A Bubble in a Stream

By: Bob Zeglovitch

At Just Show Up, we have been working with the following verse from the Diamond Sutra: 

“So you should view this fleeting world, a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.” 

This is a compact instruction that can be readily memorized and put to good use in meditation and daily life.  Its imagery directly points us to impermanence and emptiness/boundlessness/not self.  The Buddhist scholar Mu Soeng, in his book The Diamond Sutra: Transforming the Way We Perceive the World, comments that the “poignancy of the images evoked in the verse parallels the fragility and transitoriness of our human existence: A star at dawn—faintly seen and just about to disappear; A bubble in a stream and a flash of lightning—formed only for an instant and disappearing in the blink of an eye; A flickering lamp—doomed to restlessness, unable to stabilize enough to have any meaningful identity; A phantom—of such chaotic interiority that one cannot be sure of its shape; and a dream—of such dubious existence that one cannot distinguish what is real and what is not.”

In meditating with this verse, we can listen to it or recite it to ourselves, allowing one or more of the images, or even just one word, to animate and shift our experience of body, mind, and environment.  You can find a guided meditation using the verse on the Dharma Talks page of this website, dated May 6, 2026.  When we drift off, we can use an image or word to bring our awareness back to the constantly shifting process of the world of experience.  We may find ourselves drawn into an extended visualization or a detailed series of thoughts about the verse.  While this may be productive in its own way as a separate reflection practice, the suggestion for meditating with the verse is to notice that this is happening and to bring the lens of this verse directly to that process of visualization or thinking itself—“seeing”, for example, the dream-like or flickering nature of that process.

While the verse instructs us in how to “view” the world, this is not a perspective limited to the domain of sight.  The “lens” that we are invited to use is all-encompassing, a way of encountering the world with all six Buddhist sense gates of eye, ear, nose tongue, body, and mind.  For instance, how might we “view” (experience) through the sense gate of body (touch) the shifting sensations in our body as though they are bubbles in a stream, —without making up a detailed story or picture of it?  Or how might we directly encounter our passing thoughts as a phantom or a flash of lightning?  Or how might we experience the human drama of our life as a dream?  We are not simply “seeing” anything in a literal sense here.  

Outside of formal meditation, we can play with this verse in the manner of a gatha, a short poem recited to bring us back to our true nature and the fundamental ground of reality.  Recite the verse silently once.  Then slow down and coordinate with the breath—Breathing in: So you should view this fleeting world; Breathing out: A star at dawn: Breathing in: A bubble in a stream; Breathing out: A flash of lightning in a summer cloud; Breathing in: A flickering lamp; Breathing out: A phantom; Breathing in: and a dream.  Repeat one, two or three times.  Then play with shortening the verse, breathing in and “viewing world”, breathing out and softly noting “bubble” or “dream” or one of the other images.  Then let go of the words and images, just breathing and being intimate with how it is just now.  Remember that the “world” is both our external environment and everything that is arising in consciousness—thoughts, feelings, moods, physical sensations. 

I’ve taken some initial steps to experiment with the verse in daily life.  As I work through the process of grief and renewal occasioned by the recent death of my partner Ava Stanton (Just Show Up’s founder and long-time teacher), I find that I can sometimes become a bit anxious, and get pulled into both negative and positive fantasies about the future.  While there is nothing inherently wrong about developing a vision for the future, these moments are more like grasping onto a shifting emotion or a possibility that may never happen.  Invariably, even where the imagined future has a positive character, it leads to suffering as I encounter the feeling of clinging that accompanies it.  I’ve been working simply so far, just bringing up briefly the act of “viewing” and one or more of the images that seems most salient, reminding me that I am in a dream and that there is nothing solid or fixed about my imagined scenario.

You could try this informal practice when you catch yourself caught in a negative spiral or a difficult situation.  Or you could just drop into the verse from time to time even if something quite pleasant is happening or the feeling tone is neutral.  You could develop a practice of reciting the verse at the beginning of your day or at some other set time.  Having the verse memorized (it is not hard if you repeat it frequently) helps to keep it accessible, but it could also help to type it out onto a small piece of paper and place it somewhere, so you are reminded to work with it.

There can be a sense of relief and ease when we shift our perspective by meditating on or reciting the verse.  Letting go and according with the natural state of flux can have an opening and relaxing quality to it.  It should be noted, however, that experiencing the world through the lens of impermanence can also give rise to fear. We want something solid and reliable to hold on to—our body, our mind, our partner, our sense of identity.  When we see that absolutely everything is radically in flux, without boundaries, and not at all what our conventional understanding tells us, it can shake us to our core.  While this is more likely to happen on long retreats and in the context of specific practices, we could get a strong taste of it at any time, depending on causes and conditions.  If we come upon territory that feels too challenging, we may need to ground ourselves in a conventionally familiar sense of solidity from something in our phenomenal world, or to use the breath or body to bring us some measure of stability. 

A week or so ago I had a visceral experience of the nature of this very life as a “bubble in a stream.”  I took a walk along the Mississippi River across from downtown St. Paul for the purpose of scattering some of Ava’s ashes.  This was familiar and treasured terrain for Ava and me and so it seemed like a fitting place for the ceremony of returning her to the earth.  While just across from an urban center, it is an extensive natural and wooded area where one can be quite alone.  I made my way to the river’s edge, recited the Diamond Sutra verse, and released her ashes into the water.  The stream was not flowing fast here, so the ashes spread out just a bit and were quite visible at first.  In just a few brief moments, however, they had vanished.  In this case, the verse manifested as Ava’s body, literally seen with the eyes as a bubble in a stream, here for a moment and then gone.  My recognition of this, while striking, poignant and meaningful, was just another bubble in the stream of my consciousness, as other bubbles of thought, sensation, and perception emerged.      

Introducing the Heart Sutra

By: Bob Zeglovitch

This morning, we began to chant the Heart Sutra as part of our regular practice, adding it to the Harmony of Difference and Equality which we have chanted regularly for several years. The Heart Sutra is the most recited and copied sutra in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, and is central in Zen liturgy. It dates to approximately 350 CE and originated in northern India, although its precise origins remain somewhat obscure. The short text is one of approximately 38 sutras in what are known as the Prajna Paramita sutras (the sutras of Transcendent Wisdom). These are core early texts in the Mahayana tradition, which centers around the teaching of emptiness and the bodhisattva ideal. The bodhisattva ideal was a response to the model of the arhat (person who has attained full enlightenment) prevalent in early Buddhism, in which the practitioner gained individual liberation. In the bodhisattva tradition, the practitioner works for the liberation of all beings.

The doctrine of emptiness (in the translation we are using this term is called boundlessness) was a philosophical response to the Abhidharma tradition in Buddhism. Abhidharma is an umbrella term for a number of systems that were developed to categorize what was understood to constitute the types of conscious experience in terms of various factors and relationships—called the “dharmas”. In a sense, the dharmas could be likened to the building blocks of our experience in the phenomenal world, appearing and disappearing rapidly and in an infinitely complex web of relationships and causal chains. At least some Buddhist schools held that these dharmas constituted actual fundamental and indivisible elements of reality. Nevertheless, because of their radically impermanent and complex nature, they were consistent with an understanding of not-self, or anatta. Under this approach, the understanding was that there was no ego, body or mind behind a collection of impermanent elements. The Mahayana tradition represented a radical break from this rationalistic approach, and held that all dharmas, all phenomena, are empty of intrinsic existence and nature.

The Soto Zen teacher Shohaku Okumura describes emptiness in this way: “Even the fundamental elements are empty. This means that eye, ear, nose and tongue don’t function separately, buy only as a whole. They are all connected with each other. That is one meaning of emptiness. Nothing can exist as an independent entity and everything functions as part of a larger system. This perspective is called nondiscrimination mind or nondiscrimination wisdom.

In the Heart Sutra, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is addressing Shariputra and expounding on emptiness. Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion—named Kuan Yin in China and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan, male in India and female in China, Japan, Korea and Tibet. A translation which encompasses several meanings of the name is “the lord who beholds the doings of the phenomenal world and hears its cries of compassion.” Avalokiteshvara has a thousand arms and an eye in the palm of each hand, through which she is able to help all those in need, in a skillful manner appropriate to the individual situation.

Shariputra was one of the two principle disciples of the Buddha, and was known as the “Marshall of the Dhamma”, renowned for his ability to understand and teach the dharma, including the understanding of anatta or not self. Although scholars date the beginnings of the Abhidharma schools to a couple of hundred years after the Buddha, the Theravadin school maintains that the Buddha taught the Abhidharma to Shariputra, who was the founder of this scholastic approach based on the categories of “dharmas.” His appearance as the listener in this text therefore makes rhetorical sense, since he is being instructed by the Bodhisattva of compassion on the teachings of emptiness that go beyond the Abhidharma understanding.

There is another character that appears at various places in the sutra—Prajnaparamita. In the Kaz Tanahashi/Joan Halifax translation that we are using this appears simply as “wisdom beyond wisdom.” While it is accurately represented as describing the highest form of wisdom or the perfection of wisdom, it is also personified in Mahayana cosmology as “the mother of all buddhas.” In Mu Soeng’s excellent book The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, he states, “if we interpret the mother as a source from which all things are born, we will understand the wisdom of shunyata or emptiness as the source of liberation for all buddhas and bodhisattvas.”

The chant ends with the mantra, Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate means “gone, gone.” Paragate means “gone beyond.” Parasamgate means “gone completely beyond—to the other shore of samsara, the sea of suffering.” Bodhi means “the Awakened Mind.” Svaha is the Sanskrit word for homage or proclamation. Mu Soeng renders the complete mantra as follows: “Homage to the Awakend Mind which has gone over to the other shore.” He notes that the critical word is “beyond”, which can also be translated as “transcendent”. The other shore is a reference to the nirvanic realm, a place of ease and tranquility, refuge and safety. However, in Zen the understanding is that nirvana is to be found within samsara.

There is much more, of course, that could be said about this essential and dense sutra, but hopefully this provides some basic orientation. Mu Soeng’s book is excellent for a deeper dive, as is The Heart Sutra by Red Pine.