The Flowering Tree Sangha A Community of Mindful Living

Communities of Mindful Living (CML) Sanghas

Community of Mindful Living (CML) sanghas (meditation practice groups) are guided by the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings for Engaged Buddhism of the Order of Interbeing--the Tiep Hien Order. Tiep means "being in touch with" and "continuing." Hien means "realizing" and "making it here and now."

The Order of Interbeing was formed by Thich Nhat Hanh in the mid-1960s, at a time when the Vietnam War was escalating and the teachings of the Buddha were desperately needed to combat the hatred, violence, and divisiveness enveloping his country.

From its inception and in the present, the Order was comprised of all four membership categories of the original Buddhist community--monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen.

There are many small neighborhood CMLs  all over the world. The northern California Communities of Mindful Living gather together for regular retreats throughout the year at the Mariposa Retreat Center in Ukiah, at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center; and people from all over gather at Deerpark Monastery in Escondido, California (near San Diego) for Days of Mindfulness (Thursdays and Sundays) and retreats during the year, as well. Frequent local "Days of Mindfulness" are offered by many of our sanghas for anyone who would like to participate. These are a wonderful way to practice, to get to know one another, and to experience the support of a friendly, welcoming, and deeply practicing community of people.

Interbeing 

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.

Interbeing is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix inter- with the verb to be, we have a new verb, inter-be. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and

the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also

in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here -- time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the

sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. To be; is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up lonely of non-paper; elements. And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without non-paper elements, like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

See the interbeing Handbook for

comprehensive information about our practice.