This 10 minute talk is titled Surfing the Waves of Life.
What does it feel like when we align ourselves with the flow of life?
With the tau?
Well,
It actually feels a lot like surfing.
When I was growing up in Puerto Rico,
My brother taught me to surf.
It quickly became a passion of mine.
Surfing is a funny sport.
Because instead of you moving around the playing field.
The playing field is moving around you.
Since the field in which surfers play is unstable and mercurial.
They must prepare themselves for the unexpected.
Most importantly,
They must understand that they are not in control.
The ocean is.
Any illusion of control is quickly dispelled when a massive wave.
Buries the beginner surfer under tons of raging whitewater.
In time,
The surfer gets to intuit a general sense of the direction.
Size and texture of the wave.
But they are always keenly aware that it is the ocean that ultimately dictates.
How the play begins.
Surfer and water ends.
Eventually,
The waves unpredictability stops surprising the surfer.
And they learn to relax.
Having learned to relax,
They let go of control.
Allowing themselves to ride the flow of the wave.
When all goes right.
Ecstasy ensues,
If only for a second.
At the peak of the experience.
One feels at one with the wave.
And by extension,
Nature and the world.
For a brief moment,
The distinction between surfer and wave blurs.
There is no surfer that is separate from the wave.
No object-subject duality.
There are no nouns splitting up the world into different things.
Such as surfer and wave,
Self and other.
Human and nature.
No.
In this singular moment,
There is only unity.
Only a verb remains.
Which points to the surface of the wave.
And there is a sense.
Which points to the moment when two become one.
There are no surfers and waves anymore.
No.
Now.
There is only surfing.
In a sense,
Our lives are this way.
The field around which our lives play out.
Is in continuous flux.
Forever changing.
Always surprising.
Much like the waves that dance along the ocean surface.
Buddhists call this core feature of existence.
Anicca.
Which is the Pali word for impermanence.
Our lives are impermanent.
Appearing one day.
Staying for some time.
And then passing away.
So too is our health.
Here one day.
Gone the next.
What about physical agility and prowess?
The same.
Frailty eventually wins out.
If given enough time.
Personal relationships.
They too come.
Remain for a while.
And then disappear.
Even in the case of the longest marriages or friendships.
Death eventually comes calling.
And the relationship inevitably is no more.
Like the surfer who adapts to the unpredictable movements of the ocean's waves.
So do we.
If given enough time.
And the proper conditions.
Eventually learn to adapt to the unforeseeable ebbs and flows of life.
While initially trying to control the surface of the ocean.
And to control the surface of the ocean.
And to control the surface of the ocean.
And to control the surface of the ocean.
Initially trying to control the circumstances and the course of our lives.
We in time come to understand that we are not in control.
The untimely diagnosis.
The unexpected death.
The sagging skin.
They all remind us of who really is in charge.
And it most definitely is not us.
This is like the lesson the beginner surfer learns from getting buried by wave after wave.
There is no corralling the ocean.
Just like there is no containing life.
So.
If we are going to get by.
We're going to have to learn to surf the waves of life.
In much the same way as surfers learn to surf the ocean.
We must learn to let go into the flow of life.
Not resisting the momentum of life's waves.
But aligning oneself with them.
This is what it feels like to be alive.
This is what it feels like.
To allow the little corner of the universe that is you to reveal yourself.
It feels like flowing with the oceanic unfolding that we call existence instead of struggling against it.
And when things fall into place.
When they really fall into place.
Our lives get a brief taste of that which the surfer experiences at the peak of wave riding.
A timeless moment.
When we get a felt sense of a unified existence.
Where the boundaries between self and other drop out.
And we finally glimpse the unity that lurks behind.
Superficial separation.
When we stumble into full alignment with the flow of life.
With the tao.
We touch that liminal space where we notice that ourselves and other selves.
Humanity and the natural world are not separate.
That they are not two.
Underlying the superficial division lies the hidden balance that brings everything and every being together.
In the singular miraculous unfolding that we call life.
When looked at things this way.
We are not discrete beings doing discrete things.
Such as trying to make things happen.
Discrete beings doing discrete things.
Such as driving,
Eating,
Walking or sleeping.
Instead from this more cosmic point of view.
Everything we do.
From the moment we are born until the day we die.
Can be reduced to one single verb.
Living.
So rather than splitting up the world into distinct states,
Actions,
Things and beings.
When we are surfing the flow of life.
When we let go into how things are.
We realize that all of these individual things are nothing.
But instantiations of the single.
Raw beautiful scary.
Process of living.
