@Ooker The articles are... familiar. The metaphors are unfamiliar, but the gaps between them resonate with me, if that makes any sense at all. I may just be an odd person, but I often find more information in what is unsaid than what is said.

What is said talks much of duality, but the gaps suggest a desire for there to be something which is non-dual from which one can derive thought.

Of course, it may just be me. Many of the philosophers I look up to really dig that idea. Alan Watts is known for saying "The secret to life is that every inside has an outside," and then riffing on that for an hour long lecture or more.

@CortAmmon I've asked about the gap in How is the concept of “beyond word” viewed in many school of thoughts?. I haven't read Alan Watts, but Taoism+Buddhism (aka Zen) is heavily influenced my work

I wish I can be that experience in social skills like you, e.g. your answer in How do I deal with other people's screaming children in restaurants?. The articles are how I would tell others how I have matured, and help them in their struggle too. Do you think it's reasonable? Are there any flaws that you see? Thanks

@Ooker You are too kind. Stack Exchange is very kind to my way of thinking. You get directed towards the best of my work, and directed away from all the foolishness that got downvoted into oblivion and then summarily closed/deleted =) I've got a shot gun approach to Stack Exchange: something will be a hit, eventually.

As for flaws that I see in your articles, I think I may have to use a large number of words to give my answer. I don't know if I can make it straightforward and profound. But I can give it a shot.

Your second part was "help them in their struggle too." NOW we're talking about a concept which is worth talking about. The desire to help others in their struggle is something I'd consider to be "mature," but more imporant, it is something which can survive you digging deep into the duality of things. Or at least that's what I've seen. I've found no duality argument which disputes the idea of helping others.

Indeed I'd call it a "good" aspiration, if I didn't have an alergic reaction to the use of "good" in a philosophical discussion without sufficient context.

So if I may focus on that, does an article have to be flawless to help?

My own studies suggest that all written texts are flawed, because a flawless written work is inconsistent with the assumptions I make about language.

But I see no logical argument to prove that flawed works don't help.

Case study from my life: I study Tai Chi. The message my sifu (teacher) teaches me is flawed. I know it, I can see it. But I see that that flawed message helps me in every day of my life. And I think he understands that, so he continues to refine his flawed message to be more and more helpful.

@Ooker So to the topic of your question, I feel the key profound line from that monologue is "Something doesn't have to be flawless to be helpful." But I could not draw together enough skill to craft that in a way which came first.

I might have been able to phrase that in a more Zen way, by asking the question "Do you think something has to be flawless to be helpful?" and waiting for you to answer. But I got the impression that you're the kind of person willing to read through a not-straightforward answer, and I hope that it was helpful to see such an answer.

And I think all of this talk of maturity and helping and self-critiquing my own word choices to see if they serve my purposes brings me full circle to Alan Watts. I love him because we have audio recordings of him speaking, and thus we get to hear the bemused tone of voice he uses when talking about the illusions we tell ourselves. I'd love to hear him chuckling at the angst I put myself through when typing that last response. He's got such a good "oh you poor fool" laugh.

I like to think he'd tell me that Life is not a Journey. I'm actually sure he could tell me better, but since he's dead, all he can tell me are the things he recorded. Life is not a Journey is my favorite speech he put together and recorded. I know it has flaws (everything has flaws), but I can't yet see them. Every time I watch it, it tells me what I needed to hear.

(I think it's actually a few excerpts from his speeches string together by David Lindberg, but he did a good job of making it feel like a single lecture by Watts)