Once upon a time there was a beautiful river finding her way among the hills,forests and meadows. She began by being a joyful stream of water- a spring always dancing and singing as she ran down from the of the mountain. She was very young at that time and as she came to the low land she slowed down. In her mind she always heard a deep, grave sound from very far distance, but she did not know what that sound was, but she knew that she had to go and meet and merge with that vague and faint roar of distant life. As she grew up, she learned to look beautiful, winding gracefully among the hills and meadows.
One day she noticed the clouds within herself. Clouds of all sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but chase after clouds. She wanted to posses a cloud, to have this or that cloud for herself. But clouds floated and traveled in the sky, and they were always changing their forms. Sometimes they looked like an overcoat, sometimes like a mountain, sometimes like a horse or dragon. Because of the nature of the impermanence within the clouds, the river suffered the agony of not retaining or possessing a stable image of a cloud. Her pleasure, her joy had become just chasing after clouds, one after another, but despair, anger and hatred became her life.
Then one day a strong wind came and blew away all the clouds in the sky. The sky became completely empty. Our river thought that life was not worth living, for there were no longer any clouds to chase after and there was no meaning of her life. She wanted to die. "If there are no clouds, why should I be alive ?"-She thought, but how can a river take her own life?
That night the river had the opportunity to go back to herself for the first time. She had been running for so long after something outside of herself that she had never seen herself. That night was the first opportunity for her to hear her own crying-the sounds of water incessantly crashing against the banks of the river. Because she was able to listen to her own voice now, she discovered something quite important.
She realized that what she had been looking for was already in herself. She found out that clouds were nothing but frozen water. Clouds were born from water and would return to water. And she found out she herself was also water.
The next morning when the sun was in the sky, she discovered something beautiful. She saw the clear-blue sky for the first time. She had never noticed it before. At night she saw the shiny black sky punctuated with a million stars-some bright, some faint, some still, some pulsating. She had never noticed such a serene beauty of cloudless skies at a starry night. So far she had only been interested in clouds and she had missed seeing the sky which was the home of all the clouds and all the stars. Clouds were impermanent, but the sky was stable. She realized that the immense sky had been within her heart since the very beginning, only she did not know it. The great insight brought her peace and happiness. As she saw the vast, wonderful blue sky, she knew stability would never be lost again.
That afternoon the clouds returned with their many colors and shapes, but this time she did not want to possess any one of them. She could see the beauty each cloud and she was able to welcome all of them. When a cloud came by, she would greet him or her with loving kindness. When the cloud wanted to go away, she would wave to him or her happily with loving kindness. She realized that she could really know all clouds by not possessing them. She did not have to choose between the clouds and herself. Peace and harmony existed between her and the clouds.
That night, something wonderful happened. When she opened her heart completely to the evening sky, she received the image of the full moon- beautiful, round, like a jewel within herself. She had never imagined that she could ever receive such a lovely image. She remembered a poem in Chinese: "The fresh and beautiful moon is traveling in the utmost empty sky. When the mind-rivers of living beings are free, that image of the queen moon will reflect in each of us."