Happy Continuation

Last night, my three-year old came to me while I was cooking dinner and said, "Mama, can I live forever?" It may seem early for him to be struggling with mortality, but I remember (sadly) being like that when I was his age. We are a family of worriers. This may have been too philosophical for a small child, but I dove into the full Buddhist philosophy of birth and death. I told him that in some ways, he will live forever. I said that the moment he was born was not the moment he began to exist. He has existed before, in his mother, in his father, in his ancestors. We do not not come from nothing. We are a continuation. It's like the stream of water on Earth is a continuation of the cloud in the sky. And the stream of water has not been born. It's only a continuation of the cloud. He is like the cloud and it's impossible for a cloud to die. A cloud may become rain or snow or ice or water. But it is impossible for a cloud to become nothing.

He may not have understood everything, but it made him happy and gave him some relief from his worries.

These ideas are better described by the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh:

In our mind, to be born means that from nothing you suddenly become something; from no one you suddenly become someone. That is our definition of birth. But looking deeply, we don't see anything like that. A cloud has not come from nothing. A cloud has come from the lake, from the river, from the ocean, from the heat. A cloud is only a continuation of something. When a cloud dies, and you say the cloud "dies," you think it means from something you suddenly become nothing, from someone you suddenly become no one. But if you look deeply, you will see that is is impossible for a cloud to die. It's possible for the cloud to become rain or snow or ice, but you do not have the power to kill a cloud, to make the cloud into nothingness....

Everything you think, everything you say. everything you do has already begun to continue you. It is only a continuation; it's not a transfer of something from there to here. And we can make it possible for the continuation to be happy or be pleasant.. Through mindfulness, we can make sure that our continuation is good and beautiful.


Here's to a happy continuation.