“When I open my eyes to the outer world, I feel myself as a drop in the sea; But when I close my eyes and look within, I see the whole universe as a bubble raised in the ocean of my heart.”
When we look out on the wide world, we feel small in comparison with the enormous vistas that surround us. To travel across a continent is a long journey, even by car. How much further are the planets and the stars! Our bodies are small, and the irises of our eyes are much smaller still. And yet, somehow, these little irises encompass faraway mountains, and even faraway stars! Our mind is yet smaller, so small it cannot be seen at all, and yet it encompasses not only all that we now see, but all that we have ever seen and heard and smelt and tasted and touched, and all that we can possibly imagine. At the center of the minuteness of our human condition is a vastness without end. We call it the heart.
When the heart looks out through the eyes of the body it is mesmerized by the rising and falling waves of the world. But when the eyes are closed the ocean turns inside out. The heart itself is now the sea. Every wave is the heart’s own churning, and the great wide world is so much froth and foam.