The observer sat in the window and watched the street below without interest or judgment. A child fell and scraped her knee. A merchant cheated a customer. A lover kissed another lover in farewell. These events occurred as if the observer was not present, as if his watching neither blessed nor condemned them. This was the work. To see everything and to touch nothing. To remain so perfectly removed that even his presence became irrelevant, until he was not observer but observation itself, a function rather than a being. A disciple once asked him, 'What is the purpose of the watching?' 'There is no purpose,' he had said simply. 'The watching is the purpose.' The disciple had not understood. They never did. He turned his attention to another window, another street, another city. Elsewhere, other disciples sat and watched without judgment. In a distant temple, a priest stood in absolute darkness and observed the darkness, becoming it, until the distinction was lost. Ao, who was not present and not absent, approved of this with the same abstract satisfaction with which he observed all things. The watching continued, and meaning drained out slowly like water from a cracked vessel, and in its place there was only the pure fact of witness without subject or object...