We have been accustomed to make this existence worth-while by the belief that there is more than the outward appearance — that we live for a future b… - Alan Watts

If living is to end in pain, incompleteness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile experience for beings who are born to reason, hope, create, and love.

For when we fail to see that our life is change, we set ourselves against ourselves and become like Ouroboros, the misguided snake, who tries to eat his own tail. Ouroboros is the perennial symbol of all vicious circles, of every attempt to split our being asunder and make one part conquer the other.

When you no longer make the distinction between the universe and how you are acting upon it, you are really on your own and so acquire a sense of responsibility.

Man is not to be an intellectual porcupine meeting his environment with a surface of spikes. Man meets the world outside with a soft skin, with a delicate eyeball and eardrum, and finds communion with it through a warm, melting, vaguely defined and caressing touch whereby the world is not set at a distance like an enemy to be shot, but embraced to become one flesh, like a beloved wife.