Storm

Every time you have a strong emotion, like anger or despair, it is as though you are exposed to a storm.

Look at the tree outside the window. She is trying her best to stand in the storm. When you look at the top of the tree, you see that several small branches and leaves are swaying back and forward very violently in the wind, and you have the feeling that they could be broken at any time.

We feel very much the same when we are exposed to the storm of emotions.

We feel that we may die because the emotion is so strong—the fear, the despair, the anger, the unhappiness—but if you look down a little, you see that the trunk of the tree is firmly rooted in the soil, and then you have another impression. You know that the tree is going to stand in the storm.

We are like trees also. On this level we are very vulnerable. So during the storms of emotion, if you dwell on this level, the level of the brain, the level of the heart, you might be broken, you might feel that you are not going to be able to stand it, you are going to die.

But bring your attention, down, down, to the navel, a little bit below the navel, and pay attention to the rising and falling of your stomach, practicing mindful breathing. When you breathe in your stomach will rise, and when you breathe out, your stomach will fall.

To stop all the thinking, to just focus all your attention on the rise and fall of your stomach, and to dwell there at the root of your tree, and not to float up here at the level of the heart or the brain, is a very important practice.

If you can do that for ten minutes, or fifteen minutes, the emotion will go away and you survive the storm. And if you can survive the storm once, you have confidence. The next time that depression comes, when a strong emotion comes, you will do the same. And that confidence is very important in you.


* * * * *


We should know that we are more, much more than our emotions.

An emotion is something that comes, stays for some time, and goes. Things are impermanent. Nothing can be permanent.

Your emotion is not going to stay there forever. You know that you are more than your emotions.

Why do you have to die because of one emotion? But so many young people, when they are overwhelmed by their emotions, have the feeling that they cannot stand it, and the only way to stop the suffering is to go and kill themselves. That is why the number of young people who commit suicide in our times is so high: they don’t know how to handle their emotions.

It’s not very difficult – to be aware that the emotion is just an emotion. It is born, it stays for some time, and it will go away. Why do you have to die because of it? You are much more than your emotions.


* * * * *


To die, what does it mean?

In our minds it means that you are someone, and then suddenly you become no one. You are something, suddenly you become nothing—that is our idea of death.

But if we observe things deeply, we see nothing like that in reality. There is nothing that can be reduced to nothing, or to nothingness.

Can you reduce a cloud into nothingness? No, you can only help the cloud to become rain. You can help the rain to become snow. But you cannot make a cloud into nothingness.

A sheet of paper—can you reduce it into nothingness? No. You may burn it, and it is transformed in many ways. Part of it will become a cloud, the smoke rising. Part of it will become the heat, penetrating into the cosmos. Part of it will become ash, that can be reborn as a flower or a blade of grass, sometime later.

So everything is on their way, on their journey of manifestation of being.

You are also like that. If you don’t manifest yourself in this form, then you manifest yourself in another form.

Please don’t be afraid of being nothing. Nothingness is just an idea. Non-being is just an idea.

The Buddha said not only is non-being an idea, but being is also an idea. Reality transcends both being and non-being.


* * * * *


It’s like when you look into space, into the air.

You don’t see any color, you don’t hear any sound, you don’t see anything, but if you have a radio or a television set, you will capture radio or television programs, and sights and sounds will manifest themselves. So the radio or the television set is just one more condition enabling you to see the signals manifest.

Signals are reaching us all the time, signals from satellites, and because we lack one condition, we believe that they do not exist, but they do exist.

So our notion of being is also a notion. And our notion of non-being is another notion. Reality transcends both being and non-being. That is the teaching of the Buddha in so many, many discourses.


* * * * *


The typical sentence is like this: when conditions are sufficient, your body manifests, and you say that the body "is". And when conditions are not longer sufficient, and your body does not manifest itself, then you say that there is no body. Your idea of "there is" and "there is not" are just ideas.

Your true nature is free from these two ideas: being and non-being. That is why, within the teachings of the Buddha, to be or not to be, that is not the question.

The Buddha helps us to practice stopping, concentrating, calming, in order to be able to direct our looking deeply into the heart of things, to discover the true nature of reality, the nature of no birth, no death, no being, no non-being, no coming, no going.


Extract from: The Island of Self; The Three Dharma Seals, by Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh