The Net of Indra: Visual Metaphor of Non-dualism & Emptiness

• An Eternal Now

  1 May 05, 22:50

  
  
  The metaphor of Indra's Jeweled Net is attributed to an ancient Buddhist named Tu-Shun (557-640 B.C.E.) who asks us to envision a vast net that:
  
  * at each juncture there lies a jewel;
  * each jewel reflects all the other jewels in this cosmic matrix.
  * Every jewel represents an individual life form, atom, cell or unit of consciousness.
  * Each jewel, in turn, is intrinsically and intimately connected to all the others;
  * thus, a change in one gem is reflected in all the others.
  
  This last aspect of the jeweled net is explored in a question/answer dialog of teacher and student in the Avatamsaka Sutra. In answer to the question: "how can all these jewels be considered one jewel?" it is replied: "If you don't believe that one jewel...is all the jewels...just put a dot on the jewel [in question]. When one jewel is dotted, there are dots on all the jewels...Since there are dots on all the jewels...We know that all the jewels are one jewel" ...".
  
  The moral of Indra's net is that the compassionate and the constructive interventions a person makes or does can produce a ripple effect of beneficial action that will reverberate throughout the universe or until it plays out. By the same token you cannot damage one strand of the web without damaging the others or setting off a cascade effect of destruction.
  
  Source: Awakening 101
• An Eternal Now

  1 May 05, 22:52

  ...One of the images used to illustrate the nature of reality as understood in Mahayana is The Jewel Net of Indra. According to this image, all reality is to be understood on analogy with Indra's Net. This net consists entirely of jewels. Each jewel reflects all of the other jewels, and the existence of each jewel is wholly dependent on its reflection in all of the other jewels. As such, all parts of reality are interdependent with each other, but even the most basic parts of existence have no independent existence themselves. As such, to the degree that reality takes form and appears to us, it is because the whole arises in an interdependent matrix of parts to whole and of subject to object. But in the end, there is nothing (literally no-thing) there to grasp....
  
  Source: Sunyata ('Emptiness')
• An Eternal Now

  1 May 05, 23:00

  Compare the first picture with:
  
  Computer model of early universe. Gravity arranges matter in thin filaments.