Enlightenment is not a reward which one can get. It is something we have in spite of ourselves. - Alan Watts

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Whether we like it or not, change comes, and the greater the resistance, the greater the pain. Buddhism perceives the beauty of change, for life is like music in this: if any note or phrase is held for longer than its appointed time, the melody is lost. Thus Buddhism may be summed up in two phrases: “Let go!” and “Walk on!” Drop the craving for self, for permanence, for particular circumstances, and go straight ahead with the movement of life.

"The whole situation in and around at this instant is a harmony with which you have to find your own union if you are able to be in accord with Tao. When you have discovered your own union with it, you will be in the state of Te, sometimes rendered as "virue" or "grace" or "power,' but best understood as Tao realized in man.