⏱️ Estimated reading time: 5 min
MY DOOR CIRUEL,
If I didn't come back,
spring always
will return. You, It blooms.
Japanese Anonymous
Nothing is born, Nothing dies.
Nothing to hold on to, nothing to let go.
Samsara is nirvana.
There is nothing to reach.
Thich Nhat Hanh1
The deepest fear that resides in our hearts is none other than that of ceasing to be. We fear disappearing, the dissolution, nothing. In our cultural environment we think that our existence begins with birth and ends with death, as if we came from nothing and returned to nothing. Faced with this vision of reality, we cling to cultural beliefs: some promise eternal life in the afterlife, Others assure that after death there is nothing left. But suffering does not arise so much from what there is or what there is not after death., but of our ideas about what it means to exist.
The Buddha, questioned during his life about these two extreme positions—eternalism and nihilism—, responded with silence. His teaching is not based on a belief, but in a direct experience: neither birth nor death are absolute realities, but useful concepts, mental constructs that help us orient ourselves, but they catch us when we confuse them with the truth. This vision, so profoundly counterintuitive from a Western perspective, finds, however, a natural echo in the heart of Japanese culture. in it, life and death do not confront each other, but they hug each other. For the East, death is not the opposite of life, but one of its expressions. The Japanese—traditionally speaking—does not think of death as a leap toward the opposite., but as a transformation within the same vital flow. Just as a leaf is not separate from the tree, we are not separate from the life that shapes us.
From this understanding, death is not annihilation, but a mutation within the living totality. The leaf falls in autumn, but the tree continues; and in the fall of the leaf the promise of the new shoot is already present. In the traditional Japanese view, the life of the individual is rooted in the greater life of nature, of the family, of the ancestors. There is no radical separation between the living and the dead.. The ancestral rites, family altars, The practice of offering food and presence to the deceased are everyday expressions of this continuity..
In the Soto Zen, This continuity is perceived from the experience of zazen: When sitting, We are not just this individual body., this mind with its thoughts. We are a temporary manifestation of the unlimited. In the words of Dogen, “To study the way is to study oneself.”; Studying yourself is forgetting yourself; “To forget oneself is to be one with all existences.”. Death does not end this presence, a concrete form simply ceases.
Y, however, sadness at loss does not disappear. In Japan, like anywhere, the disease is suffered, old age and death. You cry for your loved one. But what changes is the perspective: sadness is not born from an absolute cut, but of a painful transformation within a continuum. You cry from love, not from abandonment.
Western culture is marked by a fear of death that is projected in transcendent constructions, in later paradises, in the need to ensure one's own existence beyond time. It is a production culture, of redemption, fighting against the passage of time. The Japanese, by contrast, has cultivated a deep acceptance of transformation. Does not seek to survive beyond, but to live authentically here, now, within the cycle that unites birth, life and death. The Zen monk learns to live without fear because he learns to die in every moment. The path is to let go of attachment to form, not in clinging to the idea of eternity.
Thich Nhat Hanh decía: «Our true nature is that of no-birth and no-death». True freedom consists of stopping believing that we are something separate, that begins and ends, and recognize ourselves as a transitory expression of something much vaster, something without a name, shapeless, without beginning or end. From this view, the act of dying stops being a tragedy and becomes a return. We do not return to any place outside of ourselves, but to the totality that we never stop being. In the Japanese tradition, the pain of loss is not denied, but it is placed within a loving continuity. The family includes those who are no longer here, and the memory is part of the present. That is why in Japanese homes they pray in front of the altar of the ancestors, food is put for the dead, you talk to them.
Looking back at this wisdom is not going back to the past., but to open ourselves to an understanding that can help us here and now. As Viktor Frankl suggests, when life loses its meaning, the pain becomes unbearable. But if death can be experienced as part of a significant process, It stops being absurd and becomes transit. The meaning is not found in denying death, but in recognizing that living fully includes knowing how to die.
Meditation, sitting in silence, is the laboratory of this understanding. In zazen, there is no birth or death, just this moment. We sit with all that we are and let life manifest itself as it is.. In that opening without predetermined ideas, a deep understanding emerges that you don't have to go anywhere to find eternity: eternity is in each attentive breath, in every gesture made, from the state of presence, from compassion and in every moment lived without attachment.
When we accompany someone on their deathbed, what we offer is not a theoretical answer, but our presence. Our serenity is your relief. Our non-fear is your comfort. And that presence is not born from effort, but of the silent confidence that nothing is lost. everything changes. Everything is transformed. Nothing disappears completely. To live is to know how to die. Dying is another way of living. From the perspective of Soto Zen Buddhism, there is no dividing line, there is no break. Embrace life fully, and let her go when the time is right. Fearless. With gratitude.
- Nhat Hanh, Thich. 2018. Understanding our mind. Translated by Begoña Laka. Barcelona: Kairos Editorial. (Original edition 2017). [↩]