THE PACIFIC DOES not seem to have great tides, at least not on this side of the Pacific along the coast of California. It is a very small tide, it goes in and goes out, unlike those vast tides that go out several hundred yards and come rushing in. There is quite a different sound when the tide is going out, when the flow of water is withdrawing, from when it is coming in with a certain sense of fury, a quality of sound totally different from the sound of the wind among the leaves.
Everything seems to have a sound. That tree in the field, in its solitude, has that peculiar sound of being separate from all other trees. The great sequoias have their own deep lasting ancient sound. Silence has its own peculiar sound. And of course the endless daily chatter of human beings about their business, their politics and their technological advancements and so on, has its own sound. A really good book has its peculiar vibrations of sound. The vast emptiness also has its throbbing sound.
The ebb and flow of the tide is like human action and reaction. Our actions and reactions are so quick. There isn't a pause before the reaction takes place. A question is put and immediately, instantly, one tries to seek an answer, a solution to a problem. There is not a pause between the question and the answer. After all, we are the ebb and flow of life - the outward and the inward. We try to establish a relationship with the outward, thinking that the inward is something separate, something that is unconnected with the outer. But surely the movement of the outer is the flow of the inward. They are both the same, like the waters of the sea, this constant restless movement of the outer and the inner, the response to the challenge. This is our life. When we first put together from the inward, then the inner becomes the slave of the outer. The society we have created is the outer, then to that society the inner becomes the slave. And the revolt against the outer is the same as the revolt of the inner. This constant ebb and flow, restless, anxious, fearful: can this movement ever stop? Of course the ebb and flow of the waters of the sea are entirely free from this ebb and flow of the outer and the inner - the inner becoming the outer, then the outer trying to control the inner because the external has become all important; then the reaction to that importance from the inner. This has been the way of life, a life of constant pain and pleasure.
We never seem to learn about this movement, that it is one movement. The outer and the inner are not two separate movements. The waters of the sea withdraw from the shore, then the same water comes in, lashing the shores, the cliffs. Because we have separated the external and the inner, contradiction begins, the contradiction that breeds conflict and pain. This division between the outer and the inner is so unreal, so illusory, but we keep the external totally separate from the inner. Perhaps this may be one of the major causes of conflict, yet we never seem to learn - learn not memorize, learn, which is a form of movement all the time - learn to live without this contradiction. The outer and the inner are one, a unitary movement, not separate, but whole. One may perhaps intellectually comprehend it, accept it as a theoretical statement or intellectual concept, but when one lives with concepts one never learns. The concepts become static. You may change them but the very transformation of one concept to another is still static, is still fixed. But to feel, to have the sensitivity of seeing that life is not a movement of two separate activities, the external and the inward, to see that it is one, to realize that the interrelationship is this movement, is this ebb and flow of sorrow and pleasure, joy and depression, loneliness and the escape, to perceive non-verbally this life as a whole, not fragmented, not broken up, is to learn. Learning about it is not a matter of time, though, not a gradual process, for then time again becomes divisive. Time acts in the fragmentation of the whole. But to see the truth of it in an instant, then it is there, this action and reaction, endlessly - this light and dark, the beauty and ugliness.
That which is whole is free from the ebb and flow of life, of action and reaction. Beauty has no opposite. Hate is not the opposite of love.
-J. Krishnamurti, 28th March, 1984
