Intelligent Design
September 30, 2005
One of the major ironies of how Buddhism has come to the West is how the teaching on dependent co-arising has been turned into a teaching on interdependence or interconnectedness. With the original teaching, the emphasis was on how things work together to cause suffering, whereas the new teaching is something to celebrate. It’s good that everything works together, everything fits together. We’re all interdependent, we’re all interconnected, and it’s a lovely, comforting thing. But when you look carefully at the way things are actually interconnected, it’s hard to see much to celebrate. The fit is always a little loose, a little awkward, and this causes a lot of pain and suffering. Extra water vapor coming off the Atlantic has now killed people in New Orleans and driven up oil prices all over the United States. It’s a weird string of connections.