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 Interconnected: Embracing Life in Our Global Society
Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 17th Karmapa.
Further quotes from the book Interconnected:
- Our intimate dependence on the natural environment
- Extend yourself and connect
- The opportunity to love
- Noticing the collective effects of our individual actions
- The full vividness of direct contact
- Time to act
- Recollecting kindness
- Outer and inner world
- Interdependent individual
- Freedom
- Knowing more is not a substitute for feeling more
- The best way to love oneself
- Gratitude
- Focusing on our inner interdependence
- A main condition for our selfishness
- Inner freedom is key
- His Loneliness
- Enthusiastically benefiting whomever we come in contact with
- Extending gratitude in all directions
- Limitless aspirations