Nondualism

Nondualism

Imagine a mass of water, a wave moving along the surface of the immensity of the ocean, and at one point a part of that wave seems to break away and become a different wave that eventually heaves backwards and crashes together with the wave from which it emerged. The crash – the explosion of water drops splashing together in the sun: that is your life. The water breaks into individual droplets; each drop is the self-consciousness or self awareness we attribute to or call “I.” The interaction and trajectory of those drops – the entire interconnected web of events and energy splashing into experience each “I” understands as “life in this world.”

The two waves crashing together: are they not indeed the same wave? Is it not in fact the exact same mass of water? Was there not in fact only one single wave the whole time? There is of course no difference between any of the drops of water: all is indeed one, even when splashing about in different shapes and forms and dancing around with one another – for a time.

The death of the self-aware personality known as “I” is nothing more than the wave returning to the immensity of the sea – the originator of everything, the Ultimate Reality – which is you all along. And me. And everything else. Because we are one.

The energy of the crash – the force of the movement of the droplets – does it not flow directly from the immense force of the sea? That vast, immense void, the power of the unmanifested, changeless and timeless – that is what Reality is: the immensity and oneness of the sea, simply the immense oneness of Being. Our “individual lives” are nothing more than the time-bound and ephemeral water play at the surface.

Each droplet senses its own ephemeral “selfness” with respect to the other droplets, at the same time understanding full well that it is exactly the same as all the other droplets – all are, literally, one.

That’s the best I can articulate my feeble understanding of the concept at this particular moment in this particular splash.