Beyond the Self by Thich Nhat Hanh

Author:Thich Nhat Hanh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parallax Press
Published: 2011-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

The notions that life span is this body or is not this body are two of the “extreme views” spoken of in the Sutra. The Middle Way goes beyond ideas of being and nonbeing, birth and death, one and many, coming and going, same and different.

The notions of existing and not existing come from our wrong perceptions. The Buddha says that we should go beyond the ideas of “exists” and “does not exist.” When something manifests, we have the tendency to say it exists; and when it no longer manifests, to say it doesn’t exist. This is a mistake that many of us make.

Plum Village, where I live, is situated amidst fields of sunflowers. When we do walking meditation in April, we don’t see any sunflowers so we say, “There are no sunflowers,” and we think of them as not existing. But a farmer driving along the road in April will see things differently. If we were to say to the farmer, “There are no sunflowers,” he may say, “Yes, there are,” because he has planted the seed. Then in May or June sunflowers will appear.

We’re very quick to come to the conclusion that something doesn’t exist. The farmer knows very well that in two months’ time the field will be full of sunflowers. But we who don’t know anything about farming will say, “There are no sunflowers,” but our view is not in accord with reality.

The teachings of the Buddha are always the Middle Way, the way that goes beyond ideas of being and nonbeing, birth and death, one and many, coming and going, same and different, as well as ideas of not being born, not dying, not one, not many, and so on. The Tathagata avoids these extremes.

In eleventh century Vietnam, a monk asked his meditation master, “Where is the place beyond birth and death?” The master replied, “In the midst of birth and death.” If you abandon birth and death in order to find nirvana, you will not find nirvana; nirvana is in birth and death. Looking deeply into the phenomenological world, we touch the true nature, the noumenal world.

“The Middle Way says that this is, because that is; this is not, because that is not.”

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