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In an undug well, water ripples from a stream that does not flow.
A person with no shape or form is drawing up the water.

—Ikkyu

Sitting with this koan, an image came to mind of a very small lake, about three feet in diameter, with no bottom and no structure surrounding the water. Searching for an image to go with the koan, I bumped into the Great Artesian Basin in Australia.

The Great Artesian Basin is the largest and deepest aquifer in the world: stretching over 660,000 square miles, 9,800 feet deep, in places holding 15,600 cubic miles of groundwater. It is hard to imagine 15,600 cubic miles of water, almost as hard as imagining that we each contain the universe and thus have no shadow or form.

If water reaches the ground surface under the natural pressure of the aquifer, it is called a flowing artesian well. The thing is, the water “flows” from the aquifer, but the water in the aquifer is not flowing: “it ripples, but does not flow.” It is interesting to me that Ikkyu observed a process in himself that is paralleled in the physical world—and how often that is true.

We are each flowing artesian wells of wisdom and compassion. Drawing the water requires no special effort; it is always readily available. The rippling water from a stream that does not flow reminds me of a line from the instruction to the koan of the week before last about pecking in and out of a shell. 

You act all day without ever acting, talk all day without ever talking.
In complete freedom you will be able to develop the activities of picking and pecking…

It also reminds me that the person of “Solitary Brightness” can “listen, understand and teach” without effort.

 Image: Great Artesian Basin in Australia.

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—David