A man who uses Buddhism or any other instrument to remove love from his being in order to avoid suffering has committed, in my mind, a sacrilege comparable to castration.
(from a letter to Kerouac, quoted in the introduction to “Desolation Angels“)
—-> 
Hexagram Twenty-Six/Line One
Nine at the beginning [yang at bottom] means:
Danger is at hand. It furthers one to desist.
A man wishes to make vigorous advance, but circumstances present an obstacle. He sees himself held back firmly. If he should attempt to force an advance, it would lead him into misfortune. Therefore it is better for him to compose himself and to wait until an outlet is offered for release of his stored-up energies.
At the recommendation of a friend, I am posting a small excerpt from a chain of email correspondence we’ve been having…
One common motif I’ve noticed in the “secret societies” is one of bees and the a hive. This makes sense to me. Those who work this metaphysical/mystic stuff reach into that empty space and pull back what is needed, distilling the honey for the support of the hive. We all need the hive, but at the same time, the hive is really just an after-product of explorations past. The hive cannot support itself. Only the doors into emptiness support the hive…
In this light all the weirdly abstract and pompous pursuits of men are suddenly transformed into natural marvels of the same order as the immense beaks of the toucans and hornbills, the fabulous tails of the birds of paradise, the towering necks of the giraffes, and the vividly polychromed posteriors of the baboons. Seen thus, neither as something to be condemned nor in its accustomed aspect of serious worth, the self-importance of man dissolves in laughter. His insistent purposefulness and his extraordinary preoccupation with abstractions are, while perfectly natural, overdone—like the vast bodies of the dinosaurs.
(via here)
