Insights from Water

I used to anticipate the rain every first week of May. After the long wait, I would sit down and meditate in the rain, feel the first droplets waiting to reach the dry summer ground. As the rain pours down, I begin to feel each cold droplet on my skin until I control the shiver over my body.It was always a very Zen feeling, as I tried to figure out how my awareness is struggling to focus among the raindrops, the coldness, and the thoughts that linger in my mind. However, it is quite strange to experience early storms in the middle of tropical summer, just a week before May comes. It seems that the weather is changing. Or is it the mind of the world changing? Change has been taking place. At one side, it brings discomfort; at the other, it brings insights.

I always tell myself that the rain and I are one. The series of rainy days has brought me again this very thought. Inevitably, the rain that I accept as I am is another word for water. It has been ironic that even I fear water as it shows vastness in its body, I deeply revere it when it comes back from the sky. Weather changes somehow awaken my consciousness on the reality of impermanence. Everything is changing. Like water, unpredictable. It brings fearful thoughts of being overwhelmed (like the Typhoon Milenyo's wrath), then dynamically moves into something that quenches my inner thirst.


As I watched a video clip on Wayne Dyer's Change Your Thought, Change Your Life, I couldn't help but notice how the stoic rock stands where whitewater cascades. This is the sight of the symbolic Yin and Yang, the symbol of balance and movement. So, in understanding that rock is Love, seeing water flowing between it has given me a very astounding insight.

After the rock, let's talk about the water.

A friend once said that it is so hard to Love all beings without exception. When she sends intention of Love to people, she stops dead on her tracks. She begins to get angry towards someone. This anger brings so much mental pain and suffering. So she excludes these difficult persons from her intentions. Although it is difficult, her struggles has turned my understanding from Love to equanimity. This breakthrough is clearly seeing that Love is formless, fluid, and flowing. And only water can perfectly embody these qualities.

We all know that water is always transforming, always encompassing. It can appear as solid like ice and gas like vapor. It is gentle as a dewdrop, calm as a puddle, vast as an ocean, fierce as a tsunami. Going beyond from form to form, water epitomizes how Love does the same.

As simple as being contained in different vessels, water takes different shapes. It becomes the shape of a glass or a pot or a jar. The vessels are emptiness existing in the depths of our being. It might be hatred, guilt, frustration, sadness, grudges, judgments, fear. Water is then poured, takes the shape of the empty anger and becomes harmony. It takes the shape of guilt and becomes freedom. It takes the shape of frustration and becomes hope. In sadness, it becomes joy; in grudges, it becomes goodwill; acceptance in judgment, Love in fear. The time comes when the pouring of water is so powerful, like a raging cascade, that the empty vessel will be then shattered. The force of the free flowing Love breaks all emptiness. Because an empty vessel can never contain this tremendous outpouring of Love.

Sometimes there are situations where people are so cold, so indifferent that we assume they lack Love, but think otherwise. For Love never leaves them, even how frigid their hearts might be. Love slows then, hardens and becomes ice, waiting for the right moment to thaw when right people are ready to send that warmth. There might also be a place when anger rules, so hot and so irritating that we think Love steams away. Do not worry, for Love sometimes evaporate, seemingly invisible but still just around in the space, waiting to cool down until it returns as nourishing droplets.


The river treading the path to the ocean is a nice metaphor from a friend. He views Love this way, flowing into the vastness. To swim against the tide is futile and to go with the flow is freedom. I might fear what kind of power Love can do, yet I trust this true nature of Love. This ocean is water that transforms from one shape, from one force, from one movement to the other. This is why Lao Tzu reminded us to become water. For water in its perfection clearly embodies what Love is and what it can do if we become Love.


There is a hidden message in water, and Japanese doctor Masaru Emoto has discovered it. Water responds when either thoughts of Love or fear is projected into it. With fear, as well as an array of negative thoughts, a water droplet forms ugly solid structure when frozen. With Love, together with all its positive vibrations, a water droplet forms beautiful water crystals. This discovery points out a substantial proof that the formless water can create beautiful forms, given that our deep potency of Love affects it. Emoto calls for our understanding of water. This world is made of 70% water. Our bodies contain almost the same amount. If we can just share Loving thoughts to others, then each of us having the living water within can be transformed into wonderful possibilities.

May the flowing, formless water reminds us the nourishing Love within.