“When you ask most people to lie flat on the floor and relax, you find that they are full of tension. It’s because they don’t really believe that the floor will hold them up, and therefore they’re holding themselves together. They’re uptight. They’re afraid that if they don’t do this, even though the floor is supporting them, they’ll suddenly turn into a gelatinous mass and trickle away in all directions. Then there are other people, when you tell them to relax, they go like a limp rag. Bleeah!

But, you see, the human organism is a subtle combination of hardness and softness, of flesh and bones. And the side of Zen which has to do with neither doing nor not doing, but knowing that you are It anyway, and you don’t have to seek It, that’s Zen flesh. But the side in which you can come back into the world with this attitude of not seeking, and knowing you’re It, and not fall apart, that requires bones.”

— Alan Watts, Zen Bones