|
Interbeing - by Thich Nhat Hanh |
|
|
|
INTERBEING - by Thich Nhat Hanh
in his book, “Peace is Every Step”
“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there
is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will
be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we
cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If
the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we
can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word
that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix
“inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more
deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest
cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we
know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and
the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the
logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed
into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without
his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also
in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too.
When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this
sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in
this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we
look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in
here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with
this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here –
time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the
sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with
this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in
the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves
alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper
is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its
source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that
this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can
be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of
paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up lonely of
“non-paper” elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to
their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper
elements, like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no
paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the
universe in it.”
|
Senes Peer Review