Water Lessons
We can learn a lot from water. Water is everywhere, both around us and within us. Without water we would die very quickly. Water meets many of our needs. Water can be a great teacher for us.
Let’s begin by considering the sea. All the oceans of the world are connected. There are no oceans, no seas, anywhere in the world, which exist in isolation. In fact although we name the oceans and the seas as if they are separate entities, they are not. They are all one, artificially divided up into regions. We do that all the time as human beings. We break down whatever we see into parts, and we name the parts, isolating them from their natural environment, artificially dividing them up to contain them.
All divisions are artificial. The seas and oceans of the world are more than just connected. They are all the one water.
The surface of the sea is rarely still. In fact, it is never still at the edges. Have you ever been to a beach where there are no waves breaking on the shore, where there is no tide? Some days, however, as you cast your eyes out further to sea, the surface may appear flat and calm, but it rarely stays that way for long. The wind blows, the currents flow, and the surface breaks into a myriad of waves. Every one of us is like one of these waves. We appear, as if we are separate and distinct entities, but only for a brief time, then we are gone again. This is no illusion. Like the waves, we do indeed appear as distinct, discernible entities. But only for a short period of time. Just as the waves emerge out of the ocean, without breaking away from the ocean, so we emerge from the universe, from Life, from the non-dual nature of reality. And just as the waves dissolve back into the great sea again, so do we, after a brief life, return to the universe, to whatever it is that we emerge from.
Apparently separate forms are not actually separate at all. All beings, all forms, emerge only for a brief time from the wholeness of everything, and they are all transient, soon finding themselves submerged again below the surface, finding themselves becoming one again.
As the wind and the currents produce the waves, so the sun’s rays heat the surface of the seas and the water rises high into the sky to form clouds. We can learn a lot from clouds. It is hard to define the edges of a cloud. As you look at it, it constantly changes shape, size and colour. You can point to a particular cloud sitting low on the top of a hill, but if you climb the hill, the closer you get to the cloud, the harder it is to see its edges. At some point, you enter the cloud itself, but it can be very difficult to know exactly when that occurs. It’s almost impossible to know where a cloud begins and ends. In fact once you get really close to a cloud, it becomes just mist, a wetness on the surface of your face, an obscurity, a hindrance to your vision. Strangely, clouds are easier to see from the distance than they are from close up.
Objects are not as fixed as they first appear. All objects are constantly undergoing change, and edges are not as clear the closer you look.
As the clouds drift towards the mountaintops, they release their water as rain, and the rain falls to the ground. As the raindrops gather on the ground they form puddles, ponds, and lakes, and they flow down the mountains and hills as streams which join other streams to become rivers. The rivers all flow towards the sea, returning to the point where they began.
All of life is cyclical. Just as the water in the sea rises to become clouds, then falls again as rain, we see the patterns and cycles of all life. Where are the straight lines in Nature? Where are the beginnings and the ends of things? Everything curves, bends, entwines, cycles and flows.
Why do the rivers follow the particular paths they take? Partly, the answer is the environment in which they flow. The earth and rocks encountered by the water resist it, and in that resistance they create the river banks. Partly, however, the answer is history. The water which has flowed this way before is joined by the water which falls today. The actual course of a river can change over the years, but we can easily place any river on a map. We can track it from it’s origins, from it’s source, right down the long and winding path to it’s estuary, and so into the sea again. Over the years, over the centuries, particular paths are carved in the surface of the Earth, and as each new rain falls, the water quickly seeks out these old paths and hurries down them.
The paths of the past create the paths of the present.
We name the rivers. We can place them all on our maps. Yet, as Heroditus said, you cannot step in the same river twice. He was pointing out the truth that the river constantly changes and flows. You never experience the exact same river twice.
Everything constantly changes. What you experience today can never be experienced again.
