No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh
I read "No Death, No Fear" by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Freedom is above all else freedom from our own notions and concepts. If we get caught in our notions and concepts, we can make ourselves suffer and we can also make those we love suffer.
No Death, No Fear was recommended to me a few years ago. It took me long enough to come around to it!
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk and peace activist who significantly influenced Western practices of Buddhism. He was the main inspiration for "engaged Buddhism."
I struggled with some ideas he put forth - they felt foreign to me. That's not how you're taught to perceive the world; it takes time & active reflection to relate to them. Some of the ideas overlap with stoicism.
Nothing is Born, Nothing Dies
Rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd.
An odd concept - there is no end and no beginning; there is no birth, and there is no death; there is no coming, and there is no going. There is only manifestation - if the conditions are sufficient, things will manifest.
It reminded me of the quote by Alan Watts and Slaughterhouse-Five.
...black implies white, self implies other, life implies death...
In Slaughterhouse-Five, there is an extra-terrestrial race called the Tralfamadorians. They can see in four dimensions; they simultaneously observe all points in the space-time continuum. Death means nothing to them because a person lives at some point in time.
Although we cannot see the four dimensions, we can adopt this view.
We can light two candles from the match and then blow out the flame on the match. Do you think the flame from the match has died? The flame is not of the nature to be born or to die. The question is, is the flame on the two candles the same flame or two different flames? It is not the same and it is not different. Now another question: is the flame of the match dead? It is both dead and not dead. Its nature is not to die and not to be born. If we leave the candle burning for an hour, will the flame remain the same or become another flame? The wick, the wax and the oxygen are always changing. The part of the wick and the wax that is burning is always transforming. If these things transform, the flame must change too. So the flame is not the same, but it also is not different.
Impermanence
Impermanence means that everything changes and nothing remains the same in consecutive moments.
It feels similar to stoic advice about one's death and impermanence.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
He says life itself is possible because of impermanence; without it, "a grain of corn can never be transformed into a stalk of corn; your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman; then your grandchildren would never manifest."
The insight of impermanence helps us to go beyond all concepts. It helps us to go beyond same and different and coming and going. It helps us to see that the river is not the same river but is also not different either. It shows us that the flame we lit on our bedside candle before we went to bed is not the same flame that is burning the next morning. The flame on the table is not two flames, but it is not one flame either.
No Self and Interconnectedness
Impermanence is looking at reality from the point of view of time. No self is looking at reality from the point of view of space. They are two sides of reality. No self is a manifestation of impermanence, and impermanence is a manifestation of no self. If things are impermanent, they are without a separate self. If things are without a separate self, they are impermanent. Impermanence means being transformed at every moment. This is reality.
I'm not going to lie; it took me quite a few reads and re-reads to wrap my head around this paragraph. If you think about it, a cloud cannot manifest without water, a tree cannot exist without oxygen, a fire cannot exist without oxygen, and you cannot manifest without your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. You are your own thing, but also you're not. We are all particles from the cosmos, so we are a part of the cosmos. But we are also our own thing.
Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing. That is called inter-being. To be means to inter-be. The paper inter-is with the sunshine and with the forest. The flower cannot exist by itself alone; it has to inter-be with soil, rain, weeds and insects. There is no being; there is only inter-being.
Details
- Amazon
- Publisher: Riverhead Books
- Published: August 05, 2003
- ISBN-10: 1573222216
- ISBN-13: 978-1573222211