[mythistorian]

That is so beautiful, sunbug, and really encapsulates the notion of interbeing. I know of his sad passing—but sad only for us, as he seems to have been in complete peace with the finitude of our mortal existence, our passing state of consciousness in time. RIP Oh most gentle Master of Wisdom—a true philosopher in his own right.

Maya dawning as a concept of interbeing emphasizes the organic force or elan vital of life, its desire to maintain and reproduce itself, to escape the prison of being in itself, the dormant state of “inanimate” matter. Thus the notion of libido is also a strong concept of interbeing as a broad “sexual” energy for the desire of being, to be a being-for-itself, the desire to create and re-create itself in time, through an evolutionary process of self-creation.

We also know that the metaphor of farming, even better than the birds and the bees, explains the whole process of organic sexual reproduction, without which there would be no trees, no animals, and no mind to make the piece of paper the Master holds in his hand. That is why libido is a concept of universal soul which is closer to the antique sense, as in Aristotle’s de Anima, and why its passage through the human race grants us access to a truly transcendent force, the very source of the experience of the transcendent.

Since my Mythblast this week tried to emphasize the Freudian strain of the Hero with a Thousand Faces we might as well elaborate a Freudian concept of interbeing which is, in fact, much closer to the notion of Maya dawning. Sexuality in this broad sense of “dawning”, of organic production and reproduction across all forms of life, is a quintessentially  “Freudian” conception of interbeing. That is to say, libido is so close to the inter nature of soul that it is virtually indistinguishable from sexuality. That was Freud’s great discovery, not that sexuality was some kind of “lower” purely biological instinct that governs the mind, but that it is the most metaphysical of all forces as the speculative identity of libido and death-drive.

Although sometimes the Buddhist elaboration of the concept of interbeing may sound more cloud-like, more poetic, as thin as a piece of paper, it is no less genuine in its existential depth. This comes out nicely in Thicht Nahn Hahn’s notion of engaged buddhism as well—not to mention everything that comes under the heading of his political activism or engagement with the world. For there are profound political implications of a philosophy of interbeing, as politics is the realm of the polis—including the police!— in which we figure out how we humans can get along with each other, how are we to co-exist fairly and equatibly, employing the mediation of the state or government, and institutions like the judicial system and the carceral state.