Everything progresses even as it stays the same. One eminent philosopher said that reality is a "constant advance into novelty" and so it is! We stay with our "selves" at our peril.
Very much an admirer of Alan Watts and his work at the moment (along with Candy Crush Soda Saga, for which I can proudly claim to be at level 4445) He had his problems with drink but hey, we all have our problems. Fix your own.
Reading his "The Way of Zen" at the moment. This from his introduction:-
Western thought has changed so rapidly in this century that we are in a state of considerable confusion. Not only are there serious difficulties of communication between the intellectual and the general public, but the course of our thinking and of our very history has seriously undermined the common-sense assumptions which lie at the roots of our social conventions and institutions. Familiar concepts of space, time, and motion, of nature and natural law, of history and social change, and of human personality itself have dissolved, and we find ourselves adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembles the Buddhist principle of the “Great Void.”
The void! Positive or negative. Some fear the void, some embrace it.
Alan Watts then goes on to quote an old zen saying:-
Above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground for the foot.
He then says that such language should not actually be so unfamiliar to us, were we truly prepared to accept the meaning of “the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”
Nowhere to lay our heads! Most prefer "beliefs", even to the point of claiming that their own set the parameters of an "only way". Quite tragic. Is there an "only way" set in stone, found in a book, that can actually set us free? Gives us the "peace that passes understanding"? More often than not the peace I see in others is all too understandable!
As Thomas Merton once said, the only way is in fact "no way at all", a "way" where we in fact become as good as lost. But - as he says again - such a way is not a way out!
Well, I waffle.
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