..续本文上一页 with the clouds, with the earth. If you remove the element sunshine from the flower, the flower will collapse. If you remove the element cloud, meaning water, from the flower, the flower will collapse. So a flower is full of everything. Everything in the cosmos can be found in the flower: sunshine, clouds, minerals, earth, time, space, humans, everything. Only one thing is lacking in the flower—that is a separate existence, a separate self. Now you understand what is meant by "non-self."

　　Non-self does not mean non-existing; non-self means you don”t have a separate existence, like the flower. A flower is there, full of the whole cosmos, but not having a separate entity. There is no such thing as permanent and separate. There”s nothing that can be permanent, that can be separate. Everything is impermanent, everything has the nature of interbeing. Nothing can be by itself alone, everything has to inter-be with everything else. The Buddha expressed that reality in very, very simple terms: "This is, because that is." If you had asked about the Buddhist teaching on Genesis, about how the world has come to be, the Buddha would have said: "This is, because that is." That is the law of interbeing, the law of interdependent origination, the law of no self. "No self" does not mean non-existing. Everything is, in a wonderful way, but everything is a formation.

　　When you practice embracing the object of your perception, whether that is a flower, or a cloud, or your anger, or a person, you know that all of these are formations, and that all formations are impermanent. But if you look more deeply, impermanence and interbeing open to you the dimension called Nirvana. Nirvana is the nature of no-birth and no-death. How can nirvana go along with impermanence and non-self

　　 The answer is that it is exactly because things are impermanent and without a separate self that their nature is the nature of Nirvana. It means the nature of no-birth and no-death. Look at the cloud. The cloud is impermanent—it can be transformed into rain at any moment. And yet you cannot reduce a cloud to nothingness. A cloud can never die. Do you think that a cloud can die

　　 To die means that from something you suddenly become nothing, from someone you suddenly become no one at all. That is our idea of death. This meditation of the Buddha looks into that notion of death. Death is not a reality, because nothing can become nothingness. A sheet of paper, when you try to destroy it, when you burn it, you cannot reduce it into nothingness. It will become smoke, it will become heat, and it will become ash. And the smoke will join a cloud, the ash will join the earth, and the heat will join human beings and other beings, and penetrate into the cosmos. If you like, you can follow the journey of the sheet of paper.

　　So it is not possible to reduce anyone or anything into nothingness. The nature of this sheet of paper is no-death. When the cloud is struck by a wave of cold air, it becomes the rain, but the cloud is not scared. In the cloud there is the wisdom that being a cloud floating in the blue sky is wonderful, but being rain falling on the field, on the ocean, is also something wonderful. You cannot reduce the cloud into nothingness. Annihilation is not a reality, it”s not possible. Annihilation, non-being, is the opposite of permanence. Permanence is only an idea, and annihilation is another idea, another extreme. A separate and permanent self is one extreme; and nothingness, non-being, annihilation is another extreme. Reality transcends these two extremes. That is called the Middle Way.

　　The Middle Way, the Madhyamika way, is the way of transcending pairs of opposites, including the notion of birth and the notion of death. In our minds, to be born means that from nothing yo…

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