Everyone and everything matters

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white chickens

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

It is a cliché. Someone intoxicated by marijuana or other psychedelics is fixated on the tiniest item, maybe followed by “oh, wow!” or laughter. Cliched because it can be true. Maybe you’ve had personal experience.

Getting high is far from the only path there. Buddhism describes and recommends perceiving tathata, thusness, suchness, things as they are, or in the words of Suzuki Rosh, things as it is.

The follow-up beat is that no matter how much you perceive the thusness of any particular thing, you can know that everyone and everything is thus. Everyone and everything is deeply itself and also the same, interdependent and equally important. Everyone and everything matters.

Williams’ red wheelbarrow and Blake’s grain of sand are things. And everything.