Ajahn Sumedho

 There's the nibbana of non-grasping while the bodies still living, and then there's the parinibbana the final relinquishment; there's nothing to get reborn. You see, when people die still unenlightened they desire to be reborn again. If you identify with the body, then you try to hold onto it as long as possible or there's the desire to be reborn into something else. You can see it just in a day here when you want something to stimulate you - that's rebirth actually. There's all this desire that will always take us to doing something, absorbing into something else. Well, apply that to when the body is dying. If you're frightened of death, and you've not really contemplated life and you're still attached to all these views about yourself, then there's a lot of desire going to come for rebirth. What you're attached to you tend to absorb into - the things you're used to, what you like, what you find attractive. You tend to go for that all the time; seeking people that you like, or seeking the place or the things, the thoughts and memories which are familiar. People will even hang on to misery and pain, because they're used to it. 

There's the conditioned, the Unconditioned; the created, the uncreated. You can't conceive uncreatedness. You have a word but there's no perception for it. There's no kind of symbol that one could grasp. You could have a doctrine about it, so religion tends to make these metaphysical doctrines that people believe in.

But if you go to the actual feeling of insecurity, you find it peaceful. It's a kind of paradox: when you are reacting to that feeling, you get worried and frightened by it; but as you open to that uncertain, insecure feeling that you have and the violent reaction to it, and bear with it - you will find its peacefulness. You will find a sense of peace with yourself.

What is deathless here and now, or the unconditioned? How do you describe the deathless, what words can describe it?  All conditions are impermanent.  What is death in the here and now? The death of the body is the end of what was born. Birth conditions death. Every condition, physical, mental, psychic, subtle, emotional - all forms begin and end.  All conditions are impermanent. What we experience is change. Is death the ending of what began? 

when you tune in you observe the way things are. reflecting on what is. we try to control what is going on. emotional experience -as we observe the emotional reality we learn to accept things as they are. we become our emotions when we control them. Sound of Silence a natural sound that you can rest in, it is a uncreated sound, the unmovable center of being. There is no me - zero, nothing. starting from zero, what arises? If I trust in the silence it sustains itself. From there I can become aware of the conditions that arise. The conditional is always arising and falling, the unconditional sustains itself. Death is it the passing of the conditional into the unconditional or simply the sustenance of the unconditioned. The stillness receives. It does not pick or choose. In the stillness consciousness arises. If you trust in the stillness, be awareness, then your nature is receptiveness, acceptance of the conditional without judgement. To create karma you have to grasp out of ignorance. There is no death, other than the conditions, which are born and die. When a condition dies, what is left peace. Mindfulness is deathlessness. Deathless can only be described from the conditioned experience. There is not a language to describe it. Where does everything begin? The point ZERO, out of the emptiness, the empty state of being. One does not get "it", something, from mindfulness. If are getting it, you are not doing it right. Once you begin to identify with the experience, then the conditional arises. Awareness is the receptacle for all conditioned phenomenon. The death of conditions is emptiness, nothing. But it is not annihilation. It is the natural state, the uncreated state. There is nothing to fear. To be awareness is to be nobody, no sense of being, but it is intelligent, discerning, observant. 


Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[......] these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.