It is incredible how quickly the mind equilibrates. News or events that initially seem quite shocking soon turn into, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”

I recently experienced this firsthand when my social media stream became full of apocalyptic pictures revealing the orange sky shrouding much of California and Oregon. Just like my first time experiencing an earthquake on the West Coast was an incredible sensation and the latest one was a minor inconvenience, my mind soon regarded that sky as just another summer with record high temperatures and town-clearing fires.

I have lived in California for many years, and each year I have watched the fires grow worse and worse. At first I was surprised, then outraged, and then I simply resigned to the reality.

It is easy to become jaded by exposure, and it is just as easy to think that it is impossible to fix the current situation. With natural disasters increasing, the pandemic plowing on, and political systems crumbling, the forces we are up against can seem quite daunting.

However, I have since come to recognize the most important thing we can all do right now for both ourselves and each other. If we internalize this realization deeply in our minds and hearts, it will solve all of the problems currently plaguing politics and society.

We must all come to a deep understanding of our interdependence.

We must conceptualize how we are all connected, in a million and one ways, and how our actions impact each other and the world.

If you are unfamiliar with the term, interdependence is a Buddhist concept that offers a deep insight into the nature of our reality. Recognizing our interdependence means understanding that nothing spontaneously exists on its own. Rather, all things are influenced by many others.

Once we realize this and truly take it to heart, everything will fall into place – you, me, the world, and our love.

We are all connected

California was not the first place I experienced a sky clouded by smoke.

Eight years ago, I spent a summer studying Buddhism in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Each week, I would go to the temples to cultivate metta, or loving kindness for all beings. A few weeks into my trip, a smoldering grey haze crept over the capital, eventually shrouding the sun.

When I asked a local about the smoke, he explained that this happens every year around the same time. Every summer, farmers in Indonesia burn down entire forests to increase the size of their plantations, he explained. Western demand has skyrocketed in recent years. “For what?” I asked.

“Palm oil,” he replied.

I was shocked – the peanut butter with palm oil that I ordered from the United States was contributing to the fires in Indonesia, which were being blown across the Malacca strait to shroud the entire countries of Malaysia and Singapore.

That event was just one of many that showed me there are countless ways in which we are connected, not only to the people in our social circle, but to the entire world.

Interdependence is the reality that we exist in one world, which is really one large, single web of relationships. If you tug on any end of the web, every part moves. Nothing occurs in isolation.

Surprisingly enough, recognizing our interdependence quite promisingly puts us directly on the journey of spiritual awakening. And on this path, our way of life experiences an extraordinary transformation.

We abandon our egoic identities and begin to care for each other and the world. This is one of the most spiritual things we can do.

Spiritual Environmentalism

Great spiritual leaders have already realized this. Just a few days ago, the Dalai Lama himself wrote an Op-Ed in the LA Times, stating:

The 7 billion human beings on Earth need a sense of universal responsibility as our central motivation to rebalance our relations with the environment. Appreciating the sense of oneness of humanity in the face of the challenge of global warming is the real key to our survival.

It doesn’t take a Buddhist to recognize that we are all on this planet together, however. Three years ago, when Pope Francis met Donald Trump, the head of the Catholic Church gifted his 2015 encyclical on the environment and climate change and encouraged the president to protect planet Earth.

Of course, the president did not take action, which should come as no surprise considering that whenever an interdependent realization hits the American psyche, it tends to fall flat on its face.

Action for the Collective Good

The United States has been ravaged by the coronavirus, because just the slightest personal inconvenience to help the greater good is considered an affront to our rugged individualism.

So-called anti-maskers reject the idea of wearing a piece of cloth over one’s mouth and nose in order to prevent the death and sickness of other people, defending their choice by citing  “personal rights” and “living in a free country.”

This emphasis on personal autonomy over the collective good slows down any semblance of progress in every corner of our society, from universal healthcare to public education to affordable housing. As the anthropologist Wade Davis noted in his recent Rolling Stone piece, “The Unraveling of America,”

The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care.

With thousands of new cases still reported each day, other countries are looking at the US with both horror and pity. Now that deaths have climbed past the 200,000 mark, other countries are asking, “Do people actually care for each other?”

Recognizing our interdependence is necessary to overcome this highly contagious and deadly disease, just as this realization is important to overcome the looming climate disaster.

This wisdom is also necessary to end the disconnection we feel with our fellow brothers and sisters, and even with our partners in intimate relationships.

One World, One Love

As Barton Goldsmith notes in Psychology Today, “The healthiest way we can interact with those close to us is by being truly interdependent.” And we can recognize our involvement with others without sacrificing or compromising our values.

When we finally recognize our connection to others and the world, a natural current of love is released. We suddenly realize that we cannot blame any one person or individual for their actions, but we rather see each individual as a nexus of a thousand interactions that have influenced their behavior.

Seeing this web of relationships is one of the fundamental tenets of the Restorative Justice model, which seeks to repair the harm that we do to each other. It begins with recognizing that those who hurt others have almost always been hurt themselves (I wrote about this a lot in The Seven Lessons of Love as well).

Earlier on the blog, I wrote that everything we encounter in life can be part of our spiritual awakening. I have now told you about the process of this spiritual awakening.

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”― Lilla Watson

First, we realize that everything is connected. Then we realize that if everything is connected, our happiness and well-being are too. We begin wishing happiness onto others, which is one of the most fundamental definitions of love: a warm regard for others to be happy.

We finally begin to love everybody, see them as just like us, and seek to improve the world as best we can, recognizing that our personal and collective liberation are one and the same.