Ocean Practice

We are an ocean. Being the ocean, we are everything that arises, can be everything that arises, can take care of everything that arises.

To help see this, let us start with the analogy that we are living in an ocean. All sorts of waves come to us. We identify with some and think they are coming from 'inside', some seem to be from 'outside'. Some we like, some we don't like. Some are feelings, emotions, thoughts that we play with, like to experience. Some we say, 'I shouldin't feel that way..this shouldn't happen..I shouldn't think this way'.

Our life habits are like the wave denying the ocean. Despite denying that it is so, the wave is the ocean. The wave can not become the ocean, need not become the ocean-it is the ocean. The ocean can not become the wave, it is the wave.

Inside, outside, from other people, from the world, from myself, all sorts of waves, circumstances, appear. All sorts of habits and reactions in this ocean are arising passing waves that is our life. Ocean and waves are not two; there are no waves other than ocean, there is no ocean other than waves. So be the ocean wave that you are right now.

An important step in practice is developing the ability to surf and sail the ocean, to be the arising/passing wave. To surf we need to be present. If we are not present, then we are fighting waves arising. Then, some waves seem to be our life and some seem external, coming at us, a dualistic sense of self and waves. Habits fight waves. Fighting them, trying to do something to them, against them, with them-if this is our strategy, at best we are only partially 'successful'. So, practice is developing the ability, the muscle, of being present, the ability to be circumstances, the waves that are appearing. And to see how to surf this wave, how to sail and tack throuth this wave. What is the skillful and appropriate way to surf this wave?

Sitting is this capacity. It might seem like something new. It is not, except to the extent that we have been doing something else much of our life, we have gotten used to not riding the waves of life, the ocean. Unfortunately, if you fight the waves of the ocean you never win. Because the ocean waves keep coming. You have no control over the waves, despite trying. We may think 'if I build this, if I go there, I'll avoid A,B, C.' You might for a while. But then, E,F,G might appear or even A,B,C.

Are you present in the middst of the storm-as well as the gentle waves that you are enjoying? Do you hear the wonderful sounds of the waves, sounds of the ocean?

The sounds of the waves, of the ocean, include the noisy traffic that you may want to exclude. These insects-wonderful? annoying?

If we don't see what is so, we are not present, then we are not able to see what to do. And we are not able to be the depths of the ocean. We may skim the surface to the exclusion of the depths. Truthfully, we are the depths of the ocean as well as the surface of the ocean. Being so, then, being the waves is easy, even being this storm-because despite the storm and the rough seas, the agitation and tumult, ocean is not perturbed, we are not perturbed in the midst of being stormed.

By/Elihu Genmyo Smith

http://www.prairiezen.org/readings/ocean_practice.htm

Salam,

Cherine