Y Talk on Interdependence

Talk was held at Bras Besah. Y Talk is an initiative by KMSPKS temple. The speaker of the night is Bro Shi'an.

Although a basic aspect of the Dharma, this topic can be quite differently delivered by each speaker and here I am trying to see how bro Shi'an had for us on this topic on interdependence. Anyway interdepence is coined to interdependence origination and probably most Chinese Mahayanist will be more familiar with the phrase 缘起性空.

In chinese Mahayana we emphasis alot on emptiness "性空" and as from the Heart Sutra, it has been stated that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. So we can not understand interdependence without concept of emptiness and understanding emptiness without touching on interdepence.

All beings are actually part of existence of a whole. Although we thing that things have definite shape and we thought we humans are a single entity but looking closer, our skins that bounds the bodily shape is filled with pores. And there are always influx and air into our body and our body excreting sweat to the environment.

Interdependence can also be illustrated by the Net of Indra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net). Imagine a big 3D net that covers throughout the universe. In its inter-locking knots, there is a radiant gem which reflects the radiant of other gems totally. Beings are seen as the gems and the net connects everyone of us.

This is to say whatever we do we affect other people. And whatever other people do, affects us. This theory applies to creation and all existence.

Bro Shi'an then move to talk slightly on being a vegan (strict vegetarian) where how choosing our diet can affect the world and in fact on survivability of all species on earth. This gives the idea of what kind of world are we giving to our fellow latter generations to come. We might think that that's non of our business but if we believe in the notion of rebirth, then its really our concern.

This short clip talks about how actually going on a plan of vegetarian weekdays can easily help the world. It just mean being vegetarian for Mon to Fri and eat freely for weekends. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html

Here is a website for Singapore Vegetarian Society where there is a database to find all vegetarian yummies around you http://www.vegetarian-society.org/

He also talk about how number of honey bees of the world are declining and its believe that once bees gets wipe out from the globe, human will get extinct in 4days!

Bro Shi'an ends the talk on about the bystander effect. He spoke about a true incident that happens to a murder of a woman in the middle of a town where no one in the town stand out to help the dying woman. And reason is they all think their other neigbours will do something. We buddhist should also be always ready to stand up to misunderstanding on Buddhism by non-buddhist, of course in a non aggressive way.

Hope to see you in other Y Talks :)