One of my favorite nursery rhymes contains quite a bit of wisdom: “Row row, row, row your boat gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream”  •  if we think of the stream as a stream of teachings, then we could consider the Buddha as the source of the stream  •  from that beginning a great river continues to flow over thousands of years  •  where does this stream flow? It flows into an ocean, which you could say is the awakening of the practitioner  •  you have a boat to carry you down this stream, and you have a set of oars to row with  •  what kind of effort do you apply? it's a steady effort, but it's also a relaxed effort: you're rowing gently, but regularly and persistently  •  and how are you doing all this? you're doing it merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily  •  it's not a big struggle; there's a sense of delight  •  in fact it could be dreamlike because it's not so solid, it's not so frozen  •  we're in a shifting and changing world; it's so dreamlike and so unreal in so many ways, but so beautiful and colorful at the same time.