Networks
within networks
INTEREXISTENCE

This pattern that connects is not a poetic metaphor. It is a biological, ecological, cybernetic reality. It is the structure of structures, the network of networks, the organizing principle that runs through every level of the living world.

Bateson was searching for the thread that links all forms of life, from the simplest to the most complex. His answer: that thread is the network. Not the network as metaphor, but as a fundamental principle of organization. Networks are the fundamental pattern of organization of all living systems.

This vision profoundly shaped my beginnings as an educational technologist in the 1980s. We were exploring telematic networks, educational multimedia, the possibilities of convivial computing. We were trying to create tools that would not dominate the human being, but would foster connection, sharing, mutual learning — like the networks of the living world. In those days, people spoke of the personal computer as "a bicycle for the mind."

What I did not yet know was that this quest for the pattern that connects would lead me far beyond technology, toward a contemplative understanding that Zen Buddhism calls interbeing.

This document retraces that trajectory — from Bateson's pattern that connects to Thich Nhat Hanh's interbeing, from technological networks to the networks of the living, from cybernetics to contemplation.

1. Networks as a universal pattern

At every level of complexity, we find this network structure: at the cellular level (metabolism), at the organic level (nervous and circulatory systems), at the ecological level (food webs), at the social level (human communities), at the technological level (the Internet).

Cellular metabolism: a ceaseless flow of energy and matter through a network of chemical reactions that allows a living organism to continually generate, repair and perpetuate itself. What the poets call "the breath of life."

2. Self-organization and emergence

Biological life is a self-generating network within a boundary of its own making.

The purpose of a living system is to continually create and recreate its identity.

This principle of self-creation (autopoiesis) distinguishes the living from the non-living. An organism is not an assembly of parts, but a dynamic process that keeps itself in existence through its own activity.

Emergence names the appearance of new properties at higher levels of organization. Consciousness emerges from the complex organization of the nervous system without being reducible to individual neurons.

3. Gregory Bateson: immanent mind

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) is a central figure in my intellectual formation. An anthropologist, cybernetician and systems thinker, he developed a revolutionary vision of mind.

"Mind, this form of intelligence, is immanent in any sufficiently complex organization."

This claim radically transforms our understanding of consciousness. Mind is not a mysterious substance housed in the brain, but an emergent property of complex systems organized as networks.

This vision resonates deeply with the Buddhist notion of universal Buddha-nature: the capacity for awakening is not reserved for humans but immanent in all existence.

4. The network as a convivial medium

In order to better grasp the role and workings of the "information highways" in human communication, I explored concepts drawn from the science of complexity. These concepts support a vision of networks as a convivial medium through which each person could, in the image of life itself, exercise and share their creativity.

The concept of "conviviality" comes from Ivan Illich (1926–2002), who distinguished convivial tools (those that increase autonomy) from manipulative tools (those that create dependency). A convivial network would allow each person to create, to learn, to communicate on their own terms. That was an optimistic vision — naive, perhaps, in hindsight — of the promises of the Internet in the 1990s.

5. Technology and bacterial life

"But all this beautiful, lifeless technology needs the bacterial life of humans to take shape."

This sentence captures an essential paradox: technological networks, however sophisticated, remain inert without the human presence that animates them. The image of "bacterial life" is especially evocative. Bacteria are microscopic, seemingly insignificant, yet essential to all life on Earth.

In the same way, humans "breathe life" into technological networks. We are not mere users, but the living cells of an emerging technological organism.

6. From cyberspace to the global village

Thanks to the convergence of hypermedia and networks, we will soon find ourselves together, fully immersed in a symbolic space. With personal and interpersonal media, we will create virtual reality from scratch, organize cyberspace, inhabit and build the global village.

This collective practice gives birth to a new form of community. Crossing the Sun Microsystems slogan with McLuhan: "The network is the computer" becomes "The network is the mind."

7. A fractal perspective

The title of this document reveals a fractal vision of reality. At every scale of observation, we discover the same network structure, nested within networks of a higher order.

I am myself a network:

• Of cells organized into tissues
• Of tissues organized into organs
• Of organs organized into systems
• Of systems integrated into an organism

And this organism belongs to vaster networks: the family network, the ecological network, the planetary network, the cosmic network — down to the atoms of my body, forged in the stars.

There is no clear boundary where "I" begin and where "I" end. I am a temporary node in a vast fabric of interdependencies.

8. Metabolism and flow

Metabolism has two aspects: a network aspect (the structure of chemical reactions and their interconnections) and a flow aspect (the constant movement of matter and energy through these reactions).

"Living organisms combine stability of structure with fluidity of change" — the same overall structure is maintained despite continual flow and change.

This dialectic of stability and flow fascinated me throughout my professional career in communication networks. A network is never static: it is a flow of messages, of data, of interactions that maintains its coherence while constantly transforming itself.

9. The organization of the living

All living systems are learning systems.

This statement captures an essential characteristic: life is learning. Every organism, every ecosystem continually learns from its environment and adapts.

The organization of the living is characterized by self-generation (autopoiesis), continual adaptation and learning, the maintenance of identity through change — and this crucial duality: openness to flows of energy and organizational closure (self-determination). An organism exchanges with its environment while maintaining its autonomy.

10. Systems thinking and Zen: two paths, one vision

For decades, I explored systems thinking from an intellectual and professional standpoint. Then, in the 2000s, I began the practice of Zen. What struck me immediately was the extraordinary convergence between these two approaches.

These are not two different descriptions of reality, but two paths toward the same understanding: the fundamental unity of all existence.

11. Interdependence and impermanence

Buddhism teaches pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination): every phenomenon arises in dependence on causes and conditions. Nothing exists autonomously or permanently.

Systems science reaches the same conclusion by a different route: every system exists in a context, sustained by flows, emerging from relationships. My body is not a solid object but a process: every cell is regularly replaced, atoms circulate, metabolism exchanges matter and energy with the environment, consciousness emerges from neuronal patterns in constant flux.

Impermanence is not an abstract philosophical doctrine; it is the observable reality of every living system. The practice of zazen allows one to experience this fluidity directly, beyond the concept.

12. Consciousness as network

If mind is immanent in complex systems (Bateson), and if I am myself a complex system nested within other systems, then my consciousness is not "my" exclusive property.

Consciousness emerges from the neuronal network, which emerges from the cellular network, which emerges from the molecular network, which emerges from quantum patterns. And this neuronal network is itself connected to the world through the senses, language, culture.

The Zen answer: consciousness is nowhere and everywhere. It is not a locatable thing but a process emerging from the universal network of relationships.

When I practise zazen, I am not cultivating "my" individual consciousness. I am opening myself to the vaster network of which I am a part. The small self dissolves into the great Self, which is nothing other than universal interdependence.

"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."

"In this sheet there is also the logger, the wheat that fed the logger, his parents, the whole chain of the living, the ocean the rain comes from. Interbeing means that everything inter-is — everything is woven together, everything co-creates everything else, moment after moment."

Thich Nhat Hanh

My trajectory — from the telematic networks of the 1970s to the practice of Zen — may look like a detour. But it reveals a deep continuity. Technological networks taught me the structure of interdependence. Contemplation revealed its essence.

Today, facing the ecological crisis, technological dehumanization and social fragmentation, the concept of interbeing is not merely a spiritual wisdom — it is a vital necessity, a matter of survival. We must relearn what Indigenous peoples have always known, what Bateson formulated scientifically, what Zen expresses through practice: everything is connected.