Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

the highest to which man can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limit.

accepting himself and his limitations just as they are, knowing that he is a weed and not trying to be a rose.

implies that very illusion of self-mastery which stands in the way. But it is just when I discover that I cannot surrender myself that I am surrendered; just when I find that I cannot accept myself that I am accepted. For in reaching this hard rock of the impossible one reaches sincerity, where there can no longer be the masked hide-and-seek of I and Me, “good I” trying to change “bad Me,” who is really the same fellow as “good I.” In the expressive imagery of Zen, all this striving for self-surrender is like trying to put legs on a snake—or, shall I say, like a naked man trying to lose his shirt. To quote from that genial Taoist, Chuang-tzu: From the standpoint of the sage, “the joined is not united, nor the separated apart, nor the long in excess, nor the short wanting. For just as a duck’s legs, though short, cannot be lengthened without pain to the duck, and a crane’s legs, though long, cannot be shortened without misery to the crane—so that which is long in man’s moral nature cannot be cut off, nor that which is short be lengthened.”

this immediate here-and-now is perfect and self-sufficient beyond any possibility of description.

the problem is the pain of trying to avoid suffering and the fear of trying not to be afraid.