Nothing is Wasted
“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
This quote is attributed to the great sage, Mahatma Gandhi. It was on a banner given to me many years ago and that I dutifully hung in my house. All the quotes on the banner resonated with me except this one. It didn't make sense for years (and it was kind of offensive to my young ears) until, finally, the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination began to shift and settle into my consciousness and alter my perspective: every action ripples in the universe. And this makes every action both insignificant and important.
We have no way of knowing the exponential and endless effects of our actions. In physics, scientists use the analogy of the Butterfly Effect to convey the complex idea of chaos theory. In non-linear systems like weather or population growth, a small change can lead to chaos because of exponential and unexpected results arising from one small point. As the butterfly analogy goes, the flutter of her wings can have ripple effects with the potential to be felt around the globe.
A pandemic is a non-linear system.
Another example: our minds are non-linear systems. So it follows that any stimuli in the human mind has incredible potential. In the context of nearly eight billion humans this is an awesome prospect because on many levels our minds create reality. One one level, mind is the genesis of action, systems like cities result from those actions, and catastrophes like war spring from defending those systems. On another level, each person’s perceived reality is created by their mind. If we consider the complex interplay of all this and more throughout history and in the future, this present moment and our experiences in it are incomprehensibly and immeasurably complex. Therefore, in it, our actions are insignificant because they are like mere drops in all the world’s oceans.
Mental activity is generated from sensory input or contact. There are six possible doors for such stimuli to enter the mind: through the five senses and a sixth door — the mind itself which can throw up memories, thoughts, feelings, and more. The Buddhist teaching of dependent origination, on one level, goes from sensory contact, through mental proliferation, and ends in suffering. Repeat. Endlessly.
One can observe dependent origination right this moment. There is the stimulus of your eyes reading this sentence, your hands on the book or device, or the sounds around you. (Neuroscience has shown the mind can only consciously hold two or three things in a given moment.) If you’ve just had a cup of tea, there might be a taste in your mouth or lingering smell of bergamot. The mind may then be reading these words, asking, “what’s bergamot?” or getting a phantom whiff of earl grey. The mind might be contesting or agreeing with these concepts and there is also a general feeling of pleasant or unpleasant or boredom as you read. The mind constantly creates stories from these basic inputs and resultant feeling tones. When, as is often the case, we are strongly invested in those stories and they differ from immediate experience, the result is suffering.
If there are only ever these six senses creating experience, can you put a finger on who is experiencing or where that experiencer is? “Why, me, I’m right here,” you might say, tapping your chest. Now, isn’t that just more thoughts and sensations? This investigation might reveal that your self (along with all her stories) is nowhere to be found. That there are only these impersonal steps of dependent origination — only ripples intersecting in the mind and hence in the universe. Or perhaps it is equally well said the other way around. Either way, in every moment, happenings are arising in conjunction with each other. Physicist, Carlo Rovelli, poeticlly terms these happenings “kisses” in an OnBeing interview with Krista Tippet.
Nothing is wasted because it all has to happen together. Whatever we do will be important because we are co-creating existence.
There are no profound events because it is all profound. It is a divine interplay — to which many spiritual traditions point. Life’s longing for itself. Suchness. Creator. Its nature is love. Love reaching out for itself. There is much misguided action in the world, much suffering. In light of the immense potential in one single mental event then, what if we remember that undercurrent of love? And, as at the end of a long day we might completely let go into the embrace of a loved one, let go into that love. Rest in that love. Trust it.
You pointed to your heart after all when above you tapped your chest: “why that’s me.” You are nothing but love. And love is all there is.
(My mind often raises the question, but what about so-and-so? Tyrants and the like. It seems to me that what we perceive to be “evil” in the world emerges in the absence of love as when a person is so contracted in fear, hatred, or greed there is no room for it. All the more reason then for us to finish the work of uncovering that which we already are.)
*An excellent article on the Buddhist meaning of dependant origination.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it — always.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
