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Interdependence
Feb. 18th, 2025 07:34 amToday's topic covers the title of the book (The Sun My Heart) since it talks about the interdependence of all phenomenon. Just as we need our heart to live, so we need the sun to live; without sunlight, there could be no plants, so no oxygen, so we would die, so the sun is like an external heart. Similarly, if we examine reality carefully, we see that all things are dependent on all other things. On an ultimate level there is no real separation between us and them. Since I was just teaching the Katha Upanishad, I do find it interesting that although Buddhism teaches anatman, concepts like Buddha mind and interdependence and the jeweled net of Indra do seem to smuggle it back in. (At least the form of Atman in Vedanta where Atman is ultimately Brahman, which also teaches that at a fundamental level there is no separation between us and other beings).
The quote I want to pull out from this chapter is not Thich Nhat Hanh himself, but a physicist he quotes, Erwin Schrodinger: "Thus you can thrown yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely 'some day': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
The quote I want to pull out from this chapter is not Thich Nhat Hanh himself, but a physicist he quotes, Erwin Schrodinger: "Thus you can thrown yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely 'some day': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
