Water does not know or identify with any race, culture, ethnicity or religion; it is in the systems of thought of all civilizations. A principle common to all of them is the contemplation of water as an element intrinsically linked to life and of union to the world. For Buddhism, “being like water” is an integrating metaphor with nature that spread throughout the East more than 2,500 years ago.
For Hinduism, according to the Vedic tradition, water is the essential substance from which all forms are born. In the Upanishads, narrations that appeared around the sixth century B.C., there are constant references to water as a metaphor of purity and authentic wisdom: “As pure water poured into pure water remains unchanged, so is the ego of an illuminated thinker.”
In the Judaeo-Christian Bible we find the symbolic power of water and the sentimental intensity with which people once lived in relation with it. The word water appears 582 times in the Old Testament and it is used to describe creation and destruction, purification, regeneration and love. Water accompanies the divine spirit and its relationship with mankind in all stages of the long biblical story.
In the Christian Gospels, water has a very special significance as a metaphor of divine wisdom: “Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst, as the water I give him shall become a fountain a water springing up to eternal life.”