Three key passages speak to me from the Second Mindfulness Training of Thich Nhat Hanh, and all suggest the deeper truth of inter-existence:
True Happiness
I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering...
...true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion.
...I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and stop contributing to climate change.
These passages are taken from one of the versions of the mindfulness trainings that appears at the Plum Village website of the Thich Nhat Hanh community, the Order of Interbeing. It sets forth for me three aspects of our interconnectedness, in order: interbeing itself, inter-feeling or deep empathy, and cooperative action. As we commit to the precept in its simplest form of "not stealing," we find we are already in deeper consideration of our vastly interconnected planet and its fate. What will life and property, all that we cling to, be worth in a warmed and less habitable world, where scarcity may create more prevalence of disease, homelessness, and tribal/geographic conflict, that is, outright war?
As I contemplated this training, I was immersed in and fascinated by the work of a Japanese artist and science teacher who had woven the 260 Chinese characters of the Heart Sutra into beautiful paintings. The gold characters were woven into images of the galaxy, the double helix of DNA, and other elements of paintings set in nature or Buddhist iconography expressing this most abstract yet image-focused sutra: the Heart Sutra. Thich Nhat Hanh has translated the sutra in a most subtle and inspiring way to show that its abstract premise- emptiness is form; form is emptiness- is not an equation of emptiness with non-being. Instead, it is simply another way of stating the truth of interbeing: that here are no separate self-entities; rather, everything inter-is.
Despite this truth of our world as one of linked biological systems, where has climate change been in our political debates? What are we stealing from future generations? Because we are in fact stealing something, namely, our sustaining earth's well-being, and it cannot be replaced by us because we cannot re-form it as it has first appeared. We can only create the conditions for its re-appearance. This hope can move us from fear and nihilism to deep understanding of interbeing, empathy, and positive action. And we must act now.
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries. Berkeley, CA: Palm Leaves Press imprint of Parallax Press, 2017.
Paula Arai, Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra, the Buddhist Art of Iwasaki Tsuneo. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2019.
