Cracking the Walnut, page 22
14. In the fuel there is no fire.
Outside the fuel there is no fire.
If the fire has no fuel,
inside the fire there is no fuel.
可燃即非然
離可燃無燃
燃亦無可燃
燃中無可燃
The above verse is translated from the Chinese. Below is the translation of the equivalent verse from the Sanskrit text:
Fire is not fuel,*
And fire is not somewhere other than fuel.
Fire does not possess fuel.
Fuel is not in fire and fire is not in fuel.
Neither fire nor fuel have an individual self-nature. If there is no fire in the fuel, how can there be fire outside of the fuel? If there were fire in the fuel, why would you need to burn fuel? That is one aspect of the truth. The second aspect asks: How can there be fire apart from fuel? With this verse, we look into the matter of inside and outside and discover that our ideas about inside and outside are all wrong. If the fire isn’t the fuel, then fire and fuel are two separate things. If they are two different things, how can one be in the other? Here there is the idea of existing in each other.
Once the Buddha taught his son Rāhula, “This body is not mine, I am not this body, this body is not myself.” To say the self is the body is not correct; to say the body and the self are two separate things is also not correct; to say the self is in the body and the body is in the self is also not correct. The Buddha taught that all these three ideas are incorrect. The metaphor of fire and fuel helps us understand clearly the words of the Buddha in the sutras.
If fire is not fuel, then fuel is not in fire and fire is not in fuel: fire and fuel do not exist in each other. This is a kind of mathematics that seems daunting, but it isn’t difficult. For example, if we take a number like 365 and we write it down as (3 × 100) + (6 × 10) + (5 × 1) = 365 it looks as if it were some form of higher mathematics, but, actually, there is nothing to it.
15. Fire and fuel are used
to explain grasping and the one who grasps,
to explain the examples of a pot or cloth,
and all the other examples.
以燃可燃法
說受受者法
及以說瓶衣
一切等諸法
We translate upādāna as “grasping”; it can mean clinging, grasping, or attachment.This term was initially translated into Chinese by a few monks as 受 and after that the character 取 became standard. The five skandhas are referred to as the skandhasof grasping (upādānaskandha). Our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are the objects of our clinging or attachment. There is the subject that grasps and the object that is grasped. We grasp the five skandhas as our self (ātmopādāna). Ātma is the grasper—the self, the I, or the soul—and the five skandhas are the objects of grasping (upādānaskandha). We can think of the fire as ātma and the fuel as upādāna. This verse says we can take the example of fire and fuel in order to explain the self and its object of attachment, and also to shine light on all the other examples that have been given—such as a pot or cloth. Imagine a pot; looking deeply into it, we see the clay. The pot is like the fire and the fuel is like the clay; the relationship is the same as that between fire and fuel. We cannot say that one of them is what the other depends on to arise. The pot does not arise from itself, nor from something other than itself; it does not arise both from itself and something other than itself—and neither does it arise without a cause. The same is true for cloth. Looking at the cloth we see the cotton or silk threads. Does the cloth rely on the threads or do the threads rely on the cloth to arise? Just like the fire and the fuel, the cloth does not rely on the thread, or vice versa—and neither thread nor cloth arise from themselves. This principle holds true for other phenomena. Does the wind come first or the blowing come first? Our ways of thinking and speaking render us incapable of seeing reality! We must practice looking in such a way that we overcome notions—including the notions of birth and death. A good practitioner directs their attention inward. In their daily life—upon hearing or seeing something—they should look and listen in the light of no birth and no death.
We may reflect on the thought, while we are driving our car, that our grandmother was unable to drive. By looking deeply, though, we see that the truth is that our grandmother is driving the car because she is in us. We say that our grandfather did not practice, but in truth our grandfather in us is inviting the bell and breathing mindfully. We and our grandfather are not two different realities, but we need to have mindfulness and concentration in our daily lives to be able to see this. Once we are able to see, we will gradually overcome birth and death—and fear. This is not philosophy. This is a meditation to help us look deeply and get insight.
When we look at a lit candle we see that it offers light, heat, and fragrance at every moment. It also produces CO2. Do not think that the candle is merely in the candle. The candle also lies outside the candle, because without the oxygen surrounding it the candle could not burn. We have to see the candle outside the candle. If we cover the candle with a glass jar, in just a few seconds the flame will go out. This demonstrates that the candle isn’t only inside the candle. In Buddhism this insight is called “the body outside the body.”
I wrote in The Sun My Heart* something like this: “I have a heart inside my body. If that heart stopped beating I would die right away. But I also have many hearts outside my body, and if any of those hearts stopped beating I would also die immediately. The sun is one of my hearts. Although it is outside of my body, if it were to go out, I would also go out.” I have to look at myself to see everything inside me, and, at the same time, I have to look at what is not myself to see myself in those not-myself things.
The light and heat the candle offers we provisionally call energy. Matter becomes energy, but it is also said that matter is extremely condensed energy and that energy is extremely diluted matter. While the candle is burning, it is in a process of manifestation. We don’t need to wait for it to burn itself out for it to manifest as something else. You do not need to wait until you bring me to the crematorium to see me manifest in a new form. Already in the present I have manifested in new forms, and you have to see this so that when the time comes you will not need to cry or feel sad. This is meditation! You have to see the light, the energy, and whatever else the candle is offering at each moment of its life.
We are the same; in each moment of our daily life we offer our thoughts, actions, and words, and we go in the direction set by them. We may offer something beautiful and wholesome or we may offer something unwholesome, like violence and hatred. When we light a stick of incense, it will continuously turn into smoke and fragrance. When it is finished, we shouldn’t say that it is no more. It continues in the universe in the form of smoke and fragrance. The nature of the incense is unborn and undying. This is the kind of thing we need to contemplate in our daily life. As a monastic practitioner, if we spend all our time working and do not have time to look deeply, we are wasting our monastic life. Pots, clothes, candles, wind, and anything else can be contemplated on and understood in the light of the teachings on fire and fuel.
16. If someone says that there is a self,
and that phenomena differ from one another
you should know that this person
has not tasted the essence of the Buddhadharma.
若人說有我
諸法各異相
當知如是人
不得佛法味
There is the notion of a self and the notion of phenomena. Self is an unchanging soul—a kind of fire that does not need fuel, but that still manages to manifest. Phenomena are things like pots, cloth, wind, or houses. All these things are not separate entities. If we are able to remove the notions of self and phenomena, we will be in touch with reality—with nirvāṇa—and experience no-birth. Once we have experienced no-birth, we no longer have any fear; we can smile as we die, because we know that we are not dying. Death is a moment of manifestation just as any other moment in life. An incense stick offers itself at each moment; likewise, the moment which we call “death” is also a moment of offering. Why should we worry about the last moment more than we do about the first? We have to be able to see our continuation right in the present moment. We don’t wait for this body to disintegrate in order to continue; we are already continuing right now. If we can see this, we will die in peace—and we will live in peace. If we are not capable of living in a wholesome and happy way, there is no way we will be able to die in a wholesome and happy way. When we have experienced the unborn, we realize that life and death are illusions. There is the chant:
The Buddha is a flower of humanity
who practiced the Way for countless lives.
He appeared on this earth as a prince who left his royal palace
to practice at the foot of the Bodhi tree.
He conquered illusion.
When the morning star arose,
he realized the great path of awakening
and then turned the wheel of the Dharma.
All species together take refuge with one-pointed mind
to realize the path of no birth.
All species together take refuge with one-pointed mind
to vow to realize the path of no birth.*
This is the ultimate aim of a monk or a nun—the most important thing a practitioner should realize. It would be a great shame not to realize this before our body disintegrates, because then we may experience a lot of worry, grasping, and attachment at the time of death. But if we can achieve no-birth, the moment of our death will be very joyful and utterly free of fear.
* William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1905) pp. 349–50.
* James L. Gould The Locale Map of Honey Bees. Science, 1986.05.16, vol. 232 pp 861–863.
* Here a posteriori means something that is because of what happened after a particular event.
* See p. 27 of Le Moment 1900 en philosophie by Bruno Antonini et al., on Bergson and his contemporaries.
* The new version of this book is titled The Other Shore, Parallax Press, 2017.
* EA 8.2 (corresponds to AN 1.XIII).
* Thus, Ānanda, with psychesoma as condition there is consciousness; with consciousness as condition there is psychesoma. DN 15 Mahānidāna Sutta.
* Rohitassa Sutta AN 4.45.
† Kāyagatāsati Sutta MN 119, MA 81.
* Husserl, Méditations Cartésiennes (1929).
* 官官, 臣臣, 父父, 子子.
* “Nothing is lost, nothing is created. Everything transforms.” Traité Élémentaire de Chimie, 1789.
* MN 62 Mahārãhulavāda.
* Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun my Heart, Parallax Press (1988, 2006, 2020), p. 66.
* From Chanting from the Heart, Volume II, Parallax Press 2023.
6
Examination of Nirvāṇa
1. If all phenomena are empty,
they are unborn and undying.
So what you call nirvāṇa
is the ending and extinction of what?
若一切法空
無生無滅者
何斷何所滅
而稱為涅槃
This is the question of someone who has not understood nirvāṇa: “You teach no-birth and no-death, but how can you speak about nirvāṇa?” When a candle is blown out, we say that it is extinguished, and extinction is what we call nirvāṇa. “On the one hand,” the one who has not understood comments, “you say that all things are unborn and undying, and on the other you say that there is extinction. There is clearly a contradiction in your teaching! If all dharmas are empty, unborn, and undying, then what is it that is extinguished in nirvāṇa?” This is a question based on precise reasoning. I had already read something about nirvāṇa at the age of fourteen or fifteen; I had heard people say that nirvāṇa is something that cannot be expressed, and I just believed it. It is partly true. There are things that we need to experience directly—to come to and be directly in touch with—if we want to see and know them. We cannot understand these things through language alone, no matter how much people speak about them. This is true not only for abstruse things. Take, for example, a tangerine. If someone has never seen one, peeled one to smell its fragrance, or put a segment in their mouth, they will never know exactly what a tangerine is—no matter how much you describe it.
It is correct that we cannot say anything about nirvāṇa. In theistic religions such as Christianity people ask, “What is God?” Theologians will reply that we cannot say anything about God, God can only be directly experienced. If we cannot say anything about God, we should remove theology as a subject of study and stop establishing seminaries to teach it. On the one hand, people say that you cannot speak about God, and on the other, they establish major and minor seminaries to teach about God, and they write countless books about God. There seems to be a contradiction in this.
When I grew up, my thinking matured. I saw that if you are skillful, you can speak about nirvāṇa without people becoming caught in what you say. If both the speaker and the audience are skillful, they will not be caught. The speaker does not lay a trap, and the listener is not caught in it. While speaking we can give clear instructions on how to get in touch with nirvāṇa. We can say, “Oh! You’ve never had a tangerine? It’s small like this and orange. If you go out to the market you may be able to buy one.” Although these words are not the tangerine itself, they can guide us to the tangerine and help us to recognize it. Words of guidance can be beneficial. If the speaker is skillful and the listener is skillful, neither of them will be caught. The listener will use the guidance to be able to touch nirvāṇa.
The Verses on the Middle Way use this approach. They know that we cannot describe the ultimate reality, but that if we use words skillfully—like a magician summoning up a phantom army—we will be able to make miracles happen. We will be able to help people remove their mistaken notions and ideas about reality. This chapter, just like all other chapters in the Verses on the Middle Way, uses the magic of words to help us do this. We should take care not to become attached to the words! In some of the Mahāyāna sutras* it is said that all the teachings of the Buddha are like a finger pointing at the moon. Although the finger is not the moon, it is thanks to the finger that we can see the moon. If we just grasp at the finger and believe it to be the moon, then we are caught. Someone who points their finger unskillfully lays a trap, and someone who takes the finger to be the moon falls into it. In the end, both of them fail. The speaker and the one listening have to be skillful. A skillful listener should look up at the moon and not mistake the finger for it.
All Nāgārjuna’s reasoning is a skillful means to help us experience something that cannot be spoken about or described in words. We cannot describe the insight of the Buddha or nirvāṇa, but we can still use language to help people remove their ideas about it. Nāgārjuna was a master of this magical language.
The term nirvāṇa in English can be translated as “extinction,” as in the extinction of a flame. Nirvāṇa is the highest aim of the practice, just as a return to God—to sit at God’s feet—is the highest aim of the Christian tradition. Some people ask: “What if you believe in heaven and God, but heaven and God do not exist, would you not lose out?” You invest your whole life and energy in something that does not exist. Would you not lose out? It is like gambling; if you win, you win big, but if you lose, you lose everything. Is theology just a game of chess? As Pascal* said, “You should keep having faith. If there is God and there is heaven, you will go there, and if there isn’t, you won’t lose anything. If you do not believe, and God and heaven do exist, then it would be a great loss! So, to have faith is much better.” There is something quite sad about this kind of reasoning. If we were to apply this reasoning to Buddhism, how would it sound?
Is nirvāṇa something real, or is it something that we imagine? What if we spend our whole life going in the direction of our imagination, and in the end nirvāṇa does not exist? Would we not have wasted our time? There are people who ask, “Does nirvāṇa exist or not? Is nirvāṇa a reality or is it simply an idea, a wish, or the imagination of people who suffer and want to find a place they believe is free from suffering?”
In the teachings of Buddhism, nirvāṇa transcends being and nonbeing. Nirvāṇa is not being, but it is also not nonbeing. So doubt, in this case, is not appropriate—as it is in the case of God or heaven. The Buddhist tradition itself teaches that to say that “nirvāṇa is” is not correct because nirvāṇa transcends the idea of being. It is also incorrect to say that “nirvāṇa is not,” because nirvāṇa also transcends the idea of nonbeing. Is and is not cannot describe nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa is neither being nor nonbeing. If we existed and nirvāṇa also existed, something existing would be going towards something else which exists. If we existed, but nirvāṇa did not exist, then something existing would be going towards something which does not exist. In this case, wouldn’t it be a waste of time? If you are business-minded then you will think, “Only if I know that nirvāṇa really exists will I invest in the practice, because if after I have practiced, nirvāṇa turns out not to exist, I will incur a loss.” But right from the start you have to understand that nirvāṇa is the absence of the ideas of being and nonbeing. If we expect nirvāṇa to exist, we make a mistake right from the beginning.
The German theologist Paul Tillich wrote in one of his books that “God is the ground of being.” All existing things—rivers, mountains, plants, minerals, animals, people, time, and space—belong to the category of being. But from the point of view of the Middle Way, the idea of being can only be born from the idea of nonbeing. Being is the opposite of nonbeing. The difference between being and nonbeing is like the difference between left and right. If there is being, there must be nonbeing. If nonbeing is not, how can there be being? So the question is, “If God is the ground of being, what is the ground of nonbeing?” Is God the ground of everything, or just the half which is being and not the other half which is nonbeing? Even on the level of language, “God is the ground of being” cannot be correct. Maybe in the future a Christian theologian will declare: “God is the ground of being and nonbeing.” How can the concept of being stand without the concept of nonbeing? How can the concept of right stand without the concept of left?
