In the West, when we think of iconographic or religious paintings, we are accustomed to pictures of divine human figures and angels and saints. When the mind of the Far East expresses its religious feeling, however, it finds appropriate imagery in the objects of nature, and in this very important respect their feeling for nature is different from ours. The contrast in these two forms of expression arises as a result of the sensation that the human being is not someone who stands apart from nature and looks at it from the outside, but instead is an integral part of it.
Alan Watts, "What is Tao?"
