The Truth of No Birth and No Death

Thầy introduces the practice of meditating on a flame, using a match as an example. The flame is hidden in the conditions, inside and outside the matchbox, and it needs the right conditions to manifest. In the same way, someone dear to us who appears to have gone from this world can be recognized in a new form, like a cloud that has become rain and then tea. There is no coming and no going.

Thầy then defines the Four Noble Truths. He reminds us that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are the path to well-being and the end of ill-being. The Noble Eightfold Path is the way to well-being and healing, while its opposite—wrong view, wrong thinking, wrong speech, and so on—leads to suffering.

The Second and Fourth Noble Truths are sometimes described in terms of consumption—what we choose to consume. “Nothing can survive without food,” the Buddha said: our love needs food, and so does our suffering. The first kind of nutriment is edible food, and Thầy retells the Buddha’s story of the son’s flesh. The second nutriment is sense impressions—what we consume with our senses and bring into our mind. The third nutriment is volition—what we pursue as our life’s purpose. The fourth nutriment is consciousness, which is both individual and collective.

Thầy shows how we can water the positive seeds in us that will allow our buddha nature to flourish. With Right View, there is no discrimination, like the five fingers of one hand that never fight each other. Thầy asks us to see that we inter-are with all beings—something we must experience to truly understand, like tasting a mango.

Our karma—our thought, speech, and action—continues when our physical body disintegrates; Thầy finds the same insight in science: nothing is born, nothing dies. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way. The talk closes with the Buddha’s answer to Kātyāyana: Right View is an insight that transcends the notions of being and nonbeing, birth and death.

This is the sixth talk in a series of thirteen given during the Summer Opening retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.