From Whirlpool to Philosophy

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A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particular and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and paté de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement–and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, music, and philosophy.

–Alan Watts, Does It Matter?
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