We’re in a drought, and caring for our water supply means feeling it’s importance. We need to get wet
Across the country record low rainfall and high temperatures have depleted reservoirs and dried up rivers. We’ve seen hosepipe bans in Cornwall, dry pipes in Surrey, and drought declared in ten regions of England and Wales. Farmers warn that this year’s potatoes will be smaller and worry that the soil’s too dry to plant seeds.
Water supply is so basic that we take it for granted, but it joins food and energy in the growing list of things we depend on but can’t guarantee. Whether the water supplier’s in the private or the public sector, it is so fundamental that it demands our careful attention, taking account not just of supply and demand, but of longterm factors and the environment.
Buddhism speaks of four elements that comprise existence: earth, water, fire and air, sometimes adding space and consciousness to the list. It’s a premodern model, not a scientific one, but in Buddhism it’s a visceral way to evoke the experience of being part of the world. In one meditation practice we reflect that everything I term ‘myself’ is made up of these elements. Our bodies are a stage in the water cycle, somewhere between the river and the clouds. The liquid we feel in our blood and taste in our mouths is borrowed from the world, and merely passes through us. We are transitional, contingent beings, dependent on conditions.
Water has a symbolic as well as a literal meaning in many faith traditions, representing inner cleansing. It plays that role, for example in Buddhist initiation rituals, but I also felt it last week when I stood with my son in the open air at The Globe Theatre in London for a performance of The Tempest. The weather was turning after baking heat, and when Prospero spoke of thunder claps the skies rumbled. In Act V the rain poured down like a monsoon cloudburst, flooding the theatre yard up to our ankles and echoing the play’s theme of purgation through a tempest that is both outside and within the characters.
Drenched through, soaked to the skin, I felt like parched earth after rain. It was an elemental experience of the ancient understanding that water is the source of all our lives and we must care for it and the world on which it depends.
