We meet ourselves time and time again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

CARL JUNG

17

WE ARE THE STORM

Okay, so this book, or your skateboard, yoga mat, meditation cushion, all the records in your vinyl collection, that sweet A Tribe Called Quest T-shirt you scored on eBay (okay, that I scored on eBay) . . . you are interbeing with all of it. It’s all dependently arising on various causes and conditions that you’re an integral part of.

Thich Nhat Hanh, besides encouraging us to nurture our painful thoughts, emotions, and feelings, also teaches extensively on interbeing and the importance of understanding and seeing it in everyday life. If you’re unfamiliar with Hanh’s interpretation of interbeing (or the Buddhist concept of dependent arising), what I wrote in the previous paragraph may sound like I’m tripping on acid or mushrooms. I assure you, those days are well behind me (though, hey, if that’s your thing, and you’re doing it responsibly, rock on).

In a piece titled “What We Came For,” poet Alison Luterman illuminates interbeing when she writes:

It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten—every piece of fruit—had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before?1

So interbeing essentially means that we’re completely interconnected with, and interdependent upon, every single thing, both seen and unseen in the world, and I mean everything. So, besides this book, you’re also interbeing with the air you breathe, the food you eat, all the pretty little flowers that decorate the entire globe, as well as the baddest of badass storms that lay waste to said flowers on a daily basis. Yes indeed, just like Ron Burgundy, you’re kind of a big deal. (And if you don’t know who Ron Burgundy is, we can’t be friends. Okay, maybe we can be friends, but you’re down two cool points from the start, so go watch Anchorman.)

On a personal/physical level, this interbeing is pretty obvious; our bodies contain our kidneys, heart, lungs, and all the other organs and strange inner workings that rely on one another (or are interbeing with one another) to keep us alive. In addition, there are our five sense receptors—sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing—all of which are interbeing or communicating (mostly via our brains) throughout the day. Understanding this simple view of interbeing on a strictly individual and subjective level is a step, but don’t forget that interbeing includes the sum total of the entire universe, and not just our individual physical selves.

Now I know I just told you a paragraph ago that you’re a pretty big deal, and I assure you, you are; but the “you” that you think you are, which is to say your body and its accompanying perceptions, isn’t the entire story. A lot of shit had to happen not only in order for you to come into existence, but also for the universe as a whole. All that has arisen has done so based on causes, conditions, and effects interbeing with one another. This incredible process is all arising within the awareness of our Everything Mind.

To share a simple example of interbeing and cause and effect, let’s use an acorn (cause), which grows into an oak tree (effect), and it does so because environmental factors such as sunlight, soil, and rain (conditions) are adequate. That’s just one very basic example. Interbeing (or dependent arising) relates to anything in the physical world because all things that exist depend on other factors; therefore anything and everything is empty of independent existence, and instead is interbeing with everything else.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching is a wonderful tool for cultivating greater compassion for all beings because meditating on it leads to deepening our understanding and experience of the interconnectivity we share with all life. Contrary to what our egos tell us, we are not just separate, isolated beings, housed strictly in our physical bodies. Instead, we’re an integral part of life’s unfolding, which goes as far back as the big bang. As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said:

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high-mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected: to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile, and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe; we are part of the universe. We are in the universe, and the universe is in us.2

That’s pretty inspiring, yet at the same time quite humbling, right? Our interconnectedness with life really doesn’t get much clearer than that.

I’ll share another example of interbeing and dependent arising based on an experience I had a few years ago while covering a Motörhead/Slayer concert for my website theindiespiritualist.com. (Shameless plug—what?) I had a nifty photo pass that gave me access to the area directly in front of the stage (lucky me, I know). So there I was, standing up front waiting for Motörhead to come on, when all of a sudden the stage went dark, and the sound of a guitar being plugged in ripped through the PA system. The crowd began to go crazy, and chants of “MOTÖRHEAD!” roared throughout the stadium. Fifteen seconds later, the lights came back on, and there, standing roughly a foot in front of me, was greatness himself, Motörhead’s bassist/singer . . . Lemmy-fucking-Kilmister!

I’ve covered a lot of shows and interviewed a lot of bands—and actors, comedians, spiritual teachers (it’s part of my job)—and rarely do I get that caught up in the whole star-struck thing, but this was Lemmy, a metal god among gods. An interesting thing happened roughly a minute into Motörhead’s first song (after getting over my fanboy nerd-out, of course), when I noticed Lemmy’s Rickenbacker bass. It was a model I hadn’t seen him play before, and it was insanely gorgeous. It had an all-natural wood finish complemented by a beautiful, hand-carved leaf inlay that covered the entire body of the instrument.

As I was standing there in awe of Lemmy’s bass, my mind naturally gravitated toward the teachings of interbeing (spiritual nerd problems, I suppose) and I began thinking about how his bass—before becoming the instrument of a metal god—was first a part of a tree. As I thought about that tree, my thoughts then turned to the sun, and how without its nurturing rays, the tree wouldn’t have been able to grow in the first place. Of course it wasn’t just sunshine that fostered the tree’s growth—there had to be oxygen, and rain, and soil. Going a step further, I contemplated the fine artisans at Rickenbacker who made the bass, and the equipment in their shop they used to make it. Then I thought about the workers themselves, and how it was thanks only to their parents that they were born in the first place.

So, while I was standing there admiring Lemmy’s amazingly badass instrument, I saw everything that had to inter-be for the Rickenbacker to have made its way into Lemmy’s hands. It didn’t end there. I continued thinking about how the same sunshine, clouds, and rain that had to inter-be for the tree to grow so it could birth Lemmy’s bass also had to inter-be in order for the food to grow that you and I, and hell, even Lemmy, eat on a daily basis. (Though, truth be told, I’ve often pictured Lemmy as someone who eats car engines rather than actual food.)

So to bring this full circle, what had begun only moments earlier as Motörhead ripping into their first song of the night culminated in my experience of interbeing and dependent arising as illuminated through Lemmy Kilmister’s bass guitar. Everything was all right there—the trees, sunshine, clouds, rain, you, me, Lemmy, and the universe as a whole—all interbeing with one another and coming to fruition in Lemmy’s bass. Oh, and seriously, I wasn’t on any hallucinogens.