Interdependence and perspective

I'm mid-way through the Wellesley onslaught so am up early on a Sunday morning by force of habit (these are the only two weeks of the year that I awake before 6:30AM as a matter of course) so I was able to catch this week's On Being interview with Matthieu Ricard, "a French-born, Tibetan Buddhist monk [who] began his professional life at the cellular genetics laboratory of a Nobel Prize-winning biologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris."

I've selected those passages that talk about interdependence & perspective. For their discussion about happiness, ego, and other things, please feel free to visit the website for the transcript & a recording of the talk.

Mr. Ricard: . . . I met Trinh Xuan Thuan in Andorra, in the Pyrenees. . . . And immediately, he said, “I’m born in Vietnam, born a Buddhist. I always wanted to have a dialogue about Buddhism and astrophysics, or modern science.” , , , The most fascinating thing I learned through this dialogue was precisely about something very deep about the nature of reality, related to interdependence and impermanence. [I]n modern physics . . . there’s non-localization, the fact that if one photon or particle split into two, and they shoot out at basically any distance in the universe, they still remain part of a whole. So there is something there that is still not separate. So that was an incredible insight for me, because interdependence is not just the fact that things are related but also that, therefore, they are devoid of a totally autonomous, independent existence.

. . . You would think that that rainbow is something existing on its own. Now behind you, you mask the rays of sun, and there is not a speck of existence of that rainbow that remains. It’s all gone, because you remove something, an element of a set of relations that crystallize that rainbow somehow as a phenomenon. . .

Mr. Ricard: , , , We are interdependent, even, I would say, even more deeply than what we mostly think. But that leads to, also, the sense of — interdependency is at the root of altruism and compassion. . .

Mr. Ricard: , , , So we have to distinguish mental factors which contribute to that way of being, the cluster of qualities like altruistic love, inner freedom, and so forth from those who undermine that, which is like jealousy, obsessive desire, hatred, arrogance. We call that “mental toxins,” because they poison our happiness and also make us relate to others in a poisonous way. , ,

But yet, we should acknowledge at the same time that you can be miserable in a little paradise, have everything, so-called, to be happy, and be totally depressed and a wreck within. And you can maintain this kind of joy of being alive and sense of compassion even in the worst possible scenario, because the way you translate that into happiness or misery, that’s the mind who does that. And the mind is that which experiences everything, from morning till evening. That’s your mind that translates the outer circumstances either into a sense of happiness, strength of mind, inner freedom or enslavement. So your mind can be your best friend, also your worst enemy, and it’s the spoiled brat of the mind needs to be taken care of, which we don’t do. We vastly underestimate the power of transformation of mind and its importance in determining the quality of every instant of our life. . .

That’s just very simple, but we don’t do that. We do exercise every morning, 20 minutes, to be fit. We don’t sit for 20 minutes to cultivate compassion. If we were to do so, our mind will change, our brain will change. What we are will change. So those are skills. They need to be, first, identified, then, cultivated. What is good to learn chess? Well, you have to practice and all that. In the same way, we all have thoughts of altruistic love. Who doesn’t have that? But they come and go. We don’t cultivate them. Do you learn to piano by playing 20 seconds every two weeks? This doesn’t work. So why, by what kind of mystery, some of the most important qualities of human beings will be optimal just because you wish so? Doesn’t make any sense . . .

Sometimes, you find a very difficult situation , , , I gave this example, which struck me. I was sitting outside our monastery once, and it was monsoon time in Nepal, a lot of mud and water. And we had put some bricks over about 20 to 30 meters, to go from one brick to the other to cross that mess. And one person came, a foreigner, and that person was just screaming, “How disgusting, this place!” And I was sitting there, and she’s going to scold me for it. [laughs] And then, so OK, then five minutes later, another person came, two ladies. And she was just hopping from one to the other, saying, “Oh, it’s so nice. It’s such fun. And when there is rain, there’s no dust.” And she was in exactly the same situation, and she had a sense of lightness and humor. The other one was just grumbling like crazy about it. So — same situation, different perspective.