The aim is to be able to feel the extent to which others are extremely important and integral to you and also to gain an emotional awareness that you are never, ever really separate from them. Others are part of you, just as you are part of them. You exist in connection with others. When you see this, you can also see that your happiness and suffering depend upon others. If you think solely in terms of yourself and your own happiness, it simply does not work. There is no happiness without relying upon others.
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
- Gradual change
- Time to act
- Recollecting kindness
- Outer and inner world
- Interdependent individual
- Knowing more is not a substitute for feeling more
- Becoming stuck in a quagmire of self-obsession
- Freedom
- The best way to love oneself
- Gratitude
- Focusing on our inner interdependence
- A main condition for our selfishness
- His Loneliness
- Concealing our weaknesses
- Inner freedom is key