Woven from Indra’s Net

In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huayan" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Huayan Buddhism</a> — a school of thought which began in China and went on to influence several Buddhist lineages (including Zen) — Indra’s net of jewels is used as a way of conceptualizing our own situation in the universe. According to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddh%C4%81vata%E1%B9%83saka_S%C5%ABtra" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Flower Garland Sutra</a> (Huayan’s primary text), this net of jewels is fractal in nature. In other words, you’re not merely a homogenous jewel caught in a cosmic net; you yourself are a net full of jewels of your own, each of which comprises a net of jewels of its own, ad infinitum. The same goes for when you pan out: our own cosmic net of jewels is but one jewel in an even greater net full of countless other jewels — and so on. As with any net, when you tug at one part of Indra’s net, the rest is moved. And every jewel in this net is so immaculately polished that they reflect their neighboring jewels as well. As if this were not dizzying enough, it’s important to understand that this is not just a commentary on space, but time. We are intimately entangled not only with that which now surrounds us and constitutes us, but that which we’ve encountered in the past and that which we used to be. <a href="https://medium.com/interfaith-now/woven-from-indras-net-530a00ec836c">Website</a>