Barry Garden Path

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.

Evolution is opportunistic. While evolution processes are constantly in motion, the evidence of evolution occurs when a niche occurs that evolution can fill. Adaptations to changes in the environment are indicators that evolution has been happening and it has siezed the opportunity to be expessed in a changed situation.

Evolution steps into the gap when extinctions occur. This has especially been true after major extinctions have taken place. When the world of the dinosaurs was changed by a huge rock from space, the dinosaurs were mostly destroyed. Only the survivors were able to advance into the new age, and they rapidly filled the newly created void when the large dinosaurs disappeared. The mass extinction was an opportunity for evolution to show its power and the amazing variety of animals that emerged from the catastrophe filled all the newly created niches.

There is some thought that we have entered a time of massive extinction. This could be an opportunity for evolution as the old assortment of living beings disappear and new niches appear for a regenerated planet. The future, post extinction planet will suvive and the life forms that populate it will be the products of the powerful forces of evolution.

I wonder what future form of humans will show up. Will a future world be populated by humans who have adapted to the changed environment? I think there is an emerging population of more aware, more adaptable humans showing up in the current population. My hope is that these humans with highly developed mindfulness will be the face of humanity in a post-extinction world.

Evolution will have its way, especially after a massive extinction. Perhaps the modifications of the planet will make way for a more highly evolved and aware presence of humans.

I don’t think I have been on a certain path. There has never been a time when I felt I knew where I was going or even wanted to go. The path beyond the step I was taking at that moment has mostly seemed vague and undefined. Even when I tried to give my path dimension or direction, it has surprised me again and again.

Even when I made promises and plans, my path hasn’t always somplied with my sense of direction. I’ve made vows, laying out a path of certainty. But things haven’t turned out as I anticipted or even planned. Most recently, my planned long-term relationships have shifted and the path I was on dissolved or certainly changed.

I thought my life of a monk was on a path of apparent certainty. From the age of 13, I knew where I was headed and what the path would look like. All I had to do was follow it. Even that path evolved and I discovered that the path I was on was much deeper and ill-defined than the clear path of a monk in robes. What I discovered while following the path of a monk, was that the path slowly, even subtly took me in a direction I and those around me scarcely anticipated.

Rather than living in a community of monks and teaching the tenants of religion, I found myself living on my own and generally outside the realm of religious teaching. Instead I found that the path I had been on had been secretely preparing me to run the State’s major water pollution control program with insights gained as a monk. I went on to run an environmental program for Dakota County, still walking the path of a monk though no longer resembling a monk.

No longer looking like a monk, I was in fact walking the path of a monk in a secular environment. It was a path not at all foreseen, planned or anticipated. It was not a path my superiors in the monastery had in mind for me. In many ways, it was a path that chose me, not a path that I deliberately chose.

For a time, my unplanned path took me into the community of St. Stephen’s Church where I was one of the forces and architects who reshaped the liturgy. It was a clear departure from the plans of the Catholic Church. But it had all the savor of the life of a monk who walked in the present, making each step real and genuine. I had no notion at all where it was leading, but even then I knew when it was time to step away and follow a changing path that beckoned me elsewhere even while it was unclear.

Soon after putting aside the robes of a monk, I was no longer walking in an alone and solitary way. I have found myself walking along side several close companions. We have supported one another and I often drew on the depth of awareness taught me in the monastery. I have learned that even in relationships, a promised future path is something of an illusion. I have learned that my enduring commitment has been to be fully present, to be real, to be genuine. While I am clear that I can be kind, honest and gentle with each step on the path, I can be less certain what the future holds for the path I am on.

Perhaps, it is simply futile to try to figure where my path is leading. I am not even sure that my path is going anywhere. I am simply on the path, and I have no path to follow. There is no path of the past or of the future. I cannot know where the path leads, nor is it useful to try to figure that out. I want to be aware as best I can of where I stand at any moment. I want to feel the full exprience of each step I take. But I don’t aspire to know where the next step will fall. I just know that I want to be fully there.

The path, perhaps, is real, but only in the sense that it exists beneath me. I know that I am on a path. Where it goes is not of great importance to me. It is important that I deeply feel the presence of the path on which I stand at any given moment. It is important to me that I am aware where my path is, not where it is going. I have no path to f0llow.