This is from Rosemary Watola Tromer.
She writes,
And once again,
The invitation to see beyond the self,
The way water knows itself,
Not only as river and lake,
But also as fern,
As cloud,
As cat.
Forgive me for believing I end with this skin,
As a man,
These ideas,
These imaginings.
Sometimes I forget to choose vastness,
Forget to know the self as cliff,
As mataki,
As crumb.
How is it I so often miss the invitation?
How is it I overlook that I am lemon,
Asteroid,
Wren?
And so let's remember together,
Shall we?
Last week,
We returned again to the fundamental teachings of the Four Noble Truths.
And what I found is that the practice unfolds for people in different ways at different times in life.
You can hear a teaching over and over again for years,
And then suddenly hear it in an entirely new way.
Something lands that didn't before.
So in an effort to reach you in this different way,
I'd like to explore these core teachings through the lens of the elements.
And most of you know what those elements are.
They are earth,
Air,
Fire,
And water.
So last week,
I presented the First Noble Truth as this earth element,
That there is suffering,
And it exists in the earth element in this body.
The solidity of the earth element is within us.
The hardness,
The softness,
The weight,
The weight,
Or the lightness of the body.
Suffering is embedded in this earth element.
So when we extract and consume and deplete our earth's ecosystem,
We see the suffering in that,
Right?
The torrential rains,
The tornadoes,
The mudslides,
All causing loss of life.
And we,
We are earth walking on earth.
There is suffering in that.
And the cause of suffering,
The cause is fire.
In the fire sermon,
The Buddha said,
All is burning.
All is burning with the fires of greed,
Hatred,
And ignorance.
So the fire of clinging and grasping,
Clinging and grasping,
Like pulling us and pushing us away.
We're pulled towards wanting,
Pushing away not wanting,
And ignoring the problems by going shopping.
This is the cause of our suffering,
The fire of grasping.
And today we're on the third of the four noble truths.
And we're sort of turning towards the good news that suffering can end.
We can put out the fire with water.
The water element represents cohesion and fluidity.
When we come to practice,
The simile is that we are entering the stream.
We are entering the,
The waters of practice.
The teacher to so many of my teachers,
Ajahn Chah,
Had this beautiful teaching.
He said,
The mind is like still flowing water,
Still flowing water.
There are perceptions,
Feelings,
Thoughts,
And moods that come and go,
That flow and are changing constantly.
But that which knows the mind is not caught in that flow,
In the world of time and motion.
That which knows the flow is perfectly still.
So when we recognize that our mind is both still and flowing,
They live together and they're not in conflict,
Then we're able to live with the flow of the mind.
We can't hold on to flow.
You know,
We can't hold onto any of that,
Which is moving and changing.
So even if we try to do that,
We can't.
So what we can do is we can go with it.
You've heard the saying,
Go with the flow and relax.
And even if the current of the flow is really strong,
Turbulent,
Even,
You know,
Painful,
We still have access to stillness.
The undercurrent is composed of space,
Regardless of what we may perceive.
So there is this end to the fires of suffering and they can be extinguished by entering the stream,
By entering the still flowing water of practice.
This human body is composed of about 60% water.
It decreases as we age.
So our earth element,
The density,
The solidity of the body is continually at play with the water element and the water element within us is lubricating and making the earth element malleable,
Flexible.
So it's completely natural that the way out of suffering is through this flexibility,
This flexible yet cohesive part of ourselves.
There are so many metaphors and references to water.
In Buddhism,
Water symbolizes life and water is this particular element in nature that carries everything from logs and trees at spring runoff to a garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Water carries everything.
Our anxieties,
Our worries,
Our wanting and not wanting,
All our perceptions and all our views are being carried along.
And then there's this practice where we just see it.
Oh,
Check it out.
I'm triggered.
I'm holding and we can be still with that.
And in the stillness,
We're not being taken under by the wave.
The wave subsides and we cleanse our mind.
And all of a sudden there's this purity of mind that's available to us.
So what's really important is this ability to really see and be present for the flow,
The flow of our experience and tune into it.
So there's this beautiful chant.
It's in the Pali and it translates to this.
And I love this chant so much.
It's beautiful.
All things are impermanent.
They arise and they pass away.
To be in harmony with this truth brings great happiness.
Harmony is fluidity.
It's flexibility.
It's water.
So thank you.
Our next class will be the path to air.
