On Oneness

I generally try to stay away from the news media as much as I can because I think it promotes the over-consumption of negative information about the world, giving us the illusion that by staying informed, we somehow have some level of control over what happens to us and to the world. Yes, there are a few who have the power to make change, but for most of us, the consumption of news, regardless of the source, only keeps us trapped in an ever expanding bubble of anxiety, cynicism and polarization. It enforces the arbitrary categorizations of “us” versus “them” that we have created throughout history, pulling us further and further apart. Biased news will try to nudge us towards one direction. Unbiased news will lead us to ask ourselves, with all our intellectual prowess — “which side do I take on this story?”

Lately, I find that the news that does end up making its way to me, portrays such an extreme level of division and hatred among people. Divisions between nations. Between ethnicities. Between religions. Between political ideologies. Even Between Genders. The irony is that we increasingly preach equality, yet we are only getting more and more divided. For those who have been around for a while, we understand the effect of echo-chambers and that there’s more beauty to Life than the misery we hear about from the sources that we gain information from. But, what about the youth who grow up on their Iphones and their Ipads, getting bombarded by this information from the social media they consume? I wonder what impact all this negative information has on them?

I want to reflect today on this idea of “Us” versus “Them”. Why do these divisions exist? And are these divisions simply an inherent reality of life that make us doomed to the resulting conflict among us? Or is there another reality that can be taught, perceived and adopted, in the hope of making this world a more beautiful place for us, and more importantly, for our kids to live in? The reality that we are all indeed One?

Divisions inherently arise from categorization. On the surface, categorization is a simple concept.

Imagine walking through a forest. You see a Tree. And the long pieces of wood sticking out of these Trees are Branches. And the colorful objects on those branches are called Leaves. That blue patch in between those branches is the Sky. That chirping noise in the background comes from a Bird. A few moments ago was the “Past”, and what will come a few moments from now, I will call the “Future”.

We have categorized everything around us. We needed to, after all, in order to communicate with each other and in order to manipulate our environments. How else would we know that a knife has to be made from rock and not a leaf? The ability and the need to categorize our world came about when we evolved our intellect from our primitive brains. Categorization is a direct result of our intellect, an intellectual exercise we play to understand what it means to be.

But do the leaves on these trees know that they are leaves, that they are something different from the branches that they exist on, that they are distinct from the trees that gave life to them in order to help them transpire? Do the trees know that it they are distinct from the sky above them?

Ofcourse not, that is all absurd.

The leaf, the branch, the tree, the sky — they are all part of the same thing, they are one. It is the same water in that blue sky above that drops onto the dirt below, that is absorbed by the roots and transformed chemically along with other nutrients in the soil to create this thing that I call a tree and its leaves. It is the same fruit that was part of the tree that the bird ate to give it energy to chirp. It is the same oxygen that is released by these leaves that I inhale to fire up my cells and give me Life and ultimately, my identity.

The reality is that everything is One.

So, divisions arise from the categorizations that we make about the world that we live in, to make sense of it with the only thing we have learned to trust, our intellect. And these categorizations give rise to our identities. And it is the need to protect these identities that create the ideas of “Us” vs “Them”, that gives rise to our self-interests and the conflict between people.

Throughout human history, wars have been fought over imaginary boundaries drawn in the soil to distinguish people based on culture and creed; thousands have been and are currently massacred in the name of identities that are simply a matter of perspective. How do we find a way out of this trap that we find ourselves in?

Remember, that a human lifetime is nothing but a speck in the history of the universe. Outside of this speck of time, we were and will be dust that gets blown around by the wind. what is this identity then that we find so much glory in? Can you really look at the ashes in a grave and tell which part of the world that ash came from, or what its beliefs were? We drink the same water. We breathe the same air. We bleed the same blood. These identities are, at the end of the day, simply Ghosts that we have conjured up. The reality is that we are all One.

There’s an excerpt I once read in the book, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. It goes like this — “But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attach effects rather than causes; and as long as the attach is upon the effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.”

I think a solution lies somewhere in this excerpt.

We cannot rely on the very systems of categorization that create division and conflict between us, to become the source of a solution to those conflicts. By doing so, all we will do is create a temporary stop-gap that is as weak as the imaginary boundaries we created. We cannot rationalize our way out of this problem, because rationality is exactly what created these divisions in the first place. Rather, the only solution to getting rid of conflict is to destroy the systems of categorization that we have built into our society. Teach children the universal truth that they are the same as their neighbors. Teach them that their diversity is a feature that adds value to the one entity we are a part of, not a burden. Teach them that the biggest virtue in life is to live a beautiful life. That’s all everyone on this planet wants — to live a beautiful life. I think once we understand this concept, we will find a solution to our conflicts.