A commentary I wrote this morning on Hakuin's Letter in Answer to an Old Nun Of the Nichiren Sect (f.y.i. which talks a lot about the Law of the Lotus)

 

If you haven't seen the Law of the Lotus yet, have faith in it until you do. Water doesn't run up the side of mountain, neither will consciousness move that way, even though it could try to. For the frictionless glide doesn't have an agenda when it is spot on accurate each time it follows along the path of least resistance, which is always the auspicious direction.

Tao is said to be close to water for a reason, because fundamentally, the flow of your consciousness and the flow of water are not constructed out of two materials - the whole universe is the same thing. The laws of physics, if you like, pervade space evenly.

So as it is, consciousness flows rivers of motion through my limbs, with nothing to fundamentally differentiate my motions from that of a running stream. I will do obvious things, like eat when I'm hungry, but also, a lot of things I don't understand. Like in order to think, I may find myself pacing about my apartment, but I can't tell what kind of thought does that to me, and I know of no schedule this happens to. Two random examples.

Water, may likewise also be said to exhibit obvious and non-obvious behaviors, so we know about evaporation, a little bit about fluid dynamics, etc., but even though it'd seem fathomable to do so, the way in which water seeps through the world, from clouds all the way down into human bodies isn't best seen as a matter of analysis. For it just does, in a myriad little steps and stages. And then living things carry the motion onwards.

ps: Just to be clear, I don't mean to argue that water is conscious, for a body of water is obviously not the same thing as a human mind, and outside a human mind, there is nothing to do any conjecturing (Hakuin says something of this in his letter too). Unless you want to consider my blood as doing my thinking for me, then go ahead...

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