All parties are changed by being in relationship. Just being connected to someone or something means we are each forming part of the other. This is true in all forms of interdependence, from those that form planetary systems to our most intimate and personal relationships. For example, in the case of parents and children, although in the more obvious sense parents produce children, yet it is only by having children that people become parents. We could even say that parents are born in the moment that their first child comes into their life. Before they had children, a woman and a man were not a mother or father. In that sense, children also make their parents “parents”. Interdependence connects us on many levels and always works both ways.”
17th Karmapa
from the book
Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 17th Karmapa.
Further quotes from the book Interconnected :
- An important source of closeness and love
- The imagination to see the other as free and happy
- Self-reliance
- Knowing more is not a substitute for feeling more
- The interdependence between us and the world
- Acting against self-serving impulses
- Noticing the collective effects of our individual actions
- Webs of interdependence
- Interdependence at work
- Our closest and most reliable allies
- Touching the core of our equality
- His Loneliness
- Collective actions and attitudes
- The deeper common ground all living being share
- Gradual change
- Delight in positive thoughts
- Our intimate dependence on the natural environment
- Interdependent individuals
- A main condition for our selfishness
- Opening up to the view of interconnectedness