The Wave

Art48

Imagine a conscious ocean wave. The wave sees itself as separate from other waves. The wave realizes that one day it will cease to be, an event it calls “beach.” The thought of beach prompts the wave to question itself. What am I, really? What happens after beach?

I am part, thinks the wave, of a vast, ancient ocean. I am not ocean but ocean is me. Yet, I feel separate and vulnerable and afraid of beach. What can I do to consciously realize my identity with ocean? To physically merge with ocean, I would have to cease to be. Which would be the death of me. But I can go halfway. Now and then, I can sit and meditate on my identity with ocean. Sitting in meditation, I’ll try to cultivate a still peaceful mental state. In mentally giving up thoughts, emotions, and physical movement, I abstract myself from my own limited personal identity and try to feel myself as ocean, vast and unlimited.

Some say that at beach we merge with ocean. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see. But If I merge, I won’t be there to see. Hm. Que sera, sera.

Sir2u

And life goes on, until it doesn't.

Heracloitus

Waves don't think.

unenlightened

Waves don't think. — Heracloitus

Hence the technical instruction – "Imagine ..." It's a brain exercise achievable only by the fleet of mind.

Unfortunately, humans can think, and because they make an identification of themselves as individual beings, they find themselves with the prospect of dying. This gives rise to anxiety and suffering. Fortunately it is only the imagined self that dies.

Fooloso4

Fortunately it is only the imagined self that dies. — unenlightened

Or, perhaps it is the imagining self that dies. And with this prospect some look to charm away their fears and anxiety with stories of not dying.

jgill

↪Art48

A poetic and well written OP. :chin:

unenlightened

Or, perhaps it is the imagining self that dies. — Fooloso4

The imagining self is the imaginary self. That's what it means to imagine oneself.

invicta

I understand the imagery I don’t think the wave would know beach as it crashes upon meeting it so it would have no conception of beach at all.

If it did then it could alter course … assuming it can do that otherwise the movement is one directional and this inevitable.

180 Proof

I am part, thinks the wave, of a vast, ancient ocean. I am not ocean but ocean is me. — Art48

:fire:

Some say that at beach we merge with ocean. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see. But If I merge, I won’t be there to see. Hm. Que sera, sera.

Watching the breakers slide back into the eternally recurring surf I have no doubt what ultimately happens to ocean waves.

:death: :flower:

This ontological metaphor really haunts me ...

sparks, fire ...
light rays, sun ...
waves, ocean ...
ten thousand things, dao ...
natura naturata, natura naturans ...

Tat Tvam Asi — 180 Proof

Also, pedantic note: "the universe" =/= "existence" ... analogously, the latter is like a field and the former a dissipating structure with respect to that field (i.e. ocean and waves, respectively; or continuum and sets). — 180 Proof

Read Laozi & Zhuangzi.
Read Epicurus-Lucretius & Seneca-Epictetus.
Read Spinoza & Nietzsche.
Read P. Foot & M. Nussbaum.

Like waves on the ocean, humans belong to nature – for better and worse. Yeah, we "stand out" but not so much that we are separate from or rise above nature anymore than ocean waves are separate from or rise above the ocean. — 180 Proof

'Is there something greater than me?' asked a wave on the ocean beneath the bright, silent Milky Way. — 180 Proof

'The everyday world' - nature natured 'sub specie durationis' - is like a wave on the surface of the deep, or an effect, caused by the oceanic Substance - nature naturing 'sub specie aeternitatis'; illustrating, though this analogy is absurdly limited, the perdurance of ephemeral surface waves relative to the long lasting ocean (i.e. Modes of Attributes relative to Substance) and that thereby, however relatively ephemeral surface waves seem, they are not non-existent in the sense S conceives of the difference between existing and the real. — 180 Proof

NB: IIRC, while sitting on the beach in Oceanside (California) beside the pier on a bright breezy spring day, some months shy of my twenty-first, oceanic thoughts like those above (especially the OP) first struck me as the blue rhythms of that shimmering surf mesmerized me. That day I forgot all about my old heartbreak for the first time in almost two years, bemusing with that new 'insight'. Study of Schopenhauer, Bergson, Whitehead, Spinoza, Nietzsche (again), Epicurus-Lucretius (again) & Laozi (again) was yet to come to help me reflect further and search patiently for a suitable vocabulary for this 'ecstatic' condition. Ever since then, and living far from any coastline, I still watch the clouds above dreamed of by the waves below.

Fooloso4

↪Art48

I just finished watching "The Good Place" while on the stationary bike. The Buddhist story of the wave was told.

Joshs

Imagine a conscious ocean wave. The wave sees itself as separate from other waves…
Sitting in meditation, I’ll try to cultivate a still peaceful mental state. In mentally giving up thoughts, emotions, and physical movement, I abstract myself from my own limited personal identity and try to feel myself as ocean, vast and unlimited. — Art48

It sounds like feeling oneself as vast and unlimited is the very epitome of utilizing thought and emotion. Perhaps it not the presence or absence of thought-emotion that is of importance, but how applies thought and feeling; they is, how interconnected one is able to construe one’s relation to others as well as to oneself.

The Wave

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