Interconnections—A Cause of Suffering

Ajaan Suwat was once asked why Buddhism didn’t have a god. If only Buddhism had a god, the person said, it would give people a sense of reassurance that there was somebody out there looking out for them when they couldn’t quite make it on their own. Ajaan Suwat’s response was, “If there were some god who could ordain that, if when I took a mouthful of food, everybody in the world would get full, I would bow down to that god.”

But we’re not connected that way. For all that they say about our being interconnected, the interconnections are actually a cause of suffering. We’re interconnected to people who can do a lot of harm. We’re interconnected to a world that can snuff us out very easily. All we need is an earthquake or a tsunami: It’s as if the Earth is shrugging a little bit, and thousands of people can die.

So it’s not the case that this interconnected system is designed for the well-being of everybody. It eats everybody up. And everybody else is eating everybody up, too. So our best contribution to the interconnected system is to get out and to be a good example to others in getting out.

It’s not that we don’t hope for other people to find the way out as well. We hope that they will. That’s why we spread thoughts of goodwill every day, thinking, “May all beings be happy,” primarily so that we can keep watch over our own actions and then realizing that, to whatever extent we can help others, we’re happy to help.

But it has to start here. If you’re going to tell people the right way to cook an egg, maybe it’s good first to know how to cook an egg yourself.

So everything keeps coming back to your actions, right here, right now, right here, right now.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the book, Meditations 9, (pdf) pp. 25-26.