clouds and water

unsui : Japanese, an appellation given to Soto Zen novices, literally “clouds and water,” signifying the renunciation of material and egotistical pursuits and highlighting their lack of permanent abode in the world

When moving along with the transience of truly empty physical reality, the solidity of our everyday world reveals itself as inherently insubstantial. This endless flowing gives rise to strangely coherent patterns, suspended fractals in motion, islands of order in a sea of chaos. We make sense of our world through language, breaking the wholeness down into parts by naming and classifying. What we call a tree is only a momentary integration of the requisite components (atoms, lipids, proteins, etc) merging into a functional wholeness. For greater clarity we further dissect a tree into its parts: leaves, bark, branches, trunk, roots, etc. This process of naming governs our understanding and interaction with everything around us, including our own body.

On the cellular level the human body is constantly in a state of repair and replacement. The lifetime of a cell can vary - most cells last months or years, others are replaced every two or three days. Physically, this means that this body is under a continual process of transformation. Every new body we inhabit is constructed from the physical nourishment that we consume. We are, quite literally, what we eat.

Stability and permanence are illusions that arise from ignorance. The practice of meditation reveals that the nature of everything is impermanent, drifting and flowing along without cease, moving and changing. Clouds and water is a way of being in the world and moving in accordance with emptiness, free from antipathy and clinging. It's a willingness to surrender the illusion of permanence and embrace the chaotic flow of life.