It’s Friday, Yeah!!
I had a focused day yesterday teaching Scientific Shoulder. My students where great and asked lots of questions.
I managed to get over to the spa to take a nice steam before dinner, which rejuvenated me.
Today, I got a quick tai-chi session in before I began teaching.
NO WATER
NO FISH
Sutra 2 Expansion: Here, we have two sutra’s in one.
“NO WATER” means no life as we know it. All sentient beings in the Earth-plane need water to “live”.
Throughout recorded history, water has been referred to as “Holy” because water brings life; Holy water is often used to purify shrines and people in religious ceremonies as a symbol of purification.
Without water, rocks would not transform into soil and nothing would grow; life as we know it to be as humans could not exist, for without water to transform rock to soil, there could be no food.
Without water, there could be no atmosphere in which to breathe.
Water is to all life as blood is to all living creatures in nature. What can live with out blood or it’s very essence?
Without water, what would carry the waste away – what would clean nature? Can you imagine how your life would change if you had no way to clean yourself or your environment?
Metaphysically, water is as Unconditional Love.
Lao Tzu tells us that, “Water always seeks the lowest level; it serves the highest, yet, as the saint or sage, serves the lowest”; how would your life be different if water suddenly decided to change direction, serving and seeking only the highest?
It is the very nature of water to penetrate rock – to penetrate even the lowest places, such as your sewer system; there, water serves as the key transformative agent, bringing movement, change, and therefore, “life” to all ‘things’.
We must remember that life is movement and without water, the movement that creates life as we know it could not exist – therefore – we could not exist as we do now.
Regardless of how challenging your life would be, dare to envision how menial your challenges would be without water!
Other metaphysical meanings associated with water include:
o Weakness; giving into the hard – in service to!Kabir expresses that God or your soul are as the master who bows in service to you, awaiting the day you wake up to the truth of yourself.
o Unexpressed possibilities of the mind; water represents the sea of thought.
o The subconscious mind – Intuition.
o Doubt; man is said to be lost at sea when he can’t effectively use his mind or imagination; his water faculty. Without fish, one must learn to use their imagination to survive – to find food.
o Negativeness of thought and of polarity.
o A low physical condition relates to ineffective use of the water principle.
o Baptism; washing away negativity and committing one’s self to openness.
o Restoration of flow so that one can think and function optimally again.
o Water is the source of all the humors of the body, including blood, urine, vitreous humor (eye fluid), cerebral spinal fluid, axoplasmic fluid (nerve flow), marrow, lymphatic fluid, digestive juices, inner-ear fluid and saliva.
o Life-giver.
“NO FISH” has many meanings.
The first and most obvious is that if there is “no fish”, there is essentially “no food”. Certainly, the challenges become obvious!
“No Fish” in this sutra comes after “no water”, therefore, “no fish” is a co-dependent statement; without water, there can’t be any fish.
In metaphysics, the fish is a symbol representing:
o Fecundity – a phallic emblem – the great possibility for increase
o Christ or the “Christ Principle”
o Deities such as Isis and Vishnu
o Ideas: the mental aspects of eating
TAO-TE-zen Practice
In the future, children will be telling stories of a time when their ancestors, with their infinite creative energy, developed amazing technologies for making everything in life “easier.”
They made their own birds that could fly and carry people; they made giant tractors to till the soil and chemicals to kill the weeds; they dammed the rivers to run massive power generators to light entire cities; they sucked all the oil out of the earth to power and lubricate their myriad of machines.
They even made food that did not grow or need to be prepared.
In just a few hundred years, they had forgotten why and how their forefathers worshiped Nature. The skies became dirty, the waters so poisoned with chemicals that Nature’s ocean life began to die.
Their massive fishing ships and factory farms threw Nature out of balance and they began to worship money and machines above and before the beings that gave them life.
Soon, they began to run out of water, and most of the fish had been eaten or died. Disease was rampant among them.
Zen is the practice of living simply, in worship of what creates life.
In balance with nature.
That is TAO-TE-zen.
May your weekend provide you many experiences to participate in nature.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
