INTERBEING

While reading a reflection the other day I came across the concept of interbeing. It is the Buddhist principle of an awareness of the interrelationship of all things. Take the slice of toast I had for breakfast this morning. How did it arrive on my plate? What was its journey from its inception to that peanut-buttered creation that awaited my ingestion? It didn’t arrive there out of nowhere or nothing.

Seeds were planted in the ground to nourish it with sun and rain in order to grow into wheat then harvested by the farmer who planted; then loaded unto the truck by a driver who took it to the refinery that made it into flour; then off to the bakery that made it into bread, to the store at which I purchased the loaf, to my toaster and finally to my mouth. That was only for starters in reflecting about everything and everyone involved in that slice of toast I had for breakfast this morning. And let’s not forget about the peanut butter that made its own interbeing journey, if you will.

All creation is tied together, somehow in some way. It is simply far beyond our understanding but it is also quite true. We can get a slippery handle on that notion when thinking about a piece of peanut-buttered toast, but that understanding only takes us so far and, even worse, allows us to take it all for granted, if we even begin to think about it in the first place, which, if you are like me, rarely happens.

What is true about a piece of toast is even truer about our relationships one with another. We absolutely could not exist in this world without one another. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the home we live in, the car we drive – it’s limitless – are the product of countless others, of the interbeing one with another. And yet like that piece of toast, how often do we stop to reflect on this interdependence, let alone be thankful for it?

If we want to go even deeper and really get personal, how often do we reflect on how important we are and have been in our being part, and a very important part, of this interbeing? It is impossible to know the influence we have had on others, their dependence on us at moments in their lives when we were the person needed at that moment in time and we did what needed to be done.

When we reflect on our own lives, there are those who stand out as having been so influential and important; but there are, I dare say, thousands who passed anonymously through our lives who were just as important, like all those who brought that slice of toast to my breakfast table this morning.

The principle of interbeing is a reminder of how much we need one another because we cannot go it alone. Nor were or are we supposed to. Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Jesus came to remind us that we are all brothers and sisters one to another, a world family, and that we need one another to live in this world: interbeing at its fullest.