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Random Fannish Thought: Indra's Net

Jul 06, 2008 19:05

I can't remember where I first came across this quote...it was ages ago, probably while researching religious metaphors for the Internet.  It's referenced in Godel, Escher, Bach, which I haven't read and probably should.  Researching Buddhism for my next Music of the Spheres arc, I was reminded of it and went and hunted it down.

Indra's Net is an image from a Buddhist sect.  I find it a hauntingly beautiful one with a lot of richness in it for a lot of things, but I think the fannish soul can see some immediate resonance:

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. (from Francis Cook, Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra).

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