Indra's Net

taiyaki

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/04/net-of-indra.html?m=1

I'd love to start a topic on the Mahayana notion of interdependence also known as Indra's Net. The above link talks about it but I'd like to know your opinions on it or if you find similar ideas in other places such as science or from other religions.

I've always been facinated with the non locality and lack of inherent existence of phenomena and how that relates directly to interdependence.

Also have you have put a mirror against another mirror. You get infinity!!

And whats the deal with fractals!

Jeffrey

I like the mirror thing as well. It seems amazing that you can do such a simple thing and reveal infinity.

Fractals are cool. Another paradox like dividing the snails motion in smaller and smaller increments such that the increments get so small the snail never gets from A to B. With fractals there is infinite surface area or so you think. I imagine some interfaces of chemical phases such as two plastics that don't mix may have a lot of surface area, though still not a fractal.

I am trying to remember my dharma talk I heard on Indra's net.



Here's some of Rigdin Shikpo's talk:

If you like that is our dilema and its also our practice to understand the nature of suffering and the nature of bliss. To understand both of those we have to do that. And of course its a good thing to do a good thing for yourself a good thing for everybody else its the only really healthy thing to do. The only game that there really is. I don't want you to think that it is overwhelmingly painful. It is only overwhelingly painful if you allow yourself to get caught in the claustrophobia. So that's
why we call it training. You ahve to train to learn to not be opressed. It's important that we do not get caught int he conspiracy dukkha. We must understand both sides. If we understand both sides we can truly help others and when we help others we help ourselves as a spin off. I think that's all I want to say so if you have any questions?


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Well theres only one net really obviously but it has different aspects depending on how you look at it. So from where we call the sutras point of view its like Indra's net and the special thing about Indra's net is simply to say that it's all about how every particular individual is like a mirror that takes in all others. It should be said that I didn't stress this because I wanted to stress the humaness or sentientt beingness, but actually I said it by implication and I think I did say it directly at one point It's actually every thing that could be considered a sort of mandala center. Which virtually is everything that you could conceive of is one of these mirrors that takes in everything else. Because everything is alive somehow. Thus if you could really see it I mean it's common when we talk of indra's net. Every atom is consists of billions of worlds. Of samsaric worlds worlds of confusion and worlds of realization all occupying the same space sort of overlapping in some sense. And I think in view of what I am saying you'd understand overlapping is not a crude idea. We are talking about a mirror and so forth and how they reflect
in eachother. Now that in a way is saying that everything is alive. You know in the sutra level there are no atoms in the sense of physical atoms as we think of it. And so that is in the ideas of hinayana that is not called the sutra tradition. Sutra tradition
is talking about the mahayana sutra. Amd when you are talking about the mahayana the mahayana is past beyond the idea that the physical world exists and I've made that clear to everyone that that's true. As soon as you have become a mahayanists you
cease to believe in the physical universe [sounds].. maybe you haven't realized that? It's worth remembering that. It's only in the hinayana that it is said that there is a really physical belief in the physical universe as regards atoms. But then you might say well why are we always talking about atoms then? If they don't believe there are any? Well its a manner of speaking
it doesn't mean there are atoms but there the appearance of things you call atoms, but they aren't actually physical stuff. I mean I am not sure it is much different from how we talk of atoms in science these days. I'm not quite sure what physical stuff means when you are talking about quantum theory. I suppose you could talk about ?? after all the universe is mostly empty space
and from the perspective of mahayana you see everything as empty. If everything is empty you are certainly not committed to the idea well everything is empty but there is all this physical stuff around. That would sort of contradict the idea of emptiness. So thats not the case you could say its all mind in some sense if you wanted to and certainly then it wouldn't be physical in that
way either. But then you could go a bit further to something more subtle and you could say its an expression of the clarity nature of things. And the clarity nature of things things could appear as if they were atoms but immediately when you think in that way there anatomic nature comes out straight a way when one says that within each of those atoms are infinite worlds well that kind
of betrays that they are physical atoms in the way we normally think of it. So its like its got a strange thing. Its like you could imagine looking at the world and what you are seeing there is actually like a mirror somehow that reflects or even a lens that brings out vastness that you could not see in your ordinary kind of vision. If I look at a bit of grit in the road, I mean its very easy to say oh thats just a bit of grit in the road. Or it could look at the bit of grit in an entirely different fashion and suddenly see that there are endless worlds and beings and suffering and enlightenment worlds within worlds always and continuously. And the only thing preventing me from seeing that is my own confusion. So anything can be a center. In teh way that I described. Because the centers in a way are everywhere. Its like saying the whole universe is significant at every point.

taiyaki

Since everything is the center, there are no true centers, yet everything becomes possible. Cute!