"No one gets out of here alive."
Chekhov wrote that "life is essentially tragic." Do you buy that? It resonates poorly with me. Always has. Kind of a half glass thing. But is it really?
Let's consider the facts. We all pass. Every living thing does. Is that tragic? Maybe. But it is the nature of living things. They pass. They are not forgotten. Energy is always encoded into other forms. That we can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Forms changes. We know that from chemistry class. So what is the issue? Fear? Thich Nhat Hanh say it well:
Free from Fear - Thich Nhat Hanh
When we are not fully present, we are not really living
Our greatest fear is that when we die, we will become nothing. Many of us believe our entire existence is limited to a particular period, our "lifespan." We believe it begins when we are born-when, out of being nothing, we become something-and it ends when we die and become nothing again. So we are filled with a fear of annihilation.
But if we look deeply, we can have a very different understanding of our existence. We can see that birth and death are just notions; they're not real. The Buddha taught that there is no birth and no death. Our belief that these ideas about birth and death are real creates a powerful illusion that causes us a great deal of suffering. When we understand that we can't be destroyed, we're liberated from fear. It's a huge relief. We can enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.
When I lost my mother, I suffered a lot. The day she died, I wrote in my journal, "The greatest misfortune of my life has happened." I grieved her death for more than a year. Then one night, I was sleeping in my hermitage-a hut that lay behind a temple, halfway up a hill covered with tea plants in the highlands of Vietnam. I had a dream about my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, with her hair flowing down around her shoulders. It was so pleasant to sit and talk to her as if she had never died.
When I woke up, I had a very strong feeling that I had never lost my mother. The sense that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just that: an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother was still alive in me and always would be.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. Walking slowly in that soft light through the rows of tea plants, I observed that my mother was indeed still with me. My mother was the moonlight caressing me as she had so often done, very gentle, very sweet. Every time my feet touched the earth, I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and father, my grandparents and great-grandparents, and of all my ancestors. These feet I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, or feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet, to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.
When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no-birth, no-death. There is manifestation, and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation. You have to be alert to recognize the new manifestations of one person. But with practice and effort, you can do it. Pay attention to the world around you, to the leaves and the flowers, to the birds and the rain. If you can stop and look deeply, you will recognize your beloved manifesting again and again in many forms. You will release your fear and pain, and again embrace the joy of life.
The Present Is Free from Fear - When we are not fully present, we are not really living. We're not really there, either for our loved ones or for ourselves. If we're not there, then where are we? We are running, running, running, even during our sleep. We run because we're trying to escape from our fear.
We cannot enjoy life if we spend our time and energy worrying about what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. If we're afraid all the time, we miss out on the wonderful fact that we're alive and can be happy right now. In everyday life, we tend to believe that happiness is only possible in the future. We're always looking for the "right" conditions that we don't yet have to make us happy. We ignore what is happening right in front of us. We look for something that will make us feel more solid, safer, more secure. But we're afraid all the time of what the future will bring-afraid we'll lose our jobs, our possessions, the people around us whom we love. So we wait and hope for that magical moment-always sometime in the future-when everything will be as we want it to be. We forget that life is available only in the present moment. The Buddha said, "It is possible to live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.
From the forthcoming book Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm by Thich Nhat Hanh Copyright © 2012 by Unified Buddhist Church. To be published on November 13, 2012, by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, and peace activist. He lives at Plum Village, a meditation center in the Dordogne region of southern France.
And that is the present. The gift.
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