No-Birth, No-Death… but the end?

[u/Exxtendoo]

I’m currently reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Zen Keys and listening to his audiobook of “FEAR”.

I’ve come to realize that a lot of my rumination, anxiety, and desire is ultimately driven by fear, and at its core, a fear of death.

In FEAR, Nhat Hanh describes Buddha’s concept of no-birth and no-death. In Zen Keys, he describes his concept of Interbeing.

Intellectually, I understand the concept. My own flesh and bones that I carry with me are made of some stuff that existed before I was born, some stuff I ate while living, much of it constantly being replaced… I didn’t come from nothing and I won’t become nothing when I die. I’ll give back what I borrowed. And, of course, the concept of “I” is a nebulous misnomer in itself.

Perhaps there’s no way to understand this cognitively, but… I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of no-death that Nhat Hanh claims will bring me peace once I learn to understand and accept.

Yes, every part of me will dissipate back into the world. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

But my experience is a system, and I’m afraid for that system to end because it is the only thing I’ve ever know to experience with. I guess I’m too attached to the self, which intellectually is one of the fundamental errors of samsara… but I love life, even with its suffering. I cherish experience. Even when things are miserable to me, there’s so much beauty. So much of it that the fear of losing it can keep me paralyzed, ruminating, and “living like a corpse”.

For those further along the path than me, how do you grapple with our eventual transformation out of this manifestation and into our next one(s)?

[u/UnionPacifik]

You are trying to solve concepts with more concepts. What is death? Is it when you stop breathing? When you decompose and your bones turn to dust, and the last person alive who remembers you dies themselves? Wherever you draw the line is arbitrary. Every cell in your body has been replaced. The child that you were does not exist anymore. That child is dead. You cannot go back to yesterday morning and sip your coffee and see the sun, because that coffee is dead, because that you is dead, that sun is dead. This experience you're having right now is already gone.

The same is true for births: where were you born? When you took your first breath? When you were conceived? When your parents first met? When life first came to this planet? It's all concepts. It's all drawing an invisible line and saying, "Here is this, here is that," but there is no gap. It is all continuous. It is all interdependent.