WEBVTT

00:00:00.495 --> 00:00:02.417
(Half-Bell)

00:00:06.456 --> 00:00:15.299
(Bell)

00:00:26.968 --> 00:00:33.541
(FRENCH)

00:00:42.569 --> 00:00:47.156
(Off camera) I have often heard here
that reincarnation is spoken about,

00:00:47.156 --> 00:00:51.708
what is the teaching about reincarnation?

00:00:59.821 --> 00:01:05.279
Reincarnation,

00:01:05.279 --> 00:01:14.921
sounds like, when people use the world reincarnation,

00:01:14.921 --> 00:01:21.648
it looks like the body and the soul,
the body and the mind,

00:01:21.648 --> 00:01:25.261
are two separate things.

00:01:25.445 --> 00:01:35.498
The body is somehow
like a house for the soul, for the spirit,

00:01:36.865 --> 00:01:39.899
so when the body disintegrates

00:01:39.899 --> 00:01:49.162
then the soul
will fly out, go into another, new body,

00:01:51.250 --> 00:01:55.428
and we understand the word "reincarnation"
like that.

00:01:58.625 --> 00:02:03.431
Maybe in "popular" Buddhism
people can believe that,

00:02:03.431 --> 00:02:08.693
but in deep Buddhism that is not correct.

00:02:12.685 --> 00:02:20.168
In deep Buddhism there is no "soul" that
can be without a body.

00:02:20.495 --> 00:02:24.320
That does not mean what when
the body is dead,

00:02:24.320 --> 00:02:26.693
the soul is dead at the same time,

00:02:26.693 --> 00:02:36.048
because, we heard there is no death, 
there is only a continuation.

00:02:36.048 --> 00:02:44.710
For the cloud there is no death,
it is always a continuation.

00:02:44.710 --> 00:02:49.411
So, continuation is a good word.

00:02:52.362 --> 00:02:56.549
It is a better word than death.

00:03:02.719 --> 00:03:09.571
The other word, rebirth, is better than 
reincarnation.

00:03:11.795 --> 00:03:17.966
The cloud is reborn in the river.

00:03:18.557 --> 00:03:25.896
You don't say that the cloud
has reincarnated in the river.

00:03:27.010 --> 00:03:33.417
There is a constant continuation,

00:03:34.985 --> 00:03:40.266
nothing can die, exactly.

00:03:41.230 --> 00:03:47.660
In the realm of Science they
have discovered something like that.

00:03:52.191 --> 00:03:56.130
The French scientist Lavoisier said that:

00:03:56.130 --> 00:04:00.329
"nothing can be born, nothing can die"

00:04:00.329 --> 00:04:04.140
"rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd"

00:04:04.140 --> 00:04:10.242
He spoke about everything,
cloud, and everything,

00:04:11.328 --> 00:04:18.479
so the first law of thermodynamics,

00:04:18.479 --> 00:04:24.703
is telling us the same,
concerning matter and energy.

00:04:27.141 --> 00:04:32.698
You can transform matter into energy,

00:04:32.698 --> 00:04:36.109
energy into another kind of energy,

00:04:36.109 --> 00:04:39.881
energy back into matter again.

00:04:39.881 --> 00:04:45.017
But you cannot destroy matter,
you cannot destroy energy,

00:04:45.017 --> 00:04:49.734
you cannot create new matter,
you cannot create new energy.

00:04:49.734 --> 00:04:51.939
They are always transforming,

00:04:51.939 --> 00:04:53.997
always on the way of transformation,

00:04:53.997 --> 00:04:57.569
no birth and no death.

00:04:57.569 --> 00:05:02.591
The scientists have come very close

00:05:02.624 --> 00:05:07.771
to the Buddhist teaching of 
no-birth and no-death.

00:05:07.911 --> 00:05:16.347
A cloud can never die 
and a cloud has never been born,

00:05:18.207 --> 00:05:21.013
because in our mind to be born means,

00:05:21.013 --> 00:05:23.214
from nothing to become something,


00:05:24.451 --> 00:05:29.785
from no one you become someone.

00:05:30.364 --> 00:05:34.074
Before you are born from your mother,

00:05:34.074 --> 00:05:38.688
you did not exist, at all,

00:05:38.688 --> 00:05:44.606
you come from the realm of non-being,

00:05:44.606 --> 00:05:48.316
never really there.

00:05:51.301 --> 00:05:54.956
That is our way of thinking 
about birth and death,

00:05:54.956 --> 00:06:03.350
but we know very well that the cloud
has not come from "la non être",

00:06:03.350 --> 00:06:05.861
"the non-being".

00:06:06.139 --> 00:06:09.301
Before it expressed itself as cloud,

00:06:09.301 --> 00:06:11.444
it had been the water in the ocean,

00:06:16.576 --> 00:06:22.742
the water vapor, 
the cloud has not come from nothing.

00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:25.411
It has not been born.

00:06:25.411 --> 00:06:27.471
Its only a continuation.

00:06:28.137 --> 00:06:31.463
So to express itself as cloud,

00:06:31.832 --> 00:06:35.580
it is only one way of manifestation.

00:06:35.580 --> 00:06:40.729
So the word manifestation is better
than the word birth.

00:06:42.662 --> 00:06:48.499
Next birthday, instead of singing
"Happy Birthday",

00:06:48.499 --> 00:06:53.177
you may sing 
"Happy Manifestation Day",

00:06:53.525 --> 00:06:56.841
or "Happy Continuation Day".

00:06:57.961 --> 00:07:01.437
When someone is dying,
she is not really dying,

00:07:01.437 --> 00:07:08.995
she is transforming herself into
something else,

00:07:08.995 --> 00:07:14.004
maybe more beautiful, fresher, younger.

00:07:14.004 --> 00:07:19.530
It can be happy even, to die:

00:07:19.530 --> 00:07:21.303
"Happy Continuation",

00:07:21.303 --> 00:07:26.086
"Happy Transformation".

00:07:26.355 --> 00:07:30.287
This is the way that Buddhism
should look:

00:07:30.287 --> 00:07:34.161
there is no birth and no death.

00:07:35.287 --> 00:07:40.826
We know that the idea of reincarnation,

00:07:41.136 --> 00:07:44.774
had been there before the Buddha.

00:07:44.774 --> 00:07:50.842
In the Upanishads there was also the idea
of reincarnation,

00:07:50.842 --> 00:07:59.778
even the notion of retribution,

00:08:00.928 --> 00:08:06.555
But retribution, reincarnation, are not
at the heart of the Buddhist teaching.

00:08:07.449 --> 00:08:16.546
At the heart of the Buddhist teaching are
impermanence, no-self, inter-being,

00:08:16.546 --> 00:08:20.431
the Four Noble Truths, 
the Noble Eight-fold path.

00:08:22.136 --> 00:08:33.295
The Buddha has accepted the
teaching of retribution, reincarnation,

00:08:33.295 --> 00:08:42.180
but reincarnation should be understood
in the light of no-self,

00:08:42.180 --> 00:08:44.535
in the light of impermanence,

00:08:44.535 --> 00:08:49.208
in the light of inter-being.

00:08:51.668 --> 00:08:55.915
In the Dharma talk tomorrow hopefully,

00:08:56.670 --> 00:09:02.741
we can discuss this matter of 
birth and death.

00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:08.797
So there is no birth and no death,

00:09:08.797 --> 00:09:17.480
when this body disintegrates,
you continue, always.

00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:22.480
It is like when you don't see
the cloud in the sky anymore,

00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:25.100
she continues,

00:09:25.100 --> 00:09:29.531
the problem is how to recognize her
in her new form.

00:09:32.068 --> 00:09:35.495
That kind of understanding
can remove fear.

00:09:35.495 --> 00:09:37.289
The fear of non-being,

00:09:37.289 --> 00:09:40.982
the fear of death.

00:09:41.498 --> 00:09:44.102
(Half-Bell)

00:09:45.925 --> 00:09:53.198
(Bell)