Date: 08/16/2025 08/17/2025
Location: Star River Meditation Center
Teacher: Yunquan Huang
Dharma Knowledge
The True Meaning of Birth and Death
In the profound view of the Dharma, birth and death are not simply the beginning and end of physical life. Nor are they merely biological events. What the Buddha called “birth and death” refers to the ongoing cycle of becoming, driven by ignorance, craving, and attachment—a cycle that spans lifetimes. To “transcend birth and death” is not to stop breathing or to seek nothingness, but to awaken from the delusion that binds us to suffering. Without understanding the true nature of birth and death, we cannot grasp the essence of liberation.
To ordinary people, birth seems like a beginning and death like an end. But from the Dharma’s perspective, both are transient expressions of dependent origination. Birth is the temporary appearance of body and mind due to countless causes and conditions. Death is the dissolution of those conditions. There is no fixed “self” that is born or dies—only processes, patterns, and phenomena arising and passing away. What we call “I” is but a convention, not an unchanging entity moving through time.
True “birth and death,” as the Buddha taught, is the mind’s attachment—to the body, to identity, to feelings, to desires, to status, to our stories of self. This attachment is what drives karma, leading us to take birth again and again, in this life and in lives to come. Even while alive, as long as we cling, we are trapped in the cycle of becoming—constantly reacting, desiring, fearing, resisting. Thus, the Buddha said: “Defilements are birth and death.”
To transcend birth and death is not to disappear or to reject life. It is to see through the illusion of permanence and self, to uproot the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion. When we see clearly the impermanence and selfless nature of all phenomena, we stop being bound by them. We are no longer moved by gain and loss, success and failure. We may still live in the world, but we are no longer of the world.
With this view, death itself takes on a new meaning. For the unawakened, death is fearful—a loss, an unknown. For the awakened or those on the path, death is a transition, a moment of truth, a release from conditioned existence. To face death with awareness is to meet it not with panic, but with calm. To prepare for death with Dharma is to die with clarity and dignity.
The truth of birth and death also transforms how we live. Knowing that life is impermanent and empty of fixed self, we let go of clinging to outcomes. We begin to cherish the present, to act with compassion, and to make peace with uncertainty. We stop seeking a perfect life and start living wisely. Death is no longer an interruption—it becomes part of the whole, a reminder to awaken now.
In summary, the true meaning of birth and death is not about physical existence, but about the state of mind. To be truly born is to awaken. To truly die is to end delusion. When we no longer cling to “I,” when we see through the illusion of self and permanence, we transcend the suffering that comes with becoming and ceasing. We touch the timeless, the unborn, the undying—that which the Buddha called nirvana. This is the path he revealed—not to escape death, but to awaken within it.
