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- For the geometry book, see Indra's Pearls (book)
Indra's net (also called Indra's jewels or Indra's pearls) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of emptiness,[1] dependent origination[2], and interpenetration[3] in Buddhist philosophy. The metaphor of Indra's net was developed by the Mahayana Buddhist school in the 3rd century scriptures of the Avatamsaka Sutra, and later by the Chinese Huayan school between the 6th and 8th century.[1]
Buddhist concepts of interpenetration holds that all phenomena are intimately connected; for the Huayan school, Indra's net symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist between all members of the universe.[4] This idea is communicated in the image of the interconnectedness of the universe as seen in the net of the Vedic god Indra, whose net hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Vedic cosmology and Vedic mythology. Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels:[5]
[edit] Huayan school
Francis Harold Cook describes the metaphor of Indra's net from the perspective of the Huayan school in the book Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra:
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Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infintely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. |
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[edit] Gödel, Escher, Bach
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Hofstadter uses Indra's Net as a metaphor for the complex interconnected networks formed by relationships between objects within a system-- including social networks, the interactions of particles, and the "symbols" which stand for ideas within a brain or intelligent computer.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Cook, Francis H. (1977), Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, Penn State Press, ISBN 027102190X .
- Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999), Gödel, Escher, Bach, Basic Books, ISBN 0465026567 .
- Jones, Ken H. (2003), The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action, Wisdom Publications, ISBN 0861713656 .
- Kabat-Zinn, Jon; Watson, Gay; Batchelor, Stephen & Claxton, Guy (2000), Indra's Net at Work: The Mainstreaming of Dharma Practice in Society (The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Science, and Our Day-to-Day Lives ed.), Weiser, ISBN 1578631726 .
- Lee, Kwang-Sae (2005), East and West: Fusion of Horizons, Homa & Sekey Books, ISBN 1931907269 .
- Odin, Steve (1982), Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration Vs. Interpenetration, SUNY Press, ISBN 0873955684 .
