If there never was birth, there will not be an end.
Nirvana is merely the ending of ignorance, and seeing our true
nature of no birth, no death.
The Blessed One replied: My teaching of no-birth and
no-annihilation is not like that of the philosophers, nor is it
like their doctrine of birth and impermanency. That to which the
philosophers ascribe the characteristic of no-birth and
no-annihilation is the self-nature of all things, which causes them
to fall into the dualism of being and non-being. My teaching
transcends the whole conception of being and non-being; it has
nothing to do with birth, abiding and destruction; nor with
existence and non-existence. I teach that the multitudinous-ness of
objects have no reality in themselves but are only seen of the mind
and, therefore, are of the nature of Maya and a dream. I teach the
non-existence of things because they carry no signs of any inherent
self-nature. It is true that in one sense they are seen and
discriminated by the senses as individualized objects; but in
another sense, because of the absence of any characteristic marks
of self-nature, they are not seen but are only imagined. In one
sense they are graspable, but in another sense, they are not
graspable.
~ Lankavatara Sutra
Because of folly they do not understand that all things are like
Maya, like the reflection of the moon in water, that there is no
self-substance to be imagined as an ego-soul and its belongings,
and that all their definite ideas rise from their false
discriminations of what exists only as it is seen of the mind
itself. They do not realize that things have nothing to do with
qualify and qualifying, nor with the course of birth, abiding and
destruction, and instead they assert that they are born of a
creator, of time, of atoms, of some celestial spirit. It is because
the ignorant are given up to discrimination that they move along
with the stream of appearances, but it is not so with the
wise.
~ Lankavatara Sutra
