Looking at my Twitter feed, I came across a tweet from Steve Schlafman with a quote from Dr. King’s last Christmas sermon:
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world?
As a yoga practitioner and student of Buddhism, the concept of interconnectedness wasn’t new to me, but it’s easy to lose sight of in the day to day until one takes a step back. Dr. King elaborates on the concept this way:
You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American ... And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world.
While the concept of oneness is something that resonates deeply with me, it’s not what stood most for me while reading through the transcript. This passage did:
So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there — they may be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree … We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
Dr. King’s reference to the the “means representing the seed”, reminds me of the following by Lao Tzu:
Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch you character, it becomes your destiny
And what is the seed you might ask? Love, according to Dr. King.
So, if thoughts are the seeds and Peace on Earth is the tree, we must start within ourselves to cultivate the conditions for loving thoughts to arise.
Thank you Dr. King for living your principles, and in so doing, inspiring us!
