All My Relations — Mitakuye Oyasin
The Teaching
Mitakuye Oyasin — All my relations.
Black Elk speaks: “The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
“Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.”
Commentary
Mitakuye Oyasin, All my relations, is the Lakota affirmation of radical interconnection. It is not a sentiment but an ontological claim: all things are related, are kin, are expressions of one underlying web.
This is Indra’s Net in the Buddhist tradition, every jewel reflecting every other jewel. Black Elk’s vision of the circle, ‘the center is everywhere’, is the same paradox as the Hermetic sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
‘Their religion is the same as ours’, the birds, the wind, the seasons. This is the deepest ecological spirituality: the sacred is not separate from nature but IS nature, seen with the eyes of relation rather than the eyes of exploitation.
Themes
Connections 16
Arose apart
No known transmission between Gnosticism and Indigenous tradition while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Indigenous tradition and Buddhism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hermeticism and Indigenous tradition while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Indigenous tradition and Shinto while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Indigenous tradition while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.
Travelled
Christianity reached Indigenous tradition by 1880 CE. The Map’s Lakota teachings come through Black Elk, baptized a Catholic in 1904 and a catechist from 1907. Scholars read his vision account as both Lakota and Christian. The Haudenosaunee met Jesuit missionaries from the 1640s–50s.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Indigenous tradition and Stoicism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.
Unsure
No documented reading of Indigenous tradition by Ram Dass.
Arose apart
No known line from Indigenous tradition to this scientific work.