Cycles

“A drop of rain falling on the ground disappears in no time at all. But it is still there somehow; even if it is absorbed into the soil, it’s still there in another form.  If it evaporates, it’s still there in the air.  It’s become vapor; you don’t see the drop of rain, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer there.  A cloud can never die.  A cloud can become rain or snow or ice, but a cloud cannot become nothing.  To die means from something we become nothing, from being we pass into non-being.  That is our idea of death.  But meditation helps us to touch our true nature of no-birth and no-death.  Before the cloud manifests as a cloud, the cloud has been water vapor, has been the ocean.  So it has not come from non-being into being.  Our notion of birth is just a notion.  Our notion of death is just a notion.”  
- Thich Nhat Hanh