Jack Kornfield writes in The Wise Heart, Buddhist Psychology for the West:

From the perspective of Buddhist psychology, compassion is natural. It derives from out interconnection, which Buddhism calls “interdependence.” This can readily be seen in the physical world. In the womb, every child is interdependent with its mother’s body. If either of them is sick, the other is affected. In the same way we are interdependent with the body of the earth. The minerals of the soil make up our wheat and our bones, the storm clouds become our drinks and our blood, the oxygen from the trees and forests is the air we breathe. The more consciously we realize this shared destiny, the more compassion arises for the earth itself.

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