There are two dimensions to life, and we should be able to touch them both. One is like a wave, and we call it the historical dimension. The other is like the water, and we call it the ultimate dimension, or nirvana. We usually touch just the wave, but when we discover how to touch the water, we receive the highest fruit that meditation can offer.
In the historical dimension, we have birth certificates and death certificates. The day your mother passes away, you suffer. If someone sits close to you and shows concern, you feel some relief. This is the world of waves. It is characterized by birth and death, ups and downs, being and nonbeing. A wave has a beginning and an end, but we cannot ascribe these characteristics to water. In the world of water, there is no birth or death, no being or nonbeing, no beginning or end. When we touch the water, we touch reality in its ultimate dimension and are liberated from all of these concepts. If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be with you; you can see that she is there in you, smiling. This is a deep practice and it is also the deepest kind of relief.
One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but it was merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled to the leaf and said, “You are pretending.” Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including the leaf I almost stepped on. The day of our so-called death is a day of our continuation in many other forms.