Interbeing

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If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in the sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain, without rain, the trees cannot grow, 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 the 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 the 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 papers.

And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread and therefore the wheat became his bread is also in the sheet of the 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 would not be able to exist at all.

Looking even deeper, we can see that we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at the sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. You mind is in here and mine too. 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, earth, rain, minerals in the soil, sunshine the cloud, river, the heat.

Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why we think that 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 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 the sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

But the Heart Sutra seems to say the opposite. Avalokitesvara told us that things are empty.

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