Stowaways

This is an outline of a talk I gave at the Blooming Heart Sangha on June 27, 2024.

There is no room for stowaways in our evolving, emerging cosmos.

As humans, we all have a special role to play in the evolution of our home planet earth, our mother Gaia.
We can’t sit on our hands; no slouching allowed.
We are not an isolated self, we are an intimate part of it all, we can’t avoid our dynamic role.
We swim with the current, not float along with it.
Thay told us this when he taught about interbeing.

When Thay spoke of ‘interbeing’, he did far more than teach a concept.

He was giving us a way of actively plunging into a deep cosmic reality of which we are a dynamic part.
He was guiding us into an experience of our active involvement in a vast cosmic event.
Interbeing is not about passive involvement. It is not just an awareness; it is also about action.
Remember the fifth remembrance: our actions have consequences.

While Thay made “interbeing” a commonly used word, especially in Lion’s Roar, the notion is not new.

Interbeing is an expression of ancient wisdom, ancient from a time before Buddhism.
Interbeing, the deep experience of connection and experience with the universe, has been in North America for thousands of years, and is still there if you listen to the voices of indigenous nations.

Thay’s Interbeing reminds us: our actions have consequences.

It is ancient wisdom that what we do is not only connected to the universe, but has consequences.
Humans have long believed that they could have an impact on the surrounding world.
Many modern minds have lost this sense and experience of connectedness.
But Science hasn’t. Today’s science seems to be turning to an ancient wisdom and shedding the materialism that has been so dominant.
Today’s science is reminding us that our actions have consequences.

Scientists, physicists, cosmologists, are all telling the story that we are all connected.

They insist that we are all connected and share the same energy and intelligence that was there at the Big Bang, the Big Fireball, the Big Breath.
There are multiple ways of expressing that first moment of our cosmos.
All tell me that all around me, in rabbits, in flowers, in rocks and me, there is the throbbing, evolving presence of the Big Bang, the Fireball, the Breath.
It is with us, in us, us.
Science tells me how the whole cosmos is united in the energy and intelligence that drives everything to evolve toward greater complexity.
We are not only an effect of this evolution, we have a role that allows us to further the progress of evolution or thwart it.
For us there is good news: It is no mystery. We know how to do this, our role is guided by our consciousness, by our awareness.
We are guided by our mindfulness.

Thay teaches us how to know our role in the cosmos: by mindfulness.

Without mindfulness, my interaction with the cosmos is superficial or misaligned.
I cannot know the guiding intelligence of the cosmos without mindfulness.
Without mindfulness, I see the cosmos as I imagine it to be, not as it is.
Mindfulness allows me to plunge into interbeing, not as as a concept but as a dynamic experience.
Without mindfulness, I am less aligned and connected with the intelligence of the cosmos.
With mindfulness, I am in touch with my interior compass that gives me direction.

I think many humans struggle with this notion of alignment and connection.

Many humans have forgotten the ancient wisdom of being connected and having an intimate role in the cosmos.
There are some writers like Joyce Carol Oates who remind us that we are caught in a myth of the isolated self.
Of course, Thay, like Joyce Carol Oates, reminds us in many ways, like in the Diamond Sutra, that the notion of self is an impediment.
But humans forget that all is connected; they forget that we are joined in a universal consciousness, a cosmic intelligence.

This “not being mindful”, not being aligned with the cosmic intelligence has disturbing and disastrous consequences

This is blatantly apparent when we see that the climate chaos is a direct result of our ignoring that we are an integral part of the living earth, of living Gaia.
In the US, the division between persons seems to be widening.
I experience my own difficulty when I observe what looks like a veritable house of horrors in the minds of some people, especially the MAGA crowd.
People mistake representation for reality.
Rather than align with cosmic intelligence, many choose a divergent path.
The evolutionary process, Gaia’s future and ours seems upended.
For me, the way out of this mess is in.

I have the sangha and I have mindfulness.

Both help dissolve my shell of separation.
Most important to me, mindfulness and the sangha show me how to act consistent with interbeing.
Mindfulness and the sangha allow me to practice acting in a way consistent with interbeing.
I learn how to have the experience of connectedness.
In Sangha and mindfulness, I can no longer experience myself as a separate self entity.
I am no longer a stowaway but an active participant in the vast dynamics of the cosmos.

And then there is my garden.

My garden gives me an experience of connectedness.
I no longer experience myself as a separate entity
My garden is an experience of interbeing.
In my garden, I experience the flow of energy that comes from the Big Bang, the Fireball, the Big Breath.
In my garden, I know how to interact; I learn how to relate to my neighbors and bring them into the garden.
I learn how to relate to the rabbits and squirrels.
As a gardener, I am no longer a stowaway but I become an active participant in the intelligence of the Cosmos and the evolution toward greater engagement and higher evolution.

How do you go about experiencing what your role is in the unfolding of the cosmos.