Page 53 - NAMAH-Oct-2022

Namah Altruism in Various Lights

“We attach great importance to what we So, in rejoicing in the happiness of others, I
conceive of as myself, and therefore, to such am giving my true Self a chance to become
thoughts, as my body, my mind, my father, my more concrete, real, and giving the sense of
mother. But the capacity of ‘others’ we neglect separate self a back seat, ignoring it, ignoring
and ignore. We may be generous to beggars and the falsehood of the ego-consciousness. In
give food to those who need it, but it is a fact truth, since all movements are movements
that we do not care for them as much as we care of the one Divine, hence seemingly separate
for ourselves…. Just as we are able to ignore individual things are interconnected at many
others, we should be able to ignore ourselves. levels; therefore if I hurt others, I hurt myself.
This is how a Bodhichitta (enlightened heart/
mind) begins to grow (3).” The idea of Inter-being

One often wonders, when one is suffering The great Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Naht
or unhappy oneself, how can one possibly Hanh, introduces a new idea — ‘Inter-being’:
think of carrying or taking other people’s
suffering onto oneself? Or how can I rejoice “If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there
in someone’s success when I am myself not is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without
materially successful? The more we believe a cloud, there will be no rain, without rain, the
in ourselves being a limited separate self, trees cannot grow, and without trees, we cannot
separate from the person who may be happy make paper.
at this moment, the more miserable we
become. Why? Because that’s not who we So we can say that the cloud and the paper,
truly are! We are believing in falsehood and inter-are. ‘Inter-being’ is a word that is not in
leaving the side of Truth. In truth, we are the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix
all one, all of us are movements of the One, ‘inter’ with the verb ‘to be’ we have a new verb,
the Divine. ‘Inter-be.’ Without a cloud, we cannot have
paper, so we can say that the cloud and the
sheet of paper ‘inter-are.’

…..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 a part of our perception. Your mind
is in here and mine 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, rain, the minerals in
the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the
heat; everything co-exists with this sheet of
paper (4).”

This idea of inter-being has great practical

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