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“Interbeing” means that you cannot be by yourself alone—you have to inter-be with everything else. Suppose we look at a rose deeply with mindfulness and concentration. In a short time, we discover that a rose is made of only non-rose elements. What do we see in a rose? We see a cloud, because we know that if there is no cloud there will be no rain and no rose can grow. A cloud is a non-rose element that can be recognized in the rose. The sunshine, which is crucial for a rose to grow, is also a non-rose element that is there in the rose. If we remove the cloud and the sunshine from the rose, there is no rose left. Continuing like that we see many other non-rose elements within the rose, including minerals, the soil, the gardener, and so on. The whole cosmos has come together to produce a wonder called rose. A rose cannot be by herself alone. A rose has to inter-be with the whole cosmos. That is the insight we call interbeing.
Happiness is the same. Happiness is a kind of rose: it is made of only non-happiness elements. If you try to throw away all the non-happiness elements you will never have happiness. It’s like when you grow lotus flowers—you need the mud. Looking deeply into the lotus flower, you see the mud. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. A lotus is made only of non-lotus elements, and happiness is made of non-happiness elements. That is the nature of interbeing. Everything is in everything else. We cannot really run away from one thing to grab onto another thing, because things are inside of each other, not outside of each other. We must abandon our dualistic way of looking at things.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~
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