Reflection on Death

Vol. 24. February 6, 2022

When the history of American Buddhism is written three hundred years from now, Thich Nhat Hahn will go down as one of the great Asian missionaries of Buddhism to the West. 

His literary output and impact on American society is matched only by perhaps D.T. Suzuki and the 14th Dalai Lama.

His obituary in The Washington Post quoted his weighty words: 

“I have never been born, and I have never died.”

Five days before his death, on January 17, 2022, my best friend from grade school, Jay Tanel, died. In the funeral program, Jay wrote, “I know for certain that I too am still alive.”

Jay was a Bible-thumping Baptist. Thich Nhat Hahn was a revered Buddhist monk. Religiously, they had nothing in common. Yet how can these two dead men make the same outrageous claim? 

One word: Identity.

They identified themselves not with this passing, temporary aggregate of matter called the ego. They identified themselves with something greater, something more sublime. 

Call it what you will — the Dharmakaya, Buddha-nature, God’s Mercy in Heaven. We are all conditioned aspects of one reality: The Undisturbed Oneness. 

When we stop thinking, we become that reality. 

In the West, time is linear. The Common Era started with Jesus and has ticked off 2022 solar years since then. We are born, we live, we die. All one straight linear shot. 

In the East, time is cyclical. What’s to come has already been. Every life has been lived before. When a Roman gladiator breathed his last in the sands of the arena, he gave life to an Aaron Rodgers going down in a NFL playoff defeat. 

To identify yourself with your ego, you stay stuck in linear time. 

To identify yourself with egolessness, you are at one with The One. 

The One has no beginning and no end, no birth and no death.  

The One is your ultimate destiny and current reality. 

Why wait until you are dead to make this identification?             

Guitar god Keith Richards once said, “The goal is not to live forever. The goal is to live with yourself forever.” 

Your true self, that is. 

Thich Nhat Hahn didn’t listen to The Rolling Stones, but growing up, my best friend Jay and I sure did.

When we pray and meditate, we stop listening to the tick of time and we start hearing the rhythm of eternity. 

When we hear eternity, we can say with Thich Nhat Hahn, 

“This body is not me. I am not limited by this body.
I am Life without boundaries.
I have never been born, and I have never died.”