Interconnectedness

It is always crucial to remember the interconnectedness of all that appears –remembering this is the habit that develops in those with Zen consciousness. The Ordinary mind sees a cup as a clear and distinct object. The Zen mind sees the cup as a mere pattern of molecules that are in a state of constant exchange with surrounding molecules. The cup is no more distinct from its surroundings than a whirlpool is distinct from the river. Therefore the cup is not spatially distinct from its surroundings in actuality; it only appears so to our unreliable perception.

And neither is the cup temporally distinct from its surroundings. The cup is made up of the clay and the glaze, and the paint and the tea stains, and the shape of the handle and the man who designed the handle and his moods and influences, and those of his wife. And each of these characteristics: the clay, the man, the tea stain is made up of its own causes and conditions that relate to all else and include every thing that can ever be conceived. Everything that has ever come to pass in the past is expressed in the present through this cup, and all that will come to pass is dependent on the cup. The cup as it exists now is intrinsically dependent on everything that has come to be. There is nothing that is not the cup – the cup is all.

So when we look at the cup and see in it everything that is, and has ever been, or will ever be – that is when we perceive reality with the wonder that is Zen.