CONNECTION / INTERBEING / INTERDEPENDENCE

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.
Laozi
570-490 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Daoism
Tao Te Ching: A New English Version , Stephen Mitchell, tr., 1988

I am not an Athenian nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Socrates
469-399 BCE, Athenian Philosopher

All things are linked with one another, and this oneness is sacred; there is nothing that is not interconnected with everything else. For things are interdependent, and they combine to form this universal order.
Marcus Aurelius
121-180, Roman Emperor, Stoic Philosopher
The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius , Mark Forstater, tr., 2000

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
William Shakespeare
1564-1616, English Poet, Dramatist, Actor
Troilus and Cressida , III

No thing is single, if it lives,
But multiple its being.
Goethe
1749-1832, German Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Philosopher, Scientist
"Epirrhema," Roman Elegies and Other Poems & Epigrams , Michael Hamburger, tr., 1996

This we know: All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the great web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.
Chief Sealth
1786-1866, Native American Suqwamish/Duwamish Leader

All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man, the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
Sealth

Each of us is responsible for everything to everyone else.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1821-1881, Russian Writer

There is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a false one.
Sigmund Freud
1856-1939, Austrian Neurologist, Founder of Psychoanalysis
Totem and Taboo

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth.
Mahatma Gandhi
1869-1948, Indian Spiritual Leader

Yet there is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.
Carl Jung
1875-1961, Swiss Psychologist, Theorist
Memories, Dreams, Reflections , Aniela Jaffe, ed., 1963

There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
George Adams
1878-1962, American Writer

All real living is meeting.
Martin Buber
1878-1965, Israeli Theologian

All things and beings in the universe are connected with each other – visibly or invisibly and through vibrations a communication is established between them on all the planes of existence.
Hazrat Khan
1882-1927, Indian Sufi Master, Musician
The Mysticism of Sound and Music , 1991

We have learned that we cannot live alone, in peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away … We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.
Franklin Roosevelt
1882-1945, 32nd US President
4th Inaugural Address, 1945

Every people draws sustenance from others, from the heritage of the generations, from the achievements of the human spirit in all eras and all countries. Mutual dependence is a cosmic and eternal law. There is nothing in the world, large or small, from the invisible electron to the most massive bodies in infinite space, which has no bonds with its fellows or with unlike bodies. The whole of existence is an infinite chain of mutual bonds and applies to the world of the spirit as well as to the world of matter.
David Ben-Gurion
1886-1973, 1st Israeli Prime Minister
in Atlantic Monthly , 1961 November

We never know we are beings till we love. And then it is we know the powers and the potentialities of human existence, the power and potentialities of organic, conscious, solar, cosmic matter and force. We, together, vibrate as one in harmony with man and with the cosmos.
Jean Toomer
1894-1967, African-American Writer
in Cynthia Kerman & Richard Eldridge, The Lives of Jean Toomer , 1987

No man who loves the trees truly can be cruel to animals or to his fellowmen.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Importance of Living , 1937

Every act or thought has consequences, which themselves will have consequences; life is the most intricate web of interconnections. This is the law of karma … (which) simply states that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma.
Eknath Easwaran
1911-1999, Indian/American Writer, Translator, Teacher
Introduction, The Bhavagad-Gita , 1985

More than anything else we need communion with everyone. Struggles for power have nothing to do with communion. Communion extends beyond borders. It is with one's enemies also.
John Cage
1912-1992, American Musician
Empty Words , 1980

We are not outside the rest of nature and therefore cannot do with it as we please without changing ourselves.
Arne Naess
1912-, Norwegian Philosopher
Ecology, Community and Lifestyle

There is a tendency for living things to join up, establish linkages, live inside each other, return to earlier arrangements, get along whenever possible. This is the way of the world … the whole dear notion of one's own self – marvelous old free-willed, free-enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of a Self – is a myth.
Lewis Thomas
1913-1993, American Physician, Educator, Writer
The Lives of a Cell , 1974

There are roads out of the secret places within us along which we must all move as we go to touch others.
Romare Bearden
1914-1988, African-American Painter

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many – this is not prophecy, but description.
Ralph Ellison
1914-1994, African-American Writer
The Invisible Man , 1952

All men – whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans – have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.
Norman Cousins
1915-1990, American Editor, Humanitarian, Author
In Place of Folly

We are each other's harvest:
we are each other's business:
we are each other's magnitude and bond.
Gwendolyn Brooks
1917-2000, African-American Poet, Writer

With each man who dies in the world, each of us dies a little. With each person who suffers, we, too, suffer a little. With each child born in the world, we all become richer in possibilities. We're all unconditionally like the other; it is just that we are in diverse lands, playing different roles in a variety of robes before dissimilar backdrops on various stages before foreign audiences. It would be interesting if we could often change robes and stand on many stages in our lifetime. It would give us great insight into man's universality. We exist for each individual as each individual exists for us all.
Leo Buscaglia
1924-1998, American Educator, Writer
Love , 1972

When we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. You cannot point out one thing that is not here – time, space, the Earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word "inter-be" should be in the dictionary. "To be" is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is … The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of "non-paper elements." And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without "non-paper elements," like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.
Thich Nhat Hanh
1926-, Vietnamese Buddhist Master, Poet, Writer, Activist
The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra , 1988

If you look more deeply you will see that in just five or six days, the rose will become part of the garbage. You do not need to wait five days to see it. If you look at the rose, and you look deeply, you can see it now. And if you look into the garbage can, you see that in a few months its contents can be transformed into lovely vegetables, and even a rose. If you are a good organic gardener and you have the eyes of a bodhisattva, looking at a rose you can see the garbage, and looking at the garbage you can see a rose. Roses and garbage inter-are. Without a rose, we cannot have garbage; and without garbage, we cannot have a rose. They need each other very much. The rose and garbage are equal. The garbage is just as precious as the rose. If we look deeply at the concepts of defilement and immaculateness, we return to the notion of interbeing.
Ibid.

Looking at anything, we can see the nature of interbeing. A self is not possible without non-self elements. Looking deeply at any one thing, we see the whole cosmos. The one is made of the many.
Hanh

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Max Ehrmann
1872-1945, German-American Lawyer, Poet
Desiderata , 1927

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929-1968, African-American Civil Rights Leader, Cleric, 1964 Nobel Laureate

Our lives extend beyond our skins, in radical interdependence with the rest of the world.
Joanna Macy
1929-, American Writer

Kindred souls – indeed, my selves otherwise costumed – turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers.
Tuan Yi-Fu
1930-, Chinese/American Geographer, Educator, Writer
Who Am I? An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit , 1999

God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another. We are not made for an exclusive self-sufficiency but for interdependence, and we break the law of being at our peril.
Desmond Tutu
1931-, South African Anglican Prelate, Civil Rights Activist, 1984 Nobel Laureate

My existence is caught up and inextricably bound up with yours … A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.
Tutu
Morehouse Medical School Commencement Address, The Wisdom of Desmond Tutu , Michael Battle, ed., 1998

I would not know how to be a human being at all, except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. Not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.
Tutu

As we continue to grow and mature, we become increasingly aware that all of nature is interdependent, that there is an ecological system that governs nature, including society. We further discover that the higher reaches of our nature have to do with our relationships with others – that human life also is interdependent.
Stephen Covey
1932-, American Management Educator, Writer
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , 1989

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences but by those who, with open minds and hearts, seek out connections.
Katherine Paterson
1932-, American Writer

Instead of production, primarily, we have to think about sustainability. Instead of dominating nature, we have to acknowledge that nature is our source and best teacher. Instead of understanding the world in parts, we need to think about the whole.
Wes Jackson
1936-, American Writer

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
Marge Piercy
1936-, American Poet, Writer, Feminist

If we begin by valuing all life forms equally – the great and the small, the rare and the common, the dangerous and the innocuous, the useful and the useless – we may also accept that all of humankind are brothers and sisters. Each has every right to be, and to seek fulfilment in its own way. A reverence for all life must take root in the mind of man.
Michael Fox
1937-, British/American Veterinarian, Ethologist, Conservationist, Writer

When I say that the fate of the sea turtle or the tiger or the gibbon is mine, I mean it. All that is in my universe is not merely mine; it is me. And I shall defend myself not only against overt aggression but also against gratuitous insult.
John A. Livingston
1937-, Canadian Ornithologist, Naturalist, Environmentalist, Educator, Writer

If we lived a life that valued and protected trees, it would be a life that also valued and protected us – and gave us great joy. A way of life that kills trees, our present way of life, kills us too, body and soul.
Wangari Maathai
1940-, Kenyan Environmentalist

We see our own fulfillment as entangled in that of the people around us. As we find our true calling and live it out, others prosper; and as others fulfill themselves as a community, they provide us with an irreplaceable context for our own unfolding and self-discovery … Community arises when we discover the interesting, if radical, alternative: finding guidance for our own lives by giving attention to the desires and intentions of others. This is not an obligation, it's a way of being that invites soul in place of ego.
Thomas Moore
1940-, American Psychologist, Writer
Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship , 1994

When you hug someone, you want it to be a masterpiece of connection.
Tess Gallagher
1943-, American Screenwriter, Educator, Poet
"The Hug"

Despite the appearance of being separate individuals, we are all connected to patterns of intelligence governing the cosmos.
Deepak Chopra
1947-, Indian/American Physician, Writer
Journey Into Healing: Awakening the Wisdom Within You , 1994

Humanism starts not with identity but with the ability to identify with others. It asks what we have in common with others while acknowledging the internal diversity among ourselves. It is about the priority of a shared humanity.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
1950-, African-American Scholar, Educator, Critic

Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected – to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom – we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness.
Malidoma Some
1956-, Burkina Fasso Dagara Shaman, Writer
The Healing Wisdom of Africa , 1999

… the intensity of human connection and attention … What would it be like if that intensity of human connection could be found here, in addition to all the material wealth that is available? If the human wealth could match the material wealth, what would happen? Heaven could be created, right here.
Ibid.

No matter what uniform we may be wearing, underneath it all we are all the same – unique individuals, alone, aching to belong. Ultimately, we all have more in common with each other than we don't have in common.
RuPaul
1960-, African-American Entertainer
Lettin It All Hang Out , 1995

Some Part of the psyche – a subliminal form of consciousness, possesses awareness of the background energy landscape and the underlying connectedness of individual bodies below the level of normal consciousness. This results in a subtle condition of tension between different elements of perception – one, sensory, and the other, episensory .
Ali Ansari
1969-, Pakistani Engineer, Writer, Poet
Sufism and Beyond: Sufi Thought in the Light of Late 20th Century Science , 1999

Breath is the vital life force which connects every man to every other and all men to God.
- Yogi Ramcharaka
The Science of Breath , 1905

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004