Nearly Everything That Sustains Your Life Is Out Of Your Control HE

Buddhist teachers often reflect on how many processes have to occur for our lives to go on.

There’s a concept in Buddhism often translated as “interdependence”. The principle is essentially that everything is related to everything else. Nothing in the universe exists outside of relationship.

When describing how this idea is relevant to our lives, Buddhist teachers often reflect on how many processes have to occur for our lives to go on.

You eat some rice. For you to eat that rice, the earth had to provide fertile soil. The sun and rain had to nourish rice plants all through history, and environmental conditions had to let those plants survive. Generations of farmers reaching ages into the past cultivated that rice.

A group of farmers alive today had to put in physical work to grow the rice you eat. People had to drive trucks, boats, and planes to bring the rice from where it was grown to where you bought it. Store employees had to run the place where you bought the rice.

Then after you eat that rice, your digestive system has to work to process the rice. Your organs and microorganisms in your body do that stuff. Generations upon generations of animals had to live and pass on their traits so that one day you would exist as a human with this functioning digestive system.

Eating that rice connects you to the history of minerals in our planet, the sun, the rain, the farmers, the shipping companies, the cashier at the checkout line, and your entire evolutionary history.

Buddhism points out that nearly all of these things are not you. Most of the things which sustain your life are outside your control.

Yes, you take actions to keep yourself alive, so you’re part of the process too. You drive to the store to buy the rice. You worked all week to afford your meals and rent at the house where you cook them.

But you wouldn’t have a house if no one built it. You wouldn’t have that car if it weren’t for the industrial revolution. The rice wouldn’t be there for you to buy if no one grew it. You wouldn’t have a body or mind to live through without the history of evolution occurring as it did.

Nearly all of the things that allow you to live the way you do happen outside of your control as an individual.