Why should one meditate in front of a river and an ocean?

Photo credit: Self — Ponnaiyar River [India]

Part 1: Meditating by the River [The present moment awareness]

“No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus

Greek and Eastern philosophy has been my go-to comfort zones whenever there have been disturbances in the force (*Chuckle* Star Wars reference). Whenever I have felt down, confused, or unsure of the way forward, Heraclitus, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Buddha, Lao Tzu, J Krishnamurti and Osho have always shown me the way.

Two favourite Buddhist books that immediately come to mind are Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him THE PILGRIMAGE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY PATIENTS By Sheldon Kopp

In Siddhartha, the protagonist — Siddhartha learns life’s greatest secret by looking at the river and realising that the concept of time doesn’t exist but in mind. In shared learning with his friend, he utters the final piece of the puzzle away from enlightenment.

“Have you,” he asked once, “have you also learned this secret from the river: that time does not exist?”

But do you not mean that the river is everywhere at once, at its origin and at its mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at the same time, and for it only the present exists, no shadow of the past, no shadow of the future?

How is the river everywhere all at once, but also we are unable to step into the same river twice?

The greatest wisdom comes thus. Life is like a river. It is constantly moving, a series of infinite presents. It wasn’t true a moment before, it wasn’t true, a moment after. Only the present river where we step into is tangible. There was nothing before we were born, nothing remains after we die. We don’t know previous births and we don’t know the afterlife. The ultimate truth is Sunyatha. We are all getting there, but the present has everything important. But for the present moment, nothing else is tangibly true.

“That is it,” said Siddhartha. “And when I learned that, I took a look at my life and saw that it too was a river, and the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and from the graybeard Siddhartha only by shadows, not by anything real. And there was no past for Siddhartha’s earlier births, and his death and his return to Brahma are without future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has essence, is present.”

This is why we need to meditate in front of a river. To understand that Life is made of millions of present moments that fleet away into nothing and we need to cherish the present.

Part 2: Meditating by the Ocean [The impermanence of life]

Chidi Anagonye — The Good Place (Photo credit: Syfy)

“Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it’s there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave.

And then it crashes in the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it’s one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s supposed to be.

The Good Place”

― Chidi

In various cultures spanning from Buddhism to Christianity, the concept of impermanence of life is mentioned. Memento Mori is Latin for “Remember you have to die”. When we start to meditate on the impermanence of life, we make different decisions. Steve Jobs once famously said:

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Steve Jobs

The best way to meditate on the impermanence and the fleeting nature of life is to sit at the seashore or the beach and watch the waves come and go. This reminds us that :

1. We come from a source — the great truth, the eternity, ether and go back to it after a while.
2. The waves are a beautiful sight to look at. The sea meets the sky, and the sun rises or sets at the horizon every day. The waves are the same, but they look different at various times of the day and in various seasons.
3. The sounds of the waves give us a sense of calm because it is similar to breathing — it has a rhythm that never ceases, it has an inexplicable noise that drowns out other noises and it has a saline breeze that exhilarates the body.
4. The coming and going of waves are great fun because it gives us time between our moments in the water. You have your feet in, the water recedes, and you have a moment to get ready for the next wave and we do not know if it would be a small or a big wave. The expectation of the next wave and the time between waves is a great experience.

The ocean is an enormous and imposing example of “This too shall pass”.

Meditate in front of a river and an ocean to cherish the present and to get ready for the journey, and its end.