Diebert: The water as being something to cross, always changing, causes wariness and fear within the archetypal woman. She can only cross standing on someone else's shoulders (material provision) if she lets herself to be carried. The teaching about avoiding contact boils down to transcending being bothered by her necessity and see her as fleeting like the river itself. The woman as "something being carried". This is wise misogyny but it's hard to translate it in real situations and real people because the image of woman (or "opposite", anti-man) is a mirage, a passing perfume cloud which cannot even be "banned" or dealt with. She only fully exists in the symbolical realm.
This is personally significant to me. In 1989 I had a lucid dream that unfolded thusly: I (awareness only, no body) walked through a dense forest, I entered a house in a clearing, I walked past my parents sitting in a darkened room (we smiled and waved at each other), I walked into the bathroom where the mirror disappeared and two light beings appeared, I turned away from the light beings to face an open grave marked with my grandmother's maiden name, I then heard a voice say "turn around" and I found myself facing an ocean, the voice then said "you must cross to the other side" and the dream ended. I have always believed that voice to be the voice of wisdom.
Opposing a physical gender would as nonsensical as opposing an arms or a leg if people did not exist themselves already fully in such symbolical realm or "heaven". Only when getting to earth there's the 'wisdom of spirit' which indeed counters all former notions.
Apparently the voice knew what it was talking about. :-)
Passing the river itself or carrying her over it is the same "right" and spontaneous thing to do. One reaction, one flow, one determination without settling on any training or teaching. But it's the same teaching that brought the monks there is the first place, right to the point of crossing.
