Contemplating Calm Awareness

The contemplative psychiatrist, spiritual director, and author Gerald May wrote in his book Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology:

Water is a commonly used metaphor for consciousness and awareness in both Oriental and Western traditions. Sometimes consciousness is seen as a vast ocean, constant and unruffled in its depths, and awareness as its more variable surface, sometimes tossed about by winds and currents, sometimes still and calm In the East, and especially in Zen, awareness is...