I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Maui waves the past nine days. Hopefully I’m starting to get their spiritual message.
“Dude, we’re the same as the ocean. Just like you are the same as God, Buddha nature, Tao, whatever you want to call it. Relax, brutha. Hang loose. Trust us, we know: when you’re not the wave, you’re the ocean.”
The thing is, waves are a lot more interesting than the flat ocean. When I sit on the beach and gaze out to sea, mostly I focus on the waves. (Which, sadly, have been calm the whole time we’ve been here, leaving my boogie board unused. Boo hoo, poor me.)
Waves are active. Waves are doing something. Waves stand out. Yet, waves don’t last. They always end up sinking back into the ocean, becoming the ocean again.
In his book, “No Death, No Fear,” Thich Nhat Hanh says that this is nirvana: realizing yourself as water, as well as a wave.
Our foundation is nirvana, the ultimate reality. You can call it God or the kingdom of God. This is the water in which we live. You are a wave, but at the same time you are also water.…A wave does not have to die in order to become water. She is water right here and now. We also do not have to die in order to enter the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is our very foundation here and now.
This is the problem with religions. They interpose a bunch of illusory crap between us and God, between the waves and water. Dogmas, theologies, concepts, commandments. Are these things real? For sure, not as real as the foundation that supports them.
Religiosity is like sand. It shifts. Even more: it separates us from the water. If what Thich Nhat Hanh says is true, it is water, just like everything else. But until religion is realized as such, it’s a barrier between us and what we long for.
If you have a notion about nirvana, that notion should be removed. Nirvana is empty of all notions, including the notion of nirvana.…You are what you are looking for. You are already what you want to become. You can say to the wave, “My dearest wave, you are water. You don’t have to go and seek water. Your nature is the nature of nondiscrimination, of no birth, of no death, of no being, and of no non-being.”
Practice like a wave.
Good advice. All it takes is letting go. Relaxing. Being what we already are. Ocean.
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