All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no one can be totally rich even with a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no one can be totally healthy, even with a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made.
People remark that they feel "out of place," "out of sorts," "depressed," or "bored" when a true moment of quiet descends on them. This is how fundamentally exiled we are from the natural texture of our own silence. As modern people we don't know what to do with this great teacher of teachers. She can be an uncomfortable teacher and guide. Yet great power and healing wait in the folds of silence and solitude. Mirroring the creation of the universe, all great things have come forth from the ancient weave of silence.