Renunciation of the World

He who abandons his worldly home
Finds his true home.
He who retains the home of his own ego
Feels miserable in any home.
If one gives up wealth,
One lives in riches:
If one gives up pleasure,
One comes to relieve the pain of others.
He who gives up his life
Never dies.
He who abandons a soft bed
Sleeps on a litter of flowers.
He who abandons thoughts of others’ women
Obtains access to a queen.
He who abandons deceit and lies
Acquires the gift of prophecy.
He who abandons slavery to the mind
Finds all his whims realized.
He who gives up everything
Acquires everything.
He who has no desires
Finds his deepest desire realized.
He who abandons taste
Tastes the nectar of immortality.
If one asks for nothing
One finds what pleases the heart.
Renunciation gives you the three world,
This the Veda proclaims.
He who remains unkempt
Washes off all impurity.
He who retains the home of his own ego
Feels miserable in any home.

@@@

Source: Songs of Enlightenment by Swamy Rama Tirtha
Translated from the Urdu and Perisian by A.J.Alston –
Heritage Publishers, New Delhi, India.1983.

SELF KNOWLEDGE

There was a cage formed of mirrors,
With a fresh rose hanging in the middle.
The flower was one, but each reflection
Was a separate object of love
To the nightingale caged within.
Every time the nightingale flew towards a flower,
It received a rap.
What it thought was a flower
Was only a reflection.
When it flew towards it,
It knocked its head against the glass.
When it looked to the right,
There was the rose.
When it ran to the left,
It suffered the same fate.
When it flew forward
It stubbed its beak.
And when it fell
It received another wound.
But once it turned back
And lifted up its eyes,
There was the real rose smiling.
Feeling startled, it thought
‘Let there be no more deception.
Is this a real rose
Or a rose only in name?’
It flew up at once to the rose.
Now there was joy, no cage, no mirrors.
It was free.
O Man, this is your condition
Encompassed by the world.
He in search of whom
You are wandering from door to door
Is shining peacefully within your heart.

@@@

Source: Songs of Enlightenment by Swamy Rama Tirtha
Translated from the Urdu and Perisian by A.J.Alston –
Heritage Publishers, New Delhi, India.1983.

PERCEPTION IS A LEARNED PHENOMENON by Deepak Chopra

The power of awareness would make no difference in our lives if Nature had outfitted us all with the same responses to experience. Clearly, this didn’t happen; no two people share the same perception of anything. The face of your beloved may be the face of worst enemy, the food you crave may cause nausea in me. These personal responses have to be learned, which is where differences originate. Learning is a very active use of the mind, leading to very active changes in the body. Perceptions of love, hate, delight, and nausea stimulate the body in extremely different directions. In short, our bodies are the physical results of all interpretations we have been learning to make since we were born.

Some transplant patients report an uncanny experience after receiving a donated kidney, liver, or heart. Without knowing who the organ donor was, they begin to participate in his memories. Associations that belonged to another person start being released when that person’s tissues are placed inside a stranger. In one instance, a woman woke-up after a heart transplant craving beer and Chicken McNuggets; she was very surprised, because she had never before wanted either. After she began to have mysterious dreams in which a young man named Timmy came to her, she tracked down the donor of her new heart, which had come from the victim of a fatal accident; when she contacted his family, it turned out that the victim was a young man named Timmy. The woman was stunned to discover that he’d had a particular fondness for drinking beer and had been killed on his way home from McDonald’s.

Rather than seeking a supernatural explanation for such incidents, one could see them as a confirmation that our bodies are made of experiences transformed into physical expression. Because experience is something we incorporate (literally, “make into a body”), our cells have been instilled with our memories; thus, to receive someone else’s cells is to receive their memories at the same time.

Your cells are constantly processing experience and metabolizing it according to your personal views. You don’t just funnel raw data through your eyes and ears and stamp it with a judgement. You physically turn into the interpretatation as you internalize it. Someone who is depressed over losing his job projects sadness everywhere in his body—the brain’s output or neurotransmitters becomes depleted, hormone levels drop, the sleep cycle is interrupted, neuropeptide receptors on the outer surface of skin cells become distorted, platelet cells in the blood become stickier and more prone to clump, and even his tears contain different chemical traces than tears of joy.

This whole biochemical profile will alter dramatically when the person finds a new job, and it is more satisfying one, his body’s output of neurotransmitters, hormones, receptors, and all other vital biochemicals, down to DNA itself, will start to reflect this sudden turn for the better. Although we assume that DNA is a locked storehouse of genetic information, its active twin, RNA, responds to day-to-day existence. Medical students at exam time show a decreased output of interleukin 2, a critical chemical in the immune response that fight cancer. The production of interleukin 2, is controlled by messenger RNA, which means that the student’s anxiety over passing his examns is speaking directly to his genes.

This point reinforces the great need to use our awareness to create the bodies we actually want. Anxiety over a medical exam eventually passes, as does depression over a lost job, but the aging process has to be countered every year. Your interpretation of how you are aging is critical to what happens over the next four, five, or six decades. In neurological terms, a brain signal is just a set of energy fluctuations. If you are in a coma, these signals are meaningless; when you are alert and aware, the same signals are open to infinite creative interpretations. Shakespeare was not being metaphorical when he wrote Prospero’s line “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” The body is like a manifest dream, a 3-D projection of brain signals as they transform themselves into the state we call “real.”

Aging is nothing but a set of misguided transformations, processes that should remain stable, balanced, an self-renewing but deviate from their proper course. This appears as a physical change, yet what has really happened is that your awareness—whether in your mind or your cells doesn’t matter, you can bring your body’s biochemistry back into line. There is no biochemistry outside awareness; every cell in your body is totally aware of how you think and feel about yourself. Once you accept that fact, the whole illusion of being victimized by a mindless, randomly degenerating body falls away.

***
Source: BOOK ON “AGELESS BODY, TIMELESS MIND” - A PRACTICAL
ALTERNATIVE TO GROWING OLD BY DEEPAK CHOPRA
***
FOR FREE DOWNLOAD AUDIO BOOK PLEASE VISIT FOLLOWING WEBSITES
http://rapidshare.com/files/74885560/Ageless_Body__Timeless_Mind_-Part_1.mp3
http://rapidshare.com/files/74914037/Ageless_Body__Timeless_Mind_-Part_2.mp3

THE MOON IS ALWAYS THE MOON by Thich Nhat Hanh

“Neither increasing nor decreasing”

We worry because we think that after we die we will not be a human being any more. We will go back to being a speck of dust. In other words, we are decreasing.

But that is not true. A speck of dust contains the whole universe. If we were as big as the sun, we might look down at the earth and see it as insignificant. As human beings, we look at dust in the same way. But the ideas of big and small are just concepts in our minds. Everything contains everything else; that is the principle of interpenetration. This sheet of paper contains the sunshine, the logger, the forest, everything, so the idea that a sheet of paper is small, or insignificant, is just an idea. We cannot destroy even one sheet of paper. We are incapable of destroying anything. When they assassinated Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, they hoped to reduce them into nothingness. But these people continue to be with us, perhaps even more than before, because they continue in other forms. We, ourselves, continue their being. So let us not be afraid of decreasing. It is like the moon. We see the moon increasing and decreasing, but it is always the moon.

@@@

Source: THE HEART OF UNDERSTANDING by THICH NHAT HANH

THE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING by Thich Nhat Hanh

“After this penetration, he overcame all pain.”

Penetration means to enter something, not just to stand outside of it. When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand. If we want to understand a person, we have to feel their feelings, suffer their sufferings, and enjoy their joy. Penetration is an excellent word. The word “comprehend” is made up of the Latin roots com, which means “together in mind,” and prehendere, which means “to grasp it or pick it up.” To comprehend something means to pick it up and be one with it. There is no other way to understand something.

If we only look at the sheet of paper as an observer, standing outside, we cannot understand it completely. We have to penetrate it. We have to be a cloud, be the sunshine, and be the logger. If we can enter it and be everything that is in it, our understanding of the sheet of paper will be perfect.

There is an Indian story about a grain of salt that wanted to know just how salty the ocean is, so it jumped in and became one with the water of the ocean. In this way, the grain of salt gained perfect understanding.

We are concerned with peace and we want to understand the Soviet Union, so we cannot just stand outside and observe. We have to be one with a Russian citizen in order to understand his feelings, perceptions, and mental formations. We have to be one with him or her in order to really understand. This is Buddhist meditation—to penetrate to be one with, in order to really understand. Any meaningful work for peace must follow the principle of non-duality, the principle of penetration.

In the Sutra of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Budhas recommended that we observe in a penetrating way. He said we should contemplate the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, the mental formations in the mental formations. Why did he use this kind of repetition? Because you have to enter in order to be one with what you want to observe and to understand. Nuclear scientists are beginning to say this also. When you enter the world of elementary particles you have to become a participant in order to understand something. You can no longer stand and remain just an observer. Today many scientists prefer the word participant to the word observer.

In our effort to understand each other we should do the same. A husband and wife who wish to understand each other have to be in the skin of their partner in order to feel, otherwise they cannot really understand. In the light of Budhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding. You cannot love someone if you do not understand him or her. If you don’t understand and you love, that is not love; it is something else.

Avalokita’s meditation was a deep penetration into the five skandhas. Seeking deeply into the rivers of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, he discovered the empty nature of all of them, and suddenly, he overcame all pain. All of us who would like to arrive at that kind of emancipation will have to look deeply in order to penetrate the true nature of emptiness.

@@@

Source: THE HEART OF UNDERSTANDING by THICH NHAT HANH

THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION by Swamy Rama Tirtha

My own Self in the form of ladies and gentlemen,

At a certain meeting in India wise men were there, very wise men were present and sacred texts from the Hindu Scriptures were being recited and explained by the savants. One of the audience—at the time when the meeting was about to dissolve—spoke about a certain sage who had come to the town, and was living on the banks of the river and he praised this saint very highly. The people then became naturally anxious to know more about this saint. There was a parrot who was listening to the talk, or you might say, a slave hearing this conversation about the sage that had come to the town. This parrot that was confined in the cage, or this slave asked the gentleman who was talking about the sage, to go to the sage on behalf of this imprisoned parrot or enslaved person, and ask him to tell certain means of escape for this confined bird or enslaved person. Well, the gentleman who had first interviewed the great saint went to him at the time when he was bathing in the river, and put to him this question, "How could that bird-parrot confined in the cage or say, that particular enslaved person, be released? How could he be released?" Just when the question was put, the sage was seen to be carried off by the torrent; he was observed by the people of the town as dead. The people who were witnessing this state of the sage were astonished and they rebuked the person who put this question or who conveyed this message from the parrot or from the slave. The people thought that the saint was fainting or was swooning through pity for the imprisoned parrot or through sympathy for the bond slave. The saint did not recover that day, so it appeared.

Well, next day when the meeting was held again at the place where the encaged bird was, or where the confined slave was, the parrot or you might say the slave asked the gentleman who had interviewed the saint, whether the parrot’s message had been conveyed to him. The gentleman said that the message had been conveyed but added that he was sorry to convey the message from such a wretched fellow as the encaged bird, or from such a sorry person as the bond slave. The parrot or the slave enquired why he was sorry. Then the gentleman said that just when the message was conveyed to the sage, he fainted away. And all the people were wondering, were astonished what all this meant.

But the parrot or the slave understood through and through the whole secret. The parrot or the slave you might say, was not so intelligent, but immediately after hearing that the saint fainted, he also fainted and was dead to all intents and purposes. There the by-standers were surprised; lo, this must be a strange message which had caused death of the two. When the message was conveyed to the saint, he died, and when the message was repeated to the parrot or the slave, the slave died. Do you know what happened next? When the by-standers saw that the parrot was dead, they thought it no longer worthwhile to keep the parrot imprisoned. They opened the cage, and immediately the parrot flew out and said, "O audience, O people, who gather here everyday to hear the sacred scriptures, you do not know how realization, salvation, inspiration is to be achieved. I have learnt it today from the answer to my message that I received from that saint. The saint did not faint; the saint, as it were, answered my message; the saint by fainting, by falling in a swoon told me the way to realization, told me the path of realization. The path of salvation, the way to realization is apparent death, that and nothing else, crucifixion and nothing less, there is no other way to inspiration. The way to realization is getting above the body, rising to that state spiritually, rising to the state of inner salvation, where the body is, as it were, dead, where the small personality is unconscious, is altogether lost, is entirely left behind, that is the way to life.

In Sanskrit we have got two words most significant, one is bhoga and the other is yoga. Most of you are familiar with the word Yoga, perhaps you have read the opposite of yoga is bhoga. Bhoga literally means enjoyment, and yoga means renunciation. People in this world talk about enjoyment. What is enjoyment? If you examine, analyse enjoyment, you will find it to be nothing else but yoga, renunciation. There is no real enjoyment except in renunciation, there is no inspiration except in renunciation, there is no prayer except in renunciation. You cannot, cannot keep your little personality, enjoying self at the same time with joy. The very moment when joy is there, the enjoying self is not there. The very moment inspiration is there, the idea of "I know" and "I do it" is absent, it cannot be there. This is what the great masters have said on the subject. ‘The man who is his own master knocks in vain at the doors of poetry.’ You cannot be in a state to write poetry, and at the same time be an enjoyer of poetry. No. You cannot be your own master and at the same time write poetry. Nobody can write and be conscious of the fact that he is writing. When he becomes the consciousness itself, then is the point of inspiration reached. The artist must be sacrificed to his art. When you are playing the part of the greatest artist, there in the eyes of others you are a great artist, but from your own standpoint you are not. No thought of "I am doing" is present, you have become one with the All. You are no artist from your own standpoint; there the interpreter, the interpretation, the writer, the writing—all have become one. There all the difference has been annihilated. This is the nature, the secret of inspiration.

People say, "He is a spiritual man," but when he is inspired he is not inspired from his own standpoint. Others call him inspired. Other people look at the rainbow and admire the colours, the beautiful magnificent tints. They like them, they admire them, but go there where you see the rainbow. Examine, see carefully and you will find no rainbow; you will find no rainbow there. The rainbow is present in the eyes of others; but from the standpoint of the exact place or from the standpoint of the person who is seated at the place where others see the rainbow, there is no rainbow. Similarly from the standpoint of others a person is called inspired, a great man, a writer, a thinker, a philosopher, but from his own standpoint at that time there is no delusion of this kind present—that "I am writing" or "I am inspired." The artist must be sacrificed to his art. Like the bees the artists must put their lives into the sting they give. There is the whole secret of inspiration. The bee, when it stings you, dies after it. So he is inspired who gives his whole life into the sting he gives. There is the whole secret. You cannot be inspired and at the same time enjoyer; try to enjoy a thing and you are no longer inspired; others will enjoy you, the world will enjoy you, when you are inspired, but you yourself will not be an enjoyer and an inspired man at the same time. You will be no enjoyer, but you will be better still, joy itself.

The moth flies into the flame of the lamp and then the moth proves its love. In order that the moth may be distinguished from a common fly, we shall see the moth singed by the lamp in order that it may prove that it is a moth. Similarly in order that a man of inspiration may be seen to be a man of inspiration, in order that his power of inspiration may be evinced and revealed, he must be a man of Yoga. Away, away above desire he goes, dead to all intents and purposes for the world.

No great genius could ever draw real inspiration except from living Nature. This will be illustrated by an example from Nature. Water gives life to this earth; it is the cause of all growth in this world along with light. Your crops are ripened by water, water is a great blessing of God. In this country people do not like rain, but in India and in all countries in the East, rain is quite the highest blessing of the world. The greatest philosophers and the greatest poets, the great people who wish inspiration always avail themselves of the opportunity when clouds are roaring in the skies, when it is raining heavily outside. These are the occasions that are most earnestly sought by all poets and by all seekers after inspiration; and from personal experience Rama can say, always when it is raining outside, it is much easier for Rama to write poetry than on other occasions. When it is about to rain or when it is drizzling, of itself the mind becomes elevated and the brain is thrown into a poetic mood, and everything becomes so inspiring, and no apparent cause can be assigned for this extraordinary exultation, except the union of heaven and earth through rain. Through rain earth and heaven unite. Usually marriage festivals in India take place on such occasions. People think the earth and heaven unite. Hence let man and woman also unite in marriage bond. Here let us see how it is that the atmosphere gives inspiration and gives us rain, gives us dew, gives us beautiful breezes. What is it that inspires the whole heaven?

Science tells us that the cause of the inspiration of the heaven is what is called saturation. Now this is a word which ought to be explained. Take a cup of milk and add sugar to it. The sugar will be dissolved. Add a little more sugar, this also may get dissolved. But there will come ultimately a point where sugar will be no longer dissolved. You may add sugar ever so little or ever so much, it will no longer be dissolved. This is the point where a certain amount of sugar is dissolved and no more can be imbibed by the milk, no more is accepted by the milk. This point is called the point of saturation. We see that water will dissolve salt to a certain point, to a certain degree, but beyond that degree no more salt will by accepted by the water. If more salt is added, it will lie, it will settle down at the bottom, it will not be dissolved. There the water is saturated with salt. Water may be saturated with earth, we may add a certain quantity of earth, it will get dissolved, but add a little more, it will not get dissolved, there is water saturated with earth.

Here is the atmosphere of ours, which consists of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, organic matter, material particles, and also aqueous vapour. The particles of water are suspended in the air. There comes a time when the atmosphere is saturated with aqueous vapour. There are times when the atmosphere is not saturated with aqueous vapour. But when the atmosphere is highly saturated with aqueous vapour and a little more quantity of it makes its presence, there the air can no longer hold its water. The superfluous water—the water that is there and above the quantity of vapour which will saturate the atmosphere, that water falls down in the form of rain. Thus when the atmosphere is more than saturated with water, we have rain in this world; we have dew-fall; we have storms, we have drizzling, we have such phenomena after the point of saturation. We shall consider afterwards how this saturation is effected, but at present suffice it to say that in order that the atmosphere may be inspired, in order that we may have any rain, the point of saturation must be reached, nay, it must be more than reached; the vapour must be saturated, and more than that, then we have beneficent results, great consequences in this world.

Similarly here is your mind, it might be compared to the atmosphere of the air. When the mind gets saturated with an idea, it fills the mind, conquers your mind, permeates and pervades your mind, fills your whole soul, saturates you. Now mark, whenever your mind is saturated with any idea, you find your mind in a very strange stage, you call it the state of unrest. It is a state of mind which remarkably resembles what we call calm, what we call on this earth a state of closeness, and you know when it is very close, people expect rain. When you find it is very close, the atmosphere is saturated and after that we expect rain, beyond the point of saturation. Thus when your mind gets entirely filled with an idea, it is in a state which remarkably resembles what we call a state of closeness, calm, close. When your mind is saturated with the thought or your loved object, you may have observed that there comes a time when the mind is in a state of closeness, calm or restlessness; it is indescribable, people call it marvellous restlessness. Now when that state is exceeded, when you go beyond that state, you become a poet, there poetry begins to fall from you, begins to rain down melodious verses, splendid songs. That is the state. When your mind exceeds or goes beyond the point of saturation, the ideas drop down in a condensed form in black and white, there is inspiration.

Here is a man. He takes into his mind a certain thought, the thought to solve a problem. He begins to work it out, he works and works, but cannot arrive at the solution. Those of you who have tried to work out deep problems, philosophical or mathematical, can bear out Rama from their personal experience. We begin to work at a deep problem; originally, in the beginning when we are trying to solve the problem, our mind is not saturated, our mind has got some other desires also permeating it. The desire to possess this object or attachment for this object or that, is predominant in your mind and also the desire to work out the problem is present in the mind. The deep problem is not solved. When you see that by such efforts the problem is not solved, you become a little restless and throw aside your attachment to other objects, you become more free, in other words that particular idea before you becomes more prominent, fills your mind more and more, and drives out other thoughts. The problem is not solved yet. Most of the feelings and attachments are dispensed with, yet there remains in your mind the idea of ahamkara as we call it in Sanskrit, "I am doing it" and "I get the credit for it." What happens? The problem is not solved. After a while when you persist in working at it and you go on hammering on it, all thought of meum et teum is lost, the idea remains supreme in your mind; and when that point is reached, all thought of meum et teum, all thought of mine and thine, or time and space is entirely got rid of. The one idea fills the whole space in your mind, leaves no vacancy in your heart, leaves no vacuum in your heart, and the soul is saturated so to say with the idea, and you become one with the idea. There the moth is singed, there the bee has given up its life, there mastery over the little self is lost, there the idea of enjoyment is gone, there is crucifixion; when that point is reached, all of a sudden you are inspired, and there flashes within yourself the solution. Do not people make use of this expression—"It strikes me," "It struck me?" Without this death-in-life, you cannot succeed and cannot be inspired.

Artist, teachers, philosophers and thinkers in their own lines get inspiration, but this inspiration comes only through crucifixion. People in this world want to keep themselves as enjoyers, keep themselves as agents, but Vedanta shows it is not in accordance with the laws of Nature that you should enjoy anything. It is not for man to enjoy anything. This enjoyer is the false self, it is not the real Self, it is not you. All thinkers, philosophers will have to see their body, their mind, their whole being enjoyed by the whole world. There is the road. If you want to be an enjoyer, the way to salvation, the way to happiness, the way to enjoyment is barred for you, is marred for you. You cannot, cannot enjoy this world, for you there is only one way, and that one way is to see the body, the mind and everything of yours enjoyed by Divinity, eaten up by Divinity. As Christ says, "Here, eat my flesh, eat it." "Here, you will have to drink my blood!" at the Lord’s Supper! Very happy is he and blessed is he whose life is a continuous sacrifice.

Whenever we reach that point of saturation, when the mind is filled with the idea, when the whole being is lost and merged in the thought, the machine, the organ, the musical instrument is taken up by the great musician, by God, by Divinity, and through this organ are produced beautiful, magnificent, sublime tunes. Great notes, splendid music come out of the organ, but so long as the child wants to keep the organ to itself, and does not want the great organist or musician to handle the organ, only notes of discord will be emanated by the organ; so long as this self, this false ego, this unreal self which is the "enjoying self", is present and wants to keep hold of the body and does not let go this body, through this body or musical instrument notes of discord will come out. Make over this instrument or this body to Divinity, get yourself rid of this false ego, away with this little self, sacrifice it, and rise above it. Then, when the point of saturation is exceeded, God himself takes up this instrument, the great musician handles this instrument himself and through this instrument, music comes out, magnificent notes spring forth. There you are inspired. Inspiration is God-doing. When the little self gives up possession of the body, the person is inspired.

We find that before Christ began his mission, Satan tried to tempt him in everyway to become an enjoyer. Here were the seven worlds, here were beautiful, delicious dishes, here was sovereignty, here was an occasion of getting a great name by working a miracle, here were the temptations, here was enjoyment laid before Christ. What did Christ say? "Get behind me, Satan, I will have nothing at thy hands." Splendid, splendid. O people of America or Europe, keep this teaching of Christ before you. "Get behind me, Satan, I shall have nothing at thine hands." Despite all this outside ravage of materiality, keep this teaching of Christ in your mind. "Get behind me, Satan, I shall have nothing at thine hands." There was Christ putting away all worldly enjoyment, he takes up renunciation and cross, gives up all that. Here is the emblem laid before you, the secret of inspiration. So long as the enjoyer or agent-idea is retained in your mind, you cannot, cannot be inspired. It is only when the enjoyer or agent-idea—"I am working, I am doing, I must take the credit"—is entirely renounced, then are you inspired.

Rama will finish it with a story. In the Hindu Scriptures there is a magnificent story told about three persons called Asuras. These three persons had wonderful powers. They were warriors, nobody could get the better of them, they were wonderful, wonderful people. People came, fought with them, and were defeated immediately; hosts of enemies came and were defeated. The men who fought with them came in thousands but were defeated by these three persons. The enemies being defeated so frequently went to a great saint and asked how they could win these three fellows; and the saint told them they must enquire into the cause of their invincibility, how these three Asuras were invincible. With great effort and trouble it was found that the secret of their invincibility lay in the fact that these persons, never, never did entertain the thought that they were workers or enjoyers. When the victory was gained, they thought nothing of it. They did not stoop down to enjoy the victory. When they were fighting, the idea that "I as this body am fighting" was entirely absent. Such are the heroes in this world. You know every hero in war, while engaged in action, as people say "I am all ears," so the hero is all action. There is no room left for the idea "I am doing." There his body gets mechanical, so to say. He is all action, there head and feet are saturated with the Divinity. So these people whenever they fought, became all action, they never for a moment allowed the idea, "I am acting." Just as a machine worked, their bodies worked; like machines of God, machines of Divinity, their bodies worked. This was the secret of their success, nobody could win them.

Now the secret of their invincibility being found out, the great sage told the enemies of these three warriors the means of conquering them. He told those enemies to engage in action with them and then run away from them. Go to them and call them out into action, and just when they begin to attack you, leave those warriors as conquerors. Just draw them out and flee away from them. The enemies of those warriors drew them out and fled from them. Thus a few times more were the enemies of those warriors defeated. By and by those three invincible warriors were drawn out of their true position, were drawn out of their real invincibility and were brought down into their bodies, they were made to believe that they were conquerors. They were made to believe that they were great, that they were victorious. Those continued victories engendered in them the idea that they were victorious, they were conquerors. Here were the three men brought down into the cage of the body; here the three men put into the prison house of the body. The idea of "I am doing" or the thought of "I am great" got hold of them and held them in prison. There the God in them was replaced by the small ego; and then it was no hard task to win them and catch them and imprison them. It was not a hard task, they were defeated immediately, immediately were they caught.

Now mark the application of this story. So long as you are doing a work, your body being a machine in the hands of God, as it were, your personality being merged in Divinity, so long as you are in that position, you are invincible, you are like those three Asuras above the idea of "I am enjoying or I am doing." You are invincible; but when people come to you and begin to praise you, to puff you up, flatter you, favourably review you from all sides, you are made to believe that you are a conqueror, you are a hero, you are victorious, others are defeated, your rivals are downtrodden. You are like those three Asuras. The idea of "I am doing it", "I must enjoy the deed", and "I am the enjoyer"—that very thought imprisons you, brings you down into the cage of the body. You are undone, the power is lost.

Do you not see even in the Bible, when Christ came fresh from the mountains, he was possessed of the great power. He lived in the midst of his friends; he talked a great deal, and Christ had to say, "Who is it that touched me? I find my power going out of me." We see that in the Bible. There you see the same thing. When you are above this "I am doing, I am enjoying," God is working through you and you are inspired; but as soon as you do a thing and accept peoples reviews and favourable criticisms, people’s applause, and people’s flattery, the power goes out immediately. Immediately it goes out; you are brought into the cage again. Go out of the cage and you are inspired, go into the cage again and you are no more.

Here is a beautiful watch, suppose. It is in working order and running day and night. It gets magnetized, it comes close to a strong magnet, the iron springs are magnetized. The watch cannot run, it is useless now, it gives us no time. What shall we do with it? Let the watch be buried underground, keep it away from the magnetic influences, keep it away from those influences, it will be de-magnetized, it will regain its original working power, and you can use it again. Beneath your minds, your inner Self is heavenly, is godly. Every child is by nature an inspired child; every child is by nature a poet, and if you live, live in accordance with divine laws, if you live in harmony with Divinity, you are always inspired. If you live in unison with your true Atman or Spirit, if you always keep yourself in touch with God in you, with your own Self or Atman, you are inspired all the time. What is wrong with you is that your mind comes in contact with earthly magnets on all sides, worldly attachments which magnetize you and put you out of order, you are no longer in running order, deranged. If you are not inspired today, the sole reason is that you do not keep yourself isolated, or insulated enough. You allow worldly objects to magnetize, to hypnotize you, you allow them to play foul and fast with you. If you want to regain your original powers and inspiration, keep yourself insulated, isolated for a while. Bury yourself in the Reality, in Divinity, in God, in the true Atman. Keep yourself buried in the Spirit, in the Truth. Live alone for a time, set apart sometime of your day for keeping in touch with the Reality; merge yourself, bury yourself in God. Do that and the spoiling magnetism and wrong hypnotism that you have got from these worldly objects will leave you, your mind will be running in order again. You will be again inspired.

Ships when they keep sailing in the sea for sometime, become a little deranged, are put out of order. They require to be placed in the dock for sometime to be repaired. Similarly by keeping yourself too long in worldly affairs, in worldly matters, in the company of hypnotizing circumstances, in the midst of spoiling and wearing and tearing surroundings, you are put out of order, you are fallen, you get your inner natural powers of inspiration lost. Just as you do with your ships, so should you do with your bodies. Keep your bodies, for sometime at least, in the docks, away from those influences; keep your bodies, for sometime at least, in Spirit. Read books which will inspire you, live in the company of people who will inspire you, live alone by yourself. Devote sometime to meditation and you will regain your power of inspiration. Does not your body require to be washed everyday, does not your house require to be rubbed and scrubbed everyday? Similarly does your mind require to be cleansed and purified, washed and bathed everyday. So long as worldly ideas, worldly attachments or thoughts of worldly enjoyment, or the idea of "I am doing this" etc., is present, so long as you are not entirely crucified, there is no hope for you. The way to inspiration is nothing less than crucifixion.

Om! Om!! Om!!!
@@@

Source: In Woods of God Realisation by Swamy Rama Tirtha – Lecture delivered on February 21, 1903 in the Golden Gate Hall, San Francisco, USA.

INTERBEING by Thich Nhat Hanh

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be”, we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have a paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exit.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

@@@

Source: THE HEART OF UNDERSTANDING by Thich Nhat Hanh

CAUSE AND EFFECT IN HUMAN CONDUCT by James Allen

IT IS an axiom with the scientists that every effect is related to a cause. Apply this to the realm of human conduct, and there is revealed the principle of Justice. Every scientist knows (and now all men believe) that perfect harmony prevails throughout every portion of the physical universe, from the speck of dust to the greatest sun.

Everywhere there is exquisite adjustment. In the sidereal universe, with its millions of suns rolling majestically through space and carrying with them their respective systems of revolving planets, its vast nebula, its seas of meteors, and its vast army of comets traveling through illimitable space with inconceivable velocity, perfect order prevails; and again, in the natural world, with its multitudinous aspects of life, and its infinite variety of forms, there are the clearly defined limits of specific laws, through the operation of which all confusion is avoided, and unity and harmony eternally obtain. If this universal harmony could be arbitrarily broken, even in one small particular, the universe would cease to be; there could be no cosmos, but only universal chaos.

Nor can it be possible in such a universe of law that there should exist any personal power which is above, outside, and superior to, such law in the sense that it can defy it, or set it aside; for whatsoever beings exist, whether they be men or gods, they exist by virtue of such law; and the highest, best, and wisest among all beings would manifest his greater wisdom by his more complete obedience to that law which is wiser than wisdom, and than which nothing more perfect could be devised.

All things, whether visible or invisible, are subservient to, and fall within the scope of, this infinite and eternal law of causation. As all things seen obey it, so all things unseen - the thoughts and deeds of men, whether secret or open cannot escape it.

"Do right, it recompenseth; do one wrong – the equal retribution must be made." Perfect justice upholds the universe; perfect justice regulates human life and conduct. All the varying conditions of life, as they obtain in the world today, are the result of this law reacting on human conduct.

Man can (and does) choose what causes he shall set in operation, but he cannot change the nature of effects; he can decide what thoughts he shall think, and what deeds he shall do, but he has no power over the results of those thoughts and deeds; these are regulated by the overruling law. Man has all power to act, but his power ends with the act committed. The result of the act cannot be altered, annulled, or escaped; it is irrevocable.

Evil thoughts and deeds produce conditions of suffering; good thoughts and deeds determine conditions of blessedness. Thus man's power is limited to, and his blessedness or misery is determined by his own conduct. To know this truth, renders life simple, plain, and unmistakable; all the crooked paths are straightened out, the heights of wisdom are revealed, and the open door to salvation from evil and suffering is perceived and entered.

Life may be likened to a sum in arithmetic. It is bewilderingly difficult and complex to the pupil who has not yet grasped the key to its correct solution, but once this is perceived and laid hold of, it becomes as astonishingly simple as it was formerly profoundly perplexing.

Some idea of this relative simplicity and complexity of life may be grasped by fully recognizing and realizing the fact that, while there are scores, and perhaps hundreds, of ways in which a sum may be done wrong, there is only one way by which it can be done right, and that when that right way is found the pupil knows it to be the right, his perplexity vanishes, and he knows that be has mastered the problem.

It is true that the pupil, while doing his sum incorrectly, may (and frequently does) think he has done it correctly, but he is not sure; his perplexity is still there, and if he is an earnest and apt pupil, he will recognize his own error when it is pointed out by the teacher.

So in life, men may think they are living rightly while they are continuing, through ignorance, to live wrongly; but the presence of doubt, perplexity, and unhappiness are sure indications that the right way has not yet been found. There are foolish and careless pupils who would like to pass a sum as correct before they have acquired a true knowledge of figures, but the eye and skill of the teacher quickly detect and expose the fallacy.

So in life there can be no falsifying of results; the eye of the Great Law reveals and exposes. Twice five will make ten to all eternity, and no amount of ignorance, stupidity, or delusion can bring the result up to eleven. If one looks superficially at a piece of cloth, he sees it as a piece of cloth, but if he goes further and inquires into its manufacture, and examines it closely and attentively, he sees that it is composed of a combination of individual threads, and that, while all the threads are interdependent, each thread pursues its own way throughout, never becoming confused with its sister thread. It is this entire absence of confusion between the particular threads which constitutes the finished work - a piece of cloth: any inharmonious commingling of the thread would result in a bundle of waste or a useless rag.

Life is like a piece of cloth, and the threads of which it is composed are individual lives. The threads, while being interdependent, are not confounded one with the other. Each follows its own course. Each individual suffers and enjoys the consequences of his own deeds, and not of the deeds of another. The course of each is simple and definite; the whole forming a complicated, yet harmonious, combination of sequences.

There are action and reaction, deed and consequence, cause and effect, and the counterbalancing reaction, consequence, and effect is always in exact ratio with the initiatory impulse. A durable and satisfactory piece of cloth cannot be made from shoddy material, and the threads of selfish thoughts and bad deeds will not produce a useful and beautiful life - a life that will wear well, and bear close inspection.

Each man makes or mars his own life; it is not made or marred by his neighbor, or by anything external to himself. Each thought he thinks, each deed he does, is another thread - shoddy or genuine - woven into the garment of his life; and as he makes the garment so must he wear it. He is not responsible for his neighbor's deeds; he is not the custodian of his neighbor's actions; he is responsible only for his own deeds; he is the custodian of his own actions.

The "problem of evil" subsists in a man's own evil deeds, and it is solved when those deeds are purified. Says Rosseau:

"Man, seek no longer the origin of evil; thou thyself art its origin."

Effect can never be divorced from cause; it can never be of a different nature from cause. Emerson says:

"Justice is not postponed; a perfect equity adjusts the balance in all parts of life."

And there is a profound sense in which cause and effect are simultaneous, and form one perfect whole. Thus, upon the instant that a man thinks, say, a cruel thought, or does a cruel deed, that same instant he has injured his own mind; he is not the same man he was the previous instant; he is a little viler and a little more unhappy; and a number of such successive thoughts and deeds would produce a cruel and wretched man.

The same thing applies to the contrary - the thinking of a kind thought, or doing a kind deed - an immediate nobility and happiness attend it; the man is better than he was before, and a number of such deeds would produce a great and blissful soul.

Thus individual human conduct determines, by the faultless law of cause and effect, individual merit or demerit, individual greatness or meanness, individual happiness or wretchedness. What a man thinks, that he does; what he does, that he is. If be is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.

@@@

Source: THE MASTERY OF DESTINY By James Allen

We are our Ancestors and The Sutra on Measuring and Reflecting by Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear Friends,

Today is the 26th of March and we are in the New Hamlet in the Spring Retreat.

When we hear the sound of the bell, we should open ourselves up to allow all the generations of ancestors in us to hear the bell at the same time as we do. It means we shouldn’t imprison ourselves in a shell of self – we should allow our ancestors to listen to the bell at the same time. That is our practice at that moment, because all the generations of ancestors, including our father and our mother are in us in a very concrete way - in every cell of our body. The body contains the mind – the soma contains the psyche, and we could say that the mind also contains the body. That means that the psyche contains the soma and that psyche includes feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness and we should learn to see our mental formations are made out of cells, just as the body is made out of cells. The cells of the body contain the cells of the consciousness and the cells of the consciousness contain the cells of the body.

Psyche and soma are just two sides of the same reality. There isn’t one that precedes the other, just like the particle and the wave are two aspects of the same reality. The wave contains the particle, just as the particle contains the wave. The reality of us is the reality of body and mind. We could call ourselves psyche and we could call ourselves soma, but in fact psyche and soma are two aspects manifesting from one reality. If we look into one cell of our body, or one cell of our consciousness, we recognize the presence of all the generations of ancestors in us – that is the truth. Our ancestors are not just human beings. Before human beings appeared we were other species. We have been trees, plants, grasses, minerals, squirrels and deer. We have been monkeys and one-celled animals and all these generations of ancestors are present in each cell of our body as well as our mind and we are the continuation of this stream of life. Therefore, when we hear the bell, it is not a separate "I" which is listening to the bell, but it is the stream, the vast stream of life, and this is the practice of no-self. We talk a lot about no-self. We could talk about it very fluently but we don’t practice no-self, we just talk about it. When we hear the sound of the bell and we allow all the generations of ancestors and all our descendants, which are already present in our body, to hear it also then we are experiencing the reality of no-self which the Buddha taught. No-self is not some vague idea, but it is a reality which we carry in our very person and we only need to listen properly to the bell and we can go beyond the shell of self. We can go beyond the prison of the idea of a separate self and we allow the sound of the bell to penetrate every generation of the past and the future which is in us.

We were earlier talking about guava fruit. Even when the guava fruit is not yet ripe, it has all its seeds of future trees. When we are only 4 years old we think we can only be a child 4 years old... we can only be a little brother, but in fact we are already a mother, already a father. A little novice of 12 or 13 years old plays the role of a disciple, but he already has his own disciples in his person and he has disciples of his disciples in his person already. So when he hears the sound of the bell, the young novice must open his heart so that all the generations of ancestral teachers can hear the bell at the same time, so that all the generations of his blood family can hear the bell at the same time, and so that all the generations of his future students, in him now, can hear the bell. And if he practices like that, he is practicing ‘no-self’ and he is able to see the wonder of no-self and he is giving a Dharma talk on no-self. To listen to the bell like that is to hear the bell according to the highest teachings.

When we take a step on the green grass of spring, we walk in such a way that allows all our ancestors to take a step with us. our peace, our joy, our freedom, which are in each step, penetrate each generation of our ancestors and each generation of our descendants. If we can walk like that, that is a step taken in the highest dhyana. When we take one step we see hundreds and thousands of ancestors and descendants taking a step with us, and when we take a breath we are light, at ease, calm. We breathe in such a way that all the generations of ancestors are breathing with us and all the generations of our descendants are also breathing with us... if we breathe like that, only then are we breathing according to the highest teachings. We just need a little mindfulness, a little concentration and then we can look deeply and see. At first we use the method of visualization and we see, as we walk, all the ancestors putting their foot down as we put our foot down, and gradually we don’t need to visualize any more – each step we take, we see that that step is the step of all people in the past.

When you are cooking a dish of food - something you have learnt from your mother or your father, a dish that has been handed down through generations of your family – you should look at your hand and smile because this hand is the hand of your mother, the hand of your grand-mother. Those who have made this dish are making this dish now and that is the truth! We are not the inventors of this dish, we are just continuing. We see our mothers hand, our grand-mothers hand, and the hands of all our ancestors making this dish. When we are in the kitchen cooking, we can realize the highest teachings – we don’t have to go into the meditation hall to practice this. We have so many opportunities, the problem is – do we know how to make the most of them? We have our teacher, we have our Sangha, we have our dharma teachings, we have all the conditions that are necessary to do this and we should use these opportunities. This is not a theory, this is real experience of our daily life... it is real life.

In the past, your grandfather – did he play volleyball? No, he didn’t, because in those days they didn’t have volleyball... Did your grandmother go jogging every day? Did your grand-mother have the opportunity to practice dwelling in the present moment while she was walking... while she was running? When we are running we should allow our grandmother to run in us, and it is the truth that your grandmother is running in you. She is in each cell of your body. You carry all your ancestors in you when jogging, when doing walking meditation and when you are realizing the practice of dwelling happily in the present moment. Maybe other generations didn’t have the opportunity to practice like this. Now we have the opportunity. We have received the practice as taught by our teachers and when we do that practice we bring happiness and joy to countless generations of ancestors, whether we’re practicing walking, running, or breathing.

We have produced Plum Village in order to be able to do these things, because in the town, in the society, we don’t have the right conditions to be able to walk like we do, to be able to breathe, to smile like we do, to wash clothes and to cook like we do in Plum Village. An environment where we can feel at ease, where we can do these things in a very leisurely way, in order to practice dwelling happily in the present moment. We know that many people have supported, and have brought time and energy to give us an environment where we can take steps at ease, where we can breathe in and out like this... where we can cook like this... where we can practice like this. And when we practice like this, we are doing it for all times – for the past and for the future. Thanks to our taking steps like this, and breathing and smiling and sitting like this, we are able to liberate so many generations. We liberate them by getting out of the shell of our separate self.

Western psycho-therapy aims at healing and bringing us a self which is stable and wholesome, but the psycho-therapy in the West is still caught in the idea of ‘self’. Psycho-therapy in the West can bring about a little transformation, a little healing, but it cannot go very far because Western psycho-therapy is still caught in the idea of a ‘self’. According to Western psycho-therapy, the family can bring about ease and peace and joy; but because of misfortune our family has not been able to bring about that. So now, how can our practice take us out of this misfortune so that we can, once again, bring back happiness and peace in our lives. Western psychology is based on the idea that we had a self that was happy and at peace and joy and we have to revive and restore that state of peace, happiness and joy that we had before. But in the light of the practice of Buddhism, for as long as we are caught in the idea of a separate self, ignorance is still in us – in our body and in our mind. Therefore, the practice of no-self is the most wonderful way to heal. Practicing no-self is to get out of the narrow idea of the self, to see the intimate relation between what is self and what is not-self. That way, ignorance is healed and all the suffering, the anger, the jealousy, and the fear, will disappear, and the fruit which is achieved is a thousand times greater than the healing which is based on the idea of a separate self.

We are people who have problems... psychological problems, and we ask ourselves questions like – "Who am I? When my mother and father came together, did they want me to come into this world or did they just come together and I was the result... rather like a misfortune, an accident... Did they want to have me or did I just appear as an accident? My mother and father came together in a thoughtless way and because of that I came into this world..." If I think like that, I will suffer. There are people who say, "When I came into this life did my parents want to keep me or did they want to destroy me – did they want to have an abortion?" Many people suffer when they think that their parents may have wanted to have an abortion. "Who am I? Was I wanted? What is the meaning of my life?" We are inclined to ask questions like that and when we try and answer those questions we suffer because we are caught in an idea of a separate self. When a young child grows up and if he knows that in the past, his mother had wanted to have an abortion, that child will suffer a lot. He knows that his parents didn’t want to have that child and it was an accident that the child was born and if the child knows that, he will suffer very much and that suffering will bring about illnesses. How will the psycho-therapist be able to help that child? "Does my life have a meaning? Where do I come from? Who am I?" These questions can be the source of abnormalities, of sufferings in the life of a person, but if we look deeply, according to the way the Buddha taught, we can see the reality of no-self and we will no longer ask questions like that. This is one of the essential points which we learn in the Sutra on the Middle Way. First of all we see that we are a continuation of a stream of life. Whether our parents wanted us or not is not so important. Maybe our father and mother didn’t want us, or didn’t want us yet, but our grandparents and our ancestors wanted us to come into life and that is the truth. The truth is that our ancestors, our grandparents, always want a continuation. If it’s not this generation, it will be the next generation. There are always generations who want us to be their continuation and if we can answer that way, then the child will not suffer from thinking their parents didn’t want them, because any parents have their ups and downs – their good moments and their not-so-good moments. Sometimes they are full of love and sometimes they are full of anger, and this love and anger is not the only thing that they have. It is not only from them, but from all generations and when we can see that their love and their anger comes from all generations, we no longer blame our parents. We see that our parents have good things as well as very unwholesome things.

In the East, we are forced to someone to marry someone we hate and we say, "Why do our parents make us marry this person we don’t like?" But after we have lived with this person for two or three years, we discover that the person they made us marry is very likeable and we thank our parents – we see that our parents had a certain wisdom in judging that person to be a good husband and they had a good reason to allow this coming together to happen. We all have friends, who in the beginning we didn’t like at all - we hated them! When we saw that person we hated them so much, but after a while we discover that person is a very good friend and therefore that moment of hatred is not everything. It is just a moment; it is not eternal and after that moment of hatred there are moments of great love and therefore hatred and love are just on the surface. Deeper than that is something else and when we can see that, we are not sad and we don’t say things like – "Do my father and mother love me or not?", because maybe, at one point during the pregnancy, they didn’t want me, but after I was born they loved me very much and they are very happy I was born. So we see we are our father and mother. We see we are our grandparents and when we get out of the shell of self we are no longer made to suffer by the question "Was I wanted?" Therefore, when we study Buddhism and practice according to the no-self teachings of Buddhism, we are able to liberate ourselves and also liberate numberless generations of ancestors and descendants in us.

In our childhood we may have been through stages of great difficulties. We have been wounded, we have had traumas and we generally do not want to remember those stages of suffering. In us there is a protective defense mechanism, we want to defend ourselves against our suffering. Every time we are in touch with the experience of suffering, we cannot bear it and therefore the thing called "defense mechanism" tries to hide these things deep down in our unconscious mind and when someone comes along and digs up these sufferings, we cry, we weep, we are sorrowful and we cannot eat for a couple of days. But running away from our suffering is not the best way to deal with it. Therefore, in Buddhism we are taught that we should practice mindfulness. We should produce the energy of mindfulness and return and embrace the young child who is wounded in us. That young child can have been very heavily wounded – very severely wounded, but because, for many decades, we haven’t had the strength to deal with it, we have tried to run away from that suffering. We have not dared to face it and therefore the wounded child in us continues to suffer and is asking for care and love, but we do the opposite – we run away. We are always running away, because we are afraid of suffering and therefore the method of Buddhism is to practice in such a way that we produce the energy of mindfulness and with the energy of mindfulness we are no longer afraid. We are able to return and we are able to recognize that child in us. We are able to embrace that child in us and we are able to talk to that child in us. When we have the energy of mindfulness we have the capacity to embrace that child like we would embrace a young brother or sister who has been wounded and we say, "I have, in the past, left you alone – I have gone away from you... now I am very sorry. I am going to embrace you.." We have to embrace that child and, if necessary, we have to cry together with that child perhaps while we are doing sitting meditation. We have to talk to that child with the language of love... We can go into the forest and do that. We can call that child a little sister or little brother.

Among us there are people who have practiced this and after a period of practice there has been a diminution of their suffering and a transformation. After that, the relationship between that person and their brothers and sisters and friends become much easier, because they have come back to themselves and healed the wounded child in themselves. The people around us, our brothers and sisters, may also have a severely wounded child in them and we can help them if we have managed to help ourselves. And therefore, after we have healed ourselves, we see the relationship between ourselves and others has become much better, much easier. We see more peace, more love in us. In Buddhism, we see that that wounded child is not just us... not only us. It may also be our mother, because our mother has suffered throughout her life. Our father has suffered, and our mother and father did not meet the Dharma in order to be able to look after the wounded child in themselves and therefore, that wounded child in us is our mother who has been wounded as a child. So when we are embracing the wounded child in us, we are embracing all our mothers of generations in the past – all the wounded children of our past generations. This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but it is a practice for numberless generations of ancestors and descendants. Therefore, when we are able to embrace the child who has been wounded in us, we are able to embrace our mother and our father. Maybe our father and our mother had suffered and the baby, the child, in them has not yet been looked after, not yet been healed, and so we heal the wounded child in us for our father, for our mother, and for our grandparents. If we don’t do it now, when will we do it? Now we have our teacher. Now we have our friends. Now we have our Sangha... and we don’t do it, so when will we do it? The years and months we spend in Plum Village are not to give us knowledge, to form us in Buddhist studies, because Plum Village is not a university for us to come and receive the heap of knowledge which, later on, we will take with us in order to get a job or in order to teach to others. Plum Village is a place where we are able to practice embracing and transforming the wounded child in us. In us, the wounded child is always there, is always waiting, and we have abandoned it. Now we have to return to her and recognize her; accept her presence, embrace her, weep with her, and with the energy of mindfulness, heal her. And in the light of the Sutra on the Middle Way, we know that this child, who has been wounded, is not just us, but it is also the child of other generations. It is the wounded child of our mother, the wounded child of our father, the wounded child of our grandparents and when we practice, we practice for all our ancestors.

Where is that child? That child is lying in each cell of our body. There is no cell of our body which does not have that wounded child in it. The cells of our consciousness and the cells of our body. Our consciousness is made of cells and in each cell of our consciousness, of our mental formations, that wounded child is there – abandoned, severely wounded. We don’t have to look for that child a long way away in the past... 3 million years ago. We don’t have to look for that child in our childhood or in the time of our great-grandparents because all the truth of that wounded child, all the suffering of that wounded child is lying, right now, in the present moment, in each cell of our body and our consciousness. We just have to go back to ourselves and be in touch and we will see all of this. You are inscribed in each cell of your body and your mind. You don’t have to go back to the past, that child lies in the present. The wounds, the suffering, the sadness... it is present in every cell of your body just as the awakened wisdom of your ancestors, of the Buddha, the happiness of the Buddha, is also present in every cell of your body. You should know how to return to it and make use of it – these elements of happiness, of awakened wisdom, in order to produce the energy of mindfulness and embrace the child who has been wounded. The wounds, as well as the happiness, are in each and every one of your cells. The Buddha, the ancestors, and the teachers have handed down this awakened wisdom that is lying in each cell of your body. You just need to return, with your breathing and your steps to produce the energy of mindfulness and wisdom and that energy will embrace and heal you, and it will heal the wounded child in you.

We are people who have ignorance in each cell of our body and our mind. That ignorance is called Avidya– lack of clarity. It means the "inability to see" things which are just lying there, we don’t know that they’re there. Avidya– no seeing, no clarity. This term is in Buddhism, it means lack of light, lack of insight, lack of seeing... That wounded child is lying there and we don’t even know the wounded child is there. The wounded child in us is a reality, but we can not see it and that inability to see it is called ignorance. This child has been severely wounded. It really needs us to return to it and accept it, to embrace it, but we don’t know that it’s there and we are running away from it. That attitude – if you don’t want to use ‘ignorance’... what do you call it? We are looking to make money, making profit, but at the same time we are not aware of what is really happening in us, and that ignorance brings about energies that make us sick. In each cell of our body, each cell of our consciousness, there is this ignorance. It is like a drop of ink in a glass of water. That ignorance is in each cell of our body. It stops us from seeing reality and it pushes us in the direction of darkness so that we do things which are foolish and which make us suffer even more and which makes the wounded child in us even more wounded. That energy of darkness is called ‘impulse’ and everyday our impulses push us to do things, to say things, which are ignorant because the basis of our impulses is ignorance. We are sad, we are angry, we blame, we are jealous... all these things are the energy of impulse and the basis of that is ignorance. These impulses – we do not see them. They lie in our consciousness. Our consciousness is ‘wrong’ consciousness. It is full of ignorance and impulse.
Buddhist psychology has two parts. One we talk about is ‘mind consciousness’ and the other is ‘store consciousness’. In Western terms we talk about the ‘unconscious’ and the ‘subconscious’ and in Buddhism these two things are contained in the Alaya consciousness, the store consciousness. We push our severely wounded child down into those regions. The deeper, the better. The child is calling, crying out for help from those places, but we don’t hear and all this is ignorance and therefore, ignorance has brought about our present consciousness. In each cell of our body and in every cell of our consciousness, we have the subconscious and the unconscious, and the energy of them pushes us to live our daily life superficially and foolishly, bringing about more and more suffering for ourselves and those who live around us. Therefore, what we are learning in the practice is - from ignorance, to make clarity. How can we have light in the darkness? We are walking in the dark, so we do things opposite to what we want to do and we know that we want light. Light means being able to light up a lamp and we have to take that light out of our body and our consciousness. Because, in our body and our consciousness, not only is there ignorance and impulses, but there is also awakened understanding because we have been handed down the seeds of understanding by our ancestors. The thing is... we never use them! Buddha has handed them down to us; our teacher has handed down to us; we receive them and we hide them away. We store them away and we don’t use them. It is like we have a lamp which we never light up and that lamp is called mindfulness and the oil of that lamp is our breathing, our steps, our smile, our working in mindfulness. We have to light up that lamp. Light up the lamp of mindfulness and the light will shine out and the darkness will cease, will dissipate.

When light is there, there will not be ignorance and when ignorance retreats, these impulses are no longer produced because clarity brings about a different energy which is called ‘bodhicitta’. The great aspiration – the ‘mind of love’ - it is also energy, just like impulses are energy, but this is an energy with light in it and impulses are full of darkness. When we have lit up the lamp, we have a different energy than when we are in darkness. That is the energy of understanding, of bodhicitta, and when we have the energy of bodhicitta already, our consciousness is illumined and so it’s called ‘prajna’, ‘wisdom’. Wisdom and consciousness have the same basis, but we can talk about consciousness only when it has ignorance in it, but when consciousness is lit up by bodhicitta, we no longer call it ‘consciousness’, we call it wisdom, prajna, understanding. If we have the wisdom of bodhicitta in each cell of our body and of our consciousness, there is happiness. We have a ‘manifestation’ body – Nirmanakaya. We still have eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body, but in each cell there is love, there is bodhicitta, there is wisdom and understanding. Therefore, the key of the practice is to light up the lamp. We have a gatha which is very good... whenever we turn on the light, we say, "Lighting up the candle, I make an offering to all the Buddhas, the numberless Buddhas, to lighten up the face of the earth." Before I light the lamp, I breathe and I say this gatha. I see that the ignorance of my mind gives way to the light of my mind. In our mind, there is the light of understanding and in the room, there is the light of the lamp. It is not enough just to turn on the light, because if you just turn on the light, or light the candle, that is only an outer light. We have to turn on the inner light, the light of mindfulness. So when the young novice has just become a monk, he has to learn these poems so that every time he lights the lamp, he can light up understanding in his heart as well. If he doesn’t do that, however many times he turns on the light in the room, he will never change the darkness in his mind into the light of his mind.

When we can say that we have forgotten the wounded child in ourselves, we feel great compassion for that child. We see how we have to practice our breathing and our mindful walking in order to be able to be stable enough to embrace that child, to comfort and heal that child. If the light of mindfulness is great, if it is clear, if it is sufficient, we will see that that child is not just ourselves, but it is also our mother, our father. Our mother and our father have suffered and they have not had the opportunity to embrace the child in them, so we are doing it for them. Because the wounded child in us is also our father, is also our mother... ask yourself – is there any understanding that is greater than that understanding? We talk a lot about understanding, but is any understanding higher than the understanding of Buddhism? When we can smile, we know we are smiling for our mother and our father, we know we are liberating our mother and our father. If we practice like that then the questions which make people suffer – "Who am I? Did my mother really want me? Did my father really want me? What meaning does my life have?" - all those questions become meaningless. In the Sutra on the Middle Way, the Sutra on Interdependent Arising, and the Sutra on Great Emptiness, we will see that if we can only practice, we will be able to go beyond these questions which make people suffer so much–.– We don’t need those sufferings any more.

We don’t need to go to Ireland or go to China to find our roots. We don’t need to go back to the old native land. We just need to be in touch with every cell in our body. We can find out it’s because of father, mother and all of our ancestors who are present in a very real way in each cell of our body. Even the bacteria are our ancestors, and the awakened understanding has been transmitted to us from all generations and all the sentient beings, but also insentient beings – so-called beings without feelings – have their own wisdom. Scientists today talk about life as matter which is inert. Before there was life this world, this universe, was a kind of... in the West we call it ‘primordial soup’... from which everything came. All the neutrons, electrons, the inert matter, became living matter. It began to be a fungi, an amoeba, and then fish. They always use the word matter, because they have been influenced into thinking that in the beginning there was just matter, there was just soma. They don’t see that matter contains spirit. Object of perception is also perception. The thing which they call matter - the object of our perception - is also perception, so it is also mind. So mind contains matter and matter contains mind. They are two faces of the same reality, sometimes something manifests as matter and sometimes something manifests as mind. The elementary particle can be called a wave or it can also be called a particle, because sometimes it appears as a wave and sometimes it appears as a particle, it is both things. You would say "Something cannot be both form – both particle and wave – those two things... how can they be one?", but in fact, these two things are one. We are both father and child, sometimes we manifest as father and sometimes we manifest as child... or mother. As soon as the guava fruit is born, it has guava seeds in it, so it is already a mother or a father.

So this is ‘thinking matter’, they say that human beings are ‘thinking matter’. The matter now has thinking in it or thinking manifests from matter. Scientists say that there was a stage when human beings first stood up, they no longer crawled along, and they call the human species at that time ‘homo erectus’. Then afterwards they had a kind of man called ‘homo habilis’, and then ‘homo sapien’, and ‘homo sapien’ is the thinking matter. Now we have another expression, ‘homo conscious’, which means the human being who is aware, who is mindful. A human being who knows – "I will get sick... I will grow old... I will die...", that is a person who is aware and because of that awareness, that person suffers more. That awareness brings about anxiety and fear, called ‘anguish’, and this brings about ill health. People ask, "Do other species have less awareness and therefore do not have the suffering of thinking ‘Oh, I will get old, I will die’ ", If other species do have that awareness it is a slight awareness. if they get sick, they get sick and they don’t have to worry about getting sick. But because human beings have this ‘anguish’, we have questions of philosophy, like "Who am I? What will happen to me?", we have the kind of questions that people sometimes asked, as recorded in the Sutras, "Did I exist in the past? If I did exist in the past, what kind of animal was I? Was it a beautiful animal? Was it an ugly animal.... Was I a frog? Will I exist in the future, and if I exist in the future, what kind of animal will I be? Will I have a beautiful face? Will I have a long tail?" All these questions that we ask come from this anguish and it brings about a lot of illness.

Did my parents want me? Was it an accident that I was born? Does anybody love me? All those questions make us suffer so much! And they come from our thinking - from this anguish, but the capacity to be aware – that is, the human being who is mindful – that is what will save us. That awareness will help us to know that the environment of this planet belongs to all species and will help us to realize that the human species is destroying the environment. When people are aware of these sufferings... they have come from political oppression... have witnessed injustice in society... When people can really see these things, they have the capacity to stop what they are doing and to help others to stop in order to go in a different direction which will not destroy our planet. Our awareness brings about our anxiety and our anguish, but if we know how to use that awareness, that mindfulness, we will be able to see the state we are in and we know what we should do and what we should not do in order to be able to transform and bring about peace and happiness and life for the future. The Buddha was one of the most beautiful people of the human species who we call ‘homo conscious’. We have the homo erectus; the homo habilis (the skillful man), and we have the homo sapiens – (the thinking man). But now we have the expression ‘homo conscious’, (the aware man). It is an expression which has been used by people – it was not invented by me.

So when we are having a meal, we should eat in such a way that allows leisure, ease and happiness, because it is really a deep practice to eat together. Just as with your breathing and working, eat in such a way that your ancestors can eat with you. Your father eats with you, your grandfather and grandmother eat with you. Sit at ease, like someone who has no problems, no anxiety. The Buddha taught us that when we eat we should not allow ourselves to be lost in meaningless thinking and conversation. We should dwell in the present moment to be deeply in touch with the food and the Sangha around us. Eat in such a way that we are happy, at ease, that we have peace, so that each of our ancestors and descendants in us can benefit. In former times, when I was 4 or 5 years old, every time my mother went to the market, she brought me back a cake made of bean paste. Before my mother came back, I would be playing in the garden with the snails and the pebbles, and when my mother came back I was very happy to see her and I took the cake that she gave me and I went off to eat it in the garden. I knew I mustn’t eat it quickly. I wanted to eat it slowly - the slower, the better. I’d just chew a little bit off the edge to allow the sweetness of the biscuit to go into my mouth and I’d look up at the blue sky. I’d look down at the dog. I’d look at the cat. That is how I ate the cake and it took me half an hour to eat it. I had no worries... I wasn’t worried about fame, honour, about profit... so that cake of my childhood is a souvenir. All of us have lived moments like that, when we are not craving for anything, not regretting anything. We are not asking ourselves philosophical questions like "Who am I?" Are we able to eat a cake like that now? Drink a cup of tea like that? Enjoy ourselves in our environment? We come to Plum Village to learn to do these things again, the things which we thought we could no longer do. We have come to learn how to walk again. To walk solidly, like a free person, without spirits chasing after us. We have come here to learn how to sit. To sit at ease as if we are sitting on a lotus flower, not sitting on hot coals. Sitting on hot coals, we just jump up and down the whole time – we lose all our peace. Here, we learn how to breathe, how to smile; we learn how to cook. Our mother taught us how to eat, how to drink, how to stand up, how to walk, how to speak... everything! Now we have to learn these things over again. We have to be born again in the light of the true Dharma, the true teachings of the Buddha.

We are going to study the Sutra on Shining the Light. This is not a Sutra spoken by the Buddha, it is a Sutra spoken by Mahamoggallana. It is in the canon and in the canon we see there are sutras not only spoken by the Buddha, but also spoken by the disciples of the Buddha. We are very happy about this, because we see the continuation of the Buddha right in the life time of the Buddha. Often after his disciples had given teachings, the Buddha would praise them and say, "If I had spoken, I would have said exactly the same...", so we see how the Buddha supported and encouraged his students and we see how the continuation of the Buddha was there, even in the lifetime of the Buddha. The original name of this sutra; was Anumana , which means ‘Measuring and Reflecting’, it is very necessary for monks and nuns. In the Chinese canon, it is called the Sutra on Inviting. Besides Shariputra, Mahamoggallana, Ananda and Katyayana, there are nuns, such as Dharmadhina, who gave talks. These talks by nuns have also been recorded in the Sutras.

@@@

Source: From the Talks delivered by Thich Nhat Hanh in the New Hamlet in the Spring Retreat on 26th March 1998.

THOUGHT AND CHARACTER by James Allen

THE aphorism, ”As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a As A Man Thinketh man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of hislife. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called ”spontaneous” and” unpremeditated” as to those, which are deliberately executed.

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry.

”Thought in the mind hath made us,
What we are by thought was wrought and built.
If a man’s mind Hath evil thoughts,
pain comes on him as comes the wheel the ox behind....
..If one endure in purity of thought,
Joy follows him as his own shadow–sure.”

Man is a growth by law, and not a creation by artifice, and cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favour or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God like thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harbouring of grovelling thoughts.

Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this that man is the master of thought, the moulder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny.

As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills.

Man is always the master, even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in his weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his ”household.” When he begins to reflect upon his condition, and to search diligently for the Law upon which his being is established, he then becomes the wise master, directing his energies with intelligence, and fashioning his thoughts to fruitful issues. Such is the -conscious -master, and man can only thus become by discovering -within himself -the laws of thought; which discovery is totally a matter of application, self analysis, and experience.

Only by much searching and mining, are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being, if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul; and that he is the maker of his character, the moulder of his life, and the builder of his destiny, he may unerringly prove, if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances, linking cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, and utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, everyday occurrence, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself which is Understanding, Wisdom, Power. In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that ”He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;” for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge.

***

Source:  "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen.

What happens when you die? by Thich Nhat Hanh

“When I drink tea it’s very pleasant to be aware

I am drinking cloud.” What happens when you die?

by Thich Nhat Hanh

A transcription from a talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh during a retreat with five hundred people in Hong Kong on 15 May 2007.

In order to answer what happens us when we die, we need to answer another question – what happens when we are alive?

What is happening now to us? In English we say ‘we are’ but it’s proper to say ‘we are becoming’ because things are becoming. We’re not the same person in two consecutive minutes.

A picture of you as baby looks different to you now. The fact is you are not exactly the same as that baby and not entirely a different person either. In a picture of you as a five year old, you are not exactly the same as that child and not entirely a different person either – the form, feelings and mental formations are different.

In the middle way there is no sameness and no otherness

You may think you are still alive but in fact you have been dying everyday, every minute, cells die and are born - for neither do we have funerals or birthdays (laughter).

Death is a very necessary condition of birth. With no death, there is no birth. They inter-are and happen in every moment to the experienced meditator. For instance a cloud may have died many times, into rain, streams, water. The cloud may want to wave to itself on earth! Rain is a continuation of the cloud. With a meditation practitioner nothing can hide itself. When I drink tea, it’s very pleasant to be aware I am drinking cloud.

When you are parents, you die and are reborn as your children. “You are my continuation, I love you.” The Buddha told us how to ensure a beautiful continuation – a compassionate thought, a beautiful thought. Forgiveness is our continuation. If anger, separation and hate arise, then we will not ensure a beautiful continuation. When we pronounce a word that is compassionate, good and beautiful that is our continuation.

When a cloud is polluted, the rain is polluted. So purifying thoughts, word and action creates a beautiful continuation. We can see the effects of our speech in our children. My disciples are my continuation ¬– both monastic and lay. I want to transmit loving speech, action and thought. This is called karma in Buddhism.

This body of mine will disintegrate but my karma will continue – karma means action. My karma is already in the world. My continuation is everywhere in the world. When you look at one of my disciples walking with compassion, I know he is my continuation. I don’t want to transmit my negative emotions, I want to transform them before I transmit them. The dissolution of this body is not my end. Surely I will continue after the dissolution of this body. So don’t worry about my death, I am not going to die.

Let us meditate on the birth of a cloud. Does it have a birth certificate? (laughter) Examine the notion of birth – the notion that nothing can come from something, from no-one to someone. Is it possible for something to come from nothing? Scientifically this is not possible.

The cloud was water in an ocean, lake, river and heat from the sun gave it birth – the moment of continuation. For instance, birth – before you were born you were in your mother’s womb. The moment of birth is a moment of continuation. Is the moment of conception the start? You are half from your dad and half from your mum already, this is also a moment of continuation. When you practise meditation you can see things like that.

It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become water, snow – it cannot become nothing. It is also impossible for us to die. Speech, action and thought continue in the future. The person who dies still continues because we are not capable of using meditators’ eyes. They continue in us and around us. All our ancestors are alive in us. Our ancestors are in our chromosomes.

I wrote a book ‘No Death, No Fear’. When conditions are right I manifest and when not, not. There is no coming, no going. Before she manifests we should not call her non-existing. Before manifestation you cannot call her non-being. They are a pair of opposites.

Meditating on the nature of creation and being may be the best way to understanding God. The theologian Paul Koenig describes God as the Ground of Being. Who then is the Ground of Non-being? This diminishes God. In Buddhism both notions of being and non-being can describe reality. Similarly, above and below, Europe and here.

Nirvana is the absence of all notions, birth and death, coming and going, sameness and otherness. According to Buddhism, ‘to be or not to be’ is not a real question.

Meditation takes us beyond to a place of fearlessness. We’re too busy, so we become victims of anger, fear. If we have really touched our nature of no birth/death, we know to die is one of the root conditions to realise oneself.

We have to learn how to die in every moment in order to be fully alive.

This teaching on the middle way is the cream of Buddha’s teaching. Many of our ancestors realised this and were not afraid of death.

We should be able to release our tensions. We are the karma we produce every day in our daily life, if we know how, to ensure continuation. I have a disciple in Vietnam who wants to build a stupa with my ashes. He wants to put a plaque with the words ‘Here lies my beloved teacher’. But I want to write ‘There is nothing here’ (lots of laughter). Because if you look deeply there is continuation.

I treasure the time I have left, more for me to practise. I want to generate energy of love, compassion and understanding so I can continue beautifully. I would like you to do the same. Use your time wisely. Every moment produce beautiful thoughts, loving, kindness, forgiveness. Say beautiful things, inspire, forgive, act physically to protect and help. We know we are capable of producing beautiful karma for good continuations and the happiness of other people.

When the time comes for dissolution of this body you may like to release it easily. You aren’t to grasp – releasing body and perception. Remember the image of a cloud in the sky seeing continuation in rice and ice-cream waving to itself. You can already see your continuation. The art of living is continuation. For myself and the other beings.

Sariputra – one of Buddha’s main disciples, Ananda and other friends went to see Anathapindika a lay disciple who was a businessman and dying. He had made time to come to dharma talks and weekly practice.

When the Venerables came they asked whether the pain had diminished. He replied that it was increasing. The monks led him on a meditation on the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. After a few minutes there was no more suffering and he smiled.

When you sit close to a person dying talk to them of happy experiences in their life. Touch seeds of happiness in them.

The monks asked Anathapindika to look at his feelings and perceptions. “I am life without boundaries, this body is a residue.”

Help the dying person not to cling to his or her body. If there is regret, help them to see they are not their feelings. When conditions are manifested this body manifests and when not, it goes. The nature of this body is not birth, death, coming or going – not hurt by notion of being or non-being. I am free from birth or death. That practice helps me.

Anathapindika cried. Ananda asked, “why are you crying?”
“No, I don’t regret anything,” Anathapindika replied.
“Why are you crying?” asked Ananda.
“I cry because I am so moved by such a wonderful practice as today,” Anathapindika said.
“We monastics receive this every day,” said Ananda.
“There are those amongst us lay people who still need this, please tell the Lord Buddha this.”

Ananda promised to tell the Buddha, and Anathapindika died smiling peacefully.

Thich Nhat Hanh gave an illustration with a box of matches.

Holding up an unlit match, he said, “there is flame, but the conditions to manifest it are not here now.”

Then he lit the match and blew it out.

He said when the conditions were right (the conditions being his hand striking the match to the matchbox), the flame became. And when the conditions were not right, the flame was extinguished.
_____________
Courtersy: Holistic Hong Kong