Interdependence and Mutuality

Interdependence and Mutuality Selected readings from World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts with commentary Universal Peace Federation - International Leadership Conference

Commentary
All existences, great and small, are linked in a web of interdependent relationships. Interdependence is the basis for teachings which deny egoism and acquisitiveness while encouraging compassion and reciprocity.
Andrew Wilson, Editor, World Scripture

Judaism
Observe how all God's creations borrow from each other: day borrows from night and night from day, but they do not go to law one with another as mortals do.... The moon borrows from the stars and the stars from the moon... the sky borrows from the earth and the earth from the sky.... All God's creatures borrow from the other, yet make peace with one another without lawsuits; but if man borrows from his friend, he seeks to swallow him up with usury and robbery.
Midrash, Exodus Rabbah 31.15

Christianity
We are members one of another.
Ephesians 4.25

Islam
Abu Musa narrated that the Prophet said, “A believer to another believer is like a building whose different parts enforce each other.”
Bukhari 8:55
The believers are like one person; if his head aches, the whole body aches with fever and sleeplessness.
Muslim 4/ 6260

Buddhism
Why should I be unable
To regard the bodies of others as "I"?
It is not difficult to see
That my body is also that of others.
In the same way as the hands and so forth
Are regarded as limbs of the body,
Likewise why are embodied creatures
Not regarded as limbs of life?
Shantideva, Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life 8.112-16

Buddhism
If [someone holds that] there is anything born somewhere apart from concatenation [the chain of mutual relations], he is one who is to be recognized as an advocate of no-causation as he destroys concatenation. If concatenation worked [from outside] like a lamp revealing all kinds of things, this means the presence of something outside concatenation itself. All things are devoid of self-nature [separate existence], have never been born, and in their original nature are [transparent] like the sky; things separated from concatenation belong to the discrimination of the ignorant. When this entire world is regarded as concatenation, as nothing else but concatenation, then the mind gains tranquility.
- Lankavatara Sutra 78

Taoism
Everything has its "that," everything has its "this." From the point of view of "that" you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, "that" comes out of "this" and "this" depends on "that"--which is to say that "this" and "that" give birth to each other…. A state in which "this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the Hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly.
Chuang Tzu 2

Commentary
All humans are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil rights leader

Commentary
Heavenly fortune rejects those who live for their own sake and embraces those who live for the sake of others. Through Heaven’s power we are connected to the entire universe. This power penetrates everything infinitely; hence our scope of action expands infinitely. By living for the sake of others, we can make relationships with everything.
Sun Myung Moon
Founder, Universal Peace Federation

Commentary
A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labor of other [people], living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labor of my fellow [people].
Albert Einstein
Physicist and philosopher

Commentary
Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
Tenzin Gyatso
14th Dalai Lama

Commentary
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
philosopher

Commentary
Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
Mahatma Gandhi
Spiritual leader and activist

Commentary
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
Thomas Merton
Roman Catholic monk

Commentary
One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked. A voice asked: 'Who is there?' He answered: 'It is I.' The voice said: 'There is no room here for me and thee.' The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation this man returned to the door of the Beloved. He knocked. A voice from within asked: 'Who is there?' The man said: 'It is Thou.' 
Rumi, Sufi poet

For further reflection
World Scripture: An Anthology of Sacred Texts
http://origin.org/ucs/ws/ws.cfm
Universal Peace Federation
http://www.upf.org/education/interreligious-understanding

Interdependence and Mutuality

by Universal Peace Federation International on Mar 17, 2010

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Interdependence and Mutuality — Presentation Transcript