Water

In the beginning
the earth was without form and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:2

The secret source is clear and transparent
[yet] her branches are dark and flow everywhere.
-- The Song of Difference and Unity
8th century Shitou Xiqian (700-790). This line is from the poem Sandokai, of the Soto school of Zen, chanted daily in temples throughout the world.

If you delve deeply enough,
at a certain moment you reach a vein
that courses underneath everything.
​​
If you go deep enough,
you arrive at that stream;
you recognize it everywhere.
​
— Bieke Vandekerckhove,
The Taste of Silence

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon’s reflection…
— Rumi

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
-- Psalm 42:7

What Any Lover Learns
River does not run.
River presses its heavy silver self
Down into stone, and stone refuses.
What runs,
Swirling and leaping into sun, is stone’s
Refusal of the river, not the river.
-- Archibald Macleish


Don't give me the whole truth,
don't give me the sea for my thirst,
don't give me the sky when I ask for light,
but give me a glint,
a dewy wisp,
a mote
as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing
and the wind a grain of salt. -- Olaf H. Hauge

Mole, drinking from the vast river, doesn’t drink beyond a full belly.
-- Chuang Tzu, by Christopher Tricker
All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are.
​
Humility gives it its power.
​
-- Tao te Ching 66 (Stephen Mitchell)


The constant practice of the Master is
humility.
He doesn’t glitter like a jewel,
but let’s himself be shaped by the Tao,
as rugged and common as a stone.
​
--Tao te Ching 39 (Stephen Mitchell)

Lauren Worsley, artist
The Old Age of a Eagle is better than the Youth of a Sparrow (2008)
Like a stone at the bottom of a river bed,
an old woman may do nothing
except stay still and hold her ground,
​
but the river has to take her into account
and alter its flow because of her…
​
Character brings particular qualities
to every scene,
adds intricacy and depth
​
— James Hillman, The Force
of Character and Lasting Life

​My ministry is like water —
it flows to fill the empty places,
and has no shape of its own.
-- Sarah


Hands clap.
Frightened, birds fly away.
Koi search for food.
A servant brings tea.
Inscription at Buddhist Temple at Nara Park, Japan near Sarusawa Pond. One interpretation is a single action (a hand clap) may trigger many different events that seem unrelated to an unaware person. But to the fully conscious observer, all these things are connected. Here, at the sound of the clap, the birds are startled, the koi fish assume they are about to be fed, and the servant responds to being summoned.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things:
everything changes;
everything is connected;
pay attention.
-- Jane Hirshfield


In the year 2000, the elders of the Hopi Nation
offered a prophecy about the coming millennium.
The Hopi elders are considered the earth protectors,
the ones who are responsible for the health of our planet.​
The advice of the Hopi elders was:
We are now in a fast-flowing river.
Many of us will be afraid
and will try to cling to the shore.
Those who cling to the shore
will suffer greatly.
​
Let go of the shore and push off
into the middle of the river.
Keep your eyes open
and your head above water.
See who is there with you
and reach out.

Come.
Reach out your hand.
Some rivers we must cross together.
-- Pinnika the Slave
When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield. -- Tao te Ching 69 (Stephen Mitchell)

Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
-- Tao te Ching 78 (Stephen Mitchell)

The restful mind is the mirror of the Universe. — Chuang Tzu

A disturbance in a shallow pool causes major turbulence;
the same disturbance in a deep reservoir causes only modest ripples.
-- rabbi david a.cooper
An old pond.
A frog jumps in.
Splash! (silence again)
-- Basho

Most famous haiku of all time, on the ephemerality of life


Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
​

​Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
​
-- Tao te Ching 15 (Stephen Mitchell)

​What is dense and muddy here
is clear and clean there, in God.
Imagine that you were to pour clear water
Into a clean basin and, still as still can be,
look into that water down to the bottom.
It’s shining clarity and absence of opacity,
would be evident from above to below.
It is just so with human beings...
-- Meister Eckhart
(Sweeney/Burrows translation)
​

Stillness is what creates Love. Movement is what creates Life. To be still, yet moving, that is everything. — Do Hyun Choe


A man is crossing a river in a boat
when he sees an empty boat
approaching on a collision course.
Even though he’s a hot-tempered fellow,
this doesn’t make him angry.
But now, he sees there is someone in the boat,
so he calls out to them to alter their course.
When this first call isn’t heeded, he calls out again.
And when this call isn’t heeded,
he calls out a third time
and throws in a torrent of abuse.
Before, he wasn’t angry.
But now he is.
Before, the other boat was empty.
But now there’s someone in it.
​
When you see
that other people are empty boats,
even if
you’re a hot-tempered person
you’ll never be angry.
​
-- from the writings of Chuang Tzu,
translated by Christopher Tricker,
The Usefulness of a Useless Philosophy


Beneath everything we say,
and within each note of the reed flute,
lies a nostalgia for the river bed.
​
Language and music are possible
only because we’re empty, hollow,
and separated from the source.
​
All language is a longing for home.
​
— Rumi
​

… One river flows toward you.
Another away.
​
In the end,
you will be the one
to carry yourself
home.
-- Isidasi (Buddhist nun)

Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water.
At that moment, all fear of death disappears. -- Thich Nhat Hanh
Water is water,
no matter what it’s shape or form,
the solidity of ice imagines itself
to be its edges and density;
Melting, it remembers.
Evaporating, it ascends.
— Stephen Levine
