We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, "The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.