Thich Nhat Hanh on dying

"The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon" a memorable phrase from Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, an exile monk living in Plum village, France. Reading several of his books, I found Thich to be poetic and literary in his expressions with Buddhism as its core philosophy. Please click here to his Plum Village website for more information.

"When you sit close to a person dying talk to them of happy experiences in their life. Touch seeds of happiness in them.
The monks asked Anathapindika to look at his feelings and perceptions. “I am life without boundaries, this body is a residue.”
Help the dying person not to cling to his or her body. If there is regret, help them to see they are not their feelings. When conditions are manifested this body manifests and when not, it goes. The nature of this body is not birth, death, coming or going – not hurt by notion of being or non-being. I am free from birth or death. That practice helps me.
Anathapindika cried. Ananda asked, “why are you crying?”
“No, I don’t regret anything,” Anathapindika replied.
“Why are you crying?” asked Ananda.
“I cry because I am so moved by such a wonderful practice as today,” Anathapindika said.
“We monastics receive this every day,” said Ananda.
“There are those amongst us lay people who still need this, please tell the Lord Buddha this.”
Ananda promised to tell the Buddha, and Anathapindika died smiling peacefully.
Thich Nhat Hanh gave an illustration with a box of matches.
Holding up an unlit match, he said, “there is flame, but the conditions to manifest it are not here now.”
Then he lit the match and blew it out.
He said when the conditions were right (the conditions being his hand striking the match to the matchbox), the flame became. And when the conditions were not right, the flame was extinguished."

- Thich Nhat Hanh.