Be water, my friend

Often this adage comes up in social media feeds and has strong relevance to the potential and capacity within humans to embody some of the characteristics of water found in Nature.

A lot of us see confrontation in our lives, such as political parties vying to acquire power, business conglomerates tussling for greater market share, or on a much smaller scale, rickshaw drivers heckling each other during the deals, or in any bargain which we have with the sellers. What can we learn from water given its fluid nature? In face of a heavy and immovable obstacle, water makes its way around it. What does that suggest? Is water avoidant? Should we be avoidant? Rather no; it implies that water is ever engaging, recognizing the obstruction in the path, it makes its path around it while shaping itself and also the obstacle in the way. After all, it is water that has shaped the land on Earth.

Many of us experience waves of emotions day in and day out. After all, it's human to affect. Here, analogies of tidal waves and lakes of water can serve to characterize our emotional states. Just as we don't want to drown in tidal waves of gigantic proportions, we don't intend to be carried away by our emotions. What we need to learn is to skilfully surf them till our consciousness becomes as still as a water lake. Who says that there can't be any perturbance in a body of water; hell yes, there can even be a storm in a teacup. But to navigate or steer ourselves adeptly to a state of stillness is of paramount significance as it is only in the state of stillness that our perception isn't obscure.

Most of the human body is water. It is central to the survival of life on the planet Earth. We, humans, are in a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms all requiring water. What we can learn here is each one of us is interdependent on society as well as Nature and we need to extend our relationships past family and friends with other animal species, with nearly everything on Earth.

An important percept of Buddhism is impermanence. Water is a perfect analogy to demonstrate the tenet. It acquires any form given the conditions. Bruce Lee explained it like no other:

"Be Water, My Friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." -- Bruce Lee