Isn’t it easy to see that this line is imaginary, and that it, and the witness behind it, are the same old faking process automatically learned in ch… - Alan Watts

Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves.

The five colours will blind a man’s sight. The five sounds will deaden a mans hearing. The five tastes will spoil a man’s palate. Chasing and hunting will drive a man wild. Things hard to get will do harm to a man’s conduct. Therefore the sage makes provision for the stomach and not for the eye.

If, then, we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures.