#inter being

[mountain-sage]

"An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do. If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

[protoslacker]

It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering around about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on their arm. At last they could taken an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Mervin W. Gonin quoted in an article by Fran Sorin at her Web site. How One Small Act Of Kindness Saved Lives: Giving Lipsticks To Women on The Brink of Death

British Lieutenant Colonel Mervin W. Gonin, commander of the 11th Light Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

Some may never have seen any photos from the liberated concentration camps. I believe seeing some of the photos can be important for understanding. A Google image search for Bergen-Belsen is not a bad way. The photos are small, which at least for me lessens their impact enough so I can bare to look.

[chuparosas]

“Action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power. But as we act, we not only express what is in us and help give shape to the world; we also receive what is outside us, and reshape our inner selves”

[grevilleacorner]

Thanks giving...

Thanks giving…

Thanks to the air  that I breathe, for giving me life in each moment. Thanks to the water that I drink, for keeping my body hydrated. Thanks for the food that I eat, for sustaining and giving me energy. Thanks to all the beings that live in, on and around me, for making me who I am. Words and photo by Stephanie Mohan – November 2015   

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[grevilleacorner]

Apart; a part

Apart from nature; our ego thinks we are more – yet, we are a part. Words and photo by Stephanie Mohan – Nov 2015   

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[zentaku]

When you hear that all beings are Buddha, don’t fall into the error of thinking there’s more than one Buddha.

Zen Graffiti

[zentaku]

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

[veganlove]

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Thich Nhat Hanh Everything is connected. Remember that always.