(Half bell)
(Bell sound)
(FRENCH) When the mind leaves the body, where does it go?
(ENGLISH) When the mind, the spirit leaves the body, where does it go?
(FRENCH) When the mind leaves the body, where does it go?
Many people imagine the body is like a house.
And the spirit, the mind is like someone who is in the house.
And the person can go in the house and go out of the house.
Even many adults believe that.
They believe we can take the mind out of the body,
and the body out of the mind.
They believe that body and mind are two things that...are their own,
that body and mind are two separate entities.
But that is not the truth.
Not only the Buddha, but also many wise people, including scientists, have found that to be wrong.
Body and mind are not two separate things.
If there is no body, there is no mind. If there is no mind, there is no body.
It's like this sheet of paper.
We can say that this is the left side.
And this is the right side.
And...
the right and the left, they rely on each other in order to be there.
If the left is not there, the right cannot be there either.
You cannot take the left out of the right.
You cannot say: "Dear friend, come and take the right and go to Bordeaux."
"And dear friend, please come and take the left to Paris."
It's not possible.
So taking the body out of the mind and the mind out of the body is impossible.
In Buddhism that is called 'interbeing'.
'Interbeing.'
We want to be together.
You cannot be by yourself alone, you have to 'inter-be' with others.
So in our dream we might see that we get out of our body and we fly.
And we look back and we can see our body still sleeping.
But only in dreams you invent this in your mind.
In fact...
the mind cannot get out of the body and go somewhere else,
because the mind is not a separate...entity.
That is why when something happens in the body, the mind is influenced by it.
And when something happens in the mind, the body gets it too.
That is why modern medicine knows that
in order to take care of the mind, you have to take care of the body
and in order to take care of the body you have to take care of the mind.
This is a very difficult question.
We have to learn a lot in order to understand it.
When I was sixteen, I had to begin learning this already.
Everything we see: our body, a house, a tree, the stars, the moon,
everything you see is the object of your mind.
That is difficult!
How could a sixteen year old boy understand?
But he had to learn, to begin to learn it.
This house, that mountain, that river, that star, is not separated from our mind.
It is the object of our mind.
That is the only thing we can be sure of.
Everything depends on our mind.
And...
you may think this book is not our mind.
But it is part of our mind. It is the object of our mind.
So for the time being I think that the thing we can learn is
that body and mind are not two separate things
They are linked to each other, without one the other cannot be,
like the left and the right, and like the above and the below.
Tomorrow, we may talk about what happens...when the body disintegrates,
when the body does not function anymore.
The body becomes a lifeless...object.
And the question is: where is the mind then?
Where has it gone?
This is a very interesting question.
We don't have to get the answer right away.
It's interesting to leave the question like that and to begin to look and look.
It's a very interesting subject.
Don't be too eager to find the answer right away.
because in the process of learning we discover many interesting things
about the relationship between body and mind.
Can the body die? Can the mind die?
Is it possible for someone to become nothing?
(Half bell)
(Bell sound)