Social Media: If you could remove one thing from the world, what would it be?
The People: hate, “those” people, cancer, starvation, war
Buddha: the illusion of separateness
From a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, “What is non-self, Anatta? It means impermanence. If things are impermanent, they don’t remain the same things forever. You of this moment are no longer you of a minute ago. There is no permanent entity within us, there is only a stream of being.
“There is always a lot of input and output. The input and the output happen in every second, and we should learn how to look at life as streams of being, and not as separate entities. This is a very profound teaching of the Buddha.”
Drinking tea is a delightful ritual in Thay’s (Vietnamese: teacher) tradition. He asks us to consider the elements contained in our cup of tea: the clouds, the rain, the water flowing, the leaves of the tea plant, the plant, the earth and its nutrients, the hands that pick the leaves and pack the leaves and the lives of those workers, the mechanics and people that bring the box of tea to our door, the heat source that boils the water, the generation of that energy. When we look closely, we see the tea is made up of non-tea elements and does not exist as a separate self.
So the true nature of the tea is the nature of interbeing, the nature of no-self. A cup of tea cannot be by itself alone. A cup of tea has to “inter-be” with everything else that is called non-tea. We cannot be; we can only inter-be.
Just like the tea is empty of a separate self, yet full of everything else, so are we! The whole cosmos can be seen, can be identified, in one cup of tea. So to say the tea is empty of a separate self also means the tea is full of the cosmos.
We are of the same nature as a cup of tea—we are made up of the DNA of our history, of the fiber
of the food we consume, the air and water we breathe and all the particles contained therein, the influences on our hearts and minds of everyone we have ever known and millions we will never know, sense impressions, our hopes and dreams and fears, the love we receive and give and lack. We are full of the cosmos, as wonderful as the cosmos, and a manifestation of the cosmos.
Non-self is a guide that Buddha offers us in order for us to successfully practice looking deeply. What does it mean to look deeply? Looking deeply means to look in such a way that the true nature of impermanence and non-self can reveal themselves to you. Think about all the things you are made up of and you touch the true nature of our existence.
When we can start to peek into that reality, it becomes evident that everyone belongs because we are everyone and everyone is us. I am because you are.
As Thay says, drink your tea.