A Simple Reflection on the Principle of Water-Wave Diffusion

　　When a stone is thrown into water it raises ripples that spread outward layer by layer. Usually people think these ripples diffuse from the stone as center.

　　That is one angle of understanding, but adopting it complicates things. Like human fate patterns: each person's fate is different; each has a sphere of influence, and under these influences, like on water, ripples never cease. These forces interweave: where they add, towering waves form; where they cancel, undercurrents form; and some drift calmly in the water without a ripple.

　　Everything becomes extraordinarily complex. Yet in the real world, the whole is complex while the individual is simple: most people work, eat, sleep, play each day, or do other things.

　　Physically reasoning through some complex calculation, one obtains a very interesting conclusion: the next moment's amplitude at a point equals half the sum of the amplitudes above, below, left, and right, minus the current amplitude.

　　If one carefully considers this fact, one finds that most people's usual understanding of water is abnormal.

　　A stone thrown into water is ultimately still a stone. Thrown into water, the ripples one sees appear to all surround the stone—this is actually an illusion.

　　The true world cannot fail to turn because someone is missing; so too a small stone thrown into water. When a stone is thrown into the water, all the ripples are in fact still diffusing with themselves as center—just as everyone in the world lives for themselves.

　　The ripples that appear are actually only because within the water waves, by the symmetry of diffusion, they cancel one another, forming the illusion of oscillation centered on the thrown stone. An illusion is an illusion: it will always decay, then vanish.

　　So a stone thrown into water, however many ripples it raises, is ultimately still ordinary.

　　Water waves rise and fall, yet waves always transmit energy. So what rises will pass energy to the surrounding water, and so sink again; the surrounding water rises, and when it rises it also passes energy back, making one rise again.

　　Human life is the same: when you help those around you, energy is transmitted outward; then those around you will transmit energy back, and so there is continuous back-and-forth oscillation.

　　However much energy anyone has, with the passage of time energy is always consumed.

　　Whether that energy manifests as time, wealth, or something else: when one has the ability to help others and be kind, and does not do it, this spare energy is also naturally consumed over time—and when fortune sinks low, no energy will ever come back.

　　Likewise, when one takes the initiative to be kind and help others, everyone nearby begins to seem to revolve around oneself. At such times one must stay alert: this is an illusion. If one is enchanted by this illusion, it is hard to escape.

　　Some feel that good people get no good reward, and that helping others does not necessarily bring benefit. The reality of this world is indeed so. But what is more real is this: though helping others does not necessarily bring benefit, there is still a possibility of it—but if one is not even willing to help others, then even that possibility is gone.

　　But this is only a possibility. If one helps with utilitarian motives, one always finds it hard to get what one wished. Hence the sages said: bestow kindness without hoping for reward.

　　After helping others, though one has given something, once energy is transmitted out it does not vanish—it only shifts. So in the end one has still made a contribution to the human world.

　　One contribution is one measure of merit. All merit in the world arises from giving. This is like Heaven and Earth endlessly nurturing the ten thousand things: clouds rise and rain falls—all is Heaven's grace; though it does not birth itself, it can long endure.