THE JEWELED NET
Buddhist Reflections on the Interdependent Web
A talk by James Ishmael Ford, 21 June, 2002
Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, Quebec City, Quebec

On the cusp between Spring and Summer, at the 1984 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, in the muggy heat of Columbus, Ohio, a crowd of rationalists, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, pagans and miscellaneous others - our people all - gathered together to ratify a new statement of principles and purposes for our denomination.

We Unitarian Universalists find it useful to posit descriptions of our general perspectives from time to time as a practice of clarification. It can be a significant exercise so long as we always include some form of a conscience clause, and so long as we remind ourselves we’re not setting up a creed or doctrinal test.

And so after literally years of wrangling, fighting, negotiating, hoping and praying, we were at the decisive moment. The statements that had been hammered out seemed to succeed in that mandate to describe, not to proscribe, to reveal what we largely held in common in this generation. So, at long last it was time to vote.

And wonder of wonders, on that muggy and hot cusp between Spring and Summer, at that 1984 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, in Columbus, Ohio, the Holy Spirit descended upon our crowd of rationalists, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, pagans and miscellaneous others.

The movement of the spirit was small--not a great rushing wind or fluttering of wings, but a motion from the floor. But what a motion. We already had a worthy document of high blown principles that most of us could agree represented our best ideals. Truthfully, later commentators have suggested just about any westerner could subscribe to them, and probably the majority of humanity as well. At the same time they did distill our hopes and aspirations as a specific religious community, clearly offering our liberal religious hope for the world.

But the magic, what made it something different and opened us to the movement of some holy spirit, turned on the seventh of these principles. The seventh and last was like the rest, reflecting our collective perspectives on the most important things, specifically calling us to "respect for Earth and interdependence of its living systems." This by itself is a worthy statement. But, the winds of the spirit took us in another and, I suggest, a much deeper direction.

One of the ministers present, Paul L’Herrou, offered an amendment from the floor. He suggested we replace the proposed language of the seventh principle with new words: "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." It was with those words the eternal breath of life, the spirit of guidance, the wisdom inherent in our human condition spoke out once again to the world of a new possibility, of a new hope, of a new Unitarianism and of a new Universalism.

Now, this perspective of a radical interdependence isn’t ours alone. This wisdom is in the air we breathe, and I believe, our heritage from the moment of our creation. So, the Catholic theologian Thomas Berry can speak from this perspective, as can many others.

Berry tells us "In this mysterious balance the universe and all its grandeur and all its loveliness becomes possible. Exactly here the presence of the sacred reveals itself. Here is the exuberance that could fling the stars across the heavens with such abandon and yet with such exquisite poise, each in relation to the untold billions of other shining fragments of primordial existence." (Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, Bell Tower: New York: 1999. p. 53)

Here we find a perspective about who we are, and what we might become. With this embrace of the image of an interdependent web of existence of which we all are a part, poetry - and something more than poetry - entered our liberal theological ruminations. We stopped merely being concerned with a description of what we tend to think, and called ourselves to something sacred.

This is so important. I find it hard to express my emotions, my feelings, my response to what this web suggests. To understand how we are related, to find our place on this planet, and within the great play of the cosmos itself, is to open a way of acting gracefully in the world. Teaching from this perspective is Bernie Glassman, one of the truly interesting Zen teachers in the west today.

"I define enlightenment as the depth to which one sees the oneness of life, the interconnectedness of life," says Bernie. Then joined with that statement is its corollary. He  tells us, "And the degree of your enlightenment can be measured by your actions." (Interview in Earth Star June/July 2002 p. 21) I suggest this joined insight can be a summation of all our Unitarian Universalist intimations, our deepest dreams, as well as a way toward an authentic healing for both ourselves and this suffering world.

This evening I want to share a couple of points. The first is that this insight can be our compass, our guide for a life of meaning and possibility. And second, this is so because it isn’t just a grand philosophical principle, but is in fact a pointing to a kind of consciousness accessible to us as human beings, a consciousness that is salvific, that heals and saves. It is a call to a sacred way of being.

Now if this is true, we need to clarify, to explore and to find that deeper knowing for ourselves in our individual hearts and minds. We need to be like that person taking a sip of water who knows for herself whether it is warm or cool. And this can be hard. The way to making this "my own" knowing can seem just about impossible. Fortunately there are those who’ve walked this path before us who can point us in directions, who can help us as we make our own way, to make this not simply a good idea, but ours, your lived reality, and mine.

For instance, we can explore this world of possibility through the lens of the Avatamsakasutra, the wisdom of the Flower Garland Scripture of Mahayana Buddhism, and the Hua-yen school that grew out of reflections on this ancient teaching. The origins of the Hua-yen are lost in the mists of time. The standard texts available to us today are the Chinese versions of the fifth century Buddhabhadra and the seventh century Siksananda.

Of equal importance are the various Chinese commentaries produced mainly between the seventh and tenth centuries of our Common Era. The Hua-yen perspective informs and underlies the whole range of Zen teachings, whose practices are all aimed at leading us to our own intimate experience of this world of radical interdependence—the same world, I suggest, that the image of the web calls us to.

Among the images found within the Hua-yen texts there is one remarkably similar in spirit to our UU web. And, I think, reflecting on it can help us to clarify what for most of us is at this point a gut level intuition, something we know, but only through a glass darkly. Perhaps the "Jeweled Net" can help. As Francis Cook writes, "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 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.

"The Hua-yen school (that has arisen from the close consideration of the Flower Garland Scripture is very) fond of this image, mentioned many times in its literature, because it symbolizes a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous mutual identity and mutual inter-causality." (Francis Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park: 1977 p. 2)

Thomas Cleary, the translator of this essential text into English, explains to us how "The Hua-yen doctrine shows the entire cosmos as one single nexus of conditions in which everything simultaneously depends on, and is depended on by, everything else. Seen in this light, then, everything affects and is affected by, more or less immediately or remotely, everything else; just as this is true of every system of relationships, so is it true of the totality of existence.

"In seeking to understand individuals and groups, therefore, Hua-yen thought considers the manifold as an integral part of the unit and the unit as an integral part of the manifold; one individual is considered in terms of relationships to other individuals as well as to the whole nexus, while the whole nexus is considered in terms of its relation to each individual as well as to all individuals." (Thomas Cleary Entry Into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 183 p. 2)

Heady stuff. But it is extremely important. This perspective tells us reality has two faces. On the one hand we are unique. You and I are born into the cosmos in ways that will never again be repeated. Within this uniqueness we share things in common, but we have eaten from that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As human beings we must make decisions based in our astonishing ability to parse things out, to differentiate, to weigh and judge.

But the Hua-yen perspective, and I suggest the intimate reality pointed out for us in that image of the web is that reality has this other face, as well. We are so deeply and profoundly bound up together, woven out of each other. And from this perspective, which is just as true as the other; it isn’t possible to say a human being or a star or a strand of the AIDS virus is better or more deserving than any other thing or being woven out of the same mysterious stuff that is the web of existence.

Many - perhaps most - of our human problems arise, I find, when we make our decisions based on one of these faces, or eyes, without reference to the other. So, within this perspective, decisions based in our isolation, are made because they are good for us as human beings, or Americans or Canadians or members of a family, or, most atomically of all, for me. Choices here are made without any larger perspective, without acknowledgment of larger relationships. In the worst case scenario, I find only my appetite or whim motivates me. And then, evil follows my choices, like the wake of a ship.

Or, I see how everything is connected while forgetting the other truth of the uniqueness of things and persons. And in the worst case of this, I can dismiss my humanity as a virus infecting the planet, not able to distinguish between killing six million Jews or six million chickens. Here is a trap for many of us committed to a life of engagement and a larger perspective: sometimes loving the world or the people, some ideal of the great unity, while despising actual flesh and blood.

In either case, I am acting from a partial perspective, a false sense of identity. And the ills of the world flow out of these partial perspectives a seemingly bottomless well of poison: greed, hatred and ignorance. But, then there is a motion of the spirit. There is the possibility of another way of seeing, that isn’t just my genetic conditioning to eat and procreate, or my thinking of a grander world of unity.

I can know, and I can act from that knowing, that we are each of us precious in our creation, passing in and out of existence within that web of unity: both together. This is, I believe, the fundamental intimation that draws so many of us to that image of the web. And as this understanding has been developed in Buddhist thought, and particularly the Hua-yen perspective, we begin to see how dynamic and rich this is. And, I suggest this really can be our Unitarian Universalist perspective, as well.

Now, let me remind everyone here that one of the great insights of our free religious movement, is that escape clause. I remember as I was closing in on the end of formal koan study with my Zen teacher, John Tarrant. It was very early in the morning during a seven day intensive meditation retreat. He leaned in so close I could smell the English breakfast tea on his breath. And he said, "James, remember. Even enlightenment is just an idea."

These words I share intending to point a way of possibility and life, can themselves become a snare, entangling the unwary with simply another list of rules. Beware. In the past the winds of the spirit have blown through the lives of our ancestors. Pagan wisdom, particularly the insights of Athens, the story of Exodus and the divine unity, the perspectives of birth and death and the hope of rebirth told through the life of a person, the exuberant joy found within human reason birthing modernity: each a fresh breath of the spirit. Each, in turn, opening possibilities for us. And each, within the crushing embrace of literalism becoming dead letters, false paths. Beware thinking the web is the truth.

But, if we are careful, if we allow the possibility to flow, the spirit to light as it will; if we come to realize that what we’re actually being called to here is not a "knowing," but rather an unknowing, a forgetting, a letting go: then something amazing may well birth once again among us. It might truly be the life of the spirit that informed our ancestors so many times, opening ways of possibility, of new visions for what is and what might become.

Here we find we are so intimately woven together and out of each other. Here we find we live more closely with each other and the world itself than is found in a lover’s kiss. You and I, together: and moving between us, among us, within us, is that spirit.

It is the spirit that descended at that1984 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, in the muggy heat of Columbus, Ohio, and upon our crowd of rationalists, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, pagans and miscellaneous others. It is the spirit that sings to us of that new Unitarianism, of that new Universalism.

So, this is my Buddhist reflection on our UU image of the Interdependent Web. It is a beautiful image. But it is also so much more and less. It is in fact an invitation to a lived life. I hope each of us in this room, will take up the challenge.

I hope we will follow our intuition, our intimations of uniqueness and interrelatedness that have informed our romance with this image of the web, right down to the depths. Who knows where it will take us. To a meditation hall? To a soup kitchen? To a political action? To telling a story to a child? Perhaps to each in its time, and rhythm, to each as we, as you and I, open to know with that truly open mind, that mind which forgets selfishness and isolation, and experiences fully the strands of uniqueness and interrelatedness, strands that bind and create and liberate.

Thank you.