“Forthe world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only fromthe standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quiteother than himself—and then trying to grasp it.But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship onthe hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with theworld as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on therealization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.”

“If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.”

“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“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.”

“Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.”

“So you see, if you become aware of the fact that you are all of your own body, and that thebeating of your heart is not just something that happens to you, but something you're doing,then you become aware also in the same moment and at the same time that you're not onlybeating your heart, but that you are shining the sun. Why? Because the process of yourbodily existence and its rhythms is a process, an energy system which is continuous with theshining of the sun, just like the East River, here, is a continuous energy system, and all thewaves in it are activities of the whole East River, and that's continuous with the AtlanticOcean, and that's all one energy system and finally the Atlantic ocean gets around to beingthe Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, etc., and so all the waters of the Earth are acontinuous energy system. It isn't just that the East River is part of it. You can't draw anyline and say 'Look, this is where the East River ends and the rest of it begins,' as if you canin the parts of an automobile, where you can say 'This is definitely part of the generator,here, and over here is a spark plug.' There's not that kind of isolation between the elementsof nature.”