The pain is no longer problematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have discovered that pain and the effort to be separate fr… - Alan Watts

The pain is inescapable, and resistance as a defense only makes it worse; the whole system is jarred by the shock. Seeing the impossibility of this course, it must act according to its nature — remain stable and absorb.

community is its own moralist. It elects and pays judges, policemen, and preachers, as if to say, “When I am difficult, please kick me.

He will not, like so many Western poets, turn philosopher and say that he is “one with” the flowers, the fence, the hills, and the birds. This, too, is gilding the lily, or, in his own Oriental idiom, “putting legs on a snake.” For when you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, “I am all this.” There is simply “all this.