Ten Misconceptions about the Shoreless Ocean and its Waves

1. That a wave has a solid, permanent, separate “self,” separate from the Ocean that gives it its life, its existence, its breath, its movement, its senses, its experience.

2. That the wave must eradicate all faults and delusions, control all of its movements, do many special practices, train for eons, accumulate special powers, and so become worthy in order that one day, it can become water.

3. That the wave can know the Ocean as an object, can produce the Ocean, can possess the Ocean, can control the Ocean, can “attain” the Ocean, can judge what should or should not be the Ocean’s movements.

                  (It is the Ocean that understands the wave, not the other way around.)

4. That the Ocean prefers one wave over another, that only a very special wave gets to be Ocean water, that the Ocean only pervades certain forms, waves, movements; that only calm, “good” waves get to live in the Ocean.

5. That a storm at sea means the wave has misbehaved or is unworthy, or that the clarity or muddiness of Ocean water is the accomplishment or failure of the wave.

6. That it is a wave that is enlightened rather than the Ocean that wakes itself up from its own forgetfulness as what it is, Source.

                  (It is the movement of Consciousness itself to identify with its own
                  creations, to imagine its life is only the surface waves.)

7. That once its true nature is remembered, the wave will always behave according to a fixed set of rules, will never be moved by feelings of joy or sorrow, like or dislike, and that it must “hold on” to a still mind, hold on to the Ocean’s still depths.

                  (As if a still mind is like a block of ice that movement could hold onto!
                   A still mind is one that moves freely, reacts wholeheartedly to
                  whatever it encounters or reflects. It is empty, and thus can move
                  fluidly, according to circumstance.)

8. That a “master” wave can give or bestow upon another wave its wetness.

9. That, in order to become the Ocean, there is a shore where the wave needs to arrive in the Shoreless Ocean!

10. That a wave’s arising or disappearing means the beginning or ending of its Life as the Ocean.

©—Dorothy Hunt, “At Play in the Shoreless Ocean”