old-path-white-clouds-thich-nhat-hanh

If you can see the teaching, you can see the Buddha. If you can see this body but not the teaching, it is of no value at all.”
After a moment of silence, the Buddha asked, “Vakkali, do you understand how impermanent the body is, mine as well as yours?”
“Lord, I see that most clearly. The body is constantly being born, dying, and transforming. I see how feelings are also impermanent,
constantly being born, dying, and transforming. Perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness follow the same law of birth and death.
All are impermanent. Before your visit today, I contemplated deeply on the impermanent nature of the five skandhas. I have seen that there
is nothing in the five rivers of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, or consciousness that contains a separate self.”
“Wonderful, Vakkali! I have faith in you. Nothing in the five skandhas contains a separate self. Open your eyes and look. Where is
Vakkali not present? What is not Vakkali? The wonder of life is everywhere. Vakkali, birth and death cannot touch you. Smile at your
body comprised of the four elements. Smile even at the pain rising and falling in your body.”
Tears glistened in Vakkali’s eyes and he smiled. The Buddha stood up and took his leave. When the Buddha and Ananda were gone,
Vakkali asked his friends to carry him on his bed to Isigili mountain. He said, “How can someone like me die in a room? I want to die on
the mountainside beneath the spacious skies.”
His friends carried him to Isigili. That night the Buddha meditated deep into the night. In the early hours of the morning, he told a number
of bhikkhus he met near his hut, “Go visit Vakkali and tell him there is nothing to fear. His death will be peaceful and blameless. Tell him to
put his heart at rest. I have great faith in him.”
When the bhikkhus found Venerable Vakkali at Isigili, they told him they carried a message from the Buddha. Vakkali said, “Please,
friends, lift me off this bed and place me on the earth. How can I lie on a high bed while receiving the Lord Buddha’s words?”
They did as he asked and then repeated the Buddha’s words. Vakkali joined his palms and said, “Please, brothers, when you return to
the monastery, bow three times to the Buddha on my behalf and tell him that Bhikkhu Vakkali is deathly ill and in terrible pain. Vakkali sees
clearly that the five skandhas are impermanent and without a separate self. Vakkali is no longer bound by the five skandhas. In his last
moments, Vakkali has released all fears and worries.”
The bhikkhus said, “Brother, ease your heart. We will return and bow three times to the Buddha and speak your last words to him.”
The bhikkhus were no sooner out of sight than Bhikkhu Vakkali passed away.
That afternoon the Buddha climbed Isigili with several bhikkhus. The blue sky was cloudless. Only a thin strand of smoke curled up into
the sky from a hut at the foot of the mountain. It drifted for a moment and then vanished. Looking at the vast round sky, the Buddha said,
“Vakkali has been liberated. No delusion or phantom can disturb him now.”
The Buddha again traveled, this time to Nalanda and Vesali. One day, at the Kutagara monastery in the Great Woods, the Buddha told
the bhikkhus, “As living beings, people have to suffer, more or less. However, those who devote themselves to the study and practice of
the Dharma suffer much less than others, because they possess understanding, the fruit of their practice.”
That day it was still very hot, but the Buddha was seated with his bhikkhus in the shade of many beautiful sala trees. He picked up a
small piece of earth, held it between his thumb and forefinger, and asked, “Bhikkhus, if we compare this piece of earth with Gayasisa
mountain, which is larger?”
“Of course, Gayasisa is much larger, Lord.”
“It is like that, 0 Bhikkhus. For those who have arrived at Understanding thanks to their study and practice of the Dharma, their suffering
is almost nothing compared with the suffering of those who are submerged in ignorance. Ignorance magnifies suffering by millions of times.
“Bhikkhus, suppose someone is struck by an arrow. He will feel pain. But if a second arrow strikes him at the very same spot, the pain
will be much more than just doubled. And if a third arrow strikes him at that same spot again, the pain will be a thousand times more
intense. Bhikkhus, ignorance is the second and the third arrow. It intensifies the pain.
“Thanks to understanding, a practitioner can prevent the pain in himself and others from being intensified. When an unpleasant feeling,
physical or mental, arises in him, the wise man does not worry, complain, weep, pound his chest, pull his hair, torture his body and mind, or
faint. He calmly observes his feeling and is aware that it is only a feeling. He knows that he is not the feeling, and he is not caught by the
feeling. Therefore, the pain cannot bind him. When he has a painful physical feeling, he knows that there is a painful physical feeling. He
does not lose his calmness, does not worry, does not fear, and does not complain. Thus the feeling remains a painful physical feeling, and it
is not able to grow and ravage his whole being.
“Bhikkhus, be diligent in your practice of looking deeply so that the fruit of Understanding may arise and you will no longer be bound by
pain. Birth, sickness, old age, and death will also stop bothering you.
“When a bhikkhu is about to pass away, he should dwell in the contemplation of the body, the feelings, the mind, and the objects of
mind. Every position and every act of the body should be placed under mindfulness. Every feeling should also be placed under mindfulness.
The bhikkhu contemplates the nature of impermanence and the nature of interdependence of the body and of the feelings, so that he will not