I've been asked to offer my reflections on Thay's teaching of no birth and no death.
And rather than go back and look at things that I've heard from him or read from him or those kinds of things,
I thought I would just sit with it and see what arose.
So we'll see what happens.
The first thing that arises for me is this clear and beautiful teaching from Thay of a Nata non-self or no self.
Thay has helped me to understand that everything is interconnected and that there is no inherent self or individual body in anything.
Even Plum Village is made up of non-Plum Village elements.
Like this inviter for my bell,
My bell,
This inviter for the bell that I was just using,
Or this inviter.
They're made up of non-inviter elements,
Right?
This is a piece of a tree.
This is some fabric,
Which maybe is silk,
Maybe it's totally polyester,
Maybe some blend of things.
So let's say it's silk,
Like fantasy.
So then if it's silk,
It's made up of mulberries and silkworms and the sunshine and the water that allowed the mulberries and silkworms to live.
And then it's made up of the people who care for the mulberries and the silkworms and the food they eat.
And you know,
All that way that Thay would help us to see the interconnection of everything.
So this inviter is absent of a separate self.
It's made up of all these other conditions.
And then the causes were present.
That someone fell the tree and then carved this little piece of wood into this shape and took the strands from the silkworms and wove them into thread and someone else took the time.
Someone had to dye it purple,
Right?
And it's purple and gold.
Someone took the time to adhere it onto this.
And then it had to get shipped.
I think to the blue cliff.
Right?
Maybe had a longer journey than that.
Like it went from somewhere to somewhere,
Somewhere,
Somewhere,
Right?
So then,
Oh,
Then there's the fuel and the driver and the airplane and the ship and the truck and whatever,
Right?
You are that way too.
I am that way too.
Thay is that way too.
All of these causes and conditions come to be that they manifest such that this human being is born.
And we existed before we were born,
Just like this existed before it was,
Happened through all those stages,
Right?
And existed and it didn't exist both.
If we are as Thay is,
I hope,
Biologically made,
But that's probably not the language in my mind.
But,
You know,
There's a,
There was a moment in time where a sperm and an egg met and the egg was fertilized by the sperm and a zygote was formed.
And then the zygote did its thing and became a fetus and all of that.
We can just keep going back,
Right?
So we got,
We got back to the sperm and the egg,
And then we,
We can go back out into those two beings that were generating egg and sperm in their bodies and all the nutrients they ate and all the experiences they had,
And they informed what was in those genes that was in the sperm and the zygote.
So we can just keep going,
Keep going back and back and back and back,
Right to the genes where they were in the sperm and the zygote that formed,
Excuse me,
The sperm and egg that formed the zygotes that formed them.
And it never ends.
It goes forever,
Forever,
All the way back to stardust,
You know,
Through the big bang.
And we can go through our amazing evolutionary journey that made its way to Homo sapiens.
And there's,
Not going to talk about this tonight,
But there's all that conditioning that created this fight,
Fight or freeze response,
Right?
It was our ancestors who noticed the threat that survived to have offspring.
We've still got that in us.
And like,
That's like way back when we were amphibians.
So you know,
We have our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents and our great great,
It's all here.
And for me,
That's part of how there is no death.
If we have our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents and our great great grandparents,
You know,
If they're all in us,
Then they didn't die either.
They live on in us,
Just as,
Just as a silkworm and a tree live on in this inviter.
They're in a different form,
But they're still here.
I know,
As I pay attention to my habit energies,
I see my ancestors in me.
I see the pain and the joy that they experienced and how it informed them and how it informs me.
How could it be otherwise?
It's not possible to not carry on the legacy of our experience of all experiences we've received through our blood ancestors,
Through our land ancestors,
Through our spiritual ancestors.
It's in us.
And Ty is one of our spiritual ancestors.
He's in each and every one of you.
So Ty didn't die.
He had a physical form,
No longer exists.
I'm sure the silkworm is not alive anymore.
And the tree was felled.
So there's no tree.
But yet it continues.
And Ty continues in each and every one of us.
And we get to live his continuation by practicing.
By practicing,
Stopping and resting.
And once we are able to stop and rest only once we're really able to stop and rest,
Then we can practice deep looking.
And it's a process,
It's a journey,
And through that stopping.
And deep looking.
Healing happens,
It just happens,
We can't do it,
We can't will,
We can't make it happen.
But every time we keep stopping and resting and stopping and resting and stopping and resting,
Finally we feel like,
Oh,
There's some ease here.
Then we can start to look deeply and that that bleepity bleep.
Is revealed and it begins to fall away.
Without any doing.
Through being.
And Ty leaves a long legacy.
And for me,
That might be the core of it.
And these so many beautiful practices that Ty has offered us so that we can do those two things so that we can stop and rest.
Deep relaxation is a profound way to stop and rest.
Sometimes we can hear the church bells or the siren.
And we're called back to ourselves and we can stop and enjoy three breaths and experience a shift.
Sometimes we don't notice the bell,
Sometimes we take three breaths,
We don't notice a shift,
Like,
Sure,
Nothing's perfect,
Nothing happens like any particular way all the time.
And sometimes when we're settled.
We can look deeply and see,
Oh,
Yeah,
That's some of my conditioning,
OK?
And if we can turn toward it and acknowledge it,
We get to know our habit energies and we have some capacity to not fight with ourselves about them or make them wrong.
Like,
Oh,
This is unpleasant,
OK?
How do I show up for this?
And then we begin again,
We begin anew with ourselves,
With our dear ones.
And that is how Ty lives on.
That is why he was not born,
He does not die.
He always was in some form,
Just like you and I always were and always will be.
Everything,
Everyone that's touched us.
Lives on in us.
And we live on in everyone we've touched.
All those words,
I kind of land for you and notice where you have resonance and where you have dissonance,
It's OK to have dissonance,
Don't agree with me.
Check it out,
Explore.
Come to find your own understanding through practice,
Right,
Not through this intellectual exploration.
But for the practice of stopping and looking deeply.
And I'll close with the reminder.
That Nhat Hanh means one action.
And Thich Nhat Hanh encouraged us to do one thing at a time.
And it's been my experience that when I can do that,
When I remember to do that.
Everything is better.
Everything is better every time I can just do one thing.
And this hard and this fast paced,
A seven day slough say would remind us,
In this fast paced modern world where moderns.
Things are going fast.
How do I interrupt that?
That's a big,
Big practice of stopping.
So I find the things that support us in stopping.
I have some bells going now on an old phone of mine,
Westminster Chimes.
I have the same bells that they play at the monastery and the dining halls and they help support me.
They remind me to come home to myself because I forget,
Of course,
I'm human.
How can we not?
It's not a problem.
It's not a problem.
A few more bells.
Let the bell call you home to yourself.
