Wednesday ~ June 23, 1999

The Life of a Wave...
 

We watch waves,  as they crash on the shore...   from the beach or from a pier,  it doesn't matter.   What matters is that the sounds and sights of waves crashing brings about a peace from within.

I'd been thinking a lot about the metaphor,  that life is like that of a wave.   We surge upward and forward in the prime of our youth,  we peak very strongly,  and then we crash and subside on the shores.

Could our crashing onto the shore mean our heaven,  or nirvana?   It seems like a fitting metaphor.
 

"The wave lives the life of a wave and at the same time,  the life of water."

In Zen teachings,  we are taught that we are like an individual wave,  the part that is us,  "rising and falling on a Great Sea of Being".

I suppose most of us experience the surface which is the individual wave,  struggling with the movement and the brief surging of life,  and then there is the depthness of the vast ocean that is unfathomable and mysterious. 

This is truly a great analogy for the God is Everywhere theme!

That if God is everywhere,  in all of us,  in the plants,  rocks and trees,  then just like the wave and the ocean,  we are but a part of God,  or this total oneness of Being.

"Waves come and go,  but the ocean remains."

But,  if we are a wave,  then we ARE the ocean.