Interbeing, a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh from the Avatamsaka Sutra’s doctrine of dependent origination, enters the depth-psychology corpus as a philosophical corrective to the illusion of bounded selfhood. Within the Seba library, the term carries a distinctive trajectory: it originates in Nhat Hanh’s own elaboration of Buddhist metaphysics, where the mutual implication of all phenomena — organs, particles, minds, chairs — dissolves the fiction of independent existence. From there, writers working at the intersection of contemplative practice and therapeutic theory draw upon it as an ontological anchor. Welwood names interbeing as the relational dimension of being itself, equating it with what Eastern traditions call true nature. Maté marshals Nhat Hanh’s formulation against biomedical atomism, insisting that ‘we inter-are’ is a claim not of mysticism but of interpersonal biology. Schwartz cites Charles Eisenstein’s narrative framing — the ‘Story of Interbeing’ versus the ‘Story of Separation’ — to motivate a systems-thinking ethics. Harvey and Baring, followed by Campbell, situate interbeing within the recovery of the Divine Feminine, identifying it as primordial wisdom pre-dating Buddhist coinage. Simondon’s transindividual ontology operates in parallel without naming the term, while Heidegger’s Being-with provides a structural European counterpart. The central tension is whether interbeing is a contemplative insight requiring meditative cultivation or a scientifically verifiable relational fact immediately available to reason.
every organ in the body implies the existence of all the others. This is called ‘the interdependence of all things,’ or ‘interbeing’ in the Avatamsaka Sutra. Cause and effect are no longer perceived as linear, but as a net
Nhat Hanh defines interbeing as the Avatamsaka Sutra’s term for a non-linear, net-like mutual implication of all phenomena, illustrated first through the body’s organs.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
In meditation on interbeing or on the miraculousness of existence, a practitioner can take any phenomenon as the object of meditation, but he or she must be able to maintain it for some time, in mindfulness.
Nhat Hanh establishes interbeing not only as a philosophical doctrine but as a contemplative practice superior, in his view, to Zen koan work, because any phenomenon can serve as its object.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
To envision the interwoven nature of relationships, which illustrates the character of interbeing and interpenetration, we can picture a sphere which is composed of all the points on its surface
Nhat Hanh employs geometric and Indra’s-net imagery to demonstrate that interbeing entails the total mutual containment of every part within every other, under the formula ‘one is all, all is one.’
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
The recently deceased Buddhist monk and renowned spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh long taught the concept of ‘interbeing.’ It’s not merely that we are, he said: we ‘inter-are.’ ‘There are no separate entities,’ he wrote, ‘only manifestations that rely on each other to be possible.’
Maté invokes interbeing as empirical support for interpersonal biology, arguing that the claim ‘we inter-are’ is confirmed rather than merely assumed by medical and social science.
, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022thesis
Because being is present in all things, our being is also, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, interbeing.
Welwood integrates interbeing into his phenomenological psychology by equating it with the relational dimension of being as true nature, grounding the term in both Eastern and Western frameworks.
, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000thesis
As Eisenstein urges, we must discard the ‘Story of Separation’ and adopt the ‘Story of Interbeing.’ We need systems-thinking leaders who can remind everyone that we’re all in this together.
Schwartz deploys interbeing as the narrative and ethical framework for Internal Family Systems’ systems-thinking, linking ecological crisis to a failure of relational ontology.
, No Bad Parts, 2021thesis
Native traditions offer us a passionate awareness of this ‘interbeing.’ For them there is nothing sophisticated or intellectual about it; it is as obvious as sunlight or the cry of a baby.
Harvey and Baring situate interbeing within indigenous cosmologies and the recovery of the Divine Feminine, arguing that the concept predates Buddhist articulation and is experientially immediate rather than philosophically derived.
, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996supporting
What the Mahayana Buddhist mystics call interdependence (or more fashionably ‘interbeing’) is as old as the Aborigine’s understanding that the rock formations of their deserts were ‘lines’ in a song the Divine World was trying to ‘sing’ to them
Campbell confirms interbeing’s cross-cultural antiquity, framing the Buddhist coinage as a modern name for a perennial awareness central to indigenous and goddess-oriented traditions.
, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting
When we meditate on it, we can see the entire universe in all its interwoven and interdependent relations in the chair. The presence of the wood reveals the presence of the tree.
Nhat Hanh demonstrates interbeing through the meditation on a chair, showing that any object reveals the entire web of interdependence when attended to with sustained mindfulness.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
The Avatamsaka Sutra says that time and space contain each other, depend on one another for existence, and are not separable by knowledge. The Relativity Theory of Albert Einstein, born 2,000 years later, confirms the inseparable relationship of time and space.
Nhat Hanh aligns the Avatamsaka Sutra’s doctrine of interbeing with Einstein’s relativity to argue that the mutual containment of time and space provides scientific corroboration of the Buddhist insight.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
for today’s scientists, a nuclear particle, just like ‘a speck of dust’ or ‘the tip of a hair’ in the Avatamsaka Sutra, combines both space and time.
Nhat Hanh extends the interbeing framework to quantum physics, arguing that the Sutra’s imagery of the infinitely small containing the infinitely large anticipates contemporary particle physics.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
love and interconnection repeatedly arise as an essence of reality in our human experience. And yet so many people do not regularly access what for some is a source of self-expanding
Siegel, without naming interbeing, converges on its core claim by reporting that presence, interconnection, and love consistently emerge as essential dimensions of reality across contemplative and scientific traditions.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting
When you light the lamp of awareness, you pass from sleep to awakening.
Nhat Hanh’s discussion of mindfulness as awakening provides the contemplative epistemological backdrop against which interbeing is to be directly perceived rather than merely conceptualised.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988aside
You cannot find the Tathagata even in this life, why do you want to solve the problem of whether I will continue to exist or cease to exist
Nhat Hanh’s citation of the Anuradha Sutra and Oppenheimer’s parallel reasoning contextualises interbeing within a broader critique of substantialist metaphysics and fixed personal identity.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988aside