As foresters like to say, the forest creates its own ideal habitat.
The overall form of the tree, with its many upward thrusting branches, is like the shape of any one of its leaves.
If you read the professional literature, you quickly get the impression that the well-being of the forest is only of interest insofar as it is necessary for optimizing the lumber industry.
It was only with the advent of words, with the illusion that he could name the whole world, every last corner of it labeled and known, that the unknown became an enemy, became a threat.
Prescriptive technologies eliminate the occasions for decision-making and judgement in general and especially for the making of principled decisions.
Religious ideas are like words—of little use, and often misleading, unless you know the concrete realities to which they refer. The word “water” is a useful means of communication amongst those who know water. The same is true of the word and the idea called “God.”
We are at war within ourselves—the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot understand.
Because life is short, human beings must cram into the years the highest possible amount of consciousness, alertness, and chronic insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startling pleasure.
We are perpetually frustrated because the verbal and abstract thinking of the brain gives the false impression of being able to cut loose from all finite limitations. It forgets that an infinity of anything is not a reality but an abstract concept,
If a problem can be solved at all, to understand it and to know what to do about it are the same thing.
What is true and positive is too real and too living to be described, and to try to describe it is like putting red paint on a red rose.
The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath.
Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain.
The pain is no longer problematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have discovered that pain and the effort to be separate from it are the same thing. Wanting to get out of pain is the pain;
Plucking chrysanthemums along the East fence; Gazing in silence at the southern hills; The birds flying home in pairs Through the soft mountain air of dusk— In these things there is a deep meaning, But when we are about to express it, We suddenly forget the words.
This is why all philosophical and theological systems must ultimately fall apart. To “know” reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it.
The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.
If psychic phenomena exist, there is no reason to suppose that they cannot be studied scientifically, and that they are not simply another aspect of “nature.”
For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable.
For the perishability and changefulness of the world is part and parcel of its liveliness and loveliness. This is why the poets are so often at their best when speaking of change.
To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand. More important still, words have enabled man to define himself—to label a certain part of his experience “I.”
Part of man’s frustration is that he has become accustomed to expect language and thought to offer explanations which they cannot give. To want life to be “intelligible” in this sense is to want it to be something other than life.
The scientific way of symbolizing the world is more suited to utilitarian purposes than the religious way, but this does not mean that it has any more “truth.” Is it truer to classify rabbits according to their meat or according to their fur? It depends on what you want to do with them. The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality. And because religion was being misused as a means for actually grasping and possessing the mystery of life, a certain measure of “debunking” was highly necessary.
This moving, vital now
The moment I name it, it is no longer God; it is man, tree, green, black, red, soft, hard, long, short, atom, universe.