Suppose we speak of the death of a cloud. You look up in the sky and don’t see your beloved cloud anymore, and you cry, “O my beloved cloud, you are no longer there. How can I survive without you?” And you weep. You are thinking of the cloud as having passed from being into nonbeing, from existence into nonexistence. But the truth is, it’s impossible for a cloud to die. To die means that from something, you suddenly become nothing at all. To die means that from someone, you suddenly become no one. But we’ve seen that this is not the case. That’s why, when we celebrate someone’s birthday,
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