Like the pine, we are inextricably continuous with the past and the present and future, the air and the earth, the spirit and also the human surround. But aloneness as such is not a real state of affairs. That feeling of being apart (rather than a part) is a real feeling, sure. Only humans feel alone and conceive of things apart. Yet our natural science sometimes speaks (and our own atomizing consciousness concurs) as if there were such a thing as a pine tree alone. You study the pine tree? Blow away the rest of the forest, the sun and the air and the water and the world, and you have a pine tree floating in nothingness, without even you to observe it. There is nothing at all, in fact, that does not exist in continuous connection to everything else. Winnicott observed that 'there is no such thing as a baby.' Having seen thousands of babies as a pediatrician, how could he say such a thing? It was because he noticed that a baby always came with a mother or other caregiver. Now we're spending a week to realize our inter-connectedness, really our indivisible continuity: with ourselves, with other humans, with 'nature' and the man-made world, and with the energetic and spiritual worlds.ĭ. We've already considered how special it is to be born human and able to hear the dharma we've already considered how death is certain. We are hijacking the phrase to apply it in his and also in a wider sense, as we contemplate the third of the four 'Preliminaries' that make up lojong slogan #1.

He wanted a unified human presence, unashamed and in command of itself. He actually used it to mean connection between the head and the heart, the cerebral and the passionate. Forster coined the phrase, 'Only connect!,' he didn't mean connection between things or people, even though interpersonal relationships were all-important to Forster.

Only connect em forster howards end