Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Selections from the Avataðsaka Sütra The Flower Garland Sutra

 The Flower Garland Sutra is most known for the notion of the mutual interpenetration of all phenomena which is the distinctive teaching of the Hua-yen school of Chinese Buddhism. The teaching is expressed through the metaphor of jeweled net of Indra: “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net that 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 all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of 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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