Dear Rob:

I wanted to respond further to your thread: it helps me to do so. I hope it’s okay with you:

“I don’t exist… Anybody else not exist?“- I tend to think literally and have problems with figurative language, but this figurative imagery is making the principle of existence in Buddhism/ in  life as clear as can be for me: life is like the ocean, huge and as permanent as can be, made of many material water molecules, salt molecules, etc., and each living thing (ex., a unicellular organism, a plant, an animal) is a single, unique wave in this ocean, an energy-in-motion,  rising and then falling within a unit of time.

I am not the ocean (huge, permanent, powerful); I am a single wave in the ocean, existing temporarily as energy, but permanently as part of the material ocean. Never separated, never apart.

In Western thinking we tend to think of ourselves as The Ocean, a God (and god was made in the image of man, not the other way around). Many believe in a literal permanence, a-forever-living as the individuals that we are (souls/ spirituality; ghosts/ sci-fi) in a heaven or hell or a paradise earth. It calms the fear of death somewhat, sometimes, to believe that the individual person that we are will never die.

The imagery of the ocean and the wave calms me because it is a relief to not think of myself as a god, as bigger or more powerful than I really am (I was told by western thinking that I am can make my dreams come true,  if only I believe it, and if I work hard enough, or smart enough, then I will become anything I want to be). It makes me feel content in my powerlessness… I am only a wave, it’s okay. And you are a wave that happens to exist.. as a wave, in the same unit of time.

“I don’t get to be a Creator, I went the other way to you, I thought I got to make choices and design my life but that’s not my story. Much respect for those who can create though. Life is quite spectacular“- the real ocean wave is subject to the wind, isn’t it, to turbulence in the water: no choosing or creating on the part of the wave. This is where the imagery is partly lacking: a person too is subject to life-circumstances. And at first, a person automatically/ instinctively/ impulsively reacts to people and circumstances..  like a wave reacting to the wind, but then, unlike an ocean wave, a person can choose to react differently to the same life circumstance.

About regrets and what you referred to (on another thread) as Perfet Pete- the wave in the ocean imagery comforts me in regard to regrets: the wave rises and falls no  matter the choices, if any are made, regardless of the successes and failures, so these italicized here are not that important, no big deal, or no deal at all in the bigger picture of reality.

anita