Union & “Interbeing”: Buddhist Tradition & Christian Faith in Conversation – Bradley Jersak

Some conversations should not be quickly forgotten.

I shall not forget the conversation Eden once had with Jesus in contemplative prayer. Like Teresa of Avila before her, Eden is a practical and organized leader who is proof that an ordered mind is no barrier to mystical insight. “In-sight” describes a vision she shared over twenty years ago that I can still behold directly in my own heart.

Eden saw me enter the depths of a goldmine and engage with the miners who virtually live there, continually harvesting treasures of wisdom. She sensed my longing to stay there with them, but instead, I was to limit my stay to brief visits where the miners offered me nuggets to dispense on the surface. She saw me opening a kiosk where I could make their discovery accessible (simplified and available) to normal people who desire the truth but aren’t meant to use their hours on the deep dive.

I love to serve and to witness divine truth that makes wise the simple. Although I stumble often in my translation of the mysteries, I do enjoy fulfilling that calling. Seeing eyes of recognition light up in real people brings me great joy. It was my goal as a youth worker to unchurched teens, as a pastor to chicken farmers, hairdressers, and plumbers, and as a companion to refugees, people with addictions, and friends who live with the challenges of disabilities.

My role as a teacher should not be mistaken for contempt or condescension. I understand very well that these folks are my mentors in the kingdom of God. They remind me of what is most important:

• Will you love me, and may we love you?

• Will you receive fresh mercy each morning and share it forward?

• Will you live in curiosity, wonder, and trust?

• Will you sorrow with us so you can also arise with us?

Only after sitting at their feet with full attention do I presume to say, “There’s an old word that describes what you’re showing me. If I explain it, I think you might find it helpful.” Often, when I boil down what I read in the ancient sages, they respond with gratitude that I am affirming what they already knew and lived intuitively, and perhaps even my B.S. can serve to fertilize their flourishing.

Christians and Buddhists in Conversation

Another conversation—and relationship—that should not be forgotten is the fruitful, decades-long engagement that Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton and Orthodox peace activist Jim Forest had with Buddhist monks such as Shunryu Suzuki and Thich Nhat Hanh.

To be completely clear, the many streams of Christianity and Buddhism have deep and obvious dissimilarities. And our differences are amplified by misunderstandings and misrepresentations, especially by those who have failed to listen to one another’s nuanced explanations of their own Scriptures, teachings, and practices. Put plainly, what Christian apologists have taught me about Buddhism has consistently proven to be erroneous, down to the most basic definitions of words they use. I have enjoyed the benefits of research that most normal people don’t have time for—enough to say that Buddhism is not what I thought it was. But by immersing myself briefly in their Scriptures, their Sutras, their teachers… and most of all, in their conversations with attentive Christians like Merton and Forest, I learned:

• The best of Buddhism has some striking similarities to central beliefs and commitments of the Christian tradition. In conversation, these monks can draw out the best of who we are.

• The basics of Buddhism can remind us of ancient Christian insights that modern Christianity has dangerously misunderstood, forgotten, or forsaken to our detriment.

• The conversation between these sages should not die with them (Forest and Hanh both departed in recent years). Their return to the sources is even more relevant to our social and spiritual situation today. They anticipated our current steps and missteps with prophetic clarity. The word “Buddha” has to do with awakening, remembering, and recognizing—something I hope we’re willing to do and be.

Having spent what little time I could in their treasury, I’ve emerged with a few nuggets you might find helpful. My primary sources have included repeated readings of:

• Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

• The Upanishads: Introduced and Translated by Eknath Easwaran

• The Dhammapada: Introduced and Translated by Eknath Easwaran

• Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

• Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

• Multiple translations and Buddhist commentaries of the Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra

Buddhist scholars and practitioners can tell you that I’ve barely scratched the surface and to claim otherwise would be fraudulent. But what I can do is speak from resonance on themes that the experts describe as central to Buddhism as the Sermon on the Mount is to Christianity.

To keep it simple (I hope not simplistic), my humble kiosk will offer a basic definition and comparison of one key term I’ve found helpful: “interbeing.” Understanding this term may help us become better humans—more understanding, compassionate, and connected—better able to love our neighbors. So, please take what helps and ignore the rest.

“Interbeing” — Union versus Separation

Interbeing is a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh that says absolutely everything is interconnected and interdependent. Even more simply, nothing and no one lives as a completely independent self. I am dependent on oxygen to live. And therefore, I am also dependent on trees that change carbon dioxide into the oxygen I breathe. The trees are dependent on the soil and the water and the light that keeps them alive and growing. I am also dependent on the food I eat for nourishment, and the growth of that food relies on everything involved in its production.

These connections also go both ways. The tree feeds its leaves, and the leaves feed the tree. I nurture the plants and the plants nurture me. My gut microbes depend on me to live, and I depend on them to live. Living from and for each other is interbeing.

Further, despite the Western idea of radical individualism, people depend on each other—I depend on my parents for my birth and growth, on my family and friends for social nurture, on my neighborhood, community, city, and nation for education, health care, transportation, food sources, and so on. And I, too, have contributed in all these ways to my parents, my children, and grandchildren, my friends and neighbors, my students and clients.

To be fully human is to experience company, communion, encouragement, and love. My development included mentors, teachers, healers, doctors, farmers, retailers, and delivery people—supply chains of everything from mundane goods to essential emotional and spiritual care.  We are not separate. We are interbeings.

Psychologists warn us that there are unhealthy ways of interbeing. They use technical terms such as codependency, enmeshment, transference, and attachment disorders. But they also tell us that deeper than such dysfunctions is the universal human need for one another—even introverts and cloistered monks cannot live healthy lives in perpetual isolation. Interbeing with the created order and with the human family is, therefore, a reality and a practice.

So too with the Divine (a multifaith word for various constructs of God or Ultimate Reality). While Buddhists and Christians think of ultimate reality or God in different ways, the best of both traditions insist that there is no separation between Divinity and humanity. Our very existence depends on our interbeing with “God.” Paul told the Athenians, “In him, we live and move and have our being.” Jesus’ revelation to his disciples was that “I AM in you, and you are in Me.”The early Christians prayed to the “Spirit of Truth, who is everywhere present and fills all things.”

When a Buddhist speaks of our interbeing with Reality, Christians can echo that sentiment from Romans 8: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” The foundation for Christian interbeing is the union of God and humanity, Creator and creation, in the person of Jesus Christ. All that it is to be divine and all that it is to be human are One in Jesus Christ. And while sin does alienate us in our minds (Colossians 1:21), “God no more turns from the sinner than the sun ceases to shine for the blind” (St. Anthony the Great).

This alienation in our minds can be likened to blindness that needs healing or a slumber from which we need to awaken (Ephesians 5:14). But actual separation? No. We would not even exist if God were to leave us for a nanosecond. The union of God and humanity, of Creator and created, of Christ and you—from the foundation of the world—cannot be severed and never has been separate.

Nor are we as people to continue to live in the delusion that we are independent from each other or from our world. Our interbeing—our interdependence—is the foundation for the commandments of Judeo-Christianity—united in Jesus—to love our brothers and sisters, neighbors and strangers, even our enemies. Interbeing is the foundation for the shared values of the Buddhist Dharma and the Jesus Way of love and compassion, hospitality and generosity, peace and equanimity with our human family and with all of creation.

Interbeing is a great Buddhist term that Christians might employ in our resistance to the pain of alienation and isolation and the folly of exclusion and hostility. Psychologists coined the term interdependence. I’ve mentioned “union,” others speak of “oneness,” and Trinitarians of “interpenetration” or the Greek borrow-word, “perichoresis.”

Whatever word we use, let’s embrace the truth of interbeing in the practice of unity, community, communion, compassion, and loving care.

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