mav scb November 4, 2023 Hello and happy Friday! In the last year I have added to my library of books a great deal under the theme of loss. As some of you may know I lost my mother on May 17, 2023 and, as some of you may also know, it can be an earth shaking, heart breaking and ungrounding experience to lose ones mother or mother figure, especially if you are close as I was with my mom, Christine. I have found some books so helpful throughout my grieving and I am hoping to tell you about them from time to time. These are books I would recommend not just for grieving but for searching as well. They are reassuring and uplifting in the day to day experience. Today, a couple thoughts I underlined from “Fear, Essential Wisdom For Getting Through The Storm” by Thich Nhat Hahn. —MAV The Nature of No-Birth and No-Death The cloud cannot become nothing. It is possible for a cloud to become rain or snow or hail. But it’s not possible for a cloud to become nothing. … So birth and death are paired notions, like coming and going, permanence and annihilation, self and other. The cloud appearing in the sky is a new manifestation. Before assuming the form of a cloud, the cloud was water vapor, produced from water in the ocean and the heat of sunlight. You can call it her previous life. So being a cloud is only a continuation. A cloud has not come from nothing. A cloud always comes from something. So there is no birth; there is only a continuation. That is the nature of everything: no-birth, no-death. No Coming, No Going There’s a tendency for people to think that they can eliminate what they don’t want: they can burn down a village, they can kill a person. But destroying someone doesn’t reduce that person to nothing. They killed Mahatma Gandhi. They shot Martin Luther King Jr. But these people are still among us today. They continue to exist in many forms. Their spirit goes on. Therefore, when we look deeply into our self—into our body, our feelings, and our perceptions—when we look into the mountains, the rivers, or another person, we have to be able to see and touch the nature of no-birth and no-death in them. Share TWITTER FACEBOOK TUMBLR PINTEREST EMAIL