... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).

In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.

In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion; and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play.

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

If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.