Sometimes I reach for analogies to express this Zen way. Today, as the weather warms, I turn to swimming ...
Imagine this world as a great pool, beyond Olympic-size, vast, holding all the world and all the galaxies, seemingly boundless. Where it came from, where it goes, we cannot be sure, yet here it is. To be born is to suddenly find oneself mysteriously alive as a swimmer in this incredible pool, moving one's arms and kicking one's legs. You feel like one swimmer in a vast pool, but you are not alone: You note many other swimmers too, great numbers, billions of swimmers, creatures of all kinds. There is sky above, ground somewhere under the depths of waters below.
Though you might drift for a time, resting, you cannot do so for long, and it seems you must keep moving forward to stay afloat. There are things ahead that you desire, some that you need to survive, some that just tempt you, and you swim hard toward many of those. You must swim for your breakfast, swim for shelter, swim for a mate. Even peace, Buddhahood, seems one such goal on the horizon.
There are also things that scare you, more than a few deadly things swimming near, and you try to swim away from those as best you can. You cannot always get away.
You see that some of the other swimmers swim with skill, gracefully, in joyful play with others, but many swimmers are very rough, unpleasant, selfishly hogging space for themself, making a mess of the waters near them, creating waves and whirlpools of disturbance spread both near and far.
Sometimes swimmers vanish into the water, seemingly never to be heard from again, and you naturally wish to avoid that for yourself, to keep alive and your head above water as long as you can. This represents your life in this world.
You feel as one single swimmer -IN- the water, separate from the water and from all the other swimmers, swimming somewhere between the sky above and the depths below. Chasing this and fleeing that. This is how we feel as separate beings in this world, here on our planet for a time, individuals somehow apart from all the other things and beings of the world.
Our Zen Practice allows us to know and experience this swimming quite differently, however.
Suddenly, we find that we are not merely swimmers -IN- the water swimming, but we -ARE- the water flowing, we are the swimming, we are all the other swimmers and they are just us, we are everything as pure swimming together, one ongoing Swimming (Big S) manifesting through all our individual little swimmings ... including the welcome things and the unwelcome, the sky and waters and depths below. In fact, so vibrant is this non-stop flowing that really, there is no separate pool or water, people or planets, here or there ... for all is swept up as a Great Swimming that all is doing together. We are this Great Swimming and this Swimming comes alive through us. One might say that we are the waters swimming, the waters swimming swimming waters. Can there be any swimming without swimmers? Swimmers without a pool and water? Here, swimmers and swimming are the Great Swimming, swimming on.
When our days end, we will sink again below the surface, yet we truly go nowhere we have not been all along: We are water returning to water. The Great Swimming swam before our time, during our time, and will continue flowing after our time. Since we are the Great Swimming, we keep swimming too so long as this Swim swims on, even if not with this swimmer's body. Really, since the waters always are the waters, here just the waters and there just the waters, thus water going no where but the waters, we can say that time does not flow anywhere but water to water, even as things flow past.
All is the Great Swimming, you are the Great Swimming as you, and I am the Great Swimming as me ... so I am you in other guise. Looking closely, we notice that each single drop is like a crystal vessel, miraculously holding within that vessel all other drops and everything and everybody else, the blue of the sky, the dark bottom of the sea, nothing left out, all contained in every drop with not a drop spilled. Typically, we swimmers feel that we end at the skin line, where the wet waters outside begin. However, in this Swimming, the borders drop, and there is only outside Flowing as the outside in, inside Swimming as the inside out. We may push ahead, swimming here and there, but there is no place to reach that is not the water, nobody separate to reach it.
Nonetheless, the point is not simply to merge into Swimming (Big S), thus to forget our little swimming, for Swimming cannot manifest without our personal swimming. Your each stroke by stroke and kick by kick brings Swimming to life. Without your swimming, and all our swimmings, Swimming is frozen ice or dead water.
Really, there is not even some "Great Swimming" to stick a name on, so vibrant this is, nothing can be pinned down ... just as one cannot glue a name tag onto rushing waters. "Great Swimming" does an injustice, much as "Pacific" cannot begin to capture all the peace and turmoil of a whole great ocean of just thousands of miles. However, whether named or namelessly, this keeps flowing, flowing. Dip your finger anywhere in this world, and one can taste the life and this whole Great Swimming in that tiny drop.
Is the swimmer swimming through the pool (like we feel that we are just beings living through time in this world)? Or is the pool swimming through the swimmer? In fact, there is only Swimming ... Swimming that is Swimming Swimming. Swimming is moving your arms, Swimming is kicking your feet.
Drowning is quite impossible, for all is waters poured into waters. Even the scary things and unpleasant beings are just flowing waters, just flowing past. Some swimmers vanish, but new swimmers come, and they just ride the waves and ripples made by those who came before.
Sad day is Swimming, happy day is Swimming, peace is Swimming, war and violence is Swimming, sickness is Swimming, health is Swimming, youth is Swimming, old age is Swimming ... all is Swimming. Do your best to avoid war and violence in the pool. Live healthily as best you can. Accept the rest.
As Zen Swimmers, our task is to swim with as much grace and poise as possible while we find ourself in this life, at home in the square inch of waters where we find ourself right now, not clutching to excess and rushing insatiably toward things far away. We should make this watery world as beautiful as we can. We should swim with equanimity, non-clutching, non-violence as best we can. In fact, if the world went to all the trouble of placing us somehow in this mysterious pool, up to our necks in water, feeling like one lone swimmer somehow in but apart, with opportunity to swim well or swim poorly, then the point of life, the point of swimming, the intent of Swimming, is to swim ... and to swim well.
There are swimmers who make a mess of it: They are swimming without elegance, swimming drunk or violent toward the other swimmers. They try to command big areas of pool, leaving small space for others or none at all. They create ripples, whirlpools and other hazards, drown themselves and cause others to drown. They feel separate from the other swimmers, from the water, from themselves. They can only think about getting to the goals at the end of the pool where, they think, some precious winning and golden prize is found. Although they are as much the water, the sky and ground, swimming and swimmers as all of this is ... they do not know. They know swimming to get somewhere, but not Swimming. They do not know that our small swimming and the Great Swimming are not two. They make a mess of it. Let us not be so and, instead, do our best to help them find their own poise.
Zazen is our time each day when we just float ... becoming still in the water for a while, dropping resistance, dropping even the feeling of inside and out, near and far ... thus to realize that water, ripples, ground, sky, swimmers and swimming are just Swimming.
This is Swimming-Enlightenment, Buddha-Swimming-Buddha .
.
* * *
Master Dogen in Kai’in Zammai, 'Ocean Mudra Samadhi' ...
.
That which contains myriad things indicates the deep ocean.
The point of these words is not about one thing that contains myriad things ...
but that what contains myriad things is nothing other than the deep ocean.
... Being all-inclusive is just like this; letting go is just like that.
What is called the ocean of buddha nature or Vairochana’s ocean storehouse is just myriad things.
Although the ocean surface is invisible,
there is no doubt about the practice of swimming in it.
The point of these words is not about one thing that contains myriad things ...
but that what contains myriad things is nothing other than the deep ocean.
... Being all-inclusive is just like this; letting go is just like that.
What is called the ocean of buddha nature or Vairochana’s ocean storehouse is just myriad things.
Although the ocean surface is invisible,
there is no doubt about the practice of swimming in it.
. buddha-statue-underwater.jpg
Gassho, J
stlah
I’ve never heard of Combat Swimming before and I hope I never need to experience such a thing. Some days it is a struggle to keep one’s own head above water let alone having someone purposely try to bring you down.
Comment