Interbeing and the cessation of suffering
Nevermind
Bitter & Hateful Veteran
The idea of “Interbeing” – introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh into the North American Buddhist vocabulary – may be viewed as a formulation of the doctrine of “dependant co-arising” in the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta.
In the Heart of Understanding – Thay’s commentary on the Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra – he writes: If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.
The observation that we “inter-are”, while true and poetic is not really the most important element of “Interbeing”. The important part is the realization that there is no independant self – that the perception of self, of “me”, of “mine” is an illusion. Awareness that “I” am made of “non-I” elements leads to the understanding of non-self and it is the realizaton of non-self that brings an end to suffering.
The above text taken from here: http://bodhileaf.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/understanding-interbeing/
Some of the ideas mentioned here came up in a recent discussion. What I've come to realize is that the concept of interbeing does not suggest there can be an end to suffering. It suggests the opposite. If we inter-are then we inter-suffer, and no cessation of suffering is possible.
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What I've come to realize is that the concept of interbeing does not suggest there can be an end to suffering. It suggests the opposite. If we inter-are then we inter-suffer, and no cessation of suffering is possible.
That's nice.
Picking another fight?
If you don't think it's possible to attain suffering's cessation then this is hardly the place for you, because few are likely to agree. Hence, your statement can be seen as provoctove.
The Buddha taught the cessation of suffering. I doubt very much that TNH teaches any differently regardless of your interpretation.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Just understanding that "we" are part of everything and everything is part of us doesn't necessarily have to include a perception of "me and you." It is quite a bit bigger than that, in my experience.
I've found that truly sitting and breaking things down in that manner, to truly understand and envision the cycle of it all can bring an experience of emptiness and spaciousness. It is only something to be attached to in that way if we choose to see it that way. Inter-being is what opens us the most to compassion. But it is something that has to be experienced.
As we have received comments, I shall close this thread until further notice for review.
Thanks.
Right:
Thread re-opened.
Please stick entirely to topic and try to leave personal opinion of members to one side.
No sniping, bitching or underhand, snide comments.
Go for it.
(Watching attentively).
All this means is that certain conditions come together to cause suffering, while other conditions cause joy, and still others anger or compassion, etc. etc.
Now when these conditions are extinguished - defined as nibanna - where is the question of sorrow or even joy? But is that unconditioned state a mere emptiness, a void, or is it something full? Is it pure consciousness, if not, what is it? These questions demand a great of speculation (as well as meditative experience).
Indeed, compassion is often seen as empathy, or to put it differently, to feel with others. To feel the suffering of others, basically. As if our own suffering were not enough to deal with.
Maybe this helps to make my point clearer?
If we are interbeing then the conditions for ALL sentient beings would need to be extinguished. If that's possible, it sure ain't going to happen for a long long time. I am hopeful nonetheless.
The "human" suffering ends after death, and we either face new realms, new adventures, or if we become enlightened before death, then everything stops and the only thing left is non-suffering.
If we inter-are that includes everything including our karma. Interbeing = interkarma. Indeed, how can an individual become enlightened when there are no individuals.
Some traditions, Shambhala being one, teach that enlightenment can be collective as well as individual.
Karma is also seen as collective in some traditions - in that the collective karma of sentient beings plays a role in the rising of a samyaksambuddha.
Indiviuality is an illusion based on our perception of reality. In a relative sense, we are individual. We are enlightened in a relative world. In the absolute sense, we are already enlightened.
See how that works? ;-)
It depends on which avenue/path you choose. Some do indeed focus on helping to end suffering for everyone, and not just themselves. That doesn't mean they have an expectation or a linear timeline for exactly how or when that might happen. It is just something that is worked on in each moment.
Being compassionate isn't the same as taking on someone else's suffering in the way you seem to be saying (if I am understanding you, that is). Again, in my experience, is something that is very difficult to define, to compartmentalize and describe unless you experience it. Words are limited in being able to explain sweet or salty to someone who has never experienced it. Trying to use words to explain my experience of compassion is equally futile. I'm not comparing you to someone who hasn't experienced compassion, just so that's clear. I just simply cannot explain my experience of it because the words are lacking to do so. But my experience does not match up with your description.
My understanding of the Theravadin point of view is that the teachings on dependent co-arising detail the psychological process by which suffering and stress arises in the mind, and which conditions the arising of future suffering and stress. Applying it outside of that framework is taking it out of context and its intended purpose, in my opinion. For example, instead of inter-being, Thanissaro Bhikkhu calls it inter-eating, pointing towards the duel meaning of upadana as clinging and feeding, and analogies such as the one found at SN 46.51. So rather than ceasing to 'inter-be,' what we're training ourselves to do is cease eating in way that feeds our hinrances.
I suppose this may not be clear to some but we can only not be individuals in a relative sense as well.
You're saying that there are individuals in the absolute sense?
Maybe you're not talking about compassion then. Maybe you mean something else. The compassion I'm talking about is not difficult to understand and pretty much everyone experiences it. Have you ever heard of mirror neurons?
Right, but we ALL (ALL SENTIENT BEINGS) need to cease eating in a way that feeds our hindrances because we inter-are.
For many Vajrayana practitioners and many Theravadins the entire topic would be seen as a strawman because they do not accept the validity of the concept of Interbeing anyway.
Or they think it creates more philosophical problems than it solves.
This often comes as a surprise to devotees of Thich Nhat Hahn.
Nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to religion.
NO, there is nothing with any inherent ebing in the absolute.
Incorrect.
No.
Now you're derailing this thread into something approaching what's called The Two Truths, something distinctly different from your OP. Start another thread if that's what you want to talk about. Read this first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine
Are you trying to drag us into pointless nitpicking? Looks that way.
If this reciprocal relationship is direct, then yes. But it is indirect. A and B may be directly connected, but A's connection to C could be indirect. Keep adding more entities and more relationships, and you may basically have some sort of interconnected web rather than a direct relationship between processes/entities.
Yes.
Some people see this as TNH approaching New Age thinking
Thanissaro Bhikkhu and Khenpo Tsutrim Rinpoche from their own respective positions ( Theravada and Vajrayana ) have both produced pretty conclusive critiques of the concept of 'Interbeing' ..
Khenpo Tsultrim decribed it as ' collective atta-ism'.
Thanissaro famously described it as " Thich Naht Hahn having a Kumbaya moment.".
I am well aware of different teachings. Which is why when I first came to this site I decided early on that I would not discuss teachers or specific teachings...as in go into details.
It was a personal choice. I have tried to keep my own leanings as neutral and diverse as possible.
I'm not by any means saying that you guys shouldn't. It's a Buddhist website, after all. My main intention/purpose here is social and practice interactions. As in practicing and applying the things I'm learning in the framework that I have chosen right now.
And no....I will not list or provide 'critiques' of all your teachers. That's for you to work on.
@Citta...I'm pretty disappointed. Co signing on this of all threads....
Thanks....kemo sabe. And don't say it's not personal......don't go there with me, Ron.
Love, light and metta.
@Vastmind if I say I have NO idea what you are talking about in your last post its the literal truth.
And I'd counter that, just because we may all share a general tendency to do x doesn't mean that those tendencies are linked in such a way that when you do x, I automatically do x as well.
So while we all may generally tend to mentally feed our hinrances to one degree or another (a shared tendency among sentient beings), as well as lean towards similar sources of nourishment, it doesn't necessarily follow that when you feed your hindrances you're feeding mine at the same time, just as you eating a pork chop doesn't mean I also eat a pork chop even though we share the general biological need to physically eat food to nourish our bodies and may even shop at the same store.
In other words, if what you're suggesting is true, then I could no more be a vegetarian than I could be free from suffering. But since I can abstain from eating meat, there's no logical reason I couldn't also be free from suffering assuming it's possible.
Experientially the realization of interdependent origination equates to total feeling of suffering of self and other. And at the same time recognition of the nature of all suffering and all beings. And hence individual liberation is possible and even so the liberation of all beings is already the case. Nonetheless from the point of view of a bodhisattva there are apparent beings who are confused of their nature. And hence a bodhisattva can hold both the perception of liberation and the perception of liberations frolic of confusion in one perception. And thus act accordingly without bias.
To bring that down to the obvious. It's very much like holding two points of view at once and then acting from what is right for that situation.
One can easily see how this is insane and a heavy responsibility. But at the same time the essence of this presents freedom. The freedom to feel, think, and explore and respond. Really it is the openness of the heart and willingness to suffer and alchemize that suffering into bodhisattva action.
Infinite suffering = infinite compassion.
When we find an absence of something that absence must be in relation to the existence of something else. The keyword here is RELATION.
Actually you're the one who brought up relative/absolute. I find it relevant to the topic, incidentally.
I don't see the significance of direct relationships. The point is dependence. Dependence does not need to be direct. It can be far reaching.
That's quite a lofty leap.
Take a mental step back with me, if you please. Why are you free to be a vegetarian? It seems you are taking a lot for granted. There are countless essential things you're dependent on to be a vegetarian. You cannot remove yourself from those dependencies.
The logical reason you can't be free is because you are dependent. You can't be free from what you are.
I'm not taking anything for granted, just offering an analogy to help illustrate my point of view. But continuing with it for the moment, I'd agree that there are conditions for one to be vegetarian, just as there are for one to be free from suffering (awakened). The teachings on dependent co-arising detail the psychological process by which suffering and stress arises in the mind, and which conditions the arising of future suffering and stress, as well as the conditions leading to awakening and the cessation of suffering. I don't see the dilemma, frankly.
People may have a general tendency to suffer due to craving (tahna, literally 'thirst'), which conditions suffering through the way it encourages the mind to feed upon sensory experiences and either causes it to intensely cling to pleasant experiences or violently push away unpleasant ones. People may also have a generally tendency to feed on things that may not be healthy/wholesome for a variety of reasons (because they're pleasant, because they may not realize they're unhealthy/unwholesome, etc.). But people also have the ability to not suffer, to change their feeding habits and not feed on things that are unhealthy/unwholesome in the same way that I have the ability to become vegetarian.
Nor do I. What is the dilemma supposed to be?
Some people have the luxury to change their diet, yes. Nevertheless they are completely dependent on other people and countless other factors, especially the ones in a position of luxury.
Indeed.
However just as:
An enlightened person sees everyone as constantly experiencing brief moments of enlightenment during the day. So paradoxically being an enlightened person doesn’t make you that special. Enlightenment contains within it, it’s own medicine for the “I am special disease”. Enlightenment allows you to see, as opposed to merely believe, that everyone is enlightened. Now you can say, “Well but they don’t realize it”, that’s one way to look at it, but it’s also undeniable that they are. From that perspective it’s very misleading to separate enlightened people from non-enlightened people.
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/06/on-enlightenment-an-interview-with-shinzen-young/
. . . so too is the non cessation also cessation. In a sense the perfection of the flaw. The Tao just is. Suffering and non suffering are interwoven too . . .
To put it another way, there are no opposites to Truth. This is different to subjective polarities which have opposites . . . lies for example . . .
:wave:
Whether it's relatively easy or difficult isn't the issue, it's whether it's possible.
You started by suggesting that the concept of inter-being offered by Thich Nhat Hanh implies that no cessation of suffering is possible. That may very well be. But I suggested that there's a different way of looking at the teachings on dependent co-arising that illustrates how the cessation of suffering is logically possible; and further, that the way inter-being is being framed breaks down when applied to things like, say, our eating habits (i.e., if things were interconnected to the extent implied, you eating a pork chop means that I also eat a pork chop, making it impossible for me to ever be vegetarian in the same way that one person's suffering would make it impossible for me to ever not suffer).
While the conditions for each person becoming free from suffering (or a vegetarian) may vary and be conditioned by a host of factors, that doesn't mean those conditions don't exist or are unobtainable, and I see no logical issues with the possibility.
False comes to mind. But that's just me I guess.
I suspect @Jason that one of the problems that make a coherent discussion of this topic difficult is that there are a whole lot of Buddhists who have to some degree internalised the concept of ' Interbeing ' and who assume that it is a central tenet of Buddharma..to be adopted or to be rejected, when it fact to large numbers of Buddhists in a wide variety of traditions it actually forms no part of their conceptual framework at all.
It is a modern invention.
Right, it is impossible to separate ourself from ourself. Or if you prefer, it's impossible to separate ourselves from our countless dependencies.
It doesn't matter if you're a vegan or a pork chop gobbler, the point is dependency and inseparability.
false is the opposite of itself. Just as what comes to our mind is false. What does not come to our mind is True, not that it would come, go or be, now what's to guess?
. . . and now back to words . . .
Wherever or whenever the notion comes from it's not really possible to deny.
For example, if you were to try separating yourself from all dependencies, I guess that would be like putting yourself in the vacuum of deep space or something, you would cease to be in a matter of seconds. You wouldn't be reborn in the vacuum of space but right back smack into the thick of things. So you see my friends, there is no escape.
Yes, this is false so the statement is true.
Nonsense. Its a non issue. A man of straw. You are demolishing a wall of vapour.
A basic premise which is accepted by no Vajrayana teacher. No Dzogchen teacher and few Theravadin teachers.
Interbeing does not exist...problem solved.
The goose is out of the bottle.
Now what ?
"Right, it is impossible to separate ourself from ourself. Or if you prefer, it's impossible to separate ourselves from our countless dependencies.
>
I'm not sure I see the point you're trying to make. I'm not suggesting that we separate ourself from ourself, whatever that means. I'd agree that we can't separate ourselves from certain 'dependencies,' such as our dependency on some kind of physical nourishment to sustain our bodies. Nevertheless, we can separate or relieve ourselves from other dependencies and habits, such as a mental and physical dependency on heroin, for example; and I see no logical reason why we can't also free ourselves from others, such as our habit of feeding on, or clinging to, (1) sensual passion for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, (2) views about the world and the narratives of our lives, (3) precepts and practices, and (4) doctrines of the self.
True enough, it is also false. The stated opposite is always false. Truth has no opposition and is not stated. False enough for you?
. . . and now back to the interbeing of non existence with existence . . .
Not sure what you mean by "feeding on, or clinging to." What do you mean exactly?
Significant to the topic is whether or not the things you mention are dependencies. It would be very difficult to deny that they are.
Upadana.
You can lead a horse to water, and you might even make them drink, but no amount of cajoling can get them to admit that they must drink.
“The All is aflame. Which All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Visual consciousness is aflame. Visual contact is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on visual contact, experienced as pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain, that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging, & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.
The ear is aflame. Sounds are aflame...
The nose is aflame. Aromas are aflame...
The tongue is aflame. Flavors are aflame...
The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame...
The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Mental consciousness is aflame. Mental contact is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on mental contact, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither pleasure nor pain, that too is aflame. Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging, & death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, & despairs.”
~ S XXXV.28
All is aflame, indeed, that's what I'm saying.
All is aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion; and those flames can be put out when deprived of their fuel. That's what I'm saying.
But ALL is fuel.
All is potential fuel with the presence of craving. But through dispassion and the abandonment of craving (which in turn conditions clinging), all ceases to be a source of fuel for the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion.
"whatever there is that arises in dependence"
Interbeing is ALL interdependent. "The ear is aflame. Sounds are aflame... The nose is aflame. Aromas are aflame... The tongue is aflame. Flavors are aflame... The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame... The intellect is aflame. Ideas are aflame. Mental consciousness is aflame...."
We cannot live and function without sounds, aromas, taste, a body, tactile sensations, consciousness... we are completely dependent on such things, just as we are dependent on each other.