The principle of interconnectedness through our actions is more compassionate than the notion of Oneness — both in showing more compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and in giving them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways.

"It’s easy to see the appeal of a notion of Oneness benevolently designed to take care of us all in spite of our actions. And why that notion can appear to be a more compassionate teaching than interconnectedness through action, in that it provides a more comforting vision of the world and is more forgiving around the precepts.

But actually, the principle of interconnectedness through our actions is the more compassionate teaching of the two — both in showing more compassion to the people to whom it’s taught and in giving them better reasons to act toward others in compassionate ways.

To begin with, interconnectedness through kamma allows for freedom of choice, whereas Oneness doesn’t. If we were really all parts of a larger organic Oneness, how could any of us determine what role we would play within that Oneness? It would be like a stomach suddenly deciding to switch jobs with the liver or to go on strike: The organism would die. At most, the stomach is free simply to act in line with its inner drives as a stomach. But even then, given the constant back and forth among all parts of an organic Oneness, no part of a larger whole can lay independent claim even to its drives. When a stomach starts secreting digestive juices, the signal comes from somewhere else. So it’s not really free.

For the Buddha, any teaching that denies the possibility of freedom of choice contradicts itself and negates the possibility of an end to suffering. If people aren’t free to choose their actions, to develop skillful actions and abandon unskillful ones, then why teach them? (AN 2:19) How could they choose to follow a path to the end of suffering? At the same time, if you tell people that what they experience in the present is independent of what they choose to do in the present, you leave them defenseless in the face of their own desires and the desires of others (AN 3:62). Kamma, however — despite the common misperception that it teaches fatalism — actually teaches freedom of choice, and in particular, our freedom to choose our actions right here and now. It’s because of this freedom that the Buddha found the path to awakening and saw benefits in teaching that path to others.

The notion of Oneness precludes not only everyday freedom of choice, but also the larger freedom to gain total release from the system of inter-eating. This is why some teachings on Oneness aim at making you feel more comfortable about staying within the system and banishing any thought of leaving it. If what you are is defined in terms of your role in the system, you can’t leave it—and you’ll make sure that no one else tries to leave the system, either. It may require that you sleep in the middle of a road heavy with the traffic of aging, illness, and death, but with a few pillows and blankets and friendly companions, you won’t feel so lonely.

But the Buddha didn’t start with a definition of what people are. He began by exploring what we can do. And he found, through his own efforts, that human effort can lead to true happiness outside of the system by following a course of action, the noble eightfold path, that leads to the end of action — i.e., to release from the need to feed and be fed on.

Because each of us is trapped in the system of interconnectedness by our own actions, only we, as individuals, can break out by acting in increasingly skillful ways. The Buddha and members of the noble Saṅgha can show us the way, but actual skillfulness is something we have to develop on our own. If they find us trying to sleep in the middle of the road, they won’t persuade us to stay there. And they won’t try to make us feel ashamed for wanting to get out of the road to find a happiness that’s harmless and safe. They’ll kindly point the way out.

So to teach people interconnectedness through kamma is an act of greater compassion than teaching them interconnectedness through Oneness.

And it gives them better reasons to be compassionate themselves. On the surface, Oneness would seem to offer good incentives for compassion: You should be kind to others because they’re no less you than your lungs or your legs. But when you realize the implications of Oneness — that it misrepresents the facts of how interconnectedness works and offers no room for freedom of choice — you see that it gives you poor guidance as to which acts would have a compassionate effect on the system, and denies your ability to choose whether to act compassionately in the first place.

Even worse: If all things are parts of a larger organic Oneness, then the evil we witness in the world must have its organic role in that Oneness, too — so how can we say that it’s wrong? It may actually be serving the inscrutable purposes of the larger whole. And in a theory like this — which ultimately undermines concepts of right and wrong, good and evil — what basis is there for saying that a particular act is compassionate or not?

The teaching on kamma, though, makes compassion very specific. It gives a realistic picture of how interconnectedness works; it affirms both your freedom to choose your actions and your ability to influence the world through your intentions; and it gives clear guidelines as to which actions are compassionate and which are not.

Its primary message is that the most compassionate course of action is to practice for your own awakening. Some writers worry that this message devalues the world, making people more likely to mistreat the environment, but no one has ever fracked his way to nibbāna. The path to awakening involves generosity, virtue, and the skills of meditation, which include developing attitudes of unlimited goodwill and compassion. You can’t leave the system of inter-eating by abusing it. In fact, the more you abuse it, the more it sucks you in. To free yourself, you have to treat it well, and part of treating it well means learning how to develop your own inner food sources of concentration and discernment. When these inner foods have been developed to the full, the mind will gain access to a further dimension, outside of the food chain. In that way, you remove your mouth from the feeding frenzy, and show others that they can, too. What’s uncompassionate about that?

Now for most of us, the path to awakening will involve many lifetimes — which is another reason to treat the world well. If we’re in this for the long term, we have to eat with good manners, so that we’ll be able to eat well for however long it takes. If we mistreat others, we’ll be reborn into a world where we’re mistreated. If we’re wasteful of the world’s resources, we’ll be reborn into a wasted world. Because we’ll be returning to the world we leave behind, we should leave it in good shape.

In the meantime, though, by following the path we’re taking care of business inside — and this, too, is an act of compassion to others."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "We Are Not One"