Forgotten

Imagine a waterfall.  Above, the water is calm and serene, and below, much the same.  But as the water falls, it separates into individual drops, and each falling drop might worry about what will happen when it hits the bottom.  When the drops were part of the stream, there was no worry, no suffering, no anxiety. It is only when the drops are separate from the stream does all the worrying occur.

But the drops were always water and nothing but water, above the falls, below the falls, and while they were falling.  But separate from the stream, they forget that they're water, and imagine that they are something that should have an existence separate from the rest of the water.

Shunryo Suzuki once wrote that before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe.  After we are separated by birth from this oneness,  then we had feeling.  When we do not realize that we are one with the universe, then we have fear.  "Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life."