River as Teacher

In the final reflection session of Living Waters in 2024 inquiry, participants explored the theme of ‘River as teacher’ and in this sense as reflecting all the great spiritual traditions.  They spoke from experience of the unconditionality of River, the selflessness of River, the mightiness of River; they spoke of confluence and oneness, how everything is in it at the same time it is us and we are it.

This is the second post of conversation between Peter and Andreas

Peter

When the participants spoke of River as teacher, you commented:

‘In the old spiritual traditions, the teacher’s role is not really personal. What a teacher does is provide a window on the foundational plane of reality through which the adept can experience that level of reality which I would call the loving source. The teacher provides this gateway without condition, making love accessible by loving.

I think you are saying that River has, or is, that capacity if we open ourselves to this broader sense of love. That has been often repeated by participants when you ask, ‘What have you learned?’ They tell you they sat there by River in love.

By Brook, Wiltshire, England. Photo: Peter Reason

Andreas

Yes, that's my experience as well. River is unconditional, as our participants discovered. I really feel that love is actually the bottom of all of this. I would say we can understand love as the activity of giving life without condition. That’s what we observe in River, and that’s what we feel as a yearning within our hearts. The desire to contribute to life. So we can feel the foundational plane right in our hearts. River as a teacher reminds us of this desire because he embodies it. He reminds us that we desire to give life, to allow others to live fully. Like River himself does. So we could say that the river flows directly through our hearts. And indeed, we know that he flows through us – we are always part of the watershed. We are the river. The Sufis have a saying for that: Our heart is the drop which contains the ocean.

In the old spiritual traditions, your true teacher was the one who could touch this depth of the heart in you, who made you remember that your center is the desire to give life. We are plunged into that remembrance when we meet someone who gives without reserve, without afterthought – like River does. He is hundred percent true. And this being true, being nothing but real transmits love to you. That's the role of the teacher; and this is why true human teachers are very rare because they must have stilled any need for egoic interest.  

Peter

So you were relating this sense of teacher to River. I have found it best when I visit River not to have any expectations, but simply to ask for teaching. River can then decide what, if any, teaching to offer.

Andreas

Yes. In an ego-fixated world where true spiritual teachers are scarce, we can at least always rely on River. River is clearly a life-giver, full of life, but without any interest in being smarter or whatever. River just is, River flows where he needs to flow. He is reality and points out its character by simply being it, and so he is that transparent window to deep planes of reality. Again, there is a potent metaphor in the Sufi teachings, which is that we must become like water – flow where we have to flow. But the role of true mentor can be assumed by trees as well, by mountains. All beings are constantly offering access to the life-giving source.

And the lesson to be learned is that if we want to take part in this life-giving benevolence, we need to become as unconditional. We don’t need to want anything else but to be real. To be part of the source. That’s another one of the old teachings. In order to peek through that transparent window on the One, the disciple has to surrender, become like water themselves.

Peter

So you're saying that in this work, the ultimate teacher is actually River. We are initiators and facilitators of the co-operative inquiry, but what we're doing is pointing to River as the true teacher.Andreas

Andreas

River is the ultimate teacher, because of course the ultimate teacher is love itself. Love is the source. The river is such a perfect guru that he is able to let shine the nature of this love through himself without taking anything off of it. The river is the one who perfectly follows the precept to be just what you are. Then you have arrived at the source. Or you have met the ocean, however you put it. You are running water, running where it needs to run, glistening, swirling, and sparkling in the flow, stilling the thirst of plants and animals in the process. What comes through the river is unconditional grace. River literally is a source of life, and we can also feel that it is. There is some degree of un-materiality, of invisibility, of non-dimensionally, but which is still not different from the material presence of the river. And this again shows that is the source.

Peter

Of course, River is doesn't have a single material identity, it is always moving, it is always everywhere. As we see on Living Waters, River is in the mist, the rivers in the rain, in the plants, in all of us…

Andreas

That's why that's why River is a fantastic teacher.

By Brook, Wiltshire, England. Photo: Peter Reason

Peter

This always reminds me of the Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha story. You know, where he becomes a ferryman…

Andreas

I read it, but it's so long ago, remind me!

Peter

Siddhartha’s story is set at the time of the Buddha and is in some ways a metaphor for the Buddha. As a young man he has become adept at the prayers and meditations of the Brahmin, but there is no joy in his heart; something is missing. So he leaves his father and his inheritance and goes and lives with the wandering ascetics, the Samanas, in the forest. He goes deeply into mortifying the body, learns to lose his Self, but is not content because self always returns. So he leaves the Samana and goes to live and work in society

He brings with him the discipline and skills he has learned as Samana, ‘I can think, I can wait, I can fast.’ These skills take him a long way: to riches, to food and drink, to love with a famous courtesan, to reckless gambling. In time, he is nauseated by this: he comes to realize he has lost everything that is vital, is living in a worthless and senseless manner. He knows that game is over, so he drops everything, flees the city. When he comes to the River, close to despair, about to drown himself, he hears River speak the holy word Om, and draws back. He apprentices himself to the old man who ferries pilgrims across the big River and who tells him, ‘…it is a very beautiful river. I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much from a river’.

He lives many years with the ferryman, learning from River. ‘Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without options…’

Andreas

Yeah. And you see, he’s become very much selfless in a way. You know, he was a great sage, a rich merchant, he was everything one can become in human terms, in terms of a successful ego and now he's just a ferryman. But he ‘rests in the nature of his mind’, as the Buddhists say. And mind here means the ground of reality where there is no differentiation between thing and experience, incessantly welling up in a luminous, selfless, and loving display. And Siddhartha understands that actually everything is full of this essence which we find in the river. No single bit is not ultimately a sparkling, glistening drop of water that gives life.

Peter

Absolutely. And just like participants on Living Waters he learns that River is everywhere, and River is timeless: ‘Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.’

But he has not finished learning. His old courtesan lover comes to River on pilgrimage with their son, who he has never met. She is bitten by a snake and dies, so Siddhartha takes on looking after the boy. Siddhartha envelops his son with love, wants him to learn everything he knows, but the boy doesn’t want to live with two poor old ferrymen, he has to go through that whole cycle himself. So he runs away. And after much anguish, Siddhartha learns he has to let him go with love. He see that nothing can be taught, only learned.

It's a lovely story – although Hesse tells it much better than me! It keeps coming back to me in the Living Waters work.

Andreas

The story ends with Siddhartha surrendering to unconditional love. He lets his son go. He becomes like water – acting only according to what needs to be done. He becomes like reality itself in a way. And through this he becomes a giver of live. He allows his son to unfold his aliveness according to its own direction of flow.

Peter

One of the things you often say, from your discipline of bio-poetics, is that the point of life is to beget life. I think you're saying that as a biologist, I think as well, as a mystic.

Andreas

The point of life is to beget life, and this whole reality is alive. So the whole point is about life. But it has an important twist. The whole point is not about ‘me wanting to feel as much life as I can’, but about giving life. That is our deepest desire, and it is the desire of the world itself. I would say that the mystery is that we are part of this desire to give. It’s about giving; and the primordial gift is life itself. Isn't that fantastic? Somehow that's what we're here for. It's such a beauty and we completely misunderstand it, many of us, much of the time.

The organ of this desire to give of course is the heart. It is where we can feel this desire; where we feel regret when we have forsaken our desire to give. The heart is that mysterious center in myself which is not me, which is not my personality, but what brings it about by giving me the gift of life. Inside our hearts there's this desire to give life to ourselves. And this desire does not come from us you know, it's the source itself, which is in ourselves, which gives us life. And then this ripples through and we desire to give others life.

Every organism is given to itself by the heart, by this desire that life be. And that's what we're doing in every moment. We are given to ourselves through this. Our heartbeat is a manifestation of this gift. Our breath is. With our breath we distribute our body in order to feed other beings, just as the river distributes its water to quench other beings’ thirst. So then an organism becomes a huge giver. That's what I describe in much of my bio-philosophical work: how much biological/ecological relationships are actually gift relationships.

Peter

Relationships all the way through?

Andreas

Gifts all the way through. It's a deep mystery, I can’t fully make sense of this on a rational level. But I can follow with my heart. It makes sense to my heart. It's very much a question of experience, which must be an integral part of understanding. And that's why the experiential aspects of Living Waters are so important. This is the place where the teacher’s role of the river becomes so crucial. Because he lets me experience this with one splash, in one gesture, even though I might miss the words to explain it for all of my life. But It’s not even important to elucidate it. It shines forth on its own in the sparkling water. Like for Siddhartha, it’s not something which can be explained. There's an element of presence, which is in the situation, and then we're ready. People feel this, everybody feels somehow together in this presence on the heart level.

Peter

That's why some of the stories people tell of their experiences are so powerful. Understanding occurs in the moment, in an appropriateness, rather than in an explanation that is arguable and intellectual and put into words. These understandings have a poetic truth in the moment, that reaches beyond the intellectual explanation.

Andreas

And this is indestructible, I would say, because this is just this is what reality is about. It is incredibly beautiful, and it's totally indestructible.

Siddhartha: an Indian novel, by Herman Hesse. First published in German in 1922. Published in English in 1951 by New Directions Publishing in translation by Hilda Rosner.

Living Waters 2025 is scheduled to run from March 11 through April 29. Details and registration links will be here and on the Schumacher College website