Waves

Today at the beach I closed my eyes and listened. For a few minutes the sound of the waves was almost all there was. I heard the rumbling roar of the crests, followed by the fizzling hum of the foam, and this duet filled my mind to the brim.

The sound grew louder and the crescendo enveloped me till the waves seemed to crash over my head, toying with my sense of direction. There was a sense of unfathomable power, yet also deep calm, both spread over some immense distance. It was the sea announcing itself in the realm of my mind.

Later in the day, during a more traditional meditation, I felt a similarity in the nature of sounds and thoughts. Sounds arise spontaneously. I have no control other than the level of concentration applied to the sound, and even that is hardly a conscious choice. Sounds are one way in which the natural processes of the world become known to us. Thoughts are really the same.

I have no control over my next thought; it arises as mysteriously as a sound. Even conceptually, thinking is just as deterministic as the physics that produces waves. External stimuli influence a chain of chemical reactions that end up firing neurons in my brain along predefined paths. Where is the control in all that? Till the moment the thought arises and makes itself known, there is no separate agent in charge. Yet as soon as the thought enters the mind, the self identifies itself as the author of that thought.

At these two points today, the story I usually tell myself could be clearly seen as fiction. I am not the creator of anything in this world; only an observer that is inseparable from the world. There is a freedom in this realisation; a detachment from that which troubles the mind, and a coming together with all that inspires us.

 

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