To be, or not to be

Hamlet is a Shakespearean classic and its most famous soliloquy is the one where the young prince asks, "To be or not to be, that is the question." He continues to ask if it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. Basically, the question boils down to either-or. That is, to be, or not to be. There is no middle ground, here.

In Buddhist philosophy, there is another option between being and nonbeing. Thich Nhat Hahn calls it inter-being. According to the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, in order to touch the true nature of all phenomena, we need to find a middle way between all pairs of opposites, just as Gautama Buddha advised us to do. We need not fall into the habit of choosing between this and that, being and nonbeing. We can just inter-be. No more choosing between polarities and opposites, between eternalism and nihilism. The path to nirvana lies in transcending dualities and embracing the state of staying cool, peaceful, fearless, swaying neither toward this extreme or that. What the Bhagwad Gita calls the state of equanimity.

Inter-being also means that you cannot isolate yourself. When you inter-be, there are no opposites; you are free of notions and concepts that force you to circumscribe God, truth and everything else. Existence is a continuum. Becoming aware of this will point us in the direction of the ultimate truth.