There is the river.

The river has a resonance with us,

down in our unconscious.  The river carries meaning.

Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees, the dying soldier's last words.


Twain gives us such moments.  The flux of the river.  Huck and Jim are separated on the river at night, with all the mysterious channels, the weather...  A fundamental experience to all creatures, that of loss, lostness, along with the need to locate, to call out in the night...  One of the great Buddhist moments of American literature.

And when they have relocated each other, found each other, the raft, Jim, Huck, all together now, Huck, the young fellow must dismiss all of that, the great feeling of lostness, friendlessness, people-less-ness, complete bare nakedness...  Feeling the suffering that all creatures, deep down, really have, replete with anxiety, fear of tomorrow, angst for the past, a distance from all good old days, as if there was indeed some drunken old father from which one had to hide from, so much so that you'd fake your own death...  Huck, feeling all this makes a joke, telling old Jim that surely this must have all been a dream...  And Jim looks down at the raft, full of litter from the flooding river..  "I was most heartbroke, and all you can do is make a joke on old Jim," something like that.



No one writes clearer than Thich Nhat Hahn.