Lion's Roar deputy editor Andrea Miller met with Thich Nhat Hanh at his "Open Mind Open Heart" retreat in 2011. That interview appears in the January 2012 issue of the magazine. "Interbeing" is one of the calligraphies Thay created and gave to the Lion's Roar Foundation on the occasion of that visit.

In The Heart of Understanding Thich Nhat Hanh says of interbeing that "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."

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, scholar, and peace activist. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Martin Luther King Jr. for his efforts in generating peace and reconciliation in his native country. Thich Nhat Hanh travels and teaches internationally. He lives at Plum Village Practice Centre in France, a Buddhist monastery for monks, nuns, and laypeople.

Learn more about Thich Nhat Hanh’s work at: www.plumvillage.org

The calligraphy, ink on rice paper, measures 15.5"w. x 11.75"h.