What is Interbeing?
Wisdom teachers have long understood that the entire cosmos is a web of Interbeing, where all beings are interconnected, interdependent, and constantly co-created. Interbeing encompasses our relationships, our collective religious and spiritual heritage, humanity, creation, and the cosmos. It includes the suffering of the planet, the wounds of the soul, and the violence from religious superiority, national self-interest, poverty, homelessness, starvation, and war. Interbeing is a fundamental attribute of consciousness
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There is no permanent entity within us, there is only a stream of being. There is always a lot of input and output. The input and the output happen in every second, and we should learn how to look at life as streams of being, and not as separate entities. ...looking into a flower, you can see that the flower is made of many elements that we can call non-flower elements. When you touch the flower, you touch the cloud. You cannot remove the cloud from the flower, because if you could remove the cloud from the flower, the flower would collapse right away. You don’t have to be a poet in order to see a cloud floating in the flower, but you know very well that without the clouds there would be no rain and no water for the flower to grow. So cloud is part of flower, and if you send the element cloud back to the sky, there will be no flower. Cloud is a non-flower element. And the sunshine…you can touch the sunshine here. If you send back the element sunshine, the flower will vanish. And sunshine is another non-flower element. And earth, and gardener…if you continue, you will see a multitude of non-flower elements in the flower. In fact, a flower is made only with non-flower elements. It does not have a separate self. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to “inter-be” with everything else that is called non-flower. That is what we call inter-being. You cannot be, you can only inter-be. The word inter-be can reveal more of the reality than the word “to be”. You cannot be by yourself alone, you have to inter-be with everything else. So the true nature of the flower is the nature of inter-being... A flower is empty only of a separate self, but a flower is full of everything else. The whole cosmos can be seen, can be identified, can be touched, in one flower. ...So you are of the same nature as a flower...
Interbeing involves living with an elevated awareness of reality, recognizing that human existence is intertwined with all life. It is stepping into a circle of continuous outpouring of Love, which is our true nature. Richard Rohr describes God as "a process rather than a clear name or idea, a communion, Interbeing itself and never an isolated deity that can be captured by our mind" (Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self). Julian of Norwich expresses this by saying, "Greatly are we to rejoice that God dwells in our souls, and more greatly are we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God."
Interbeing means we cannot exist in isolation; we can only inter-be. Healing occurs in relationships, and love and understanding are deeply connected. To love is to fully understand another's suffering, and this understanding is the greatest gift we can offer. Accepting others as they are allows for transformation.
Divine Love reveals Ultimate Reality as interabiding oneness, embodying Lover, Beloved, and Love. This dynamic reality (Trinity) is pure relationality, where the soul understands itself as radical relatedness. Love is about abiding in one another, achieving complete unity. Jesus expresses this in John 15:4 and John 17:21-23, emphasizing the deep interconnectedness of all beings.
Our presence brings forth the full presence of life and the environment. Mind and body are not separate but interdependent, as Thich Nhat Hanh explains. Understanding the nature of our body and mind reveals their intrinsic inter-being.
Our goal is to live in harmony with the land, all vegetation and animals, and our fellow human beings. When we are in harmony with each other, we are in harmony with the earth. The happiness and suffering of all beings are shared, and as practitioners, we recognize our part in the whole of human civilization. We are children of the Earth, inseparable from the soil, forests, rivers, and sky, sharing the same destiny.
Our full presence brings about the full presence of life, of the environment. What I would like to say here is that our mind and our body inter-are, they do not exist separately as two entities. The first fact we would like to make is to look deeply into the nature of our body and of our mind. We’ll find out that their nature is the nature of inter-being. The mind cannot be there without body and the body cannot be there without mind… —Thich Nhat Hahn
Close Synonyms for Interbeing
Trinity
I and the Father are One - Christ Jesus
Oneing - Julian of Norwich
Ek Ong Kar (Sikh & Hindu) The Creator and the Creation are One
Wahdat al-Wujud (Sufism) Unity of Being
Univocity of Being (John Duns Scotus; Christian theologian)
Indra's Net (Hinduism and Buddhism)
Wen De Ya Ho (Indigenous Spirituality) I am of the Great Spirit
Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh (Sikh) The beloved community belongs to divine Oneness, and so does all that it achieves.
It is our sincere aspiration to live in harmony with this land, with all the vegetation and animals living here, and with all our brothers and sisters with whom we live and practice. When we are in harmony with each other, we are also in harmony with the land, with the plants and animals. We see our close relationship with every person and every species. The happiness and suffering of all humans and all other species is our own happiness and suffering. We inter-are. As practitioners we see we are part of and not separate from the whole of human civilization. As human beings we see that we are children of the Earth and not separate from the soil, the forests, rivers and sky. We share the same destiny. —Thich Nhat Hahn