Reflections on Water

  Recently I have been thinking about how the mind is like water: it moves and stirs according to the conditions that affect it, but its essence truly does not change. What attitude should we take as a result of this realization? What attitude retains such thinking? While walking to the Multifaith center today, I considered how even a little bit of an attitude of striving for something can tear one away from this water mentality. The mind becomes quite tired, in fact, when it is always thinking there is a right or wrong answer to this question. Again and again, I come back to the principle that perhaps instead of "letting go" we should be saying something like "falling back", because anything we think is going to fall short of the mark.

   Put it in another way. Does water discriminate against the reflections-liking one thing and ignoring another or disliking something else? Water stirs and accommodates the reflections evenly: it acts in accordance with what is, in other words. There is a funny motif about this, and that is regarding how vampires in horror movies can't see their own reflection. The fact that they can't means that they are not quite human or are verging on ghost like. But the mind does not say there is one realm that is better than the other. But time and again, I find myself discriminating and getting stirred up: somehow in even a subtlest way believing that there is something to retain, when the nature of water itself is purely reflective: it lets go even before we can hold onto it. This does not mean that we should not practice, but I think what it means is that we should know what we are practicing.

   Another analogy: someone gives me something to hold, then another, then a third person gives me a third thing, when I only have two hands. I pile and pile it up, only to realize that all the things I am carrying are the same: they are just different shapes and sizes related to the same fundamental substance. The hand making a fist or spread out is still a hand, just different appearances or forms. As soon as I prefer one, strive to hold onto another, then another and this and that, I become entangled, burdened and somehow responsible for all this. But what if I could just experience that all this is the same, and what if my ethics were just like a water-based ethic? Then I would not worry about even my own appearance, because I would know that all reflections are ephemeral, they come together and disappear as soon as they arise.