Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

To use another Buddhist simile: The doctrine is like a finger pointing at the moon, and one must take care not to mistake the finger for the moon. Too many of us, I fear, suck the pointing finger of religion for comfort, instead of looking where it points. Now it seems to me that what the finger of religion points at is something not at all religious. Religion, with all its apparatus of ideas and practices, is altogether a pointing—and it does not point at itself. It doesn’t point at God, either, for the notion of God is part and parcel of religion. I might say that what religion points at is reality, except that this merely puts a philosophical notion in place of a religious one. And I can think of a dozen other substitutes for God or reality. I could say that it points at one’s true Self, at the eternal Now, at the nonverbal world, at the infinite and ineffable—but really none of this is very helpful. It’s just putting one finger in place of another. When Joshu asked his teacher Nansen, ‘‘What is the Tao, the Way?’’ Nansen replied, ‘‘Your everyday mind is the Tao.’’