We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life.

For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.

The ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

When we flow with the river of our lives, we will always arrive where we are meant to be.

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Contemplating the lace-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water.

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.

Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.

As all the rivers of the world constantly pour their waters into the ocean, but the ocean’s grand, majestic nature remains undisturbed and unchanged,

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.

We're all water from different rivers,
That's why it's so easy to meet,
We're all water in this vast, vast ocean,
Someday we'll evaporate together.

SEA OF LIFE

This is not the end, my friend.
Just as the ocean sings songs to infinity
Our friendship too will flow onward
Until the day one of us
Turns and leaves
And the seasons will turn too
As our shells
As they return back to sand
And the tides that brought us
Forth
Will take us back
Again.

I will never leave you, my friend.
Every time you see a wave rushing to
Meet another,
Two friends unite.
Every time you see a wave crashing,
Two friends depart.
The journey will go on, my friend.
Our memories are recorded
In seashells
To show and tell
The lessons learned
In these heavens and hells
Part of this sea of life -
And when the tide is right,
We shall cross paths again
When the ocean sings our song.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem