‘Birth and Death Are Nirvana’

Just understand that birth and death itself is nirvana, and you will neither hate one as being birth and death nor cherish the other as being nirvana. Only then can you be free of birth and death.

This present birth and death is the life of Buddha. If you reject it with distaste, you are thereby losing the life of Buddha. If you abide in it, attaching to birth and death, you also lose the life of Buddha. But do not try to gauge it with your mind or speak it with words. When you simply release and forget both your body and your mind and throw yourself into the house of Buddha, then with no strength needed and no thought expended, freed from birth and death, you become Buddha. Then there can be no obstacle in any person’s mind. 

There is an extremely easy way to become Buddha. Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and having pity for those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation—this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it. 

        —translated by Masao Abe and Norman Waddell

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Excerpted from Teachings of the Buddha, edited by Jack Kornfield, originally published in The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, translated by Masao Abe and Norman Waddell.