Reflections on Water

  In the talk on Silent Illumination, Venerable Guoshing Shi noted that one of the hallmarks of the practice is being able to look at things clearly without having an emotional reaction to them. Just what does it mean not to 'react', however? I am reminded of a famous story in Buddhism about the mother who burned the monk's hut down because he would not respond to her daughter's 'advances' toward him. Does Silent Illumination really entail that one's emotions are not involved at all? I think that in a sense, it means that the mind is so clear that there is no particular inclination to attach to any feeling or thought. Although sensation states do arise in this process, the mind is just not attaching to anything precisely because there is a totality there.
   I don't quite know how to describe it but I wonder if it might be that the surface of the mirror is so evident that there is no desire to attach to the forms, because I am clearly aware that they are reflections on water. There is also an awareness that the reflection is not separate from the water or the person observing the reflection; that all three in that moment are together in one total situation. I am not separating the reflection or seeing it as inferior to the water, and nor am I attaching to the reflection as though the water did not exist. Each part of this puzzle--water, watcher, reflection--are integral parts to the whole, and one is mistaken to remove one from the other.
   I am wondering if I can put this all a different way. What happens if the watcher, reflection and water are taken as separate things? Well, seeing a reflection without an awareness of water is akin to essentialism: a thing is a thing, and it has a fixed substantiality which allows me to appraise it as good or bad in itself, thus giving rise to craving or hatred. On the other hand, if I focus only on the 'substance' of the image as water, I am committing another extreme of disregarding forms altogether, in favor of a concept of noumenon. If, on the other hand, I think this is all just a product of my fantasizing, dreaming mind, then I commit the third fallacy of trying to separate awareness from everything observed or experienced.
    Seeing all as as totality seems to create the greatest completion. Rather than denying the beauty and intrigue of forms, it recontextualizes them as impermanent and yet never really leaving to go anywhere.