Thought for the Day, 9 June 2007

Vishvapani

Yesterday we heard about a survey revealing that many British adults don't know that what they eat comes from farms. So if you think the four main food groups are canned, frozen, instant and lite, or that the answer to the question, 'Where do eggs comes from?' is 'Tesco's', you're not alone.

I grew up on fish fingers and beef burgers myself, and I recall the shock on a childhood holiday when my parents brought a crab home to eat, and it was still moving. On the spot my sister became a vegetarian. We'd never really considered that the meat we consumed came from living animals.

The invisible origins of our food are just one effect of the technology and packaging that also bring us comfort and security. We all see how modern conveniences distance us from nature and even a sense that our bodies, too, are natural organisms. More fundamentally, Buddhism says it's profoundly deluded to feel that the world exists to fulfill our desires. In truth, everything we see springs from an array of causes and has myriad effects on the world, and this means that everything--everything--is interconnected with everything else.

One scripture uses the wonderful image of an infinitely large net woven by Indra, the chief of India's legendary gods. A single glittering jewel hangs at each link of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. If we look closely at any one of these jewels, we see that its polished surface reflects all the other jewels in the net.

The meaning of Indra's net is that nothing exists in isolation and if we look deeply enough into any single phenomenon we'll see its connection to the whole universe. I think that's what William Blake meant when he spoke of seeing the world in a grain of sand.

Global warming dramatically reveals interconnectedness because it shows that whenever we produce or consume something we affect the whole planet. The inescapable lesson is that each of us is a small part of the planet.

Restoring balance starts with paying attention to simple things like food with what Buddhists call 'mindful awareness'. This means more than knowing that eggs come from chickens, it means experiencing interconnectedness with the whole of our being, seeing our effect on the world and its effect on us.

So gaze deep into your cereal and perhaps you'll see not only the grains and the milk, but the cornfields and the cattle. Perhaps you'll see the sun and the rain, the sky and the whole world.