By Marc Gafni
From Your Unique Self:
We are, in the words of Kabbalist Luria, “cut from the same cloth and hewn from the same quarry, even as we each have an utterly unique soul expression and soul destiny.”
The great Buddhist way of describing this is the story of the water and the wave:
Two waves flowed toward shore. The larger wave was extremely depressed, while the small wave peacefully moved along.
“If you could see what I see from up here,” said the large wave to the small wave, “you would not be so happy.”
“What do you see?” asked the small wave.
“In not too long, we will crash into the shore, and that will be the end of us.”
“Oh, that,” said the small wave. “that’s OK.”
“What, are you crazy!?”
“I know a little secret that tells me that it’s OK,” said the small wave.
“Would you like me to share it with you?”
Our large-wave friend was both curious and suspicious:
“Will I have to pay a lot of money to learn it?” he asked.
“No, not at all.”
“Will I have to do zazen for thirty years in the lotus position?”
“No, not at all,” said the small wave.
“Really, the whole thing is only eight words.”
“Eight words!!! Then, tell me already!”
The small wave said, ever so gently, “You are not a wave. You are water.”
To which the Unique Self mystics add, “And you are also a Unique, beloved, and irreplaceable wave.”
Photo Credit: nathangibbs
About Marc Gafni
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