No Coming, No Going
For many of us, these notions of birth and death, coming and going, cause our greatest pain. We think the
person we loved came to us from somewhere and has now gone away somewhere. But our true nature is
the nature of no coming and no going. We have not come from anywhere, and we will not go anywhere.
When conditions are sufficient, we manifest in a particular way. When conditions are no longer sufficient,
we no longer manifest in that way. This doesn’t mean that we don’t exist. If we’re afraid of death, it’s
because we don’t understand that things do not really die.
There’s a tendency for people to think that they can eliminate what they don’t want: they can burn down
a village, they can kill a person. But destroying someone doesn’t reduce that person to nothing. They
killed Mahatma Gandhi. They shot Martin Luther King Jr. But these people are still among us today. They
continue to exist in many forms. Their spirit goes on. Therefore, when we look deeply into our self—into
our body, our feelings, and our perceptions—when we look into the mountains, the rivers, or another
person, we have to be able to see and touch the nature of no-birth and no-death in them. This is one of the
most important practices in the Buddhist tradition.
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