No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

A series of short, profound, beautifully written, and inspiring pieces of prose that together illustrate how to live a rich and worthwhile life, while living in harmony with the world around us. From the internationally renowned and prolific Zen Master, the late Thich Nhất Hạnh (1926-2022), or “Thay”, the name by which the author is known to his followers (translation: “teacher”).

NO DEATH, NO FEAR is a primer on the religion/philosopy of Buddhism, valuable to both beginning and experienced practitioners, from one who lived up to the its beliefs for most of his long life. And whether you can adjust your own thinking and outlook to accept his tenets winds up being beside the point. I promise you that you will WANT to think as show more Thay does, you will WANT to believe what he believes, and you will WANT to live the way he lived.

In fewer than 200 pages, “Thay” explains how each one of us can recognize and internalize a bigger picture of life in this world, not just in the present moment, but also in connection with the past and future. As the book title suggests, he argues that we can all live without fear, guilt, anxiety, and sadness — if we are able to see THE larger truth that everything is connected and each of us is a continuing part of our universe at all times. Even after death.

The language is beautiful. Each passage is a nugget that merits deep reflection. If I had to choose a favorite part, it would be the last chapter, “Accompanying the Dying”, in which Thay provides specific and concrete ways to comfort someone who is the final days or hours of life. The book would make worthwhile reading for this section alone.

My only criticism of the book is that because it appears to be a collection of Thai’s thoughts and teachings, it begins to feel a bit repetitious reading it as a whole. Much of his wisdom is repeated multiple times. It might be better to read the book slowly, over a long period, taking the time to consider each passage individually. Perhaps with a partner to enrich discussion.

Bottom Line: if only everyone read this book and followed Thay’s path, the world would be in a much better place than it is. show less

A series of short, profound, beautifully written, and inspiring pieces of prose that together illustrate how to live a rich and worthwhile life, while living in harmony with the world around us. From the internationally renowned and prolific Zen Master, the late Thich Nhất Hạnh (1926-2022), or “Thay”, the name by which the author is known to his followers (translation: “teacher”).

NO DEATH, NO FEAR is a primer on the religion/philosopy of Buddhism, valuable to both beginning and experienced practitioners, from one who lived up to the its beliefs for most of his long life. And whether you can adjust your own thinking and outlook to accept his tenets winds up being beside the point. I promise you that you will WANT to think as show more Thay does, you will WANT to believe what he believes, and you will WANT to live the way he lived.

In fewer than 200 pages, “Thay” explains how each one of us can recognize and internalize a bigger picture of life in this world, not just in the present moment, but also in connection with the past and future. As the book title suggests, he argues that we can all live without fear, guilt, anxiety, and sadness — if we are able to see THE larger truth that everything is connected and each of us is a continuing part of our universe at all times. Even after death.

The language is beautiful. Each passage is a nugget that merits deep reflection. If I had to choose a favorite part, it would be the last chapter, “Accompanying the Dying”, in which Thay provides specific and concrete ways to comfort someone who is the final days or hours of life. The book would make worthwhile reading for this section alone.

My only criticism of the book is that because it appears to be a collection of Thai’s thoughts and teachings, it begins to feel a bit repetitious reading it as a whole. Much of his wisdom is repeated multiple times. It might be better to read the book slowly, over a long period, taking the time to consider each passage individually. Perhaps with a partner to enrich discussion.

Bottom Line: if only everyone read this book and followed Thay’s path, the world would be in a much better place than it is. show less

I started reading this after Mom died trying to find a way to help cope with the grief. I read it slowly at first because it does talk a lot about death. But it goes beyond that and talks about impermanence, no self, and nirvana, basic Buddhist concepts. My favorite analogies were about the wave and the water, the candle, and the clouds.

I love and admire Thay, and the essential teaching in this book is a powerful one. In fact, it's a life changer if one can apply the philosophy into regular practice. However, it's a point that is made repeatedly, chapter after chapter, often using the same two or three recurrent metaphors. At 208 pages, I felt the message could've been conveyed in a book half the length...or perhaps the book could have been designed to be read in short, devotional-length chapters. Just the musings of someone who read the book quickly over 2-3 days and felt I was treading over the same content.

Of course, there's the old story about the preacher who gave the same sermon four Sundays in a row, and when questioned by a concerned parishioner, he replied, show more "Glad you noticed. Once everyone starts putting the sermon into practice, I'll stop giving it." Perhaps that's what Thay is gently offering up here. After all, it's a lesson that can change how we approach the biggest challenge we will ever face: accepting the inevitability of our - and our loved ones' - impermanence. show less

Enjoyable, short, targeted, and circularly written. This didn't speak to me as a whole -- lots of existing ideas repackaged -- but there were three areas of particular meaning to me:

1) A parallel between waves being birthed, living, having concerns about their role and where they were going, and dying -- with a change in perspective offered that if we remember the underlying waterness of them all, then that is enough.

2) Burning a candle so far that is gone. This does not mean that the candle is entirely gone. It has just changed in manifestation. Again, we can change perspective away from a time-based perspective into a horizontal, effects-on-other-things perspective, and we see that it became energy, light, and heat, and we could show more measure these effects going out arbitrary distances with the right equipment and science.

3) A guided meditation (which I am reproducing in this listing within the set of quotations from the book) that matches thoughts to breaths in clear patterns and forces attention on the unavoidability of old age, sickness, and death. We leave behind only the consequences behind our actions, which we cannot escape and which will persist despite old age, sickness, and death.

Sometimes I am bothered by the loose, metaphor-based philosophical arguments of Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh; they seem to rely a bit too heavily on rhetorical sleight of hand. But I am also taken by them, because I recognize that looking for perfect logical consistency when the teaching is designed to illustrate a bigger, impossible concept entirely misses the point, and because the nuggets of wisdom at the core do speak to me. show less

This book is less for a person seeking comfort and transformation from grief and more for the person who wishes to contemplate what it means to die. Nhat Hahn is a Buddhist monk and brings a spiritual focus to the journey of death so often full of fear and uncertainty.

Thich Nhat Hanh has a gentle, compassionate spirituality. The book is full of a vision that looks deeply into the nature birth and death and offers a comforting, indeed invigorating, view of this life in which we find ourselves. There are beautiful stories culled from a lifetime of helping his fellow human beings. You do not have to be a Buddhist or nearing a death to find sage advice on how to live offered in simple, easily digestible stories.