Book Review : Old Path White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh

This extraordinary book on the life of Buddha takes us back to, if one may say, our own lives lived with Buddha. You cannot read this book like a novel, this is life itself.


Like a gentle walk in the forest, with no particular destination, stopping by the tiny grass flowers, or sharing a moment with the wild geese flying above your head.. one stops - stunned by the beauty and simplicity - of Buddha's words. It shatters the common misconception about buddhism and Buddha and of course, the very existence.


If one is courageous enough to walk with the buddha, not like a shadow, but as a living being throbbing with life, his companion, aware and with open heart, one can bask in this light without any effort. Each chapter opens up like a new flower in the sunlight, spreading its fragrance.


A few lines from the book:


He smiled, and looked up at a pippala leaf imprinted against the blue sky, its tail blowing back and forth as if calling him. Looking deeply at the leaf, he saw clearly the presence of the sun and stars—without the sun, without light and warmth, the leaf could not exist. This was like this, be cause that was like that. He also saw in the leaf the presence of clouds—without clouds there could be no rain, and without rain the leaf could not be. He saw the earth, time, space, and mind—all were present in the leaf. In fact, at that very moment, the entire universe existed in that leaf. The reality of the leaf was a wondrous miracle.
(- from Chapter 17 - Pipala Leaf)


This book is a treasure to those who want to touch the very core of their being.

About the Author:

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He worked for reconciliation between North and South Vietnam; his efforts moved Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He now lives in exile in Plum Village, a small community in France where he teaches, writes, gardens, and works to help refugees worldwide.

What is death? - JK, Ramakrishna, Osho on Death.

The topic of death has been literally considered as "deadly" for centuries. It's been a taboo ever since humans saw the first death. And for sure this idea is not going to change so easily.
Death should be viewed as a simple, natural process unless someone dies in a freak accident. It's my feeling.  And it's been said by the masters that anyone who is living a consious life will never die abrubtly in a ungraceful way!, 
Also even a birth of a baby is looked like a death itself. It's coming out a of life in the womb, the life is no more there. the baby is entereing into a new form of life. That's why death is almost considered a birth.
By a death, only the body dies off. Not the soul. The soul enters into a new state.

My favorite masters talk about this topic with the same core meaning but from different dimensions. You'll love reading it. Please find them below!

"What is death?" This is a question for the young and for the old, so please put it to yourself. Is death merely the ending of the physical organism? Is that what we are afraid of? Is it the body that we want to continue? Or is it some other form of continuance that we crave? We all realize that the body, the physical entity wears out through use, through various pressures, influences, conflicts, urges, demands, sorrows. Some would probably like it if the body could be made to continue for 150 years or more, and perhaps the doctors and scientists together will ultimately find some way of prolonging the agony in which most of us live. But sooner or later the body dies, the physical organism comes to an end. Like any machine, it eventually wears out.

For most of us, death is something much deeper than the ending of the body, and all religions promise some kind of life beyond death. We crave a continuity, we want to be assured that something continues when the body dies. We hope that the psyche, the `me, - the `me' which has experienced, struggled, acquired, learned, suffered, enjoyed; the `me' which in the West is called the soul, and by another name in the East - will continue.

So what we are concerned with is continuity, not death. We do not want to know what death is; we do not want to know the extraordinary miracle, the beauty, the depth, the vastness of death. We don't want to inquire into that something which we don't know. All we want is to continue. We say, "I who have lived for forty, sixty, eighty years; I who have a house, a family, children and grandchildren; I who have gone to the office day after day for so many years; I who have had quarrels, sexual appetites - I want to go on living". That is all we are concerned with. We know that there is death, that the ending of the physical body is inevitable, so we say, "I must feel assured of the continuity of myself after death". So we have beliefs, dogmas, resurrection, reincarnation - a thousand ways of escaping from the reality of death; and when we have a war, we put up crosses for the poor chaps who have been killed off. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia.- JK

Ramakrishna paramahamsa:

The body was born and it will die. But for the soul there is no death. It is like the betel-nut. When the nut is ripe it does not stick to the shell. But when it is green it is difficult to separate it from the shell. After realizing God, one does not identify oneself any more with the body. Then one knows that body and soul are two different things.

Osho On death:

Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon – the tide and ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries.

Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale.
And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is. – Osho