Thich Nhat Hanh's Analysis

Among the numerous lessons that Thich Nhat Hanh expresses in his book Essential Writings, perhaps his most intriguing is the query into our perception of birth and death. While many would find it peculiar to doubt the inevitability of such a topic, especially those within predominantly non Buddhist religions, Hanh argues that there is no birth or death, rather only continuation. Through the practice of meditation, more specifically seeing the “interbeing” or the interconnectedness between oneself and their surroundings, one can be liberated from the dogma of birth and death. Han’s perspective carries additional emphasis as it provides comfort when thinking about death, in addition to its emphasis of appreciating life in its present form. In what is his initial step into understanding birth and death, Hanh explains quite simply that there is no birth. Hanh routinely recites in his text, “To be born means from nothing you become something.”p61. With that in mind, Hanh delves further into what it means to be ‘something’. Prior to what many would refer to as our
In essentially a mirror image for his definition of birth, Hanh mentions that “To die means that from something you became nothing.”-p62. To contextualize his definition of death, Hanh speaks about the burning of a piece of paper. While the paper may seem to have disappeared, Hanh argues that it is still very much alive, “ The smoke will rise and continue to be. The heat that is caused by the burning paper will enter into the cosmos and penetrate other things, because the heat is the next life of the paper. The ash that is formed will become part of the soil and the sheet of paper, in his or her next life, might be a cloud and a rose at the same time.”-p62. As can be seen, the piece of paper never dies; rather it only continues to be in another form. In other words, birth and death are opposite ends of the phenomenon of