(Half-Bell)
(Bell)
(FRENCH)
(Off camera) I have often heard here that reincarnation is spoken about,
what is the teaching about reincarnation?
Reincarnation,
sounds like, when people use the world reincarnation,
it looks like the body and the soul, the body and the mind,
are two separate things.
The body is somehow like a house for the soul, for the spirit,
so when the body disintegrates
then the soul will fly out, go into another, new body,
and we understand the word "reincarnation" like that.
Maybe in "popular" Buddhism people can believe that,
but in deep Buddhism that is not correct.
In deep Buddhism there is no "soul" that can be without a body.
That does not mean what when the body is dead,
the soul is dead at the same time,
because, we heard there is no death, there is only a continuation.
For the cloud there is no death, it is always a continuation.
So, continuation is a good word.
It is a better word than death.
The other word, rebirth, is better than reincarnation.
The cloud is reborn in the river.
You don't say that the cloud has reincarnated in the river.
There is a constant continuation,
nothing can die, exactly.
In the realm of Science they have discovered something like that.
The French scientist Lavoisier said that:
"nothing can be born, nothing can die"
"rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd"
He spoke about everything, cloud, and everything,
so the first law of thermodynamics,
is telling us the same, concerning matter and energy.
You can transform matter into energy,
energy into another kind of energy,
energy back into matter again.
But you cannot destroy matter, you cannot destroy energy,
you cannot create new matter, you cannot create new energy.
They are always transforming,
always on the way of transformation,
no birth and no death.
The scientists have come very close
to the Buddhist teaching of no-birth and no-death.
A cloud can never die and a cloud has never been born,
because in our mind to be born means,
from nothing to become something,
from no one you become someone.
Before you are born from your mother,
you did not exist, at all,
you come from the realm of non-being,
never really there.
That is our way of thinking about birth and death,
but we know very well that the cloud has not come from "la non être",
"the non-being".
Before it expressed itself as cloud,
it had been the water in the ocean,
the water vapor, the cloud has not come from nothing.
It has not been born.
Its only a continuation.
So to express itself as cloud,
it is only one way of manifestation.
So the word manifestation is better than the word birth.
Next birthday, instead of singing "Happy Birthday",
you may sing "Happy Manifestation Day",
or "Happy Continuation Day".
When someone is dying, she is not really dying,
she is transforming herself into something else,
maybe more beautiful, fresher, younger.
It can be happy even, to die:
"Happy Continuation",
"Happy Transformation".
This is the way that Buddhism should look:
there is no birth and no death.
We know that the idea of reincarnation,
had been there before the Buddha.
In the Upanishads there was also the idea of reincarnation,
even the notion of retribution,
But retribution, reincarnation, are not at the heart of the Buddhist teaching.
At the heart of the Buddhist teaching are impermanence, no-self, inter-being,
the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eight-fold path.
The Buddha has accepted the teaching of retribution, reincarnation,
but reincarnation should be understood in the light of no-self,
in the light of impermanence,
in the light of inter-being.
In the Dharma talk tomorrow hopefully,
we can discuss this matter of birth and death.
So there is no birth and no death,
when this body disintegrates, you continue, always.
It is like when you don't see the cloud in the sky anymore,
she continues,
the problem is how to recognize her in her new form.
That kind of understanding can remove fear.
The fear of non-being,
the fear of death.
(Half-Bell)
(Bell)