Review: reflecting to see clearly that nothing is ours

Once we have realised this, we have taken a long step on the path of practice. The first and foremost thing is still property: no “my house”, “my car”, “my money”... Otherwise we are still standing outside the door of the Way, without wisdom.

Next is affection. Someone jokes, “I accept that nothing is mine, not even the house or the money, but my wife is mine; she can't belong to the neighbour.” In truth, she too only seems to be ours and is not. In past lives these two people sowed kindness and owed debts to each other, so that in this life they meet again as husband and wife. Truly, the love between husband and wife is only karma, only conditions coming together, and at times it turns into hatred, loathing, resentment, betrayal... When the conditions and debts are exhausted, the love is finished. So affection may look intense, but it is not stable.

The most terrible bond, married love, is in reality also only temporary, precarious and easily changed. We have heard far too many stories of adultery, divorce, or one person dying and leaving the other behind. So is there anything that is surely ours? Nothing at all.

There is an amusing story:

At a seminar, a doctor told the guests, “The food you eat every day can cause illness. For example, pickled bamboo shoots cause back pain, fizzy drinks harm the stomach and bones and can even cause cancer, sweet cakes cause diabetes...” After giving many examples, he asked everyone to add more examples of things that, once eaten, make us suffer greatly. An eighty-year-old man stood up and said, “Doctor, it is the wedding cake. Eat it once and suffer for a lifetime.” The joke means that the affection we regard as sacred and deep, the kind that stirs the heart, is in truth precarious and troublesome; it seems ours, but it is not ours.

Or take the love between parents and children. The law acknowledges, and moral tradition acknowledges, that children belong to their parents. By blood it is the same: clearly the child carries the parents' genes. We often think that a child we have given birth to is certainly ours, and so we want to build their life, outlook and career according to our wishes. But in truth the child is only a being who has been reborn from somewhere else. Some condition arranged for the child to be reborn into a family and become their child, but the child is not the private possession of the father and mother. Concretely, a child's temperament is quite independent of the parents'. The ancients said, “Parents give birth to the child, Heaven gives birth to the nature.” The parents like the two-stringed fiddle and the bamboo flute while the child is mad about football; the parents like to row a boat on the river and gaze at sky and earth while the child is addicted to racing big-engine motorbikes... As the child grows up, they develop quite independent tendencies, because they do not belong to their parents; they were simply reborn into this family because of conditions and mutual obligations.

Two kinds of beings are reborn into a family. The first are beings with a connection to them; this kind includes good and bad, talented and untalented, better and worse. The second are devas from the heavenly realms who, moved by the hearts of the father and mother, are willing to be reborn as their child.

There was a married couple whose child was born disabled, and they were in great sorrow. They went to the temple to pray and asked the abbot to pray for them so that they might have a healthy, intelligent, capable, successful child... in other words, they wanted to “design” a child. The monk said, “If you ask patiently, then when the conditions are complete, a being will be reborn to you, but its temperament will be very independent of its parents', and whether it is good or bad, talented or not, cannot be guaranteed. If you want a heavenly being from the deva realms to be reborn into your family, you must practise and make vows every day for many years... Then the heavenly beings look down, are softened, and are willing to be reborn as your child. In that case the child born will be an extraordinary person, honoured and glorious.”

And to practise so that a deva from the heavens is moved to be reborn here, the parents must be diligent and energetic, follow a strictly vegetarian diet, make merit, bow to the Buddha, be generous and give, and help others and the world with their whole hearts... for many years before they can touch Heaven's heart; it is not at all simple. Ordinarily we cannot be sure whether a child who is born will be good or bad, because the child is ours, yet not ours; it is only an equal being temporarily reborn into the family. So a person with wisdom, looking at the child they cherish, love, feed and teach, still understands very deeply that in truth nothing is theirs.

And what about honour and reputation: are they ours? Take General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the strategic commander who made possible the victory at Điện Biên Phủ, which resounded across the five continents and shook the globe. It helped liberate the country and put an end to the French presence in Vietnam after more than 80 years of colonial rule. His great service and historic achievements remain forever in the memory of the whole Vietnamese people and of friends abroad.

But the General was a man of wisdom, and he may well have thought: he was the commander who received his orders from Uncle Hồ; to win that victory, the blood of countless heroes and martyrs had soaked the entire Điện Biên Phủ valley. How many people hauled the artillery up the high mountains, how many lost parts of their bodies, how many died buried in obscurity and no one remembers them any more... They fell before they could enjoy the brilliant glory of victory day. He understood that the achievement and the honour were not his alone, but belonged to countless people, some who had fallen and some who were still alive, some named and some not. Perhaps this is why the General lives on in the hearts of the people: he did not cling to fame.

Many other things in life are the same. So when praised, a person without wisdom claims all the credit for themselves: “It was because of me that the work turned out like this, that the locality gained such a good name.” But a wise person clearly sees that the honour they are enjoying is the labour of many people behind them, who may simply not yet have had the chance to be named.

Finally, the thing closest to us is the body. Rain pours water into the rivers and the deep underground streams for us to drink, rice grows in the fields into grains for us to eat, the atmosphere surrounding the earth lets us breathe... None of it is ours, yet it temporarily comes together as the conditions that make up our body. In truth, the body is not ours.

So, when we investigate, what is ours? Nothing at all!

With all our resolve, all our subtlety and depth, all our wisdom, let us investigate this. And we must investigate it clearly; do not say “This house is not mine, this body is not mine”... like a machine, without thorough understanding. Because even if we can say it, if our mind is not steeped in it we will not be able to live that way: whenever something happens we will again be troubled, petty and create karma as usual. We resolve to investigate each thing, one by one, until it breaks open, so that for the rest of our life, while still fulfilling all our duties, our heart is spacious and at ease, our ethics rises higher day by day and our meditation practice grows day by day, all thanks to the merit of seeing nothing as ours.

Whoever often sees clearly “it seems mine, but it is not mine” is truly a child of the Buddha and has made great progress on the path of practice. Whoever often reminds themselves of this mantra, “It seems mine, but it is not mine,” is both loved by the devas and plants very deep good seeds of awakening in their own mind. When we see very clearly that truly nothing is ours any more, we are on the verge of entering the stream of the noble ones.