#207 / What The Dalai Lama Said

Shekhar Kapur, an Indian film producer, tells this story about the Dali Lama, quoted in The Rights of Nature:

I visited the Dalai Lama to ask him if he would describe in one sentence the fundamentals of Buddhism. After a moment of amusement at my ignorance and arrogance (they are the same thing, are they not?), he said calmly, "All things connected, formlessly and eternally, as in Nature."

We are utterly dependent on the world of Nature that sustains all life, and we make a profound mistake in thinking that the world we create is not connected to Nature by this dependence. Yet, we behave as if we can act alone.