omniharmonicInterbeing
Interbeing is a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh to describe the fundamental interconnectedness of all phenomena. Nothing exists independently; everything “inter-is” with everything else. A sheet of paper contains the tree it came from, the rain that nourished the tree, the logger who felled it, the food that sustained the logger. To see one thing truly is to see the entire web of relationships that constitutes it.
This is not a metaphor but an ontological claim — a statement about the nature of reality itself. Modern science increasingly confirms what contemplative traditions have long recognized: ecology demonstrates that organisms exist only in relationship to their ecosystems; quantum physics reveals that particles are best understood as patterns of relationship; neuroscience shows that the self is a process rather than a substance. Interbeing names this relational ontology in accessible language.
The significance for civic innovation and regenerative systems is foundational. The dominant Western paradigm — what Charles Eisenstein calls the story-of-separation — treats individuals, communities, and ecosystems as fundamentally separate entities that interact but do not constitute one another. This ontology of separation makes extraction seem rational: if I am separate from the forest, cutting it down costs me nothing. Interbeing dissolves this logic. If I am the forest and the forest is me, then ecological destruction is self-destruction. This relational ontology underpins living-systems thinking, regeneration as a design principle, and rights-of-nature as a legal framework — all of which flow from recognizing that the well-being of the whole is inseparable from the well-being of each part.