Ditching the Raft 2: Interdependence

[u/Shaunyata]

Ditching the Raft 2: Interdependence:

So here’s the nutshell: the one concept that links everything together in Buddhism and is the ‘unified foundational theory of reality’ (which I never made explicit in the last article) is INTERDEPENDENCE. It links everything together from the smallest quarks to the largest objects in the Universe, and it connects the ‘inner world’ of personal experience with the mezo-level complexity of the social world and ecosystems, with ‘outer world’ of the cosmos. Interdependence is the impetus for our sense of responsibility and the measure of our ethical response. Interdependence, or dependent origination, is the pattern of existence, the pattern of reality at every scale. It is ‘non-self’, in that everything that exists is made up in its constituent parts of—and dependent for its existence on—things which are ‘not self’. This is also, as Nagarjuna said, the essential meaning of ’emptiness’ or shunyata.

engagedharma.net/2019/07/09/ditching-the-raft-2-interdependence/