..續本文上一頁another idea. Reality is free from these two notions. I used to say, "To be, or not to be, that is not the question." That is why the practice of looking deeply can help us to touch the nature of no-birth and no-death, and help us to transcend all kinds of fear, especially fear of non-being. There are people who are afraid of being. They try to kill themselves. There are people who are afraid of non-being. All these fears, all these kinds of craving can be removed by the insight of Nirvana.

　　The Buddha said that Nirvana can be touched with your own body. Nirvana is in the here and the now. If you look into a wave, you can see the water. The wave can live her life as a wave, of course, but the wave can live the life of water at the same time. As a wave, she is supposed to be born, and to die, to be high, or to be low, to be more or less beautiful than other waves. But if she touches the water within herself, and recognizes that she is water at the same time, then she is no longer afraid of coming up, going down, birth and death, being more or less beautiful, because she knows that she "inter-is" with every other wave, and with the water. So water is the ultimate dimension of reality, and wave is the historical dimension of reality. But the two dimensions are not separated; if you throw away the wave, you won”t have any water left; and if you throw away the water, you won”t have a wave. That is why, touching the wave deeply, you touch water, and when you touch reality in its nature of impermanence and interbeing, you touch the nature of Nirvana, that will release you of all your fears. For those of us who have terminal illnesses, who have been contemplating death and dying, this is a very important practice. Not only for those who are in their terminal illness, but for all of us.

　　Sooner or later, we will have to take up the practice, because fear is always in us, insecurity is always in us, and that makes us suffer. To practice looking deeply, in order to touch Nirvana, is a very important practice. If you go to a Buddhist center to practice, that means that you want to get relief. You can suffer less, you can get relief, but the greatest relief of all you can only get when you are capable of touching Nirvana. Touching Nirvana is to get the greatest relief from fear of non-being, since things continue to be, things continue to manifest themselves in one form or other. Beneath these differences, the ground remains the same thing. Nirvana is the ground of our being, it is the nature of no-birth and no-death, and it is the extinction of all these notions like birth and death, being and non-being, permanence and annihilation, and also the extinction of all the sufferings that have been created by these notions. Our fear, our despair, our suffering…most of them are born from our illusions, our notions. You get angry because you have a notion. You get jealous because you have a notion. Even your notion of happiness, you have to get rid of it. Suppose you believe that you have to get that diploma, that position, you have to marry that person, otherwise life will not be worth living. So you have an idea of happiness, and you become a victim of that idea. Happiness can come in many thousands of ways, but you have already closed all the doors, and you have only opened one door. That is the notion you have of your happiness. It”s very important to remove that notion of happiness. Allow happiness to come freely, and you have one million more chances to be happy. So even your idea of happiness is a notion, and you have to touch Nirvana by letting go of that notion. It is very easy to be happy, but you have forbidden yourself to be happy by establishing an idea of happiness. That is why Nirvana is the abolition of all ideas and notions, and al…

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