Models of the Multiverse: Indra's Net and the Golden Lion

 

Indra's Net is a powerful model of the interconnectedness of all phenomena, well-know in Eastern tradition. When Indra fashioned the world, he made it as a web, and at every knot in the web is tied a pearl. Everything that exists, or has ever existed, every idea that can be thought about, every fact that is true - every dharma, in the language of Indian philosophy - is a pearl in Indra's net. Not only is every pearl tied to every other pearl within the web on which they hang, but on the surface of every pearl is reflected every other jewel on the net. Everything that exists in Indra's web implies all else that exists. [1]

-    The Avataṃsaka Sūtra has it that 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 infinitely 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. Choose any one of these jewels and study it closely and you will find that in its polished surface are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels; the process of reflecting is infinite. [2]

Around the year 700, Fazang, the third patriarch of the Hua-Yen school in China, changed the image of the starry net into a golden lion to instruct the empress Wu.

In each of the lion's eyes, in its ears, limbs, and so forth, down to each and every single hair, there is a golden lion. All the lions embraced by each and every hair simultaneously and instantaneously enter into one single hair. Thus, in each and every hair there are an infinite number of lions... The progression is infinite, like the jewels of Celestial Lord Indra's Net: a realm-embracing-realm ad infinitum is thus established, and is called the realm of Indra's Net. [3]     

 The lion represents the cosmos, parts of the lion the various phenomena of the universe; the gold itself represents emptiness. The lion has a mane, teeth, claws and eyes: parts that seem distinct. Yet the essential substance of the entire lion was the same -gold. Within each hair there are infinite lions. The differences are all superficial. Such is the nature of the integrated, interconnected Flower Garland universe. After demonstrating this principle to the empress, using the sculpture of a lion at the imperial palace gate, Fazang wrote a one-chapter Essay on the Golden Lion.

In his Treatise on the Five Teachings, a house is used as a metaphor for the universe. The complex interplay between joists, uprights, roof, tenons and mortises—the sum total of structural relationships between all parts--is contained in a single rafter. The nature of the infinite can be seen in the infinitesimal. The role of the rafter--or any other component--helps one understand the interdependence of all sentient beings. Certainly, Fazang’s flair for the theatrical and his ability to convey the message to his patrons through such brilliant demonstrations, helped successfully propagate Flower Garland Buddhism.

References

1.  Timothy Brook, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (London: Profile Books, 2009)22. 

2. cf Francis H. Cook, Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977).

3.  Steve Odin, Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration Vs. Interpenetration, (Albany NY: State University opf New York Press, Press, 1982) 17