Indra's net

Indra's net (also called Indra's jewels or Indra's pearls, Sanskrit Indrajāla) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of Śūnyatā (emptiness),pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), and interpenetration in Buddhist philosophy.

The metaphor of Indra's net was developed by the Mahayana school in the third-century Avatamsaka Sutra and later by the Huayan school between the 6th and 8th centuries.

"Indra's net" is the net of the Vedic god Indra, whose net hangs over his palace on Mount Meru, the axis mundi of Hindu cosmology and Hindu mythology. Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the image of "Indra's net" is used to describe the interconnectedness of the universe:

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 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.

This metaphor plays an essential role in the Chinese Huayan school, where it is used to describe the interpenetration of microcosmos and macrocosmos.Fazang (643–712) used the golden statue of a lion to demonstrate the Huayan vision of interpenetration to empress Wu:

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