Tuesday, March 1, 9988

The Ocean

You are an ocean.  You put up waves: waves of elation, waves of sorrow, waves of courage, waves of fear, waves of youth, waves of maturity, waves of beauty, waves of ugliness, waves of strength, waves of weakness, waves of belief, waves of doubt, waves of reputation, waves of obscurity, waves of accomplishment, waves of failure.  All these waves are temporary configurations of ocean.  But they are not the ocean.  They will disappear, because they are only movements, not stable forms.  Only the ocean persists.

If you define yourself by your waves then this false self will end when the waves end, so your idea of who you are is thus always in jeopardy, always doomed, and this will cause you to live in fear of annihilation.  You might put great effort into maintaining and defending your waves - sometimes competing, sometimes bragging, sometimes complaining, sometimes arguing, sometimes shouting - but they will disappear on their own anyway, because they are nothing but waves, and you will see that all your efforts were futile because you defended nothing.

To insist that you are your waves is to deny your ocean-ness.

When you realize that you are the ocean, there will be no anxiety about the waves imminent demise, because you will know that you are not them.  You will become aware that you are real, vast, and persistent.