A drop in the ocean might be the ultimate. Perhaps not an inevitability but something which needs to be strived. Just like a seed grows, turns into a fruit, gets ripe and falls off with the swiftest of the breeze, perhaps maturity of the complete kind will wither off and fall with the swiftest of a push.
A drop in the ocean could just be an illusion. It could be just an illusion of rationality. Something spirituals being invented to get a meaning out of this desert.
A drop in the ocean is the melting of the ocean into the drop too. A passive process at best, again an illusion at worst, especially for the concerned being.
If it is the ultimate, the middle way is the most effective. You become desireless. Your motives purify. Your intentions become white as the whitest sand. As with the ripe fruit, you mature, a process which is usually guided with your will, instinct and good intentions and actions etc. Then with realization, perhaps not even a gentle push is needed before you plunge into the ocean, the nothingness or the everythingness, the sunyata. The feeling perhaps could be confusing at best. You feel the ocean nearing you like she is the one who is moving. Terror and dryness might take over for untrained pathways in the person and slowly, transcendence takes place. Another moment and realization before you plunge into her or to you, the ocean plunges in you, taking you and swirling you around. Then peace.
An illusion brings despair and vanity back. Things to be strived for are there and also not there. For everything turns into an illusion again. Bonds, sweetness, bitterness. Like starlight which will fade after the coolness of the night becomes heavy and the starlight evaporates. The ship takes you away, far away, from the memories of the people who care if you live or die. It will bring you back or maybe it won't. Is it the same in the end? It doesn't matter in this case. And it will never.
