AJ:  There’s an old image from Korean Hwaeom Buddhism called Indra’s net – the whole universe imagined as an infinite web of jewels, where every jewel reflects every other jewel, all at once. Tug on one thread and the entire thing shimmers. Early Buddhism has a less poetic name for the same insight: dependent origination, the plain observation that nothing arises on its own, including you. Your next breath depends on some tree you’ll never meet. Your sense of “I” is propped up by people whose names you don’t know. We love a good self-made story, but tonight we’re sitting with the slightly destabilizing (and honestly kind of freeing) truth that there’s no separate self holding it all up alone. Through breath, body, and a guided meditation in the Buddhist style I trained in, we’ll feel into how thoroughly we belong to each other. What shifts when you stop carrying yourself like you’re the only one carrying you?