"No birth, no death. No coming, no going." | Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh | #mindfulness

A sheet of paper can be
the object of our meditation.

The sheet of paper is there because
it has been born some time in the past,

when it was produced by a paper firm.

And we can establish
a birth certificate for the sheet of paper.

I certify that this sheet of paper is born
at that moment, of the day, of that month, of that year.

But if you look deeply
into the nature of the sheet of paper...

we can discover that this sheet of paper
has never been born.

Because to be born means
from nothing, you become something.

And this is not born from nothing.

Before it manifests itself as a sheet of paper,
it had been many things else.

It had been a tree.

Can you see?

It had been the sunshine, the rain,
the clouds, the trees, the earth.

So many things.

And you also, before you were born from your parents,
you had been many things.

You cannot say that before your birth,
you did not exist.

That's not true.

The moment we call birth
is only a moment of continuation.

So looking deeply into the sheet of paper
you see that

the sheet of paper continues to be a leaf,
a tree, a cloud, the sunshine, and many things.

When we look into ourselves,
we can see that we have a mountain inside, we have a river inside.

We have trees inside.

We have rocks inside.

It's not only that we have been a tree,
a rock, a mountain, a river in our past lives,

but we continue to be a tree, a rock, a rabbit
a deer and the water in this very moment.

It cannot be true that you did not exist
before your conception.

You carry with you the whole cosmos.

Now, let us meditate a little bit more
on this sheet of paper.

This sheet of paper has not been born.

Its nature is no birth.

And if it has not been born,
it cannot die.

We cannot reduce it into non-being,
even if we burn it.

In the process of being burnt,

the sheet of paper finds ways to continue

its presence.

The heat, produced by the burning,
will penetrate into the cosmos,

and penetrate in every one of us.

Some of the paper
will be transformed into the smoke,

joining the cloud.

There you are,
encountering the sheet of paper again.

It's wonderful.

It's a continuation.

And the ash can be returned to the ground.

And you might encounter
a little flower on the grass.

And the little flower will say,
"Hello, my dear, here I am again,

a little sheet of paper."

So there is only continuation,
there is no death.

No non-being.

There is no coming, there is no going,

there is no birth, there is no death.

There's only a continuation of manifestation.

Subtitles created by volunteers on the Amara.org public platform