Author: barryschade@gmail.com

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.

• What engagements give you the experience of connectedness?
• What are your touchstones with the cosmic intelligence?

How do I want to live in a fear-based world? I want not only to survive in such a world, but play a small part in releasing the world from the grip of stiffling fear. Fear has served humans well. Fear has protected my ancestors from dangers and has helped them to overcome the perils of scarcity. Humans have managed to control the basic dangers of living and we have created an abundance capable of sustaining us all.

However, fear prevails. Some humans have hoarded the plenty we have managed to create, and have created an illusion of scarcity. Demagogues create the illusion of peril and fan the fear of loss. Our news media broadcast their messages of fear, creating a fear-based environment all around me.

My antidote to fear is to embrace the power of love within me. I have the energy of the universe within me and it manifests itself in the dynamics of love. The more I am mindful of this powerful source of love, the more I am able to contradict the stifling force of fear. By embodying love, I become a radiating source of healing energy to the world around me. I want to embrace everyone and everything close to me and beyond. I want to share the energy of love that resides naturally in me.

Fear has been a natural part of the human condition. But we have evolved to a level that fear no longer serves us or our future. We all have the power of love in us, a trait we share with the whole universe. I choose to embrace, use, and extend that power within me. I choose to no longer be an agent of caution.

The age of fear has passed. Fear is out of step with the evolutionary plan for the world.  We are in a new age when the love response is more in tune with the progress of humans, and those who grasp at fear are a relic to be put aside.   Those who spread and cling to fear belong in the past, not in the future. I refuse to be guided by fear and the perpetrators of fear. I choose to be a change agent that frees the power of love into the world. I refuse to live in a fear-based world.

There is order in what I experience The old tired notion of a random universe is being abandoned by science and the view of ancient humans is once again coming back into focus. There are no chance accidents, only convergence. Minds come together naturally, and they share similar thoughts.

What happens in my life has meaning and purpose. I do not live in disordered chaos. I live in a well-ordered and intentional occurrence of events. There is no chance meeting along my sidewalk but a pattern of converging events. What seems random, even serendipitous, is determined as meaningful, not accidental. There are no accidents, only convergences.

As time goes on, I see that I seem to be connecting more and more with ancient wisdom. The reference to an ancient way of understanding the world repeatedly shows up. I am reminded how the growth of trees the blooming of plants, the ebbing of winds, and the waves are all connected. And I am connected to them all. This is not a new idea.

There was a time when the kinship of humans with all the energies of the cosmos was routine. It was a time when the consciousness of humans was linked to the intelligence of plants, animals, and planets. Kinship with the world was a daily experience.

“Interbeing” may seem to be a new expression in my language, but it is ancient in how it reveals the deep kinship I have with all things. Many indigenous people have preserved and practice the experience of kinship. It has become a common experience of mine when I walk through my garden. It is a small but difficult thing to routinely experience kinship with other humans. But it is slowly growing beyond my small circle of intimates. For me, it is becoming a deeper and expressive matter to enter into a living kinship with all else in the world.

The notion of interbeing may be an open door to see the deep reality in which I am kin. To me, the idea of interbeing has felt rather static. What I want is a dynamic experience of kinship with all the world around me. I am getting a taste of what that kinship actually is.

I see that I am part of a huge drama in which I have an important role. Everything around me is being guided by an intelligence that directs the movements of all the players. The smallest items, the largest galaxies are all part of that consciousness, and so am I. This is the ancient wisdom that reminds me that I am part of a cosmic drama. I am self-reflecting and so I have a splendid connection with the guiding intelligence, with the consciousness that constitutes it all.

This is the ancient wisdom revealed in the experience of interbeing. It is a relationship of kinship in which I act and necessarily interact. I am not a stowaway in this ancient drama, I am not an observant stagehand. I am a critical partner in all that unfolds. I am not an observer of interbeing. I am an engaged participant.

I am learning not only how to connect with the intelligence of the cosmos. I am learning how to play my part in the cosmic kinship.

I acknowledge the ancestral nature of this place and I acknowledge all those ancestors with whom I share this space.   

I acknowledge the land beneath me that rose from the ocean more than two and a half billion years ago.

I acknowledge the ancestral ice that has covered this place many times since this land appeared.

I acknowledge the simple organisms that first inhabited this land and from whom we have all descended. 

I acknowledge the dinosaurs who lived here for millions of years and breathed the same air we now breathe.

I acknowledge all the mammals who have occupied this land. 

I especially acknowledge our human ancestors who have lived here for thousands of years and with whom we now share this ancestral land. 

I sit in the embrace of all our ancestors who sit here with me.

I place myself in the presence of all ancestral beings with whom I share this space.  

My culture wants to make love safe. Love gets all wrapped up in cultural norms to make me feel safe and secure. I am told to wear a life vest to reduce the risks and uncertainty of love. The future is made to seem predictable and without chance of loss and pain.

There is no certainty in love. Love is not focused and constrained. Love is by its nature wild and free. It has all the expansive vibrancy of the universe. It does not want to be tamed or put securely in cultural cages.

Love is not in me as a tidy package, enclosed in appropriate wrappings. It is not secure and contained in promises about the future. It is mine to choose daily with all its risks and uncertainties.

I must become unprotected and vulnerable to the future and the unpredictable unfolding of what is to come. It is mine to choose with all its risk and uncertainty. I choose to be vulnerable to the unknown future and the unknown expansiveness of love.

I choose to yield to the expanding life force of the universe, and I am uncertain where it will take me or how it will affect me. Love makes no promises. It only invites me to live courageously. Love is not safe.

This is a talk never given. It points out how my actions are all part of the unfolding of the Cosmic activity initiated at the time of the Fireball. I stress my role in determining the future of the evolving universe.

A Cosmic Interbeing plunge.  2/29/2024

Thay came up with the word “interbeing”, and it is something I have struggled with.  

I now think that when Thay spoke of “interbeing”, he was doing more than teaching us a concept.

• He was giving us a way of plunging into a deep cosmic reality of which we are a significant part. 
• He was guiding us into an experience of our involvement in a vast cosmic event that is 13.8 billion years old 
• I want to share with you what it has meant for me to take a plunge into that cosmic event, guided and facilitated by what Thay has taught.

First, Join me in blowing into the palm of your hand.

• Feel the movement of the air, the energy of lungs pushing air out your mouth.
• This is energy that originated in the Great Fireball, 13.8 billion years ago in what we often call the Big Bang.
• This energy of our breath originated in the Fireball that erupted out of a field of infinite possibility,
• This breath is a part of the vast cosmic event that continues to unfold, shape and reshape everything around us, everything we experience.
• We experience the dynamic urging of the Fireball when we blow on our hand.  
• It is the energy that moves and shapes the whole world around us and inside us. 
• This push from the Fireball shapes and reshapes everything we experience.
• The evolving Fireball energy allows me to experience the substance and fabric of interbeing from the largest planetary body to the atoms you see in the tip of your finger.  
• Guided by Thay, Note the fabric of interbeing in your breath, in the tip of your finger. 

I like Science.  Science tells me that there is nothing in the tip of my finger and in today’s world that was not there at the first instant of the Fireball.

• Physicists, cosmologists, poets and biologists constantly tell me how this is so, and how that original pulse of energy continues to form and reshape the whole cosmos.  
• Science tells me how the energy of the Fireball moves and shapes every object, every presence, every interaction.
• Science constantly reminds me how all around me, in raccoons, in trees and in rocks, there is the living, energetic presence of the throbbing Fireball.  
• But it is Thay who has given me the notion of interbeing and the means to experience it. 

Mindfulness, as taught by Thay, takes me and my awareness into a deep plunge into the Cosmos, into my engagement with the Fireball.

• Without mindfulness, my awareness and interaction with the cosmos is validbut superficial.
• Without mindfulness, I see the world as I imagine it to be, not as it is.  
• Mindfulness allows me to plunge into interbeing, not just as a scientific concept but as a timeless, dynamic experience.
• Mindfulness allows a sense of wonder and awe to arise out of the universe.
• Mindfulness allows me to know what it means to be human, to see my relation with all other beings, to see my true dynamic relationship with the Fireball.  
• Mindfulness allows me to dispel the notion that I am a separate self in the Cosmos.

 Self-aware: Perhaps, the mindfulness I experience is actually the Cosmos reflecting back on itself, of being self-aware.

• That is for me, the deep meaning of interbeing as taught by Thay.
• Through mindfulness, I see that I am not a separate self, but I see that I am connected to all things.
• I think that humans may be uniquely capable of self-reflection, of being aware of our cosmic relatedness to all things.
• As an expression and manifestation of the Fireball, we are capable of self-awareness,  of self-reflection.   
• We are the universe being aware of itself. 
• We are an essential part of a great cosmic journey, that is the deep meaning of interbeing.
• Thru mindfulness, as taught by Thay, we recognize that we are not stowaways on that cosmic journey, but we are active agents of this evolving cosmos.

For me, interbeing is more than science, more than a simple concept of interconnectedness.

• It is more than a linear view of clouds becoming rain, more than seeing fungi making plants possible, more than understanding how the microbiome in our bodies allow us to live.
• More than the physical entanglement so evident in our world.
• Interbeing is a deep timeless plunge into the origins and unfolding of all things, a deep plunge into a web-like fabric of the cosmos, a deep plunge into no-time.
• We, and all the world around us, were there at the origin of the Fireball and we are there now.  
• We continue and experience that primal connection throughout all time, through no-time.  We have a way of stepping out of time.

Thay’s notion of interbeing, through mindfulness, brings us face to face with the cosmic dynamics.

• We see ourselves not just as witnesses to the dynamics of the universe; we are its self-reflective expression.
• Through mindfulness, we can experience the elements of the Fireball in us.
• Through mindfulness, we see that we are the individual presence of the Fireball, filled with its energy and its urgent purpose. 

The End:  This is the gift of Thay.   When we experience the air we blow on our hands, we experience the energy, the force of the cosmic Fireball.

• We experience the Fireball in the tip of our finger.
• We experience the Fireball that was there at the beginning, is here now, and will be in all the actions we choose to take.   All guided by mindfulness as taught by Thay.   

Every day, I want to cultivate a sense of being. I will come back to that feeling of connection with something or everything. I will cultivate the experience of awareness throughout my whole body. It may be something simple, like touching a chair and losing my cosmic body in everything. I will cultivate my sense of being throughout the day.

I admit that there are times that I wish things were different. I wake up in the morning and wish the piles of snow would disappear. I think of tasks I need to do, like the laundry, and cringe away from them. Sometimes, I remember things I have done, even decades ago, and cringe with a bit of embarrassment. I wish I had acted differently, but didn’t. I clearly can’t change the past, and so accepting it, choosing to live with it, seems both practical and insightful.

Even now, there are things happening and things to be done, like the laundry. It seems a poor use of my energy to resist what is and what I think must be. For me, it is like choosing to live. I am trying to choose to live each moment. I not only don’t resist my next step, but I enter fully into it. I accept it full-heartedly.

I want to choose this moment with open heart and open arms. I choose the unpleasant not only with passive acceptance but with active engagement. If I am to be alive, I choose to live.

Is walking with friends half the journey? No, it is the whole journey.