Below is an excerpt of a Tricycle teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. For the full article, see: tricycle.org/article/zen-peace-practice

Water / Reflecting

“Breathing in, I see myself as still water. Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.” When we are agitated or possessed by a strong emotion, we cannot see things clearly. If we only listen to our irritation, our despair, our anger, we cannot listen to the voice of the truth.

The refreshing moon of the Buddha 
Is traveling in the sky of utmost emptiness. 
If the pond of the mind of living beings is still, 
The moon will reflect itself beautifully in it.

This beautiful old poem tells us that when the lake of our mind is calm, the moon will reflect itself in the water. The truth breaks through to us if the water in our mind is calm. These are the two aspects of Buddhist meditation practice: samadhi and vipassana.

Samadhi is calming, stopping: stopping forgetfulness, calming our emotions, our agitation.

Vipassana is looking deeply in order to understand the true nature of things, to have the insight that can liberate us. But we can’t look deeply to get insight if we are not calm. So the practice of vipassana (insight meditation) contains the practice of samadhi and the practice of samadhi already contains the practice of vipassana.

Suppose that walking in the twilight you see a snake. You scream. But when someone brings [over] a flashlight, you discover that the snake was only a piece of rope. You did not see things clearly, because you were not calm.

In our daily life, we distort many things and make a lot of mistakes just because we are not calm enough. So we need to practice “water/reflecting” in order to become calm.