Artwork by Magda Cabrero
Monday, November 13, we will meet online.
Dear friends,
This week we will meet online on Monday 7-8:30PM EST, in person on Wednesday morning from 7-8AM EST, and online on Friday 12-1PM EST.
Magda will facilitate on Monday evening. The Chesapeake Earth Holders and members of Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC sanghas will join us to celebrate Native American Heritage Month in a gathering dedicated to water mindfulness and contemplation. Maggie Morris, a member of the Chesapeake Earth Holders and the Cloud Floating Free sangha from Charlottesville, Virginia, will conduct a water blessing. Please bring a cup of tea - or any other beverage of your choice - to our gathering. You may also bring water you hold sacred or dear for any reason.
THE SCENT OF WATER IN THE DESERT
My reflections on water begin in an unlikely place: the desert of New Mexico. Recently, as I was practicing walking meditation through the stone labyrinth of Ghost Ranch, my sanctuary, I thought back to my conversation with Hollis, a kind young biologist I had met on a previous visit. Hollis had shown me formations of precious cryptobiotic soil, a sign of new life in the desert. He also showed me a blue sage that was growing next to the labyrinth. Encountering this plant in the desert was special, as it requires ample water in its early stages. As I thought back to that day in Ghost Ranch I looked around me and realized that I was in the middle of a yellow wild flower oasis bordered by cottonwoods whose leaves had turned bright yellow in the fall.
I walked a few more steps and was surprised to discover a Water Medicine Wheel. Suddenly, as if on cue, I heard the gurgling sound of water! I followed the sound until I found a creek, the only water source I could see in the huge ranch. The scent of water against sand felt familiar, like the scent of my Puerto Rican Caribbean Sea. As I stood there in the desert, by the precious creek water that nurtured the cryptobiotic soil and the cottonwoods, the yellow wild flowers and the blue sage, I found the inspiration for this week’s meditation topic.
MARBLE COLORED CORAL REEFS
The image of a bleached-white coral reef has stayed with me since I first encountered it in David Attenborough’s A Life In Our Planet. I came across it again recently in a photograph on the front page of El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s most widely-read newspaper.
Attenborough describes what a coral reef should be like: “a whole community of small fish, shrimps, sea urchins, sponges and shell-less tentacle-cloaked mollusks, libelously called sea-slugs” that looks as though it has been “decorated by imaginative schoolchildren in shades of pink, orange, purple, red and yellow” (p. 87). Coral reefs, he adds, rival rainforests in their biodiversity.
Though the marble color of bleached coral may be beautiful, it is a dangerous indication that corals have become stressed. As the oceans become too warm and acidic, the polyps eject the symbiotic algae that give coral reefs their varied colors, exposing the bone white of their calcium carbonate skeletons. Without algae the polyps weaken and seaweeds begin to colonize the site, smothering the coral skeletons and hastening the coral ecosystem’s demise.
Learning about the reefs’ plight fueled my aspiration to understand the ocean more fully: what it once was and what it has become under human pressure. I dug deep into Rachel Carson’s work, especially her ocean trilogy, Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea. Coincidentally, the final chapter in the last of these books is entitled “The Coral Coast”.
Even though Carson never uses the term, I consider her work an exercise in engaged mindfulness: she shares her wisdom and reverence with us, so that they may grow in us too. Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) asks us to deepen our understanding in order to better appreciate true love and true justice. Carson’s mindful reflections on the ocean have helped me follow this teaching. With this essay, dharma talk and illustration, I hope to honor her work and share her wisdom.
YOU ARE TAKING TOO MANY
As a child I loved playing with baby crabs and collecting shells on the beach. I exchanged them with my friends and took some home. The shells’ varied hues provided me with some of my earliest color lessons.
I recently watched a movie called Blueback. The protagonist, a young girl, developed a special bond with a blue groper that she kept secret from everyone except her mother. The girl hoped to protect her friend from poachers but soon realized that she needed to share the secrets of the ocean to foster understanding.
“You are taking too many,” her mother would tell her, stressing the importance of sustainability. I never heard this phrase growing up. It reminded me of the exhortation to “take what you need, rather than what you can get.” This wisdom is at the core of life in Palau, a highly sustainable nation in the tropical Pacific. The government monitors the population of fish in its waters and acts quickly to create no-fishing zones wherever the stock starts to decline. The government often practices generosity by sharing their consistent surpluses.
When I visit my elderly mother in Puerto Rico, I often practice walking meditation by the sea. One morning I notice a sand dollar. I marvel at the sea’s ability to produce something so perfect. I almost take it home but look around and realize it is the only one around. “You are taking too many,” my heart whispers.
A couple of days later I notice a shining pink empty shell. I marvel at its beauty; I imagine that the whole ocean is contained in it. It feels like a karmic gift from a grateful ocean. “I will show your creation to the world,” I whisper to my Caribbean Sea.
BEGINNINGS
Another morning I look up to study the clouds. In Puerto Rico, rain is a frequent occurrence, so we all become sky readers. As I look for the signs I take a moment to ponder rain’s connection to the origins of life. As the early Earth cooled, vapor in the atmosphere condensed, with the resulting rains forming oceans and other bodies of water. These new environments turned out to be especially hospitable to the development of early life. In the billions of years that followed, the ocean would foster the emergence of countless species, among them our own ancestors. In a way, we owe everything to the ocean. She is our Great Mother.
It seems surreal to consider that I spent nine months gestating in my mother’s amniotic fluid, a substance consisting mostly of water. As Carson puts it, we begin in a miniature ocean and evolve from inhabitants of an aquatic world to creatures able to live on land. In one of my favorite passages in Carson’s trilogy, she describes the gestation of a human being:
“… each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water. This is our inheritance from the day, untold millions of years ago, when a remote ancestor, having progressed from the one-celled to the many-celled stage, first developed a circulatory system in which the fluid was merely the water of the sea. In the same way, our lime-hardened skeletons are a heritage from the calcium-rich ocean of Cambrian time. Even the protoplasm that streams within each cell of our bodies has the chemical structure impressed upon all living matter when the first simple creatures were brought forth in the ancient sea.” (The Sea Around Us, p. 212)
Soon after I left my mother’s womb, I was introduced to the Caribbean Sea. In a way the Caribbean is my single point of origin, bridging as it does my two homelands, the Venezuela of my birth and the Puerto Rico of my youth, joining my two shores. My father crossed it to meet my mother in Venezuela and returned to Puerto Rico with his new wife, my sister and me.
In my childhood, the Caribbean Sea was always present as most family outings involved the ocean. As a teenager, I drove to the beach to pursue my social life. Sunset time by the sea, meanwhile, was special and meditative. After I emigrated to the continental United States, I returned often, especially recently as my mother has advanced in years. In the last two chapters of my recent book Walking on Earth with Thich Nhat Hanh, I chronicle, and illustrate, how my walking meditation along the sea supported me throughout my prolonged stay in a traumatized post-Maria, covid-ravaged Puerto Rico.
The Caribbean Sea was one of my first art teachers. Like an eskimo who can distinguish countless shades of white, I notice even small differences in shades of blue, especially blue/green turquoise tones. I have tried to capture this great variety in my illustration for this topic.
It is commonly known that Puerto Ricans abroad often make regular visits to Puerto Rico. Perhaps they are drawn by family ties … but perhaps many are drawn, too, by the Caribbean Sea.
BRIGHT GREEN UNDERGROUND GARDENS
Another morning, I am pleased to notice a number of uvas de playa (sea grape trees) as well as several man-made dunes intended for wildlife conservation. I then look into the crystalline waters, wondering if I might spot any kelp algae. Attenborough recommends cultivating highly nutritious kelp forests for carbon storage and as a healthy plant-based food option for humans. Attenborough asks us to stop exploiting the ocean and begin sustainably harvesting it. He proposes the cultivation of abundant salt marshes, seagrass meadows and mangroves.
Mangroves, described by Carson as “sea becoming land almost before our eyes,” forming “a world of swamp and forest,” serve essential ecological functions. I recently brought my mother to the Caribbean Manatee Conservation Center where we learned how the fewer than 600 manatees left in the Puerto Rican coastal areas thrive in mangroves.
Carson draws a connection between mangroves and coral reefs, citing the shared influence of the currents: “... and the currents that stream under the bridge, carrying the mangrove seedling, are one with the currents that carry plankton to the coral animals building the offshore reef, creating a wall of rock-like solidity; a wall that one day may be added to the mainland. So this coast is built.” (The Edge of The Sea, pp. 601-2)
Bright green underwater gardens are ephemeral formations, dependent on available sunlight and on the ocean’s rhythms and composition. The surface waters of the ocean are a boundless plankton pasture which travels with the flow of the currents, waves, and tides, to many destinations.
NOAH’S ARK OF THE OCEAN
Rachel Carson’s trilogy is an extensive, exhaustive account of the marine world- so comprehensive that I am inclined to describe it as a kind of Noah’s Ark of the ocean. Below are a few of the most notable subjects Carson covers. Please click on the link for my descriptions of each topic.
MODEL OF INTERBEING
“…in writing the book I was successfully a sandpiper, a crab, a mackerel, an eel, and half a dozen other animals.”
Carson, R. “Memo to Mrs. Eales” on Under the Sea-Wind, p. 694
Rachel Carson strives to understand and describe the ocean from the perspective, not of humans, but of the ocean’s creatures themselves. I believe that her approach is an example of interbeing between the human and marine worlds, one that has much to teach the rest of us.
Attenborough, meanwhile, provides an example of natural interbeing when he describes the complex networking processes that take place in coral reefs. Stony corals function as a colony when they cluster in groups held together by calcium carbonate. The mutually advantageous connection between algae and polyps goes well beyond their oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. Coral polyps provide a protected environment for algae, allowing them to access sunlight and carry out photosynthesis. In return, the algae use sunlight to create sugars and other organic compounds which supply the polyps with up to 90 percent of the energy they need to continue building their calcium carbonate walls upwards and outwards. The resulting architectural networks provide protection to the shore, serving as a buffer against coastal flooding.
Other instances of interbeing take place on the shores. For example, Carson explains that, wherever the coastline changes, waves of living creatures seek a foothold in the form of colonies. Along newly formed coasts one might find legions of barnacles, or vermetid snails connected by intertwined shells. Likewise, the changing tides will often reveal colonies of sea urchins.
IMPERMANENCE AND CONTINUATION
“One dies, another lives, as the precious elements of life are passed on and on in endless chains.”
Carson, R., Under the Sea-Wind, p. 653.
When I walk along the beach I am often in awe at the sight of the turquoise waves. I focus on one wave. I breathe in while it gains force and breathe out when it breaks. Carson explains that a single wave can travel a great distance before it finally breaks at the shore. I think of the sea’s eternal rhythms. A wave carries tremendous energy. Where does all that energy go when it breaks? I wonder how we might harness it to benefit the planet.
One day, as I walk across the sand, I almost stumble over hard sand blocks packed together. I realize that here sand is slowly becoming rock, right in front of my eyes. The rocky coast used to be made of sand. And again, according to Carson, the rocks will be ground down by the waves. Over time the land turns out to be as fluid as the sea.
I see lots of sargassum algae along the tidal edge, claiming the land for itself, blurring the boundary between the marine and the terrestrial. This rivalry between realms never ends, says Carson, “but the sea itself will determine when that which they build will belong to the land, or when it will be reclaimed for the sea.” (The Edge of The Sea, p. 651)
Carson ends her almost 700-page trilogy with a chapter called “The Enduring Sea”. While the sea may change in many ways - even for the worse by human hands - it will survive, holding its own even against the most powerful land dwellers.
AVATAR, THE WAY OF WATER
I enjoyed watching the movie Avatar: The Way of Water, especially for its rendition of the amazing richness of coral reef ecosystems. I appreciated the words of Tsireya, who grew up with the ways of the reef, to Loa, who was trying to adapt to aquatic life:
“The way of water has no beginning and no end. Sea is around you and in you. The sea is your home, before your birth and after you die. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world. Our breath burns in the shadow of the deep sea. The sea gives and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.”
BUDDHIST WATER CEREMONIES
Water is often perceived as a symbol of cleansing, purity, rejuvenation and renewal. In many Buddhist ritual traditions, practitioners offer clean water to the Buddha as a symbol of reverence. Some Buddhists also sprinkle or anoint themselves or others with consecrated waters, or even immerse themselves in bodies of water. They may use water to bless objects with spiritual significance. Moreover, the creation of mandalas involves dissolving color powders in consecrated waters. This reminds me of how Thay mixed his tea with ink to produce his calligraphy and to illustrate the circles of interbeing.
I am delighted that the Chesapeake Earth Holders will conduct a water blessing ritual when I facilitate at our sangha gathering on Monday night. Please bring a cup of tea - or any other beverage of your choice - to our gathering. You may also bring water you hold sacred or dear for any reason.
AMERICAN INDIAN WATER CEREMONIES
As November is Native American Heritage Month, I would like to mention some of the water ceremonies practiced among indigenous American tribes. These traditions include blessing the waters while gathering at a natural water source and offering prayers, songs and sacred herbs or objects to the water; water dances; water drumming; sweat lodge ceremonies; and rituals honoring river and water spirits.
Description of the Water Medicine Wheel I Found at Ghost Ranch
Almost Nothing, Yet Everything, written by Hiroshi Osada & Illustrated by Ryōji Arai