bubble_chart Content Shen Yaozi, August 1998
When climbing the mountain, one must pass by the military cemetery at the foot of the mountain. On one side of the park's main hall, there is a small cement-lined drainage ditch with shallow water. Every time I pass by, even if I tread lightly, it stirs up many small ripples in the ditch. Once, out of curiosity, I bent down to take a closer look and discovered a hidden world. A drainage ditch about 30 centimeters wide and no more than 3 centimeters deep was home to many small shrimps, fish, tadpoles, and even crabs. I noticed that the water was flowing and clean. With few people around, even after several days without rain, the ditch remained moist. The water in the ditch must come from a mountain spring. Seeing this, childhood memories of flowing water vaguely surfaced in my mind.
The community where I live is also embraced by two streams, one large and one small. Our family has lived in this community for over 20 years. I remember when we first moved in, the streams were full of life, with small fish, shrimps, crabs, and various insects, making it a natural playground for children. On hot summer days, kids would catch fish and shrimps, build dams, splash water at each other, and even take baths in the stream. Without spending a dime on tickets, they would return home soaked and thoroughly entertained. Over time, many new small industrial zones began to encroach around the community. The once clear stream water was secretly tainted with various unnatural colors, and the fish and shrimps gradually disappeared. Day by day, standing by the stream, the laughter of children grew faint, replaced by parents' earnest warnings to their children to stay away from the water. Sometimes, after being away for years due to studies or military service, I would return to find the stream even dirtier and darker, with foam, trash of all sizes, small animal carcasses, and a mix of foul odors floating on the surface, resembling pus and blood oozing from the earth.
My thoughts wandered to the drainage ditch before me. If there is any remaining clean water in the future, it might only exist in such small, confined spaces. There is a Chinese saying: "Water does not need to be deep; if there is a dragon, it will be spiritual." Although this small ditch is shallow, it is spiritual because of the shrimps. Over a hundred years ago, even the streams near big cities were clean enough for washing clothes, bathing, and boating. In cities as large as Chang'an, the sound of clothes being beaten could be heard every night. Traditional Chinese medicine says: "A door hinge never rusts, and flowing water never stagnates." Our ancestors probably could not have imagined that in just a century or two, even the flowing water of heaven and earth could become so foul.
Clear river water flows over a pristine riverbed, transforming into various unpredictable ripples and eddies when encountering depressions and protrusions. It is sweet, cool, and crystal clear, pure and elegant in every direction. In contrast, polluted river water mercilessly corrodes the riverbed, with filth accumulating into a thick, greasy layer. Multicolored water transforms into distorted ripples and eddies when meeting depressions and protrusions. The black patterns resemble musical staves, with oil slicks and foam drifting on the surface, like a discordant elegy composed for the earth.
A person's expressions and behaviors constantly reveal their thoughts and ideas. Traditional Chinese Medicine says, "To know by observation is called divine," meaning that the most skilled doctors can diagnose diseases just by observing the patient's external appearance. Similarly, by merely looking at the surface of flowing water, one can infer its essence. The water's surface is its expression, and from this expression, one can gather sufficient information, including that of the water itself and its surrounding environment. Remember, physics teaches us that ripples in deep water are looser (with longer wavelengths), while ripples in shallow water are tighter (with shorter wavelengths), because the depth of the water and the terrain beneath it affect the waves on the surface. As the Western saying goes, "Blue water runs deep," which also speaks to the expression of flowing water.
Water flows through the riverbed, and because the river's course is winding and undulating, the water also varies in speed, thickness, and turbulence. The riverbed is textured with bumps and scattered with pebbles and rocks. The water flows deep and slow, turning blue, while in shallow areas, it becomes transparent and anxious. When encountering a rise, it diverges, and behind a pillar, it forms a whirlpool. Thin water passing over a group of rocks creates ripples and dancing reflections. Rapid water hitting a bald rock splashes, and when meeting a cliff, it cascades like a curtain. The flowing water is so unpredictable, vividly displaying its expressions.
The languid river reminds me of the regulation of the Dongshan River. "Everyone has a river in their heart." This is the closing line of a Public Television program about the regulation process of the Dongshan River, and since then, this sentence has been etched in my heart. Indeed, everyone has a river in their heart, a stream of consciousness that never stops flowing from birth to death. Apart from its concrete form, the stream of consciousness is very much like a real-world river: life views and values are the river's course, with its ruggedness, smoothness, meanders, and branches. Personality, memory, and knowledge are the riverbed, with its highs and lows, undulations, scattered rocks, and sediments. Thoughts and ideas are like the ripples, whirlpools, or floating objects on the river's surface.
The heart's river murmurs, caressing the banks and bed of the heart, stirring up strands of thoughts or reveries. The youthful heart's river is simple and clean, like the stream in my hometown twenty years ago, full of vitality. The older heart's river is turbid, with disordered thoughts and chaotic ideas floating on its surface , and the riverbed is already piled with anger, jealousy, unease, disappointment, and melancholy. The hearts of people converge into a great river, on which drift the eternal poisons like nuclear waste. The Buddhist scriptures say, "A pure heart leads to a pure land." The hearts of people are dirty, hence the land is also dirty. If the rivers around us have started to stink and become dirty, it is because the river in people's hearts has already been polluted.
During meditation, many people detest the clutter of thoughts in their minds and always try to cut off thoughts to achieve clarity. Master Huineng said, "Huineng has no tricks, does not cut off a hundred thoughts." Because random thoughts are like garbage, drifting in and out, merely fishing them out cannot solve the root problem. If you want the river to remain clean forever, please do not throw garbage into it. True meditation is not about cutting off thoughts, but about reflecting and tracing the origin of thoughts. On the heart's river, why are the ripples chaotic and carrying filth? Why has such a vicious whirlpool formed here? Is it a hidden evil stone in the heart's river? Or is it the tangled waterweeds or rusty cans at the bottom?
People are recklessly polluting the surrounding waters because they are easily obtained and thus not cherished. But what about the essence of water? One oxygen and two hydrogens, water in the universe has been cycling with the Earth's breath for billions of years, yet water remains water; its essence does not change because it is tainted with sweetness or filth. And what about the essence of the heart? The Buddhist scriptures say, "Everyone has a pure nature like the void, which has no shape or form, but appears square when measured with a square, round when measured with a circle, yet the essence of the void does not change because it is enclosed in a square or a circle." The essence of the heart is as pure as water, so pure water can become turbid, and dirty water still has the chance to clarify; redemption is always possible.
