If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

one of the most precious gifts of Asia to the world, the origins of Zen are as much Taoist as Buddhist... a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought... Zen may be regarded as the fulfillment of long traditions of Indian and Chinese culture

Confucianism preoccupies itself with conventional knowledge... presides over the socially necessary task of forcing the original spontaneity of life into the rigid rules of convention...The individual defines himself and his place in society in terms of the Confucian formulae... a task that involves not only conflict and pain, but also the loss of that peculiar naturalness and un-self-consciousness for which little children are so much loved, and which is sometimes regained by saints and sages.

it is notorious that most revolutions establish worse tyrannies than they destroy. To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it

if we think of spirituality... as including an intense awareness of the inner identity of subject and object, of man and the universe... sexuality... would naturally become one of the chief spheres of spiritual insight and growth.

The culture of Victorian England—a culture of the most elegant lasciviousness—offers a striking example of this religious prurience. Extreme modesty and prudishness in the home so heightened the fascination of sex that prostitution, even for the upper classes, flourished

No one has done better in conveying Lao Tzu's simple and laconic style of writing, so as to produce an English version almost as suggestive of the many meanings intended... and what it has to say is exactly what the world, in its present state, needs to hear.

Governments maintain this sense in a mild form by seeing to it that the laws are so complex that every citizen is inadvertently guilty of some crime, making it possible to convict anyone when convenient.

We are therefore a civilization that suffers from chronic disappointment—a formidable swarm of spoiled children smashing their toys.

we are most happy when good things are expected to happen, not when they are happening. We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing to meet them that we can't slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.

No one has done better in conveying Lao Tzu's simple and laconic style of writing, so as to produce an English version almost as suggestive of the many meanings intended. this is a most useful, as well as beautiful, volume—and what it has to say is exactly what the world, in its present state, need to hear.

The culture of Victorian England—a culture of the most elegant lasciviousness—offers a striking example of this religious prurience. Extreme modesty and prudishness in the home so heightened the fascination of sex that prostitution, even for the upper classes, flourished.

To really do nothing, with perfection, is as difficult as doing everything.

Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning, covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum.

When we no longer confuse ourselves with the definition of ourselves that others have given us, we are at once universal and unique.

‘official psychotherapy’ lacks integrity and becomes the obedient tool of armies, bureaucracies, churches, corporations, and all agencies that require individual brainwashing… the therapist who is really interested in helping the individual is forced into social criticism.

The test of liberation is not whether it issues in good works; the test of good works is whether they issue in liberation.

when we have Eros dominated by reason instead of Eros expressing itself with reason, we create a culture this is simply against life

When technology is used to increase employment rather than get rid of it, work becomes an artificial creation of ever more meaningless routines