The rules of communication are not necessarily the rules of the universe, and man is not the role or identity which society thrusts upon him. For whe… - Alan Watts

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

To hate death and change is trying to make life deathless and changeless, and this is rigid. moribund, living death

Almost more common is the sensitive boy who learns in school to encrust himself for life in the shell of the “tough-guy” attitude. As an adult he plays, in self-defense, the role of the Philistine, to whom all intellectual and emotional culture is womanish and “sissy.” Carried to its final extreme, the logical end of this type of reaction to life is suicide. The hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already dead.

Zen emphasizes immediate action. When anything is to be done, it should be done immediately without thinking it over in advance.