No birth - no death. Transformation of a leaf

[elisabethw]

One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I stopped. Looking closely, I saw that the leaf was not really dead; it was merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, "You are just pretending." Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including the leaf I almost stepped on. The Buddha said, "When conditions are sufficient, the body reveals itself, and we say the body is. When conditions are not sufficient, the body cannot be perceived by us, and we say the body is not." The day of our so-called death is a day of our continuation in many other forms. Touching this truth is a deep practice, and brings us relief from our deepest fears.