This is because that is.
That is when this is; that arises with the arising of this.1
“Interbeing” is a new word invented by Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay), which he employs to explain the interconnectedness of all things in the universe. A sheet of paper, for example, is an interbeing as it is connected with a cloud through a chain of relationships. “Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper,” Thay writes in The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. Things that appear totally unconnected to most people—a sheet of paper and a cloud, in this example—become connected with each other in a relationship which Thay calls “inter-are.” 2
Tibetan: རྟེན་འབྲེལ་ tendrel (Wyl. rten ‘brel)
Contemplations on interdependence
Each of us individually is the accumulated product of thousands of generations that have come before us in an unbroken line. Our culture and technology today are also the result of thousands of years of accumulated and remixed cultural knowledge.3
As science has revealed, our planet is suffused with life: with microbes, plankton, pollen, and spores; moss, algae, lichen, and leaves; roots and mycelial networks; reefs, forests, grasslands, and peat. The ubiquitous presence of life dramatically increases the planet’s surface area that is capable of storing and transforming energy, exchanging gases, and performing complex chemical reactions—in other words, that is capable of the very biochemical processes we associate with life. … Collectively, these organisms comprise Earth’s living tissues—a colossal animate body with a planetary-scale physiology and metabolism.
Moreover, organisms and their environments continually coevolve, each profoundly changing the other throughout geologic time. Many of the planet’s defining features—its blue sky, breathable atmosphere, high mineral diversity, fertile soils, frequent wildfires, and ocean chemistry—are at least partly products of life. The ways in which life alters the planet’s geology and chemistry loop back to influence the evolution of species.4