We live in relation

Mark Rothko

 Norman Fischer in the introduction to the first section of his book.

In that desperation I stumbled into Zen, looking for, I suppose, something like metaphysical relief.  So it is quite surprising that the opening section of this book, its bedrock, is about relationship. Because this is what I have discovered after many decades of Zen Buddhist practice: that the religious life isn't  about truth as much as it is about relationship.  Or that, perhaps, truth and relationship are one and the same.  In other words, from the standpoint of Zen practice, "relationship" doesn't mean what we normally think it does: boy meets girl, person meets person; parents and children; friends, relatives, associates, colleagues.  It does mean all that, of course, but that only as a vehicle for some truth beyond them.  Relationship is not something that happens (or doesn't happen) in a life: it is life, it is life's truest truth.  We live in relation to other human beings, of course -- but how, and at what level of depth?  But we live also in relation to ourselves, to our own thoughts and feelings, to our body, our breath.  We live in relation to the whole of the physical world.  We pick things up, we put them down, we se the sky and the sea, we hear the waves and the birds, we taste and smell and touch and are touched: these things make us what we are; we are nothing without them. Understanding this, fully appreciating it at its depth, goes tot heart of Zen practice. (3-4)

"We are nothing without them" seems to be at once a basic fact of the idea of the blank slate moved forward in time AND a comment on identity.  We are nothing without the things that we come into contact with.   This means that we are a formed by the things we touch.  At some point in our development, mental constructs begin and we are also formed by reflection on things. ("ideas" become things). Somehow that seems to be more real or true than the actual physical things.

It makes me think about "we are what we pay attention to."  Or, you are an average of your 3 closest friends.  

It also make me think about "interbeing" by Thich Nhat Hahn.  The truth of the world/existence is how things inter-relate, relationships among things.  

I'm thinking of the difference between "weathering" and "identification."  The landscape is constantly changing.  Riverbeds adjust, floods happen, earthquakes rearrange things.  Even the landscape goes through weathering constantly.... rocks grounds down.  We like to name things -- igneous rock, bluff, wet land.