Let go of the self.

Before Christmas, the following parable was shared with our school.  It has stuck with me.
 
A SIEVE AND WATER (A Buddhist Story)

The Zen master and his disciple made their way across the sand to the shore. The disciple carried a cup and a sieve. At the water's edge, they stood on a rock, the sea breaking around them in great, frothy swirls. 'Show me how you would fill the sieve with water,' the master said. The disciple stooped and filled the cup with water. He poured it into the sieve. Cup after cup he poured into the heart of the sieve but no matter how quickly he poured, only the smallest remnant caught in the bottom. Even that soon formed a drop and was swallowed in the vastness of the ocean. All the time the master watched, saying nothing. In the end, the disciple faced the master and shrugged. The task was hopeless. Now, the master spoke: 'It is thus with the life of the spirit also,' he said. 'So long as we stand on the rock of I, of myselfness, and seek to pour the divine life into that shell, so certainly shall that life escape us. This is not the way to fill a sieve with water, nor the human spirit with the life of the divine.'

Then the master reached out his hand and took the sieve from the hand of the disciple. He thrust his arm far behind him then launched the sieve as far as he could, out into the face of the deep. For a moment, it lay glinting in the morning sunlight on the face of the water. Then it slipped far below. 'Now, it is full of water,' the master said. 'It will always be so. That is how you fill a sieve with water and the spirit with divine life. You throw the myself, the I, far out and away to sink into the deep sea of the divine life.'
 
Maurice Lynch


When I first heard this story told, my first thought was: Idiot, you can't fill a sieve with water; put the sieve in the bowl.  When I shared this on Wednesday morning, Sara shared that she had thought to hold the sieve under water.  Neither of us wanted to let go of the sieve.  As a metaphor for how tightly we hold on to the self, this says much about our desire to be filled up with "the life of the spirit."  We want to be filled; we do not want to let go of that useless sieve.

Bev