{"id":6351,"date":"2010-05-31T14:19:49","date_gmt":"2010-05-31T06:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=6351"},"modified":"2010-05-31T15:24:58","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T07:24:58","slug":"rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2010\/05\/rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

It is raining?
\nRaining?
\nRain!<\/p>\n

No \u2018it\u2019.
\nNo \u2018raining\u2019.
\nJust \u2018rain\u2019.<\/p>\n

Because there is no rainer,
\nBecause there is no raining,
\nBecause there is only rain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above is inspired from ‘Beyond the Self: Teachings on the Middle Way’ by Thich Nhat Hanh:
\n<\/span><\/em>
\nAt the center of our grasping and imagining, at the center of all our wrong perceptions is our idea about self. We think there’s something called a ‘self’, that there is a ‘me’ and ‘mine.’ We have the idea that ‘I’ exist, and that there are things that belong to ‘me,’ that are ‘mine.’ But who is this self?<\/p>\n

When we look at a flower and ask, ‘Who is opening?’ we don’t need an ‘I’ which is born, which grows old, and which will die. We think that if there’s birth, there has to be an ‘I’ that is born, if there is aging, there has to be an ‘I’ that grows old, and if there is death, there has to be someone who will die.<\/p>\n

In truth, birth is simply birth, old age is simply old age, death is death; there is no ‘I’ in that. It is only when we are caught in the idea of self that we say there has to be an ‘I’. Does the flower have a soul, a self, within it? Does it need a self in order to be born, to open, and to fade; does it need an ‘I’ in order to exist?<\/p>\n

For there to be rain, there doesn’t have to be an ‘I.’ Rain happens; you don’t have to ask, ‘Who is falling?’ In many languages, we have to say ‘it’ is raining, implying there is a self in the rain? We get used to this way of speaking, that there has to be an action. In English we say, ‘It rains.’ In Vietnamese we say, ‘The sky is raining’ or ‘the wind is blowing,’ we can divide this sentence into two phrases, One is ‘I know,’ the other, ‘the wind is blowing.’ This is truly a strange statement. <\/span><\/p>\n

How can there be wind, you have blowing; without blowing there is no wind, the blowing is part of the wind. Why not just say, ‘the wind’? It’s the same when we say, ‘A cloud is floating in the sky’ or ‘a flower is opening.’ If a cloud is not floating in the sky, then it’s still the water in the river; if a flower is not open, it’s not yet a flower, but a bud. There is also the phrase, ‘I know.’ Do we have to have an ‘I’? Just to say ‘know’ would be enough, we don’t need ‘I’. ‘Know’ is a verb, so it requires a subject, and therefore we have to have the word “I.’ If we wish to say the truth, just to say ‘rain’ or ‘wind’ or ‘cloud’ is enough.<\/p>\n

We’ve become accustomed to the habit of thinking and speaking in terms of a subject, a self. This has been happening for so many past generations. But, unfortunately, this idea that there must be a subject hides the truth from us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is raining? Raining? Rain! No \u2018it\u2019. No \u2018raining\u2019. Just \u2018rain\u2019. Because there is no rainer, Because there is no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[48,199],"class_list":["post-6351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-anatta","tag-self","wpcat-176-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}