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Originally Posted by JohnsonCM
In this way we realize that everything is one, yet we also know that we cannot exist in this life, in this world of samsara, without the understanding that we must make some differentiation between things. It's just not practical. You said that the universe was here way before you. Maybe, maybe not. How do you know you weren't there all along? That you weren't part of it? If you broke down an atom from your body to it's most minuscule part (I think modern science calls it a quark now) and did the same thing with an atom from, say...... a tree, or a chair, or a monkey, would you be able to tell the difference between the "you" quark and the "tree" quark? Probably not, because we are all made from the same stuff. We are all connected, and we all embody the entirety of existence. Like looking at a lake from an airplane. You just see the round blue spot, but remember it contains fish and frogs, logs and weeds, sticks and sand.
Thich Nhat Hanh has one of the most lovely images of this perspective on "dependent co-origination" and "no self" ... which he likes to call "interbeing" ... another way of expressing what we are discussing ...
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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 ha vea new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And wesee the wheat. We now the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.
Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.
From: The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
The only thing I would add to this is that, again, this view of "interbeing" is one "simultaneously true" perspective on self and not-self.