Page 80 - Because I know, I can let go

If you hold to that kind of an understanding, entertain that sort of belief, then prepare
yourself to hear something new.

We say that nibbāna is available right here and now, that there’s no need to die to attain

to it.

Because education is incomplete it’s taught that nibbāna is the death of a Buddha, or
of an Arahant. It’s still described as a kind of destruction, an extinction, hence becomes

something dull, flat, devoid of flavor, something empty, meaningless, an extinction.

Now, let’s make a new, a fresh, understanding, a new belief, don’t be a Buddhist who
doesn’t understand Buddhism, because if we’re to understand Buddhism we’ll have to

understand nibbāna.

If we use worldly language here, look at this from the materialistic viewpoint, then the
Buddha’s nibbāna was about him dying and then getting incinerated so that only bones

remained. This is the worldly understanding of nibbāna as expressed in worldly terms, as
seen through worldly eyes.

Now, if we use the language of Dhamma then the Buddha still lives, and doesn’t know

death - as the man himself put it: one who sees the Dhamma sees me, one who sees me
sees the Dhamma, because in Dhamma language the Buddha is the Dhamma, so he, in
a sense, is still here.

Everything can be looked at like this, for instance, if we use worldly language then there’s a
place called Hell under the ground somewhere and there’s a Heaven in the sky, and we go
to one or the other after death. But if we use Dhamma language then both Heaven and
Hell are available to us right here and now, because both occur in the mind.

This is the difference, understand which language we’re using when we mention life: life
in the usual understanding concerns an organism being born from the mother’s womb,

80 Because I Know...