Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will?

To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.

For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.

The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it.

Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.