Interdependence Interbeing Interconnectedness Reliance

This is a talk given at our weekly Sit Raleigh Meditation Society Tuesday night group. In this discussion the concept of interconnectedness, interdependence, interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh called it. How important it is to realize that we are all reliant on each other one way or another. Hopefully this talk offers a way in to this concept and allows us to see where we already know and practice this, and puts a spotlight on it so we recognize our connection to all beings. As a live talk, there is possible for noise to show up - more proof we are connected to the world! Wishing you much metta.

Transcript

So this idea of interconnection, Interbeing, The astronaut's overview effect, Interdependence, We can call it being in relationship or association, Lots of different terms to describe something really similar. That one way or another, Whether we like it or not, We are all connected, We are all dependent on and to other people. We are all downstream from something. Another way to consider this is that there isn't anyone that has a being all to themself, That they make everything they need from what, Right? Sure you could build your own house and cut down trees, But then you need the trees, And you need the tool, And you need the land to put it on, Right? You need the air to breathe, And we could go on and on and on. So by, Just by ourselves, Whatever we happen to be, We won't, We're nothing without everything else. You know, Just take sitting. If we didn't have something to sit upon, We couldn't sit. If there wasn't ground to walk upon, It doesn't matter that our legs can move in that way. If there was nowhere to walk, So we need the ground, We need to be in relationship. It's required. But I think we're kind of trained to ignore that, To not see that, And over, I think, The past bunch of years, We've separated ourselves even greater, Unfortunately. I don't believe personally that it does anybody good. So I'm going to go back to the astronauts just for more moment, And there was another astronaut. His name was Rusty Schweiger, And he was also up on the space station, And he had to do a spacewalk, I'm told, With another astronaut, And he had a moment where he wasn't doing anything, And he got to just look out there. And the term he uses, I'm going to read it, It says, He was being undone, Unmade by this experience when he saw the earth in one view. All that he thought he knew, That he was and that he believed, Changed. I'm not saying that he tossed away everything that he knew and believed, But it changed when he saw that. Oh, I mean, We know that, Right? If you've seen a picture of the earth, If you went to school, You learned some things, You have that, We know that, But we don't know it in here. We don't embody it. And the astronauts describe this as a spiritual experience. And what we're doing is considered a spiritual practice. And when you consider the terms of going against the stream, That's kind of being undone, Unmaking all you knew and finding a new way to view the world, To connect with the world, To be in the world. So as with, I believe, All the practices, There are three ways I see we need to develop them. We need to hear them or read them. We need to find out about them in some way. And that's the intellectual aspect that we, Oh, I know what that means. I understand the concept. And then through meditation, Doing these contemplations, You start to know what it feels like in the body. So you get a felt sense that, Oh, Okay, When I think about my connection to this or that, Here's what arises. And it might be faint in the beginning, But if you do these practices and you look for it, You start to get to know, Oh, That's how this feels. I know what that feels like. And then the third part is the heart. So you have the head, The body, And the heart. And that's when we think about these other beings, Like what arises in our heart? How does that compare to the feeling of metta? And so we learn how that feels. And then we take the knowledge, The heartfelt and the body sense, And we go out in the world, And we look around the room. And if we just spend a little bit of time contemplating, We'll start to notice what might arise. And they all don't show up all the time, And not everything will make this show up, And not everything will make that show up. But with regular practice, You'll start to be able to notice that more, To the point that you then embody what this means, What it feels like to be in touch with our interdependence, Our connection with all beings. We're all earthlings. Whatever we are, We're an earthling. And we start to change the way we connect with these other beings. And we also stop othering. You know, If you turn on any news website or program or paper, There's a whole lot of othering going on right now. People calling each other names, Awful names, Separating each other. These people are okay. These people are no good. They have to go. They can't come here. They have to leave here. All that. But when we don't realize that we're connected, It's really easy to do that, To separate ourselves from other people. When we realize that we're, As the astronaut, The first one I read, That we're more similar than we are different, Then it gets a little more difficult. It's a little more easy to care, Even if they are quite different from us, Even if they have attitudes and ideas and even actions that we strongly disagree with. It doesn't mean we just say, Okay, Well, They're people and I know I really disagree with them and I'm angry about their actions, But whatever. That's not what I'm trying to say. When we see people that arise those feelings in us and we have disagreements like that with, It's easy to feel first anger and then hate. This person did that. They harmed that person that I know. I really hate them for it. That kind of, That's easy for that to arise. That only hurts us. Hate burns us first. It doesn't usually change that situation at all. And we just feel bad. And then we increase that separation between us and others, Which will never improve a bad situation. And these are hard things to accept. It's much easier when we see someone that does something that we really don't approve of to just say, They're no good. I want nothing to do with them. You know, Goodbye. And this doesn't mean that we need to embrace them either. You know, We need to protect ourselves. If someone's really causing us direct harm, Make some space, Protect, You know, Your life and your family and whomever, Friends. But it begins in the heart because nothing will ever be able to change if we've drawn those hard lines. And again, We look at these other people, Using that word, And all we see are the differences. And if you begin to think about what most animal life is made on this planet, And most in plant life too, We're 78% water, I think, Somewhere in that range. That's a big percentage. And so if I'm whatever, Three-quarters water, And my cat is three-quarters water, And the tree is three-quarters water, And you know, Definitely the ground today is three-quarters water. Think how similar we are. We're made of the same stuff, Right? The red in the clay in North Carolina is iron. It's the same thing that makes our blood red. I mean, I could go on and on. I'm not going to give a science lesson. But we could go through all the different things that make up the body we inhabit. And then we could look at the body of a raccoon or a deer, You know, Or any other being. And we could go down the list and it's all the same stuff. You know, We look at the DNA strands and even the simplest beings we have so many similarities with. Like the instructions for our bodies to make itself have most of the same instructions as a raccoon does. I mean, There's some difference there, Of course, But more similarity. But if the raccoon's going through your garbage or tearing up something on your property, You might not feel that way. You think, Oh, That darn raccoon, Look what he's doing. He's making a mess. The deer, They're eating my plants, Tearing up my lawn. And they're just like us. They're trying to get a meal, Be safe, Have some place to sleep. Not much different than we do. We make a mess, Too. You know, Look around, You know, Getting our food and finding our place to live and all that. We make all kinds of messes. But we don't look at that. We look at them. It's easy. We don't want to look inward. But this is not about looking where we're wrong. That's not what this is really about. This is about where we're similar. Where can we see that we're more similar, As Christina said, Than different? I guess when we see that. And one of the ways that we can really develop that is through the first of the no blameful path, Right view or understanding, Which is Samaditti and Polly. Trying to view the world, Not as we think it is, Or we wish it would be, But coming to some sort of clearer truth of what reality is. How it really is, Not how I think it is, Not how I was taught or what my parents told me or I saw on television or Facebook. But when I experience the world, What am I seeing? When I try to take away my bias the best I can, And take away labels and names, Bring them down to lowest common denominators, Mammal or being, Not dog or cat or snake, But just that's just a being. I'm just a being. It gets simpler, Easier to care. I see these just incredibly beautiful teachings that the Buddha gave us. There are so many ways in, So many areas that we can focus on. But whether we do the heart practices and open our hearts first and then develop wisdom along with the compassion and kindness, Or we go through the eightfold path and develop wisdom and collectedness and ethical living or morals, And compassion also develops. So whichever way you find that is appealing and makes sense to you, But they all bring us to the same place where we see what is really true about this moment. How can we be in relationship with others, With all beings and not cause suffering? So, You know, The goal, As the Buddha said, It was to achieve enlightenment, To end all our suffering so we don't keep on the cycle of samsara. Well, If we're causing suffering, We're definitely not ending our suffering. If we're creating suffering with every step we take, We're going to create more suffering. That's just going to happen. But, You know, Instead of creating this much, We can create this much, You know, And then this much, And we keep shrinking it as we become more skillful, We understand how to relate in the world in a kinder, Gentler way. And this doesn't happen just because we understand some concept. We have to take the concept and then begin to live it. That's really what I've seen over the years of practice. First, I got this idea and I was like, Wow, That's incredible. Okay, And then the next day I'd forget it. You know, It was, And then I'd be reminded of it again, Maybe in a couple of days, A couple of weeks, Who knows how long, Until I thought of it again, Or I read about it again, Or I saw some notes I took from a talk, Whatever it was. But the more intentional effort we put at this, It eventually just becomes how we live. And I can't tell you how long that takes, But the more effort you put, The quicker it happens. If you do it once in a while, Take forever. You know, If you think about trying to learn guitar, If you spent like 10 minutes today, You just got a guitar and you spent 10 minutes today. And then in two weeks, You're picked it up for 20 minutes. And even every two weeks, You doubled the time. It would take you years before you could probably play a song. But if you spent a half an hour every day, It wouldn't be that long. You probably wouldn't sound that great, But you could probably play a song in a couple of weeks, Maybe less. It's the continuity that is really where things come in. And that's what's so important with practice. So I'm going to end with this little practice that I have tried to do that kind of connects these things. So the next time you're walking somewhere, Preferably during the day, So you don't trip over your feet that, You know, Walk somewhere where you, You know, You're not going to walk out in traffic or somewhere relatively safe, Not the edge of a cliff. And take a couple steps looking at your feet. If you're wearing shoes, Pay attention to your shoes. Look at the ground that you're walking upon. And then as we did in the meditation, With the shoes, Try to remember where you got them. And then take that back. How did they get to where you got them? And imagine who brought them there. Maybe imagine who sold them to you if you bought them. If they were a gift, Imagine who gifted them to you. And try to take it back to the individual or group of people that made them. And then where the materials came from. Just try to take it back to the lowest common denominator, To where they all began. You're probably not going to know any of those people. But you can bring a picture up in your head, An idea. And try to thank them. In whatever way feels appropriate. Just smile thinking about them. You know, Putting your hands together and a bow, Whatever makes sense for you. But just acknowledging that there's this whole group of people that are responsible for these shoes on my feet. That are allowing me to walk in relative comfort and safety on whatever I'm walking on. Because how often do you think about that? I mean, We don't. And, You know, This is not about, Again, This is not about calling ourselves out that, Oh, We're ungrateful. No. We've never been taught to really, Most of us at least, To be thankful for those things. Maybe thank the person, You know, If our parents bought us something, If I got a jacket for my grandmother as a gift, Of course I would say thank you. And I would be grateful. But I wouldn't take it, I wouldn't think about the store owner or the truck driver or any of that or the seamstress. But it widens our connection to the world. And it's not abstract because the shoes are on your feet. You really have them. And then think about the ground you're walking upon and do the same thing. If it's a sidewalk, Well, There's a lot to that. Excavators and masons, Probably some carpenters and engineers and all truck drivers, The cement plant. I mean, You know, The little creatures, Millions and maybe billions of years ago that became part of what the sand is that are now in the cement under our feet. I mean, Again, Not something we think of that often. If you're, If you're on the earth, Think about the fact that the earth you're walking on today, It wasn't like that a hundred years ago, Probably. And most likely a thousand years ago, It was definitely not like that. And you go farther and farther back. There was an ocean here. This was not land. I've been told and I believe it's true that in the mountains out in Nashville, They were as, They were incredibly tall. They're not very big anymore. In comparison, They were, They were, You know, Three, Four times as tall. And all that rock that is no longer there, That's in your backyard. If you live around here, It got washed all the way, All these miles, Hundreds of miles. And now they're, It's here. And just understand that things change. Like the, What became the sand is now the sidewalk, The sand that becomes the windows, All these different things. And I think through a combination of mindfulness of our surroundings and our relationship to all these things, Everything, We become more curious about what's around us. We'll care a little bit more. You know, It's not going to bust our hearts open. This is a gradual process. But life is a lot easier coming from a place of care and love than anger and hate. And I'll just end on this note because, You know, It's something that when I was first introduced to some of these ideas, I thought, Well, If I, If I open up that much, I'm going to break because I'm going to feel responsible for all beings. But the equanimity practice and the teachings on karma tell us we're not responsible for other people's actions. We can support them and help them and guide them if needed, But we can't make other people do anything. People are going to continue to be unskillful and make mistakes. So are we. But we're responsible for our actions and how we meet the world. And if we want a kinder, Nicer, Friendlier, More peaceful, All those things, You can put lots of adjectives. We have to meet the world that way. If that's what we want. Thank you.