Quotes About Interconnectedness

Before we eat any meal, vegetarian or meat, we should always remember the beings that have died so that we can eat. Their lives were just as important to them as your life is to you. Think of them with gratitude and pray that their sacrifice will be a cause for them to be reborn in a higher realm—and for you to be healthy, so that you can quickly, quickly reach full enlightenment in order to lead them to that same state.

the countless other nonhuman semchens, or sentient beings? Don't they seek happiness, too? And the avoidance of suffering? Are their lives not as important to them as my life is to me?

This is another reason we should behave with love and compassion toward all living beings. We never know in what circumstances we will meet up with them again. Sometimes even in this same lifetime.

we should behave with love and compassion toward all living beings. We never know in what circumstances we will meet up with them again.

For all of us with consciousness"—the Dalai Lama returned to his seat—"our life is very precious. Therefore, we need to protect all sentient beings very much. Also, we must recognize that we share the same two basic wishes: the wish to enjoy happiness and the wish to avoid suffering." These

We are connected to each other through innumerable lifetimes and in limitless ways.

It is said that each one of us has been a mother to every other living being, at some time in the past," he gazed at me with open-hearted benevolence. "Imagine, little Snow Lion, if we could all feel that connection, as if it were real?

Our biographies involve each other so intrinsically now that we're both on nearly every page.

You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else's movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us.

Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." There's a nice word: ramifications. It's especially good in this context because, while the literal definition is "a structure formed of branches," from the Latin ramus, of course the looser definition is "implications." Darwin's tree certainly had implications.

Ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree, and things fall out.

As we besiege them, as we corner them, as we exterminate them and eat them, we're getting their diseases.

Humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected with other animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health.

The more numerous we become, the more crowded, the more interconnected, the more demanding of resources, the more invasive of wild places, the more disruptive of richly diverse ecosystems—the closer we stand to the epidemic threshold for any new virus that probes us as a possible route to greater evolutionary success.

Invadimos los bosques tropicales y otros espacios salvajes, que albergan una enorme cantidad de especies de animales y plantas; y en el seno de estas criaturas, multitud de virus desconocidos. Talamos árboles; matamos animales o los enjaulamos para enviarlos a los mercados. Alteramos ecosistemas y provocamos que los virus escapen de sus huéspedes naturales. Cuando esto ocurre, los virus necesitan un nuevo huésped. A menudo, ese huésped somos nosotros.

Everything comes from somewhere, and strange new infectious diseases, emerging abruptly among humans, come mostly from nonhuman animals.

What makes a species of insect—or of mammal, or of microbe—capable of the outbreak phenomenon? That's a complicated question that the experts are still trying to answer.

From this perspective, the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens.

Trophic cascades, as defined by Diamond in his "Rosetta Stone" paper, are the secondary effects that can ramify from level to level in consequence of a single extinction.

about 60 percent of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or have recently crossed between other animals and us.

Vivimos en un planeta complicado, rico en organismos de una vasta variedad, incluyendo los virus, todos interactuando de forma oportunista, y aunque existen 7.000 millones de personas, el lugar no se ha hecho a nuestra conveniencia y para nuestro placer.

Let's keep an eye on wild creatures. As we besiege them, as we corner them, as we exterminate them and eat them, we're getting their diseases.

People and gorillas, horses and duikers and pigs, monkeys and chimps and bats and viruses: We're all in this together.

our most problematic dualism is not life fearing death but a fragile sense-of-self dreading its own groundlessness, according to Buddhism. By accepting and yielding to that groundlessness, I can discover that I have always been grounded in Indra's Net, not as a self-enclosed being but as one manifestation of a web of relationships which encompasses everything.