To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

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.

Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.

Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration.

If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.