Why do ocean waves appeal to us? It's because they hint at the relationship between ourselves and the whole of reality. Each wave is unique, and yet each is an expression of the entire ocean. Or better, the entire ocean is present in each wave - since we can never say where the wave begins and where it ends - so that individual expression and the whole it expresses are one and the same thing. When the ocean reabsorbs the wave, we may think that it's gone, but that's a mistake. Since there was never any separation between the ocean and the wave in the first place, what perishes when the wave recedes is only the illusion of separate existence. As wave after wave appears and disappears, we witness a microcosm of the game reality plays with itself, where it takes on and sheds the appearance of separate individuality. What really exists, however, is not the separate wave, but the entire ocean in its coming and going, the unending flux that is reality itself.
