Birth and Death

A common error in the Western and/or superficial perception of Buddhism is to only consider the absence of birth and death from a material perspective.

It is not so much a fault or a bias of perception as an incompleteness in the description and the consequences of such an absence of birth and death (as stated in the Hannya Shingyo, Sutra of the Heart of the Great Wisdom).

When the body takes shape and when the body dies, the bodily dimensions aggregate and dislocate. They endorse a coherence that we learn to identify as “me” then, when this coherence, this cohesion dies, each of the constituent parts continues its path, integrating another whole where they will become part of an equally relative coherence.

However, the ethereal dimensions that this body came to support (of which it was the support), in the same way, pursue a single path, on the paths in accordance with the dynamics define their movements. Consciousness and its ever elusive layers, what happens to them?

Certain layers are so linked to the body itself that they are almost material (at the brain level in particular) and therefore relate to the developments discussed above.

We see here that a material/immaterial, corporeal/spiritual separation is an artificial approach, the result of a cognitive reflex of categorization.
The reality of our being seems to be approached in a more credible way when we consider it along a continuum subject to the same evolutionary processes.
A flap of skin and the tip of the mind do not have different treatment, in terms of nature.

What does deep consciousness mean?
Where does it continue on its path?
Does it continue on its way?
If there is neither birth nor death,
neither beginning nor end,
there is no ‘from here to there’,
no temporal linearity and no path.
can the phenomena of aggregation and dislocation be approached in a static manner ?

From this center of consciousness…
At least, it can be sensed from the deep layers of consciousness.
Observation points for the dance of births and deaths,
beginnings and ends, aggregations and dislocations,
and zones of wisdom, from where we perceive the scenic, illusory aspect of the dances.
Time which shrouds in its veils, the dances of life and death, exerts a diminishing influence as one penetrates the deep layers of consciousness.

The self of transitory existence cannot have its quarters there.
It must act and fulfill its role on the illusory scene or not.
Finally, let us note that in the absence of this zone of consciousness, the observation of the essence of birth and death cannot take place.

©FJ April 2024
Recueils / Participation/ Groupe De Pratique