Zen Rock

The instant that I saw this rock it sent me into a kind of zen trance.

The first thing that it made me think of was impermanance... After all, the rock has the look of something ancient. It has clearly been in existance for millions of years. And long after I am gone and forgotten (barring human intervention, or barring sudden breakthroughs in longevity treatments in my lifetime) it will still be sat there, in the sea, being battered by the waves in much the same way...

On the other hand... the rock is clearly being battered by the sea. It isn't hard to imagine it being broken down into sand in just a few millenium. It just made me very aware of the impermanence of all things, and especially myself...

The second thought that came to me was how everything changes, but everything stays the same. For maybe hundreds of years the water had been splashing over this rock in much the same way, filling the pool at the top, and then running out of the pool back into the sea below. Unchanging for hundreds of years...

The flip-side of this is that no two waves, washing over this rock, will have ever been exactly the same... Hundreds and tousands of waves, all breaking over this rock, and each one slightly different from all of the others... Possibly due to the different timing, size or direction of the wave, or down to slight changes in the shape of the rock, or maybe even due to the presence of sea life on the rock, altering the wave slightly, making each one unique...