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Some of my happiest hours are spent watching mountain streams swirl around rocks, pool in the bends, and tumble over waterfalls with reckless exuberance. Some of my favorite melodies arise from babbling brooks, crashing waves, or refreshing rain. I see water as an everyday miracle with multiple lessons to share.
Water flows. It does not cling to the past but remains current, never the same, always in motion, at peace with inevitable change. It is where and what it is. I aspire to a fluid and flexible presence, fretting not over what has been or will be, living in now.
Water responds creatively to its environment, bubbling through a channel, parting to encircle a rock, leaping over a shelf, filling a basin, draining into the ground and emerging somewhere else. I want to fit well in my surroundings, responding with imagination, retreating when needed, bursting forth when the time is right.
Water follows a singular purpose, drawn by gravity en route to the sea. I long for simplicity and focus, drawn by love en route to the Ultimate.
Ancient Chinese wisdom uses water to illustrate Tao (the way things work).
And water, being true to being water
is true
to Tao.
Those on the Way of Tao, like water,
need to accept where they find themselves;
and that may often be where water goes
to the lowest place, and that is right.
Like a lake
the heart must be calm and quiet
having great depth beneath it.
The sage needs to know like water
how to flow around the blocks
and how to find the way through without violence.
water, you know, never fights
it flows around
without harm.
(From Chapter 8, Tao de Ching, translated by Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer & Jay Ramsay)
Are you drawn to water in nature? What does a day at the beach, on the river, in the lake mean to you? How does it feel to go with the flow?
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