Dolphins and Chuang Tzu

 When we need to remember our own beauty, our innate grace it is the animals that teach us the most skillfully-- and perhaps the dolphins and whales most of all, as they are mammals, like us.  We can glimpse the deep intelligence in their eyes, see their children playing within the security of a dolphin pod. And-- they are so at home in their element, Water. The Tao is, after all, like water...

Fish are born in water; man is born in Tao.
If fish, born in water, seek the deep shadow of pond and pool
all their needs are satisfied.
If man, born in Tao, sinks into the deep shadow of non-action
to forget aggression and concern
he lacks nothing; his life is secure.
All the fish needs is to get lost in water.
All man needs is to get lost in Tao.
--Chunag Tzu, trans. Thomas Merton

All images from a sound resonance bath/ dolphin expedition through Dana Point Harbor.