Dadu kept his old water pots stacked in the cool shadow of the back veranda, big round clay matkas that had held drinking water for as long as Aarav could remember.

"Dadu," Aarav said one slow afternoon, "you keep saying the Self lives all through me but never gets dirty. I don't understand. If I get muddy, doesn't the thing inside me get muddy too?"

Dadu picked up an empty clay pot, looked into its dark mouth, and held it out. "What's inside this pot?"

Aarav peered in. "Nothing."

"Look again."

"...Air?"

"Air. Space. The same sky that fills the whole world is also sitting quietly inside this little pot." Dadu set the pot down. "Now watch." He took a pinch of dry red dust from the garden bed and dropped it into the pot. The dust drifted down and settled on the curved clay bottom.

"Is the space dirty now?" Dadu asked.

Aarav looked. The dust lay on the clay, in a little reddish heap. But the air above it, the empty space inside, looked exactly as clear as before. He tipped the pot and the dust slid out, leaving the clay stained — but the space inside took no mark at all.

"The dust touched the pot," Aarav said slowly. "It stuck to the clay. But it never stuck to the... the air. The space."

"Space is too fine to be stained," Dadu said. "You can fill a room with smoke, and when the smoke clears, the space is just as clean as before. You can break the pot to pieces, and the space it held isn't broken — it just joins the bigger space outside. Nothing has ever managed to dirty the sky, in all the years of the world."

He tapped Aarav lightly on the chest. "The Self in you is finer even than space. It fills your whole body, the way air fills this pot. The body can get muddy and tired and sick — the clay can crack and stain. But the one sitting inside, the one watching out through your eyes, takes no mark from any of it. It stays as clean and clear as the open sky."

Aarav held the empty pot up to the light and looked at the unmarked space inside, and somehow the afternoon felt wider than before.