The Butterfly Effect

New age spiritual advocates like to rave about oneness, which in essence means that we are all of one consciousness.  While we may understand this conceptually, it is still difficult for most people to relate to and apply it to real life.  After all, we are all distinct and separate individuals leading our own paths.  Perhaps we can try to re-define the term in a way that can make it easier to comprehend.  How about when we say that all lives are interdependent, and that one action may lead to a reaction at a distance.  The Butterfly Effect, anyone?  It is a notion that the a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico or Brazil can set off a case of atmospheric events, thereby causing a hurricane or tornado somewhere else in the world like China or Texas.

With pragmatism, this means that the decisions you make and the way you treat others have a direct or indirect impact on others.  The idea is not to say that a small thing can directly result in a catastrophe.  But small things, when added up together, can have non-linear influences on a bigger and more complex system.  That is, they serve as catalysts that act on other conditions.  

Although this is from a doctorate thesis in 1963 by Edward Lorenz, it is in no way an idea of novelty.  In Buddhism, there is an important and fundamental teaching called "Dependent Origination" (pratitya-samutpada), the view that all phenomenon exists dependent on other phenomena or conditions contingent with it.  This is sometimes also referred to as "dependent arising" or "interdependent arising".  If so, life is indeed an intricate web and there is no way that we as humans can absolutely be able to see through all the underlying factors that attribute to all the happenings.  All we know is that it is governed by the law of karma.  Scientifically it is explained by Newton's third law of motion: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."  Perhaps this will give us a strong incentive to cultivate our spiritual practice and be mindful of our decisions.