When the water goes up...

An excerpt from Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck (highly recommended book):

There’s an old Taoist story about a group of Confucian intellectuals who, while strolling past a huge waterfall, glimpse a human body in the churning, roaring froth. Horrified, they gather by the banks, trying to figure out how to fish out the body and give it a decent funeral. The discussion comes to an abrupt end when an old man pops out of the water at their feet, dries himself off, and walks away.

Once the scholars have stopped gaping in astonishment, they run after the old man. “How did you do that?” they demand. “No one could swim in that water without being killed.”

“Oh, no, it’s really very easy,” the old man tells them. “You just go up when the water goes up, and down when the water goes down.”