“Be like water”, he tells me. “Find your space. You may be contained by your present container. But remember you aren’t the container”
I am awestruck by what a simple man sitting under a giant oak tree in the courtyards of a simple temple is telling me. I look at him with wonder. “You see water finds its place. Hold yourself lightly and keep going. There is a joy in the flow.” He is old and the wrinkles bear testimony to the many seasons his skin has been in the game.
A silence fills the moment as he stares into the sky and I stare into his lost eyes. “You will know what it like when you stand by the stream or watch a waterfall. You can hear it’s energy”
He breaks free from his trance. And proceeds rather dourly. “You didn’t expect this from a wrinkled old odd smelling fellow like me, did you?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. And then says, “many years ago I was like you. Riveted by drive and laced with passion’
His pauses for the longest period of time. Unable to bear it any longer, I ask, “and then?” He smiles, dusts himself up as he prepares to leave and says “I began to flow”
He walks away leaving me in the company of a silence broken by the sounds of his receding footsteps on dried leaves.
(at Yosemite National Park)
