Addendum to No-Birth, No-Death

I found this quote from Thich Nhat Hann after I wrote the last blog.  I thought it really described this practice of feeling the mutuality of form and emptiness.  We can actualize this mutuality in our everyday activity and this coming together is the actualization of enlightenment.

From Thich Nhat Hanh, “Touching the Earth, Intimate conversations with the Buddha”:


The Pure Land has the outer appearance of birth and death, but looking deeply I see that birth and death are interdependent.  One is not possible without the other.  If I look even more deeply, I will see that there is no birth and no death; there is only manifestation. I do not have to wait for this body to disintegrate in order to step into the Pure Land of the Buddha.  By the way I look, walk, and breathe I can produce the energies of mindfulness and concentration, allowing me to enter the Pure Land and to experience all the miracles of life found right in the here and now.

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