All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. As semanticist Alfred Korzybski used to say, it is an urgent necessi… - Alan Watts

All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is.

The universe is everlasting. The reason that the universe is everlasting is that it does not live for itself. Therefore it lasts. Therefore the sage puts himself behind, and finds himself in front, regards his person as outside himself, and his person is preserved. Is it not because he does not live for himself that he realizes himself?

To succeed is always to fail-in the sense that the more one succeeds in anything, the greater is the need to go on succeeding. To eat is to survive to be hungry.

up.” The Native Americans laugh at the “palefaces” because they say, “The paleface does not know when he is hungry until he looks at his watch.” So in this way we become clock-dominated, and the abstract system takes over from the physical, organic situation. As a result, we have run into a cultural situation where we have confused the symbol with the physical reality, the money with the wealth, the menu with the dinner, and as a result we are starving from eating menus.