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Notions of Birth and Death

Thich Nhat Hanh · March 31, 2011 · Thailand

March 31, 2011. A 155-minute dharma talk given in English, with consecutive translation into Thai, on the seventh and final day of the Understanding Our Mind retreat at Mahachulalongkornrajavidhayalaya Buddhist University (MCU) near Bangkok, Thailand.

After a brief review of manas and store consciousness, Thay speaks about the nature of no-birth and no-death discovered by the Buddha. Being and nonbeing—we can’t have something from nothing. How are we continuing the teacher? The young monks, nuns, lay practitioners are also Thay—their practice becomes Thay’s continuation, like the Century plant at Deer Park Monastery: one plant can become many plants.

Right thinking is your continuation. Thinking is already action—karma. Our karma continues after the dissolution of the body. The second karma action is speech. The third is body: the way we eat, the way we drive. So, dissolution of the body is not our death.

Birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, sameness and otherness—the ultimate reality is free from all these notions. Suchness, the ultimate reality, cannot be conceived of by ideas or notions. Nirvana is the other word for ultimate reality: the extinction of all notions.

At the end of the talk, Sister Chan Khong shares about the Thai Plum Village and the new international practice center in Thailand.

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