When we come and see

here also

is the burning house — 

why do people say

“Good to live in”?   Ikkyu

He is saying, “At a funeral a body is burning, and people are standing around the funeral pyre, but nobody is aware that it is not just this body that is burning. It is not an exception, it is the rule. Your body is also going to burn on a funeral pyre.” 

This house is not eternal. This house made of matter is going to collapse any moment. Then why do people say, “Good to live in...to live in this body is good”? Why do people say this, when the body is nothing but a carriage that takes you from the cradle towards the grave?

To live in the body is not good. To be in the body but be as a witness, to know that “It is not me” — that is a great experience. You are discarding the body even while you are alive; you are discarding the mind even while you are alive. So when death comes it cannot take anything from you, you have discarded all that it can take and you have saved the eternal, which it cannot touch.

It is absolutely essential for every intelligent person: before death comes he should become completely clear that he is not the body and he is not the mind; he is only a pure consciousness.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind