But as I revisit the arguments offered so boldly in The Wisdom of Insecurity, I can feel the shock of truth that it produced in me.

While it is true that these arts employ what are, to us, highly difficult technical disciplines, it is always recognized that they are instrumental and secondary, and that superior work has the quality of an accident.

In trying to figure out the brain, the obstacle is that we have no finer instrument than the brain itself for the purpose. The greatest hindrance to objective knowledge is our own subjective presence.

The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

When you no longer make the distinction between the universe and how you are acting upon it, you are really on your own and so acquire a sense of responsibility.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.