But he would do it in the strangest way, by declaring that there was no self to find. Lasting happiness — the underlying quest in almost all of Watts… - Alan Watts

The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.

We can’t reimpose old myths on ourselves or believe in new ones made up out of a desire for comfort; therefore, the path of self-examination is the only one a person of conscience can reasonably follow.

Taoism, on the other hand, is generally a pursuit of older men, and especially of men who are retiring from active life in the community. Their retirement from society is a kind of outward symbol of an inward liberation from the bounds of conventional patterns of thought and conduct. For Taoism concerns itself with unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life directly, instead of in the abstract, linear terms of representational thinking.

Life is a series of urgent choices demanding firm commitment to this or to that.