It’s All Over — Water Wisdom
Extraordinary Lessons from Ordinary Water — from Waves to Wu-Wei
“To understand water
is to understand the cosmos,
the marvels of Nature, and life itself.”Masaru Emoto, Water Researcher
Where there is life, there is water. Where there is water, there is wisdom—if only you care to sip it. Water holds truths that are at once paradoxical, contradictory, and opposite. How can that be? Anyone who has loved deeply knows that whatever you can say about love, the opposite is also, at times, true.
“A great truth is a truth
whose opposite is also a great truth.”Neils Bohr, A Grandfather of Quantum Physics
With its iconic Yin-Yang symbol, Laozi's Dao is one such universally revered wisdom. Water is a recurring reference in this ancient teaching. If you are in the flow, you are in accord with The Way of all reality (The Dao), and you can accomplish all you need and feel as if you were doing nothing (wu-wei).
上善若水
“Supreme excellence approximates water.”Chapter 8, Verse 1, Laozi, Dao De Jing
Unlike a cookbook, the wisdom of The Dao inspires a mindset reset. No size fits all. Each specific action you take must be organically fluid to be optimal for each specific circumstance, like water.
Water’s teaching and impact on life are endless. Water flows out of everywhere, to you, in you, through you, and out of you, ever since life began. This ordinary element offers extraordinary wisdom. But first…
You Must Empty Your Cup
The Zen teacher keeps pouring water into the student’s overflowing cup, saying:
“You are too full of yourself. There is no room for knowledge, let alone wisdom. Out there are countless springs ever-flowing with this fluid wisdom. To hold anything, you must first empty your cup.”
As an empty cup, I am a beginner with no knowledge. I am expected to ask questions, even stupid ones. Thus, I get intelligent answers. Also:
“To the expert, there may be only one option.
To the beginner, the possibilities are endless.”Zen Saying
Let’s begin as beginners with empty cups.
Wacky Ways of Water
Earth is the ultimate water recycling plant—uh, planet. She has preserved the same totality of water since the beginning of life billions of years ago.
Tracer-tagged H2O molecules in a cup flung anywhere on the planet will end up in your cup within days. Everything on Earth shares the same recycled water since life began billions of years ago.
Indeed, about two-thirds of our body is water. Sorry, no substitution, ever! Nothing else even comes close.
無以易之
“Nothing can replace water.”Chapter 78, Verse 3, Dao De Jing
Science calls H2O the only universal solvent. It dissolves everything, and itself dissolves into anything. A person like that would be the consummate mixer. Wouldn’t that be nice socially? Strategically, it is as Bogg declares in Star Trek, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”
Can immortal, all-pervasive water teach us, mere mortals, how to dissolve our problems by finding our own solutions? Yes. Whatever applies to you in the following, integrate that into your daily routines as a Healing Habit.
“In one drop of water
are found all the secrets of all the oceans;
In one aspect of you
are found all the aspects of existence.”Khalil Gibran
Wayward Ways of Water
We all run into people and life events that we don’t know whether to love, hate, or both. Like people, water is full of such enigmas and inconsistencies. Yet, it is just one, simple, unitary entity. That’s already a paradox in itself.
It isn’t bipolar, schizophrenic, or confused. More than a one-tracked mind, it is multi-dimensional, just like reality—and you.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability
to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time
and still retain the ability to function.”F. Scott Fitzgerald
When you’re dying of thirst, water—tasteless and bland—can quench you like the sweetest elixir from heaven. Be clear about what you genuinely thirst for, though.
“Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?”Kahlil Gibran
Water can keep you afloat on a lifeboat in a stormy sea, yet 4 inches of it in a puddle can drown you. How you position yourself can save or kill you.
Tiny as a droplet and enormous as an ocean, water can be nowhere or everywhere. It’s a shape-shifting ninja, being anywhere, anytime it needs. Want to be that good at fitting in?
It is soft as steam and hard as ice. It is gentle as a shower and horrific as a tsunami. It is as conforming as blank space and as unique as every snowflake. It is not just how you are, but how you avail yourself that makes you what you are.
You can see clear through water until it is pitch dark when you get too deep. Its surface reflects just as you are, so you can’t hide. To see clear through, you must also reflect.
“The face of the water…
it had a new story to tell every day.”Mark Twain
Winning Ways of Water
Let’s see if we can learn from water by embracing all of reality’s opposites and optimizing it for ourselves. Get the Yin with the Yang. Winner takes all!
You can beat at water as hard as you want; you can’t hurt it. It instantly returns to its original shape and never punches you back. Exemplary passive resistance!
Slight as a mist, yet once gathered with more of its kind, water ascends as voluminous clouds, then downpours as droplets that swell into grand rapids and mighty seas. You are just one, but when you are one with all, you become unstoppable. Extreme teamwork at getting things done!
“Water is the driving force of all nature.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Splashed on a hot stone, water vanishes in an instant. Drip by drip, it drills through huge, hard rocks over time. Gentle patience and unwavering consistency can overpower brute force and impenetrable hardness.
Water takes the shape of any container you pour it in. Yet, when a river runs through, continents get carved, and civilizations get created. Whoever thinks we can be contained, we will show them what civilly disobedient self-determination can do, as we have throughout history.
Like Nature, water flows, mixes, becomes, and is ever-changing, even though it may look stagnant to the fixated mind. That is also our nature—if we allow it.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it's not the same river
and he's not the same man.”Heraclitus
When we are in the flow, fluid as water, time streams by, though it seems to have stood still. Try to push the river, and you’re up the creek. When you glide along, making all kinds of surprising and scenic turns with it, you can get it all and hardly have to do a thing.
“Empty your mind,
be formless, shapeless
– like water.”Bruce Lee, Kungfu Legend
That’s the way of the greatest artists, writers, scientists, and sages. How do they find the flow?
Your Way, Our Way, The Way of Water
Life is like an ocean, and lifeforms like us are varying forms of the water in it. Some are like mist spraying here and there. Others are like surfs bursting up and down.
We frolic and linger for as much and as long as the Nature of water would have us. Our time varies, but after a relatively short while, we all mix back in the same timeless, shapeless, unfathomable ocean of life. Then, others take their turns for re-creation and recreation. Water is indestructible. The cycle continues.
Does it make any sense for sprays and surfs like us to contest, combat, compress, and conquer one another during our brief presence? Shouldn’t we be busy marveling at the diverse and ever-changing grandeur instead?
In this ocean of life, we are all just waves; why not just wave while surfing and spraying, frolicking in fun?
Life is tumultuous, and the mind can get murky in the churning. Whenever I can, I go to the beach and watch the waves. If not, I just take a few minutes to watch drops of water dripping slowly from a faucet. Most meditative practices are based on rhythmic, non-thinking, non-verbal repetitions into stillness.
In stillness, thinking diminishes, and your mind slows down. The mud settles, and the water clears. After a while, even complexities become plain as water, and you can soak it all up like a sponge.
Coming from the highest stratospheres in the sky, water descends to the lowest substrata underground. In between, it does it all and serves all that need it without passing judgment, incurring stress, or soliciting reward.
It does not hesitate to water those trapped in the lowest cracks; it does not bathe in glory for floating those up high. Be it the beginning, middle, or the end, cause or consequence, victory or defeat, water doesn’t care. Coming and going, it is always inspiring, never expiring.
What a life of meaning, not merely meandering. What a fantastic flow to follow. When you have the clarity, courage, and commitment for your life’s purpose, and that purpose is in accord with your nature, and with the way of Nature, like water, you are in the flow.
You will descend from the highest plane, reach every level, morph into every form, enjoy every turn, and arrive at every destination you need. It just feels as if you are simply flowing along, having no purpose, making no effort, almost doing nothing (wu-wei).
Be rigid and frigid as ice, and you will be fixed as you are. Be fluid and embracing as water, and you can be all you need and accomplish all you mean to in all your multi-dimensions. Be that, trickle by trickle, until it fills up into a healing habit, almost in no time—before we all turn into misty steam.
Water—The Way, The Dao, Your Way. Way to go. You got this.
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Extraordinary Living by Ordinary Means 2024