the living water

 

.

In any age one can look into the water of a natural spring and see that it is alive. Shaken by a mysterious quivering that originates from within the earth, the liquid pulsates forth in its emergence. Looking into the sand at the bottom of the clear water, one sees the ‘eyes’ of the spring rhythmically spewing the grains here and there in little whorls and eddies. 

The pebbles skip and wheel as if invisible fingers were playing with them. The water bubbles and dances aside in crystal sheets of mirrored trembling, to slip and pour across the moist rocks and succulent earth around it. Springing forth from invisible fissures, pushed upward into the light, the water rushes out of the mother’s side, out of her eyes, her mouth, her breasts. Springing into a fountain, the water is born of the mother and, coursing through her, takes on the limpid shape of her half-opened eyes and the dazzle of her smile.

At the propitious time, Zeus removed to the place of his own nativity in order to await the wondrous birth of his daughter Athena who, it was said, sprang fully-armed from his brow. Her soul, arching forth into the world, was made manifest in a gushing fountain that spilled abroad her beauty and wisdom and was marked by a temple raised in her name. This is the sacred fountain of Tritonis (trito is an archaic word for ‘head’) in Arcadia where these waters of spirit and matter merged and became one glorious fount.

Symbolizing the Mother Source, these life-giving waters are like the milk of the Melodious Cow poured forth, once again, as the power of speech into the world. This is why from very ancient times the jets of water at many natural founts were directed through an aperture resembling a human mouth carved into the living stone. As the centuries unfolded, sculpted fountains were increasingly engineered in varied and ingenious ways so as to channel the flow through the opened lips of nymphs and gorgons, goddesses and gods. Pilgrims and travellers came to such places for instruction as well as refreshment.

In ancient Greece each fountain was believed to have its own genius. Some were visited for medicinal purposes, others in order to purge the effects of sin or the polluting contamination of some criminal act. Certain fountains were believed to possess oracular powers and were linked with famous oracles like that of Delphi, while a few were approached as mirrors through which one could look into the future or as founts of euphoria and bliss. Whatever their powers, pilgrimages were made to them accordingly and many became widely famous throughout the Mediterranean world.

—The Fountain, excerpt

The Theosophy Library

.

Heart of The Buddha

 

.

No need to chase back and forth like the waves.
The same water which ebbs is the same water that flows.

No point in turning back to get water
When it's flowing around you in all directions.

The heart of the Buddha and the people of the world ...
Where is there any difference?

—Hsu Yun

.

 

water and wind

.

THE soul of man
Resembleth water:
From heaven it cometh,
To heaven it soareth.
And then again
To earth descendeth,
Changing ever.

Down from the lofty
Rocky wall
Streams the bright flood,
Then spreadeth gently
In cloudy billows
O'er the smooth rock,

And welcomed kindly,
Veiling, on roams it,
Soft murmuring,
Tow'rd the abyss.

Cliffs projecting
Oppose its progress,--
Angrily foams it
Down to the bottom,
Step by step.

Now, in flat channel,
Through the meadowland steals it,
And in the polish'd lake
Each constellation
Joyously peepeth.

Wind is the loving
Wooer of waters;
Wind blends together
Billows all-foaming.

Spirit of man,
Thou art like unto water!
Fortune of man,
Thou art like unto wind!


—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1789

.

the peace of wild things

 

.

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's  lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

—Wendell Berry

.

On the Making of Gardens

 

.

I have left almost to the last the magic of water, an element which owing to its changefulness of form and mood and colour and to the vast range of its effects,  is ever the principal source of landscape beauty, and has like music a mysterious influence over the mind.
 

—Sir George Sitwell 

.

Tide of Voices

 

.

Water must flood 

the mind, as in certain diseases, the walls
between the cells of memory dissolve, blur
into a single stream of voices and faces.  

I don’t know any more about this river or if 

it can be cleaned of its tender and broken histories—
a tide of voices. 

And this is how the dead 
rise to us, transformed: wet and singing, 
the tide of voices pearling in our hands.

 

—Lynda Hull

.

water

 

.

I was born in a drought year. That summer

my mother waited in the house, enclosed

in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,

for the men to come back in the evenings,

bringing water from a distant spring.

Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul. 

Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain. 

—Wendell Berry

.

there is a sacredness in tears

 

.

There is a sacredness in tears. 

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. 

They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. 

They are messengers of overwhelming grief …
and unspeakable love.

—Washington Irving

.

 

love is always too much

 

  

.

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.

In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening 
we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,

and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,
except we keep returning 
to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth 
of its joy. 

—Wendell Berry

.

question

 

  

.

 

We are of the sea, and the sea is our essence;
why then is there this duality between us?


The world is an imaginary line before the sight;
read well that line, for it was inscribed by us.


Whatsoever we possess in both the worlds
in reality, my friend, belongs to God.

—Shah Nematollah Vali 

.

all are stars of heaven reflected in flowing water

 

.

Consider the creatures as pure and limpid

water, within which shine the Attributes of the Almighty.

Their knowledge, their justice, their kindness – 

all are stars of heaven reflected in flowing water.

Kings are a locus of manifestation of God's

Kingliness, the learned a locus for His Knowledge.

Generations have passed, and this is a new

generation. The moon is the same, the water different.

Justice is the same justice, learning the same

learning, but peoples and nations have changed.

Generation upon generation has passed, oh

friend, but these Meanings are constant and everlasting.

The water in the stream has changed many times, 
but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same . . .

All pictured forms are reflections in the water

of the stream; when you rub your eyes, indeed, all are He.

—Rumi 

William C. Chittick version

.

say i am

 

 

.

When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach. 

—Antonin Artaud

.

invisible stories

.

the sea

 

.

Before our dreams (or terrors) persisted
in mythology and cosmogony,
even before time coined itself in days, there existed,
already, the sea. It was. 

There was always the sea.
But who is the sea? Who is that old, undisciplined,
violent creature, who’s gnawing away under
the pillars of the earth, who’s also chance and wind,
one and many oceans, and abyss and wonder? 

Staring upon the sea, we see it as though
for the first time, sensing the splendor of all free
and elemental things: like afternoons, the glow
of the moon, or a blazing fire. But who is the sea?
And who am I? In time, when my days are passed,
and my final agony’s done, I’ll know, at last.
 

—Jorge Luis Borges

.

 

you are the music

 

.

You are a digital bioholographic precipitation, crystallization,
miraculous manifestation, of Divine frequency vibrations,
coming out of Water.

Get it?

You are the music, echoing universally and eternally
hydrosonically!


—Dr. Leonard Horowitz

.

Let there be water and air

.

 

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, 
they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.

The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there be water and air. 

Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. 

Let’s just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air 
in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from 
the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. 

While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example.

Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. 
Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.

—Hiroshi Sugimoto

.

 

beings who walk other spheres

 

.

The world below the brine,

Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,

Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick

tangle openings, and pink turf,

Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the

play of light through the water,

Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,

and the aliment of the swimmers,

Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling

close to the bottom,

The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting

with his flukes,

The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy

sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,

Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,

breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,

The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed

by beings like us who walk this sphere,

The change onward from ours to that

of beings who walk other spheres.

—Walt Whitman

.

the prayer of the little ducks

 

.

Dear God,
give us a flood of water.
 

Let it rain tomorrow and always.
 

Give us plenty of little slugs
and other luscious things to eat.
 

Protect all folk who quack
and everyone who knows how to swim.
 

Amen.

—Carmen De Gasztold

Prayers from the Ark trans. by R. Godden

.






 

all things merge

 

 

 .

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. 

The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. 

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. 

Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. 

I am haunted by waters.

—Norman Maclean

.

subtle spirit

.

A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. 

It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. 

—Henry David Thoreau 

Walden, the pond

.

sweet mystery

 

 .

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery 
about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak 
of some hidden soul beneath; 

like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod 
over the buried Evangelist St. John. 

And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, 
wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, 
the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; 

for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, 
drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; 

all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; 

tossing like slumberers in their beds; 

the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

—Herman Melville 
Moby-Dick, 1851

.

Warrior of Light

.

The Warrior of the Light sometimes behaves like water,

flowing around the obstacles he encounters.

Occasionally, resistance might mean destruction, and so

he adapts to the circumstances. 

He accepts, without complaint, that the stones in his path 

hinder his way through the mountains.

Therein lies the strength of water: It cannot be touched 

by a hammer or ripped to shreds by a knife. 

The strongest sword in the world cannot scar its surface.

The river adapts itself to whatever route proves possible,

but the river never forgets its one objective: the sea. 

So fragile at its source, it gradually gathers the strength of

the other rivers it encounters.

And, after a certain point, its power is absolute.

—Paulo Coelho

.

living water

 

.

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

 

 —Philip Larkin

.