A Cloud in the Water

Summary

This talk, delivered on the final day of the retreat “Nourishing Happiness in Our Heart” on 17 August 2014, presents a wide-ranging teaching on impermanence, interbeing, and the nature of reality through Buddhist practice and modern scientific parallels. The speaker addresses the Sangha, including children, and uses accessible imagery to explain profound concepts such as no birth and no death, emptiness, and dependent co-arising. A central teaching is the story of the cloud and the water. The speaker explains that when one looks into water, one can see a cloud, and that the water and cloud continue a conversation of mutual presence. This image is used to show that nothing truly disappears; rather, forms transform. The cloud is described as a former life of the water, and the water is invited to “host” the cloud through drinking, breathing, and even urination, until it returns to the sky as vapor and cloud again. This playful explanation is meant to help children understand that their parents are not only outside them but also inside them, as a continuation within their lives. The speaker emphasizes that this is a great insight for family life and practice. The talk then turns to the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths: conventional truth and ultimate truth. On the conventional level, there is birth, death, coming, going, being, and non-being. On the ultimate level, these opposites do not apply. The speaker links this to science, especially the first law of thermodynamics and quantum physics, arguing that modern science also points toward transformation rather than absolute creation or destruction. The French chemist Lavoisier is cited for the principle that nothing is created or destroyed, only transformed. This scientific insight is presented as compatible with the Buddhist understanding of no birth and no death. The speaker explains that right view, as taught by the Buddha to Katayana, is the view free from the notions of being and non-being. A meditation exercise is offered using a timeline with points of birth and death to show how ordinary thinking traps people in dualistic categories. The speaker insists that birth and death, being and non-being, always arise together in conventional thought, but that wisdom can transcend these pairs. The same is said of subject and object, creator and creature, and other dualities. The teaching of dependent co-arising is presented as the Buddha’s “Genesis”: things do not arise independently but only in mutual dependence, like the left and right sides of a sheet of paper. The talk also discusses the Buddhist teaching of mind-only, explaining that the object of perception is shaped by the subject and that deluded perceptions are often projections of fear, anger, and discrimination. Meditation is described as a way to remove these obstacles so that reality can reveal itself more clearly. The speaker uses examples from love and daily life to show how initial perceptions of another person are often distorted by the mind. Another major theme is non-attachment to views. The speaker compares the Dharma to a raft and a finger pointing to the moon: teachings are means, not final truths. This is used to reject dogmatism, fanaticism, and violence in the name of religion. A historical example is given of Buddhist monks in the 11th century fleeing persecution rather than forming an army, preserving the tradition through nonviolence. This is connected to world peace and the need to remove discrimination and fanaticism. The teaching of emptiness is then clarified. Emptiness does not mean non-existence; rather, it means empty of separate self-existence. A glass is empty of tea but not empty of air, and a flower is full of the cosmos because it contains non-flower elements such as sunshine, cloud, soil, time, space, and the gardener. The Heart Sutra’s statement that “everything is empty” is interpreted as meaning empty of a separate self, not empty in the sense of nothingness. This leads back to interbeing: to be is to inter-be with all things. The final sections focus on nirvana as the true nature of reality, described as the removal of all pairs of opposites and the extinction of the flames of fear, anger, and discrimination. The speaker uses the example of a flame to show that it does not come from anywhere or go anywhere in an absolute sense; it manifests when conditions are sufficient and ceases when they are not. This reinforces the teaching of no coming and no going. The same logic is applied to personal identity, such as the relation between an adult and their five-year-old self: one is neither identical nor entirely different from the child. The talk concludes with practical guidance for the retreat participants. The speaker encourages them to continue practicing the Five Mindfulness Trainings, to build local Sanghas, and to maintain mindfulness through sitting meditation, walking meditation, mindful meals, deep relaxation, and Dharma sharing. The audience is reminded that they are the continuation of the Buddha and should keep the light of compassion and insight alive in their communities. The closing song, “No coming, no going,” summarizes the entire teaching: “I hold you close to me, I release you to be so free, because I am in you and you are in me.”