Inspector Montalbano is investigating the death of a prominent politician, whose body was found in a car left in a place known for prostitution. Witnesses say they saw a man having sex with a woman in that car the night before. The post mortem confirms he died of a heart attack, Montalbano, however, is suspicious about the scene of the crime, there are just one too many anomalies. He visits the deceased's widow who believes the death of her husband was politically motivated. Neither of them has any proof.
'What can I do' bemoans Montalbano.
'Well, you could just accept the shape they gave to the water'
'what do you mean' he asks.
She recounts a childhood encounter with a young country boy .He'd put on the edge of a well a bowl, a cup and a square tin all full of water, and he was just staring at them
she asks him
'What are you doing?
he replied with a question.
'What is the shape of water?'
laughing she says
'Water doesn't have a shape, it takes the shape that its given'
I watch a lot of crime procedurals, not usually with the expectation of being left reflecting on a phrase. But 'water takes the shape that its given' stayed with me. There is something about it that made me want to dig a little deeper into the what and why of it.
I was viewing this particular episode of Montalbano the morning after five days on retreat at home had concluded. My retreat reading had been Dogen's - Sansuikyo - The Mountains & Waters Sutra, and a commentary on it by Shohaku Okumura. Other watery spiritual metaphors had seeped in from other reading directions; from Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild and Sheng Yen's commentary on Seng Ts'an's Faith In Mind. The natural symbolism of water appeared to be falling out of thin air and into my lap. Then, once the retreat was over, I was merely relaxing watching TV, and was presented with yet another.
'That -- water takes the shape that its given'
Our bodies are largely made of water, too little and we die of thirst, too much and we drown, it scalds, it freezes, it falls, it pools, it moistens, it floods, it flows, it steams, it snows. Water adapts itself to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. Water is a shape shifting element.
'Water reaches into flames, it reaches into the mind and its images, into wit, and into discrimination, and it reaches into realisation of the Buddha-nature' Dogen
Waters capacity to flow as a spiritual metaphor is irresistible. To be able to mimic waters ability to go with the flow of whatever it encounters, to get through, in, over, around or under it. If only our experience of life could be more like that. Moving smoothly from one thing to the next, nothing ruffling us as we ride those tigers and paddle through those doldrums. Water brings insights into a better way of relating to reality.
That our original shape was quite like water
Water has more than ease of flow to recommend it. Unlike humanity water never gets stuck for long in one particular form or way of being. If water has any sense of itself as water, it is not one that is stifled or inhibited by its own self consciousness. Water doesn't have a fixed permanent sense of who it is. A quality of water is that it has no will, no desire for control over its destiny. Water is compelled to fully embrace its innate willingness to adapt and be transformed by external circumstance. It doesn't have to be protective of, or define, who, what or how it is. Water is content within its wateriness.
'Water embraces whatever shape it currently is, however brief.'
Dogen extols the virtues of water. Though he asks us not to allow our perceptions of them to be limited only to human centred viewpoints. Do not assume perceptions are the same for all sentient life. How, for instance, does a fish view water, what form does water take through a fish's eyesight, how would that perception feed into its imagination and way of living? Can we conceive of what fish-water, duck-water, or Buddha-water might look like? Lets not assume all sentient life defaults to the human way of seeing things - for why should it?
Perceptions of water take the shape that we give them.
Humanity tends to find different perspectives, different ways of doing things challenging. It prefers consistency, routine and certainty over their opposites. Our use of the internet appears to be making intolerance of other cultures and opinions more intense. History shows that people have often tried to force people to believe or see things in one way, the way that they do. If they refuse to conform, then we imprison or kill them. Yet our opinions, like our sense of our self, evolve, they are not the fixed things we think they are. Actually we all possess a more water like sense of self, even if we carry it around in a bottle.
Like water our sense of our self can become frozen
We protect self identity, reinforce its shape through how we interpret our perceptions, the stories we weave around them about who we are, why we are the way we are, what we are or are not capable of. Then apply the same criteria to other people, why they are who they are and what they are. We force ourselves and others into predefined shapes. Seeing them only as what we've made them into, the particular box that we've constructed then put them in.
'In general, ways of seeing mountains and water differ according to the type of being that sees them. There are beings which see what we call water as a string of pearls, but that does not mean that they see a string of pearls as water. They probably see as their water a form that we see as something else. We see their string of pearls as water.' Dogen
Can we imagine ourselves being more like water? Adopting the shape of other peoples opinions and ways of being, To understand anyone requires imagination, empathy and being able to listen, often without comment, as we soften our world view in order to accommodate someone else's. To see the world as if through another persons eyes, broadens who we are or can be. Someone being different to us doesn't make them unknowable. We can befriend people entirely unlike us, it can be quite invigorating.
We already do this in a smaller way with friends, partners and family, all the time. Unconsciously adapting our shape and way of being in order to sit easier with another person's shape and way of being. We find ourselves behaving differently with friends from schooldays than we do with those from our work or the buddhist centre. People from these different contexts don't necessarily get on, even though they all have you in common. They appreciate a different side of you. There are people you clash with all the time, something about their shape you cannot adapt to or accommodate. It's worth investigating why.
Different people's shape allow you to be a different shape too.
There is a traditional Buddhist story of the five blindfolded people each describes what an elephant is like for them. One knows an elephant only by its trunk, another by its ears, another by its legs, another by its tail, another by its belly. Each is correct according to the experience it has of it, but incorrect in describing the whole animal. The same goes for us and our family, partners and friends, each has their own partial view. No one can fully describe the shape of you, not even you.
' Now let us be wary of this. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistakenly assumed the various images to be one object? ....If the above is so, then practice-and-experience and pursuit of the truth also may not be only of one kind or two kinds; and the ultimate state also may be of thousands of kinds and myriad varieties.' Dogen
Lets integrate the diversity and inconsistencies that we hold within ourselves, be with them, rather than fighting against them. Resist making ourselves conform to a consistent shape, particularly if that shape is not of our choosing. The shape of ourselves can be far more flexible and fluid than we allow it to be. The same is true of other people, of our way of seeing the world, of our conception of how reality is. There maybe an infinite number of tracks up to the top of a mountain, numerous routes to cross an ocean by, many a circuitous, winding path toward Buddha Nature.
Reality functions like water, it has no permanent shape.,
Reality shape shifts
We are shape shifting sentient beings, that do not yet realise it..
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