Tethered to a body,
As spaciousness, mind is free
In balance is light.
The waves were strong that day at Rockaway. I was just a kid, gripping the rope with the plastic buoys strung along it, feeling the ocean pull and batter me. Holding on tightly, I let the waves crash over me, pushing against their force. But sometimes, the waves were stronger. Sometimes, I lost my grip and tumbled, saltwater filling my mouth, my body twisting in the current, spinning until I didn’t know which way was up. Other times, I let go on purpose, trying to ride the waves, thinking I could control them, only to be swallowed by their power, tossed and turned until I came gasping to the surface.
That rope was my anchor, something solid to return to in the shifting, relentless sea. And now, years later, I see how much that rope was like my body—the thing I return to as I move through the waves of existence. Awareness, like the mind, drifts outward, pulled by thoughts of past and future, lifted and thrown by memory, expectation, imagination. It moves away from the body, untethered, only to be drawn back again—because without the body, awareness has nowhere to land. Without form, it is unmanifest. And without awareness, the body is just a collection of moving parts, a vessel with no light inside.
So I hold onto the body, like I held onto the rope. The breath moving in and out. The weight of my feet on the earth. The feeling of warmth, or coolness, or air against my skin. Again and again, the mind moves away, drifting with the currents of thought, and again and again, it returns—because it must. Because the body is where experience happens. Because holding onto the rope is the only way to know the ocean without being lost in it.
And then—something happens. There is a moment when awareness touches the body completely, when there is no more separation between being here and knowing I am here. It is like catching a wave just right, like gliding instead of struggling, like suddenly realizing I don’t need to fight the ocean—I can move with it. In that instant, there is nothing missing. Nothing to hold onto, nothing to let go of.
The tea is already steeped. There is nothing more to do.
The body is here, resting, breathing. The mind is here, quiet, open. The moment is whole, complete in itself. And in that stillness, there is joy—not the kind that comes from gain or excitement, but the deep, quiet joy of knowing that nothing is needed. That everything is already present. That the ocean was never separate from the wave, and the rope was never separate from the sea.
Spiritual Gravity 