Page 81 - Because I know, I can let go

then living for so many tens of years until it dies, this is called one life, one lifetime.

Now, if it’s about life in the Dhamma understanding it’s not like that, it’s about thought,
about thinking, about the arising into the mind of one instance of the thought of being ‘me,’

of the ‘me’ who’s like this, like that, which then quenches away: there’s this ‘me’ thought,
then it quenches away, disappears, this is called one ‘life.’ Hence, during the course of
even one day we can be ‘born’ many times. The feeling of being ‘me’ arises once, and is
called a ‘life.’ So, during the course of one day and night we can be ‘born’ many times.

During the course of one month many hundreds of times. During the course of one year,
many thousands of times. Through many, many years there can be many, many tens or
hundreds of thousands of lives. Reckoning lives in this way doesn’t negate the necessity
of us accomplishing the perfections through many tens and hundreds of thousands of

lives in order to attain nibbāna, it’s just that the same words can be understood differently.
Because ‘lives’ in this kind of understanding can happen without anyone having to
physically die many tens and hundreds and thousands of times.

One birth is dukkha. One life is dukkha, Because there’s desire and clinging, there’s a ‘me’
so there’s dukkha. Dukkha arises from clinging, whenever there’s clinging there’s dukkha
every time. The pali texts say that everytime there’s birth there’s dukkha, because birth is
clinging, clinging is birth.

Nibbāna means ‘cool.’ Cool because without the heat of kilesa. Whenever the kilesa are
absent there’s coolness. This is the sort of nibbāna we experience many times. These
are ‘little’ nibbānas, samples of nibbāna, brief touches of nibbāna. Whenever the mind is

without kilesa, is free from defilement, and we’re awake we’ll feel this way, the mind being
free of defilement we’ll be ‘cooled.’ Whenever the kilesa, of whatever sort, arise, there’s
heat, that’s Hell, or the vattasaṇsāra, then it’s hot.

They compare nibbāna with the vattasaṇsāra: When the kilesa arise there’s the vattasaṇsāra,
there’s heat, when the kilesa don’t appear, then we’re free from heat, there’s coolness.
Hence, for just one second, for five, ten minutes, or whatever, when we don’t have the

...I can let go 81