A Buddhist scholar named Nogaguna, who lived about A.D. 200, invented a whole dialectic and founded a school where the “leader” of the students would simply destroy all of their ideas - absolutely abolish their philosophic notions. And they would get the heebie-jeebies and see that the leader did not have the heebie-jeebies, that he seemed perfectly relaxed in having no particular point of view. ‘Teacher, how can you stand it? We have to have something to hold on to.’ And the teacher’s response: ‘Who does? Who are you?
’Eventually, of course, they discovered that it is not necessary to hang onto anything, to rely on anything. There is nothing to rely on because you are IT. It is like asking the question ‘Where is the universe?
’Where is it in space? Everything in it is falling around everything else, but there is no concrete floor underneath for the thing to crash, because the space goes out and out forever and ever and has no end.
What is it? What else could it be?
Of course, it is you.”
—Alan Watts (1915 - 1973). With thanks to the Tao of Photography
