Tathata

I was listening to Alan Watts last night as I was falling asleep (I like the thought that positive words affect our subconscious while sleeping :), and I heard something awesome. Unfortunately, I'm unable to find the audio on youtube; however, if it were on youtube, I'm sure it would be stuck in the middle of a long video anyway. Although I think everyone should hear every word Alan Watts has ever recorded, I'd like to get straight to the point. So here it is in text (I found it on Google Books):

Actually, some of the words that the Buddhists use for the basic energy of the word really do not mean anything at all.  The word tathata, which in Sanskrit for "suchness" or "vastness," really means something more like "da-da-da," based on the word tat, which in Sanskrit means "that."  In Sanskrit existence is described as tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," or in modern American, "You're it."  But da-da is the first sound a baby makes when it comes into the world because the baby looks around and says, "da, da, da, da, da."  "That, that, that, that, that!"  Fathers flatter themselves and think their baby is saying "da-da" for "daddy," but according to the Buddhist philosophy this entire universe is one da-da-da, which means then thousand functions, ten thousand things, or one suchness, and we are all one suchness.

This is especially relevant to me because we have a 10-month-old baby, and just the other day I was listening to him saying "Da-da-da, da, DA," and suspecting that maybe he was just trying to say "That!" Now I know why!

(Random baby saying "da-da")

Here is the book quoted above on Amazon. One of my life goals is to read every Alan Watts book (progress of which has ground to a halt in part because of said baby!). So I definitely recommend it!