To be or to inter-be

More on Hamlet 2000: Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist teacher, showed up in the film.

I recognized Hanh, as I've been taking a beginner "Hardcore Dharma" class at a place called The Interdependence Project. I became interested in Buddhist philosophy last year after a cancer diagnosis. A cancer diagnosis is fucking terrifying, especially at first, when you don't know how aggressive it is, if it's spread, etc. So my interest: call it foxhole spirituality. Like getting "saved" on death row or something. Though
I'm not saved and not a Buddhist (but, interested) and not on death row; I'm cancer free and consider myself very fucking lucky.

Hearing "you have cancer" brings to mind what you'd likely expect. The meaning of life, one's own mortality. Forces your face right in there. No amount of Law & Order reruns and Ativan is gonna keep you from thinking oh shit, cancer, surgery, chemo, people die from cancer, I don't want to die, etc.

Anyway.

At one point in the film, we see that Hamlet has various video devices around his room, and on one a video is playing in which Hanh is talking about "being" — "We have the word to 'be,' but what I propose is the word to 'interbe.' Because it's not possible to be alone, to be by yourself. You need other people in order to be." (Am thinking about Hamlet paper topics--maybe something interbeing-ish? How Hamlet changes according the the constellation of people around him?)

I found another Hanh clip on youtube in which he talks about the Holy Trinity as representative of interbeing--the father is in the the son, the son is in the father, the father in the holy ghost etc. I thought of Hamlet, mourning his father, also named Hamlet, and interacting with his father's ghost.

Shortly after Hanh appears, Hamlet delivers his "to be or not to be" speech in which he contemplates death.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

...

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

So the rub is the fact we don't know "what dreams may come."
The dread of the unknown, death; they thought about it 400 years ago,
and the "undiscover'd country" is still this great terrifying puzzle.

Though Hanh says it's impossible to "be" alone, and I understand in theory, a cancer diagnosis certainly felt isolating. I did feel I was "interbeing" with people at the cancer center, though, quietly united with other people who were also facing this disease, thinking (or trying hard not to think) about shuffling off this mortal coil.