The Fundamental Misunderstanding

WHEN WE BELIEVE OURSELVES TO BE SEPARATE FROM EVERYTHING

“The fundamental delusion of human beings is that belief that we are separate and independent from the rest of the universe. ‘There is the whole universe,’ a human thinks ‘plus something, and that something is me.”

~ Reb Anderson Roshi, writing in ‘Being Upright - Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts.’

When we believe that we we exist separately from the universe and everything else, we become focused on our perceived uniqueness and grow attached to the concepts that reinforce this misunderstanding.

Instead, we are profoundly interconnected to the universe and one another, to all living things. At our atomic core, there is no difference between you and me, between you and the stars in the sky.