Wednesday, December 17, 2008

"Ever since I can remember anything at all, the smell, the sound,and motion of the sea have been pure magic. Even the mere intimation of its presence - gulls flying a little inland, the quality of light in the sky beyond hills which screen it from view, the lowing of the foghorns in the night. If ever I have to get away from it all, and in the words of the Chinese poet "wash all the wrongs of life from my pores," there is simply nothing better than to climb out onto a rock, and sit for hours with nothing in sight but sea and sky. Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology, inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves."
~ Alan Watts

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