One of the founding principles of my previous production and of my life in general. The self is an illusion. The self is non-existent. Yet paradoxically, it is through the self that I can change the world.
The idea of “Interbeing” – introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh into the North American Buddhist vocabulary – may be viewed as a formulation of the doctrine of “dependant co-arising” in the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta.
In the Heart of Understanding – Thay’s commentary on the Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra – he writes:
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,”…
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