Dependance

Tonight, I am working with a man who seems to have the same daemons I do (well, one of them anyway), and it’s something that has been bought to light in the last couple of shifts…
We are currently having a problem in one part of the building with the drains. They have been blocked and are starting to smell. Badly! It has got to the point where the closest kitchen to reception (where we spend our entire shift) smells so bad, it’s very unpleasant. We would go to another kitchen (located on another floor) but this one has the same problem. Fortunately, the smell hasn’t, currently, drifted into reception, but this is not the point. As my colleague quite rightly said, the situation is unacceptable.
In all due fairness, the sinks have only just started to smell. However, they have been out of action for four days. Although this may sound a lot like whining, it is strange to think that in this day and age what, should, be a straight forward job has taken over four days to fix (more, considering it won’t get done over the week end. I’m not placing the blame entirely on the maintenance team, as I know they are short staffed, and have over fifteen buildings in the area to maintain. What it seems to come down to is a simple blindness to a very simple and obvious precept: that we are all, in one way or another linked together and rely on each other to live.
This was again bought to our attention the other day, when one of the cleaners rang down to reception to report that one of the hot water earns was running hot water everywhere, and that she couldn’t stop it. My colleague went up and stopped it. It seams someone tried to use it, couldn’t turn it off, and left it. This incomprehensible blindness meant that the poor cleaner had to stay behind; taking what could have been precious time to clean someone else’s mess.
Buddhism calls this Universal responsibility and Dependent arising. It was a concept I couldn’t quite grasp until I read His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s latest book, “seeing yourself as you really are”. It simply states, that we each should care for each other (as well as other things) personally, because we depend on these people to survive.
Take for example a cup of tea: to reach our lips, we have completely relied on thousands of people to drink this simple beverage. We depended on the people who prepped the ground the tea was grown, the people who cared for it, who picked it, who weighed it, packed it, shipped it, and sold it to us. Then the water was treated against all sorts of nasty diseases, piped to our homes. The pipes that transported the water to out homes, the kettle that boiled the water, the cup we are using to drink, and possibly, the milk we have added, the sugar… all these ‘tiny’ things have been made by people, for people. And in return, we have given these people a job, a wage (one hopes), a reason to live, even. And yet we never even met these people. It is not a long stretch to say we owe these people at least a thank you. But most of us don’t (with due reason. I’ll admit I never used to think about all these people until it was pointed out). The best thank you we could give is by helping them in return (whether directly or indirectly). I think this, if anything would have a serious impact on the way we live. By thinking of the countless other that we affect on a daily basis, we are in actual fact, helping ourselves.

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