It is difficult to imagine the immensity of the ocean—so vast, so deep, and extending far beyond the limits of our vision. The ocean represents a metaphor to help us understand that which is beyond creation, beyond the limits of time and space, beyond the limitations of language and concepts. How do you explain something that is outside the limits of explanation?
The ocean, so immense and unfathomable hints at the isness, the suchness, the fountainhead, the Godhead from which creation came forth as incarnation of the word. Though finite, the ocean hints at the infinite.
A cup is simple by comparison–a relatively small device to store or transfer some quantity. Such quantity is easy to measure, limited only by the size of the cup.
In trying to understand the truth of oneness and the illusion of duality, we are sometimes encouraged to consider ourselves as a wave in the ocean. While the wave may be misperceived as somehow separate from the ocean, it is not. It is every bit a part of the ocean and only seemingly apart from or separate from the ocean. The wave in the ocean helps us to comprehend this perceived duality. Yet, the wave itself seems so much a part of the ocean that separation is not readily apparent.
So, let us then consider the cup. If we dipped our cup into the sea and removed one cupful from the infinite expanse of ocean, and we carried this cup away to land, the separation would be most evident. But is the contents of the cup any less ocean than before we removed it? Has the contents of the cup stopped being ocean as a result of being contained? It is every bit, every drop still and fully ocean. While that one cupful of ocean is seemingly diminished by the process of removal and separation, this too is an illusion. You cannot take away or somehow diminish the essence of what ocean is by simply removing it to a different place. Content is held and occurs within context. Content is limited. Context is unlimited. The cup contents are limited by the size of the cup, but the essence of what the cup holds is infinite. In much the same way, our bodies and minds are but vessels to hold our infinite souls.
Each day, many cupfuls of ocean evaporate into the atmosphere only to return again as rainfall in a vast cycle of re-creation. And so, when our time here in this world of creation is ended, our ocean essence evaporates, only to return to the sea of infinity.
There is no duality, there is only oneness.
