“Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
Interconnectedness Quotes
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.” ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“To you, it was just picking flowers. To them, it was a massacre.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“We’re here to connect. Love, time, death. Now these three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love, we wish we had more time and we fear death.” ~ Howard Inlet (Will Smith), Collateral Beauty
“Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety. We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything. We cannot buy into myths we make ourselves, or the noise and chatter of the outside world. We must understand that we are a small part of an interconnected universe. On top of all this, we have to build an organization and a system around what we do – one that is about the work and not about us.” ~ Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
“Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbelieving, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams. Each of us wants the best for our family and loved ones. We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language make no difference.” ~ Dalai Lama
“A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘the universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection of a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein, via Solitude
“Not only is everything I experience part of who I am, Spirit-filled, and not to be rejected, but there is no need to go searching for something special anywhere else. Everything life has to offer is always right here wherever I am right now. There is no place more alive and sacred than this place. No time more alive and sacred than this time.” ~ Robert Kull, Solitude
“I feel I somehow own myself and have the right to control what I do and feel and what happens to me. From there it follows that the world is mine to do with as I wish. But I didn’t make me, nor do I own me or the world. I’m just part of the flow of existence.” ~ Robert Kull, Solitude
“Sometimes, I actually experience that there is no outside or inside, that the weather and my feelings are a continuum, that the world is not, cannot be, against me since there is not separation between us. I am the wind and rain. In those moments I feel peace and joy.” ~ Robert Kull, Solitude
“Every being on this Earth, every object on this Earth has a soul. All souls flow into one, this is the Soul of the Universe. You see, when you nourish your own mind and your own spirit, you are really feeding the Soul of the Universe. When you improve yourself, you are improving the lives of all those around you. And when you have the courage to advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, you begin to draw upon the power of the universe.” ~ Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
“Within you lies the sun, the moon, the sky and all the wonders of this universe. The intelligence that created these wonders is the same force that created you. All things around you come from the same source. We are all one.” ~ Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
“The majesty of the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas made his heart beat faster and, for one long moment, took his breath away. He felt a oneness with his surroundings, a kind of kinship that two old friends might enjoy after many years spent listening to each other’s innermost thoughts and laughing at each other’s jokes. The fresh mountain air cleared his mind and energized his spirit. Having travelled the world many times over, [he] had thought he had seen it all. But he had never seen beauty like this. The wonders of which he drank at that magical time were an exquisite tribute to the symphony of nature. At once he felt joyous, exhilarated and carefree. It was here, high above the humanity below, that [he] slowly ventured out of the cocoon of the ordinary and began to explore the realm of the extraordinary.” ~ Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
“You have to create the atmosphere of happiness around you. If everybody is miserable, how can you be happy? You will be affected. You are not a stone, you are a very delicate being, very sensitive. If everybody is miserable around you, their misery will affect you. Misery is as infectious as any disease. Blissfulness is also infectious as any disease. If you help others to be happy, in the end you help yourself to be happy.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“A self-centered person is always seeking his happiness. And this is the beauty of it, that the more you seek your happiness the more you will help others to be happy. Because that is the only way to be happy in the world. If everybody else around you is unhappy, you cannot be happy, because man is not an island. He is part of the vast continent. If you want to be happy, you will have to help others who surround you to be happy. Then – and only then – can you be happy.” ~ Osho, Love, Freedom, Alonenss: The Koan of Relationships
“It is impossible to really see the unity of the universe as long as one continues to see oneself as a discrete object, separate and distinguishable from the rest of the universe in any way, shape, or form.” ~ Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
