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