A Talk to Open When You Don’t Know What to Do with Your Consciousness (4/4)

​　Previous articles in this series

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(Continued from last time)

★Let’s live with a heart like water

In any case, as long as your heart isn’t hardened stiff, however stagnant and muddy the water (thoughts, words, and deeds) the other person pours into you, you can let it flow freely with the heart of a clear stream. And conversely, however hardened the mental state of the person you’re dealing with, if your heart is like smoothly flowing water, then—fitting a square if they’re square, a triangle if they’re a triangle, and into the holes if they’re shaped like a cheese full of holes—with attitudes and words that match them and never clash, you can soothe their raging emotions, release the paralysis of the five senses of their heart, restore their eyes and ears to working order, and even bring their calm, rational divinity to the surface.

Long ago, Laozi, a sage who appeared in China, left the words, “The highest good is like water.”

Apply that very way of living to yourself.

It’s a very good passage, so let us introduce it here.

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[The highest good is like water. Water benefits all things well and does not contend; it dwells in the places people dislike, and so it is close to the Way.]
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(Meaning: The highest form of goodness is like water. Water gives blessings to all things without contending, and flows down to settle in the low places everyone finds unpleasant. That is why it is close to the Way.)

This doesn’t simply mean to live a life without conflict, nor to become a timid, weak person.

Water is a gentle presence that can wrap around everything, following its shape, and flow into it. But these words also carry a paradoxical meaning: it is exactly such soft things, without a hardened form, that, when they become a strong current, have the power to move even hard things.

And a formless heart (a heart like water) without a lump called “self” (the individual self) can, just as the radio waves of a cell phone pass through the walls and glass of a building and come into a room, seep even into a person’s heart that has hardened with no gaps to be seen, melt the ice of their heart without their noticing, and change them into a softer person.

Well, a person with ego can’t change others even if they try, so this is a story about how what a selfless person does with a natural, unforced heart ends up creating a good state. But it’s one example of how, if you live with a free, unobstructed consciousness, having cleared away your own fixations and assumptions, you can take things in any way and change them too.

We’ve talked about many things this time, but you don’t have to try to do them all at once, and you can take in only the parts you feel you need.

Finally, coming back to where we began: when you encounter someone’s words or actions that make you think, “I don’t like this. Why am I being told (treated) like this?”—whatever your reaction may be, never blame yourself.

That self-blaming heart is exactly the biggest reason you feel “blame” and “attack” in others’ words and actions and stir up storms of unpleasant feelings yourself.

So just as you look at others without judgment, you must wrap yourself too in no criticism, no evaluation, and no blame.

Because the judgments you feel about others—except when you are expressing facts objectively, without emotion—are equal to what you are doing to others and to yourself. (The End)