SuchnessReality, as it is, is called suchness. Suchness means "it is like that." You cannot describe it in terms of notions, especially notions of birth and death, being and non-being, coming and going. No word, no idea, no notion can describe reality: the reality of a table, the reality of a flower, the reality of a house, the reality of a living being.
Sometimes you are angry with your father and you say, "I don't want anything to do with him!" What a declaration! You don't know that you and your father belong to the same reality; you are his continuation, you are he. Look into whether you are the same as your father or different from him. Our true nature is the nature of not the same, not different. You and your father are not the same; and you are not different.
When you help the flame to manifest by striking the match, look deeply and you can see that it comes from nowhere, and it goes nowhere. Use the flame on the match to light a candle. Is the flame of the candle the same as the flame of the match or different? If you have a second candle and light it too, you can ask if the three flames are the same or different.
Looking into a flame of one candle, we can see in this very flame that the idea of "neither the same nor different" applies not only to the flames of the two different candles but also to the one flame that lit them both. This flame is not the same and is not different because each moment of that flame is unique. The moment that comes next is a moment where the flame manifests itself in a different way.
The manifestation of something or someone does not rely on one condition alone; it relies on many conditions. So, the idea that one cause can bring about the effect is not correct. One cause is never enough to help something manifest.
While we are contemplating the flame we did not look deeply enough to see all the conditions. We know that the flame is nourished by the matchstick, by the wood and by fuel. It is true that nothing can survive without fuel, but the fuel is only one element, one condition. The flame can manifest itself only when all the elements are there. If there is no oxygen in the air, the flame cannot appear for very long. The flame relies on the wood, on the wick, on oxygen. The flame is already there in the matchbox. It does not need to be born, it only needs to manifest when the conditions are right.
We may only be a boy or a girl of twelve years old and do not now have children of our own. But in our person, the causes and conditions for the manifestation of children and grandchildren are there. It's just a matter of time and conditions
A SHEET OF PAPER
No coming, no going,
No after, no before.
I hold you close,
I release you to be free;
I am in you
And you are in me.
No coming, no going is the true nature of reality. You have come from nowhere; you will go nowhere. The rose, the cloud, the mountains, the stars, the planet Earth - everything is like that. Their nature is the nature of no coming, no going. To die does not mean that from something you become nothing. To be born does not mean that from no one you suddenly become someone. There is only manifestation based on sufficient conditions, and the cessation of manifestation, based on the lack of proper conditions.
The sheet of paper on which these words are written has a history. This page in the book that you are holding in your hands took its form in a single moment. That does not mean that it was a moment of its birth. It was already there as the light of the sun, as the trunk of a tree, as the cloud and the earth. The moment when it came from the factory was just its moment of manifestation.
So we should ask, "Dear little sheet of paper, were you there before you were born?" The sheet of paper will answer, "Yes, in the form of a tree, in the form of the sunshine, in the form of a cloud and the rain, in the form of minerals and the earth. The moment of becoming a sheet of paper was a moment of continuation. I have not come from nothing. I have come from the cosmos. I have been a tree, I have been a cloud, I have been sunshine, soil and so on."
Looking deeply into the sheet of paper, you can still see the trees, the clouds, and the sunshine. You do not have to go to the past. That is the advantage of being a meditator; you do not have to travel. You just sit there and look deeply, and you can see and recognize everything. The sheet of paper contains all the information about the cosmos, including information concerning the cloud, the sunshine, the trees, the earth. If you return one of these elements to its origin, the sheet of paper will no longer be there. If you returned the sunshine to the sun, there would be no forest, and no paper. That is why the sunshine is in the paper. When you touch the sheet of paper, you touch the sunshine, you touch the cloud, you touch the rain, you touch the earth, you touch the whole cosmos. One manifestation contains all.
If you run your fingers over the paper, you can feel the cloud in it. Without the rain, which comes from the cloud, there would be no paper. When you are running your fingers over the piece of paper, you are running your fingers over the trees in the forest. With our fingers we can touch the sun and all the minerals of the earth in the paper. All these conditions lie in the paper. When we can be in touch with the paper with our awakened understanding, we are in touch with the whole of existence.
When we practice looking deeply into this sheet of paper, we can see the forest. Without the forest there would be no tree, without the trees we cannot make paper. So this sheet of paper has not come from nothing; it has come from something like the trees. But the trees are not enough to make the sheet of paper. The sunshine nourishes the trees; the clouds water the trees; the soil, the minerals and a multitude of other phenomena help the sheet of paper to manifest. And then there has to be a logger who cuts the tree, and the deli worker that made the sandwich for the logger's lunch, and the people who formed the company that pays the loggers. These things do not exist outside the sheet of paper. They are one with the paper.
You may think,
How can I identify this sheet of paper with the forest? The forest is outside the paper. If you remove the forest or the cloud from the sheet of paper, the sheet of paper will fly apart. If there were no clouds, and no rain from the clouds, how could trees grow? How could we make paper paste in order to produce a sheet of paper?
The sheet of paper has no birthday, and you have no birthday. You were there before you were born. The next time you celebrate your birthday, you might like to change the song to Happy Continuation Day." If it is true that the birthday is a continuation day, then what you call the day of death is also a continuation day. If your practice is strong, at the moment of dying you will sing a song of happy continuation.
~ No death, no fear (pg 78 to 83); by Thich Nhat Hanh
