Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

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.”