Wild Waters And The Tao

Nurturing The Song Within

The highest motive in life is to be like water.
It fights nothing or no one.
It flows from and back to its source and in the flowing smooths and wears away all resistance.
      - Taoist Proverb

Setting aside friendship for a moment, the deeply profound experiences of my life have all had something to do with water. These range from long wilderness canoe trips to whitewater kayaking to painting with watercolor, which is a creative collaboration with water.

In paddling wild rivers, I learned that the power of the river is immense, and our power insignificant. Similarly, the Tao tells us that the energies of the universe, driven by the forces of yin and yang, are greater than we are. And much like the positive and negative energies of electricity, without both, without light and dark, female and male, neither could exist. To survive long term as a species, we must accommodate ourselves to those energy flows rather than fight them.

In paddling a rapid, we seek to move with its flow rather than against it, to execute our strokes at points of maximum impact, and to not use a hard stroke when a light one will do. And sometimes, when the water moves faster than we can think, to execute our strokes with intuition.

Water is the source of creation, the ancestor of all living things. It's the bloodstream of the Earth.
- Kuan-Tzu (645 BC Prime Minister of the state of Chi'i)

For more reflections on the nature of water and its relationship to Taoism, visit here.

http://www.herondance.org/water-and-the-tao

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