Interdependence in Action

In my early days of Zen practice, I asked my teacher, “I am trying to face my overwhelming shame, rage, and despair. Am I just wallowing in misery or am I being mindful of these emotions in a way that is healing?” He encouraged me to keep practicing with as much kindness as I could and to see that there is no formula, no way to figure it out. I recall walking to the Zen center and opening my senses to the tall green trees along Thirty-Second Avenue as it ends at the shore of Bde Maka Ska, mystified by the pervasive anguish that I could not locate in space, in my body, or in my thoughts. It was clear to me that feelings come from a vast array of conditions, but oh, how I wanted them to be something I could control. I was starting to see the true nature of my emotions, but facing their ungraspability was hard.

Meditation practice can help us to see that thoughts can’t be held. Where do they come from? Where do they go? The Huayan ancestor Chengguan wrote, “Since forms come from conditions, they must lack inherent nature or identity. Their lack of inherent nature due to dependence on something else is identical to the completeness of real emptiness.” Even a cup of ice water, so vivid, cannot really be held. The sensations, the true nature of what your fingers feel curved around the cool glass, is always and only a momentary manifestation dependent on countless conditions. There is never a return of those particular sensations, and they do not last even for an instant. They are here only in the boundaryless now. That there are lasting distinct and separate entities is an often useful illusion made by the mind. The cool of the glass comes and goes into infinite conditions. Seeing that I can’t hold emotions, that they belong to the universe, not me, that they just appear, has transformed my life.

Even a cup of ice water, so vivid, cannot really be held. The sensations, the true nature of what your fingers feel curved around the cool glass, is always and only a momentary manifestation dependent on countless conditions. 

I have met few practices more beneficial than mindfulness of emotions. We can do this at any time. We can turn attention to what has arisen dependent on conditions without trying to fix, judge, or control. We can notice whatever emotion is present, perhaps label it with a word (sadness, calm, anger, shame, bliss), notice whether it relates to any sensations in the body, then bring the attention to whatever seems beneficial to focus on: the breath, the person you are speaking with, the cloth you are ironing, the spreadsheet you are editing, a prayer, or a mantra.

Huayan teachings focus on how things depend on each other, and they focus on why this dependence is wonderful. In general, there is a distinct trend running from the earliest Buddhist teachings, through the Mahayana, to the Huayan, whereby dependency is seen in an ever more positive light. In the Early Buddhist texts of the Pali Canon, suffering and the entire world of samsara arises because of dependent arising. The purpose of practice is to break the chain of conditioned arising and thus to arrive at the unconditioned—that is, nirvana. Later, Mahayana teachings shift from saying the dependent nature of things is the fundamental source of suffering to saying that it is the reason that everything is both samsaric and nirvanic. Because things appear to arise entirely dependent on other things, they are empty of separateness. It is conventional thinking that makes the appearance of conditioned samsaric things, but they are already empty, unconditioned, and nirvanic. The Yogacara teaching of three natures takes a yet more positive turn on dependency. The fact that things are of dependent nature is the middle ground between the imaginary nature of things (samsara) and the complete, realized nature of things, which is blissful, peaceful, and compassionate. This teaching invites us to remain with what has dependently arisen but not grasp at it. This is the way of the bodhisattva: joyful compassion within the conditioned world of suffering. In Huayan, the true (dependent) nature of things is identical with the Dharma (empty) nature. It is replete with everything wonderful that buddhas know and experience. Huayan arrives at the idea that dependency is already complete liberation—and our text hasn’t even mentioned suffering!

Suffering is surely real to most people. Huayan teachings focus on helping us see interdependence, because if we do, we will naturally take beneficial action. When Dr. King wrote that we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,” he was explaining why he had come to Birmingham to meet violence with nonviolence. Too often, people are spurred to action by feelings that corrode their own well-being: rage, shame, clinging, anger, inadequacy, exhaustion, fear, and so on. I pray that we may create conditions so we may all be free of these. Seeing that the interdependent system we live in can move us to compassionate action, bell hooks wrote, “Our willingness to assume responsibility for the elimination of racism need not be engendered by feelings of guilt, moral responsibility, victimization, or rage.” She offers a vision of love in action based on interdependence instead of ideology or afflictive emotion.

The Potawatomi biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.” What we are doing in each moment creates the conditions for what will be. This is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism. The importance of our actions is a subject I explore at length in my two books on Vasubandhu, whom Uisang often cites in his commentary on our text. The ways we perceive and respond to the world are the actions that create our experience. Our cultures, our cities, climate change, international relief efforts, and my mood as I walk to the store—these all emerge as the fruit of countless tiny seeds, moments of action.

The fact that things are of dependent nature is the middle ground between the imaginary nature of things (samsara) and the complete, realized nature of things, which is blissful, peaceful, and compassionate.

Uisang shows a world of wonder, connection, and ungraspability. Imagine what kind of world we make when we see things in this way. As Maya Angelou once said, “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot—it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.” A thousand years ago, the great nun Miazong wrote:

Killing and bringing to life simultaneously
The poison and the Dharma nectar together
Is it a punishment? Is it reward?
Your guess is as good as mine!

Each thing is born in its distinct momentary manifestation right now and is already gone. They are the gifts that shower us. Life and death are right here. Their true nature is dependent on conditions and ungraspable. Miazong does not invite us to figure out whether this moment is something good or not, nor where it came from, nor why it’s here. It’s here!

In death, the whole world is born. Myriad beings have died. Let us be grateful. Without them and their passing, there is no now for us. As everything you want to grasp disappears moment to moment, what are you bringing to life? What is your offering?

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Excerpt by Ben Connelly, from Inside the Flower Garland Sutra. © 2025 by Ben Connelly, Inside the Flower Garland Sutra: Huayan Buddhism and the Modern World. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.