In Zen, we call this interconnectedness, or interbeing, or dependent co-arising. Sometimes we call it “emptiness,” which is written with the Chinese character for “sky.” One of the astronauts who walked on the moon, Mr. Edgar Mitchell, had a deep realization of emptiness when he was floating in the sky. He looked back at the Earth and suddenly understood that the molecules of his body, and the bodies of his partners, and even the spacecraft itself all came from some ancient generation of stars, and at that moment, he experienced a feeling of oneness with the universe. He said, “It wasn’t them
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