It is with great honor, deep gratitude, and much joy that I share the following news: I have a story that will be included in a book coming out on October 10! Tears Become Rain: Stories of Transformation and Healing Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, edited by Jeanine Cogan and Mary Hillebrand, includes 32 stories from writers around the world, and a story I wrote will be among them.
Published by Parallax Press and distributed by Penguin-Random House, Tears Become Rain is available now for pre-sale, through both local independent book sellers and also larger sellers such as Amazon.
This is a labor of love project and I am thrilled to be part of it. Both of the editors and all of the writers have generously given their time, energy, and loving care to this book project, free of charge. All of the proceeds of the book go to the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation, which helps to support the 11 global monasteries & practice centers in the Plum Village mindfulness tradition.
This blog post was crafted & prepared for a talk I’m giving during a Day of Mindfulness in-person event at Empty Mountain Practice Center on July 9, 2023.
As this talk centers around the topic of the insight of interbeing, I’d like to start off by saying – cue TV announcer voice here – this talk was brought to you in part by the state of Wyoming. I recently took a solo road trip to meet my mom in Boulder, Colorado, which is half-way in between where I live in western Montana and where she lives in northern Arkansas. Each of us had about a 14-hour drive, and about half of my drive time was through the lovely state of Wyoming. The wide expansive landscape of Wyoming, coupled with the open road, provided a rich opportunity for me to reflect on this topic thread and piece together parts of this talk. So without having recently driven through the state of Wyoming, this talk would be a different talk. And the musical artists I listened to as I drove, which served as the soundtrack for my travels – Rodrigo y Gabriel; Ani Difranco; Lord Huron; John Craigie; my good friend Dave Manning, to name a few – are also part of this talk.
When we look through the lens of interbeing, we can start recognizing the vast array of elements & factors, causes & conditions, that went into crafting whatever is it we’re interacting with. Through this lens, we see clearly that people, places, things, and happenings are each a collage generated by many different mediums: experiences & influences; joys & hardships; upbringing & surroundings; blood ancestry & relationship dynamics. Nothing exists or was created in a vacuum. Everything is tethered to the web of life.
When we are not utilizing the lens of interbeing, we regard people, places, things, and happenings as separate entities, untethered from the whole of humanity. Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not – and oftentimes we aren’t – without the lens of interbeing, we see things as not being in relationship with the web of life, but as operating independently outside of it.
Why does this matter? When we view things as being separate and untethered from the whole, a couple of things happen that are worth paying attention to. One is that it becomes really easy for us to negatively judge, criticize, condemn, blame & shame other people, situations, and the world at large. And two, when we’re not utilizing the lens of interbeing, we tend to then enter into the cycle of attachment & aversion.
Why does this matter? Criticizing & condemning others, situations & the world greatly reduces our ability to cultivate understanding, care, and compassion, and the attachment/aversion cycle reduces our ability to experience feelings of contentment, ease, and joy. Now, it’s important to note here that we all have likes & dislikes. We all have preferences and things we gravitate towards and away from. But the attachment/aversion cycle is different, it’s next-level. When we’re caught in this cycle, we are forever trying to manicure our zone of okayness. We’re expending vast amounts of energy trying to grasp onto what we like and keep at bay what what we don’t like, and our well-being hinges on things being and going a certain way. So it’s very externally based, which means it’s also very fleeting.
going outwords & inwords 