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The Ocean said, "You have not caught the ocean, you have only caught a bucket of seawater, and only for the moment. Eventually the water will evaporate or the bucket will decay and the water will return to the Sea. No matter how many buckets you fill, you will not put the Ocean in them."
The Fool said, "How then can I ever know the Ocean if I cannot catch it?"
The Ocean looked at the bucket of seawater. "Your catching is always finite, but what you seek to catch is infinite. In the same way, no matter how wise you become, your wisdom will always be finite, but your foolishness will always be infinite."
The Fool dropped the bucket and the seawater sloshed back out to sea. "How then can I know anything?" he cried.
"Look at the wave washing in at your feet," the Ocean said, and the Fool did so. The wave washed in and around his feet and back out again.
"That wave is part of Me, and every wave is part of the whole Ocean," the Ocean said.
"So?" the Fool replied.
"And you are part of Mankind and every man is, and Mankind is part of the world and everything else is," the Ocean said.
"So?" the Fool replied.
"So you start by looking at what is at your own feet, like that wave, and in that way you can come to know better what the whole is. You can travel the whole world to vainly try to understand the whole world, or you can start by looking at what your feet are standing on. It's the same world. You can understand much of the world without leaving your own garden, and you can understand much of the ocean by seeing the waves at your feet. Do not seek to understand everything, it is beyond you. It is also all around you, right now, and you yourself in fact are part of it. So attend to what you see and hear and feel, attend to what is under your own feet, and let the Ocean be the Ocean. You are immersed in it, you are part of it, but you will never conquer it."
"I do not understand," the Fool said.
"Now you are getting it," The Ocean said.
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