If we sincerely gaze at a flower, we begin to realize that it is composed of non-flower elements. The sun is part of it. The rain is part of it. The earth beneath it is part of it. Your consciousness in looking at it is part of it, as are the wind and the sky and many other things.
In fact, if we deeply look, we see that the flower is composed of everything in existence. The galaxies had to be there for the sun to be there. The quarks and gluons and whirling electrons had to be there for the sun and rain and earth to be there. The flower is literally composed of everything.
And not just the flower. If we listen and look deeply at anything at all, we see that it's composed of everything. A bear is composed of non-bear elements, everything else in the universe that is non-bear. A mother is composed of non-mother elements, everything else in existence. Even our "self" is composed of non-self elements, nothing less than everything else in existence.
When we see this, the distinctions between flower and non-flower, river and non-river, self and non-self begin to fade. Everything inter-exists with everything else. Nothing actually exists by itself, as a separate thing. All inter-exists, all shares interbeing with everything else. In fact, there is no everything else. There's only the living organism of existence itself.
When we get a wound in our left hand and wash it with our right, we don't think that the right hand is "helping" the left. The two are just part of one organism, so of course one hand washes the other. Similarly, existence itself is all one interbeing.
Thus, when we are kind and compassionate, we do it for all of existence. When we extend a hand, we extend a hand for all of existence. When we meditate, we meditate for all of existence.
Everything is connected; everything is composed of everything else. What's true in space is also true in time. Your kind act of today wouldn't have been there without all the other events in your life. All of those events are present at the moment when you smile or extend a hand.
The past and the future are both present in this moment. The sun and the grass and the starlight and the atoms are all present in this flower, and in "you" and in "me."
When we touch this moment with compassion, we touch all moments that way. When we touch this person with compassion, we touch all people at the same time with the same compassion. When we touch a feeling or thought with compassion, we touch all feelings and thoughts past and future that way. All is related; all is one.
When we meditate, we do it for all beings everywhere, indeed for all of existence. When we free ourselves, we are helping to liberate everyone everywhere. When our heart expands, it helps to expand the heart of the universe.
At one level "we" exist in time, journeying towards consciousness and awakening. At another level we exist everywhere as everything, and can neither die nor be born, but simply keep changing form.
In our minds we create the concept of a "wave" on the ocean. And if that wave thinks of itself as a separate thing, then it has fear and anxiety. But at all moments the wave is always water, and that water is everywhere, supporting all "waves," being them.
That water takes numerous shapes, depending on what vessel it is in, or whether it is evaporating to the sky or raining upon the earth—but it is always the same, always water, always the ocean, rising and falling, being here and there, self and non-self, star and non-star, this moment and all other moments, here in your consciousness, present in your heart.
—jim sloman 5/14/01
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