Living Water
The woman at the well was in a dry place in life. We all have them. Those times when we feel disconnected from other people, from communities, from the Divine. The Samaritan woman was in a dry place. She came to get water in the middle of the day after all the other women had gone for a reason…Jesus saw her. A woman who had had five husbands and was currently living with a man she was not married to. Do you think she wanted this life? No! Like so many women throughout time she was caught in circumstances and making the best out of a dry patch in life, and so when Jesus talked about Living Water she was interested.
Water is life giving in and of itself.
Living Water implies something more than meets the eye.
Living Water is a concept as ancient as life itself.
The water we experience today is the same water that was present on the Earth during the lives of our mothers, our grandmothers all the way back to the origin of the universe itself. Earth recycles water, filtering it, cleansing it, purifying it. Water in turn works for us by clearing energy, cleansing us, nourishing us. We are at a place where science has been able to affirm the assertion that water is alive. Water carries consciousness. Water responds to thoughts, words, emotions. Water comprises 70 percent of the human body and 70 percent of the planet Earth’s surface. Masaro Emoto of Japan has done extensive work studying water and water consciousness. His work shows that water responds to music, the environment, words, thoughts and emotions.
Let us look at a wave on the surface of the ocean. A wave is a wave. It has a beginning and an end. It might be high or low, more or less beautiful than other waves. But a wave is, at the same time, water. Water is the ground of being of the wave. It is important that a wave knows that she is water, and not just a wave. We, too, live our life as an individual. We believe that we have a beginning and an end, that we are separate from other living beings. That is why the Buddha advised us to look more deeply in order to touch the ground of our being, which is nirvana. Everything bears deeply the nature of nirvana. Everything has been “nirvanized.” That is the teaching of the Lotus Sutra. We look deeply, and we touch the suchness of reality. Looking deeply into a pebble, flower, or our own joy, peace, sorrow, or fear, we touch the ultimate dimension of our being, and that dimension will reveal to us that the ground of our being has the nature of no-birth and no-death.
We don’t have to attain nirvana, because we ourselves are always dwelling in nirvana. The wave does not have to look for water. It already is water. We are one with the ground of our being. Once the wave realizes that she is water, all her fear vanishes. Once we touch the ground of our being, once we touch God or nirvana, we also receive the gift of non-fear. Non-fear is the basis of true happiness. The greatest gift we can offer others is our non-fear. Living deeply every moment of our life, touching the deepest level of our being, this is the practice of prajña paramita. Prajña paramita is crossing over by understanding, by insight.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching”.
What if the life in the water is the essence of the Divine within every living cell? Thich Nhat Hahn talks about nirvana. He says we do not need to look for or try to attain nirvana because we are always dwelling in nirvana. We are one with the essence of the Divine and in the moment that we realize this, all our fears vanish. I imagine the Samaritan woman gazing into Jesus’s eyes in that moment when she realized she was looking at the Christ. In that moment she stepped into the wave of Living Water he offered her and her circumstances no longer mattered…her fears fell away. She went and shared the news with the people in her town and they in turn came to believe in Jesus. Water ripples forth. It begins as one drop, then becomes a wave and then an ocean. Imagine that we are a wave within an ocean of goodness spreading through the world. We are waves of impact. We carry Living Water to a thirsty world. May it be so in you. May it be so in me.
This comes on waves of love with dolphins skimming the surface in delight,
Mary Ann
