Interbeing

“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. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot 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 the 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. And 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 we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper 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. You 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. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You 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 only 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.” 

- Hanh Nhat Thich (1926 - )

Quoted from Sourcebook of the World's Religions

Ring of Brodgar, Stenness

"There, on a little hill near to the lake, in a tomb, was found the bones of a man, which indeed were connected together, in length fourteen feet as the author affirmed, and money was found under the head of the dead man; and indeed I viewed the tomb...There at the lake are stones high and broad, in height equal to a spear, and in an equal circle of half a mile."

- Jo Ben (c.16th Century)

 Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum

Simplicities of Natural Laws

“The simplicities of natural laws 

arise through the complexities

of the language we use 

for their expression.” 

- Eugene Wigner

(1902-1995)

Matter is But a Shadow

“...the supreme quality of beauty being 

a light from some other world is the idea ... 

... that the matter is but a shadow, 

the reality of which it is but the symbol..” 

- James Joyce

(1882 - 1941)

Becoming Never Ends in Being

“All mortals, being in the process of coming-to-be

and passing away, appear as phantoms 

and uncertain apparitions of themselves.

No one can step twice into the same stream, 

nor touch a living object twice in the same condition.

In swift and repeated change, 

things disperse and gather again; 

not in temporal succession, 

but in substance only they come together 

and flow away, approach and depart.

So it is that becoming never ends in being.” 

- Heraclitus

(c. 540 - c. 480 BCE) 

A Faculty Superior to Reason

“You ask, how can we know the Infinite?

I answer, not by reason.

It is the office of reason 

to distinguish and define. 

The infinite, therefore, cannot be 

ranked among its objects. 

You can only apprehend the

 infinite by a faculty superior to reason,

by entering into a state in which 

you are your finite self no longer,

in which the divine essence 

is communicated to you. 

This is ecstasy. 

It is the liberation of your mind 

from its finite consciousness. 

Like can only apprehend like; 

when you thus cease to be finite,

you become one with the infinite.

In the reduction of your 

soul to its simplest self,

its divine essence, 

you realize this union -  this identity.” 

— P. D. Ouspensky

(1878 - 1947)

Pondering Reality

“Perhaps the world was actually different

from the one I had begun to perceive.

Every man who had ever lived became a

contributor to the evolution of the earth,

since his observations were a part of its growth.

The world was thus a place entirely constructed

from thought, ever changing, constantly

renewing itself through the process of

mankind’s pondering its reality for themselves.”

— James Cowan (1942 - )

A Mapmaker’s Dream