The Moon in the Water

The phenomenon of the moon in the water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon in the water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tinest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. The moon does not intend to cast its reflection and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. Everything does have a real relationship.

- Alan Watts

We are not simply isolated entities that stand apart from the universe, but are instead dynamic components of it, facets of the much greater whole - an active and capable part of the totality through which nature's power flows. Western logic has a rule entitled the law of identity whereby things are what they are (i.e., an apple is an apple) and that it is impossible for one thing to be and not to be something in the same space and time. In the Eastern philosophical mind, however, this either/or way of looking at life is innacurate; it is indeed possible for something to be opposite and yet the same. For example, man and woman, opposites one would think and yet the same in that both are human beings. In fact, man and woman are not so much opposites as they are complementaries; divided in such a fashion as to be able to reproduce themselves with their union. Man and woman, then, are the legs upon which the life of our species stands, and when one half is absent, the whole perishes.