The self is always with or up against the old and new. It needs both. The world is monotonous and surprising. Newness with speed is the essential thing in surprise. Any one of us can look at the world at any time, and be surprised. What it is, can seem strange and sudden. We then have that immediate and immeasurable sense of reality, which is always in us, but seldom seen as an object clearly.

There is humor in the world, and the mingling of monotonous, tricky, unpredictable, and surprising can be seen as of humor.

The world is always placing things in orderly and mischievous arrangements. Reality is a surprise. Birth is a surprise. Ourselves are a surprise. If we look at ourselves truly, we shall be surprised. There is something funny, indescribably, universally quaint, about existence just as existence. If we look, we shall see ourselves as inevitable and surprising. The self is like that. Why this moment? why I as I am? why this action? what is all this about, anyway? what is all this going on? what is this, this, this? how am I and you here in a world without edge or bottom or boundary or end or lack of anything? This is surprise; surprise pure. Reality is surprise pure, wide, immeasurable, funny, lovely, inevitable, not able to be other, has to be this way even if it’s that, and so on here, now, to, in, of, here.

Surprise is infinite. Seen as infinite, it makes sense. We look for it. All art, all happiness proud of itself, goes after it, and has it because it really goes after it.