"We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I… - Alan Watts

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.

The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth — urgent as they are — will destroy rather than help if made in the present spirit. For, as things stand, we have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else.

Yet, when it comes to it, this moment can be called “present” only in relation to past and future, or to someone to whom it is present. But when there is neither past nor future, and no one to whom this moment is present, what is it? When Fa-ch’ang was dying, a squirrel screeched on the roof. “It’s just this,” he said, “and nothing else.