On the River of Love, Compassion, and Interbeing: Continuing Thay
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love
Continuing Thay
Born unto the earth on October 11, 1926, Thich Nhat Hanh (“Thay”) was a Buddhist monk and peace activist who epitomized universal love. Over the course of his life he published more than 100 texts, ranging from poems to commentaries on the interrelation of mindfulness and climate change.
Thay’s understanding of the world, and our role in it, cultivated solidarity during the Vietnam War and continues to inspire compassionate living to this day. One of his most central teachings was on interbeing, the fundamental interconnection between us as humans and every other being on the planet.
If you’ve read any other articles on this site, the concept should be familiar. Indeed, Thay’s writings are likely what planted the first seeds of this project in my heart.
Thay never referred to October 11th as his birthday. Instead he considered it (and every other day) a “continuation day,” for every manifestation is simply continued from the last. Rain is the continuation of a cloud, a bloom is the continuation of a seedling, a river is the continuation of a glacier. Likewise, human beings are continuously evolving, taking new forms with each new moment. Hence another one of his teachings: No Death, No Fear.
Continuously shifting, through mindfulness and understanding we are afforded the opportunity to expand our little cups of the “self” to the breadth of an almighty river.
WHen the Heart Contracts
Our efforts to control, taper, and minimize pain by making our hearts small is always in vain. Like a dammed-up river, a heart confined by boundaries can only let trickles of joy (or compassion or peace) in. And the rest has a really difficult time penetrating our resistance.
Because how else, other than setting rules and creating hierarchies and labeling others, would we be able to “protect” our sovereignty?
It’s an interesting conundrum. We often convince ourselves that by avoiding certain types of people or situations—or separating ourselves by hating them altogether—we’re somehow better off. This is how conflict is born. And yet, even though we know conflict causes suffering, we prefer to perpetuate it.
Because again, how else would we be able to distinguish between you and me?
Existing on our own ideological islands, we drift apart from others outside of our comfortable circles. Thus “protected” by our common beliefs, roles, identities, and opinions, the salt (e.g. criticism, negativity, judgment) in our cups intensifies. By the time we’re challenged to open up to another perspective, or show compassion toward a “broken” ideology, our hearts are calcified. We recoil and brace ourselves, holding up the make-believe armor of the mind.
Think of how it feels to be judged unjustly or frustrated by a hot-button opinion. The contraction manifests both physically and emotionally. It clenches our jaws, bunches our shoulders, and puts our tempers into a tiff.
No wonder so many of us—and the worldly atmosphere—are this tense.
Becoming Like The River
Now think of a river. How unconfined and freely it flows! It accepts when a tree branch falls into its wake; it lets leaves and logs float along. Creatures feed from it without fear of reprimand or demand of profit. Even when humans dump in chemicals and contaminants, it flows on—and surely it could handle a cup of salt, like in Thay’s poem.
The Nile doesn’t know it’s the Nile; we assigned it that label. It doesn’t measure or discriminate. There is no thinking about whether it should provide a resource for creatures and the planet. It simply does, because it simply is.
One of Thay’s most profound teachings is at the center of this concept. This is the teaching of interbeing: the notion that we all—plant, animal, arachnid, human, and river alike—are inexorably connected and interdependent.
When we start to open ourselves to that connectedness, no longer will we feel so tolerant towards dividing lines. For indeed, even the conventional “pest” serves a purpose. If it didn’t, then it wouldn’t be here. We may not always see it that way, given that we tend to value exclusively the things which benefit or bring profit to humankind, but it’s so.
Nature’s laws do not discriminate. In that way, It is much wiser than we.
The Healing Power of the River
So to become like a river is to transform the heart. Just as the water shapes the earth, our inflowing and outgoing energy shapes our interactions.
If our vessels are tight with tension, negativity accumulates and squanders whatever compassion tries to muscle its way through. Contrarily, to remain open makes space for the entire spectrum of experience. There is thus more capacity for peace, joy, and love. And those forces are divinely powerful. To them, cups of saltwater are insignificant, mere feed for the stream.
Just as the salty water is changed, whatever passes through an open heart-channel is apt to change, too. That’s the unspeakable art of interbeing. As much as we are benefitted by the joy openness brings, other beings are equally blessed when we accept them and give them space to be, grow, and change organically.
Imagine how differently it would feel to be “allowed” to exist without condition, free from the emotions and agreements of the majority. I think then we’d start to understand just how expansive our true nature is, how interwoven our souls are.
That’s the potential of love: it heals what control cannot.
The Commonality of Suffering
The Buddha’s first Noble Truth is quite instrumental when aiming to become like a river. Human life is suffering. It’s a simple phrase, yet it’s steeped in nuance.
For our purposes today, the fact that human existence generates suffering at all lays a baseline for understanding. When we start to realize and appreciate that we’re not alone in our pain, drama, fear and conflict, it becomes much easier to open our hearts to others.
“Compassion and forgiveness are possible once we can see the suffering of those who’ve inflicted suffering on us.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
Perhaps someone cuts you off in traffic. Maybe you become the victim of injustice. Or a person lies to you. Steals your lunch. Cheats you somehow. Whatever—there are endless ways we inflict suffering on each other.
There is an alternative to our usual defenses, close-ins, and explosions of emotion. Instead we can look at our situation without taking it so personally. We can watch and listen for cues of clarity that often reveal themselves if only we remain open and mindful.
Seeing things as they are, we understand that people are only human—and human life is riddled with suffering. Though we all have circumstances which culminate that conflict, it’s not inherent to our soul nature. So when we are met with resistance, hatred, wrongdoing, or even violence, we can relate to the suffering that fabricated it.
“That is the meaning of love: to be one with.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the PLanet
Becoming Like Thay
In virtue and action, Thay taught that love is not an emotion to be felt. It is a natural expression of awareness itself. When we honor our interbeing, love becomes effortless. Like the river, we cannot help but to give, cleanse, and give grace to our fellow beings.
This is what Thay meant when he wrote “Our enemy is not other people. Our enemy is hatred, violence, discrimination, and fear.”
So this October 11th (and every day), may we practice widening our hearts, even when the salt stings. May we cultivate spaciousness when our instinct is to resist, soften when the world bares its fangs, and remember that compassion is not submission, but strength.
For in becoming the river, we also become conduits of peace. The salts of negativity, division, and suffering transform into the crystalline waters of understanding. And through that transformation, we carry the legacy of Thay’s work as living continuations of his love.
♡ ‧₊˚ ⋅