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Cloud and Flame: The Wisdom of Non-Birth
Today, we explore birth and death through two metaphors: the cloud and the flame.
By observing a cloud, we discover that it is neither “born” nor “dies”: before becoming a cloud, it was water in the ocean, vapor, humidity, heat (from the sun), and movement (from the wind); afterwards, it transforms into rain, snow, ice… Always in continuation, never produced from nothing nor lost into nothing.
In the same way, the flame awaits the coming together of conditions to manifest:
- the wick (the wax),
- the match (the fuel),
-
the oxygen (the air)
– neither identical nor completely different from one moment to the next, it is born and “dies” without being born or dying.
This essential teaching of the Buddha, summarized as “This being, that is” (interdependent co-arising), echoes Lavoisier’s scientific formula: “Nothing is created, nothing is lost.” Our true nature is that of no-birth and no-death, neither being nor non-being, the middle way.
