Sublime

Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of the universe break down, and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a “principle of uncertainty.” We find such a world meaningless and inhuman, but familiarity with Chinese and Japanese art forms might lead us to an altogether new appreciation of this wor

There is, then, an analogy–and perhaps more than mere analogy-between central vision and conscious, one-at-a-time thinking, and between peripheral vision and the rather mysterious process which enables us to regulate the incredible complexity of our bodies without thinking at all. It should be noted, further, that we call our bodies complex as a re

Because the teaching of the Buddha was a way of liberation, it had no other object than the experience of nirvana. The Buddha did not attempt to set forth a consistent philosophical system, trying to satisfy that intellectual curiosity about ultimate things which expects answers in words.

Second, if we begin to think about our goals in life as destinations, as points to which we must arrive, this thinking begins to cut out all that makes a point worth having. It is as if

It is fundamental to every school of Buddhism that there is no ego, no enduring entity which is the constant subject of our changing experiences. For the ego exists in an abstract sense alone, being an abstraction from memory, somewhat like the illusory circle of fire made by a whirling torch. We can, for example, imagine the path of a bird through

Alan Watts, who gave us the image of trying to wrap up water with string, made the point that it is absurd to work at something you don’t enjoy, purely to make more money to be able to live…

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Buddhism is not really a religion—a way of obedience to someone else’s rules, a regula vitae—but a method for clarifying and liberating one’s state of consciousness. I had found myself in agreement with Lucretius

It must be obvious, from the start, that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life,

contemplative watching of the eternal now, which is sometimes revived by the use of psychedelic drugs, but which came to me through flowers, jewels, reflected light in glass, and expanses of clear sky.