During heavy rains water flows across our side yard and out into the road. It finds the gulch beyond and tumbles without encumbrance into the valley there. It filters through the turf out back and pools beneath the pines behind our neighbor’s home. Eventually, though, it seeps into the shallow cut nearby – thence to meander ‘neath the pine boughs, and the road leading into town, to marry with the waters of more distant field and wood.
The waters wash bare the earth, leaving tree roots standing out like dark veins on the back of an aging person’s hands. They make the hillsides sag and droop, as if shrugging off the deluge. And yet those hillsides give mightily of themselves as they do, supplying the bottomlands with the nutrients that make them the rich farmland that they are. Perhaps the leaves that I raked into the low spots over the course of the last two autumns will slow this process down a bit. In the grand scheme, however, I’ve merely created a convenient way station for the detritus to accumulate for a time before continuing on its journey down below.
May we all heed water’s lesson of the Way!
I can’t see the river on a brilliant sunny day without seeing the rains beyond. I can’t see the fleshy crops sprouting along its banks without seeing those wooded hillsides up above. If life is indeed a collection of individual beings, then surely water must be that which connects us all. But when I see these flowing waters in the deepest way that I am able, I see only one body, one being, and one Life – with water being the blood ever flowing in its veins.
I studied with a now deceased Ch’an teacher for a time by the name of Ryugen Fisher – referred to by some as Old Frog. At the close of meditation retreats he made a habit of reciting a concatenation of two passages from the Tao Te Ching, one from Chapter Eight and one from Chapter Chapter Seventy-eight. I’ve been reflecting on these passages for the past month or so, reading various translations and bringing them to life in my mind. One way that I do this is by using new words to convey my internalized understanding of the collective works. So, what follows is Ryugen’s recitation, reimagined by this author after benefiting from translations by Fisher, Legge, and Feng/English:
Water teaches us the Way.
It benefits each and every living being,
But seeks nothing in return.
It simply keeps on flowing downward
To places we refuse to go.
Nothing on earth is more supple and yielding than water.
Yet nothing is hard enough, or strong enough,
To contain it or stand in its way.
May we all heed water’s lesson of the Way!
Copyright 2018 by Mark Robert Frank
All images are the property of the author unless otherwise noted.