Via Basel: Independence or Interdependence Day?
Preface: July is a month of revolutions and independence mainly from monarchies. The most famous was the French Revolution or “Bastille Day” July 14, 1789. More personal for me as a witness was the 14 July Iraqi revolution of 1958, a military coup led by General Abd al-Karim Qasim which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy established decades earlier by the British. Finally our own July 4 Declaration of Independence from the British Empire in 1776.
I was impressed by my fellow meditator Blanche Roberts’s Dharma talk last Sunday at our Sangha meeting, and with her permission here it is:
We just celebrated our 250th birthday —– Our Independence Day. Buddhists note an irony in this independence because we cannot really LIVE without being dependent on others. Perhaps we could consider celebrating “Dependence or Interdependence Day.” According to the Dalai Lama, interdependence is the idea that all things are connected and that everything in the universe exists in a state of mutual dependence, that no one thing exists in isolation.
Dekila Chungyalpa – is an ecofeminist+ environmental strategist who was raised as a Tibetan Buddhist in a tiny Buddhist-kingdom in the eastern Himalaya and now lives in the US. When she came to study in the US she observed that one of the myths of Western society is that we’re independent beings. She noted that the dominant American identity hinges upon individualism or what she calls the John Wayne paradigm. This John Wayne worldview is of antisocial lone heroes—who will save the day via decisive and often violent retribution. She goes on to say this view is based on a confrontational world defined by scarce resources, competition as the basis for a zero sum game, and the survival of the fittest.
This is from Martin Luther King, Jr’s., Christmas Sermon On Peace, 24 December 1967:
“Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world.”
And you’ll recall these famous lines from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
He concludes the Christmas sermon by saying, “We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.”
Indeed, we can celebrate individuality and individual agency. No two humans are alike! And at the same time, we each exist within nature’s web of interconnectedness and interdependence. The true nature of existence is Interconnection. So perhaps this is a reality deserving of its own holiday? What if we declared July 4th Interdependence or Dependence Day?
Here’s a closing prayer from Jack Kornfield: “Happy Interdependence! May all beings breathing together in the web of life live with mutual care. May they honor and support inner and outer freedom for all.”
Blanche gathered the above from links below:
Dekila Chungyalpa at the Center for Humans & Nature
Jack Kornfield’s Happy Interdependence
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Christmas Sermon
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