"What is the color of your head from the standpoint of your eyes? You feel that you head is black, or that it has not any color at all. Outside you see your field of vision as an oval because your two eyes act as two centers of an ellipse. But what is beyond the field of vision? What color is it where you can't see? It is not black, and this is an important point; there is no color at all beyond your field of vision. This little mental exercise gives us an idea of what is mean by the character hsüan. Although its dictionary definition is "dark, deep, obscure," it actually refers to this kind of no color that is the color of your head - as far as your eyes are concerned. Perhaps we could say that the invisibility of one's head, in a certain sense the lack of a head, is the secret of being alive. To be headless, or have no head in just the same sense I am talking about, is our way of talking about the Chinese expression wu hsin, or "no mind." As a matter of fact, if you want to see the inside of your head all you have to do is keep your eyes open, because all that you are experiencing in the external, visual field is a state of your brain."
- Alan Watts, Swimming Headless, 1966
- Alan Watts, Swimming Headless, 1966
"Easter Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks, 1960-1969." By Alan Watts. Novato, California, New World Library, 1994, 2006.
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