After passing (and marveling at) the Great Buddha we met in the mountains of Zhejiang Province (see Episode 103), my traveling buddy and I toiled on up the hill to a shiny new compound, so recently completed that there were still construction materials lying around.
The focus there was a "Great Compassion Hall" featuring a massive figure of Guanyin, Bodhisattva of Compassion, with eleven heads and a thousand arms (to extend her ability to help those who call on her). Ranged around the hall were 32 other images of Guanyin. A kindly and very knowledgeable old lady let me in to the enclosure and lectured to me at length on the different figures. Unfortunately, because of my poor Chinese and her thick accent, I could glean very little. But the kindness was enough.
Having arrived late at the temple, and spending way too much time receiving instruction I couldn't understand (and yet deeply appreciated), we found that any other hall that might have been open on our arrival was now closed.
And that's a shame, because one of them embodied my favorite metaphor come to life. But we peeped through the window.
In recent decades there has been a revival of the Huayan, one of the classic eight (or ten) schools of Chinese Buddhism. It focuses on the Avatamsaka or "Flower Garland" Sutra, so named (some say) because it's composed of several shorter sutras strung together something like a Hawaiian lei. And one of its most fascinating teachings is that of "Indra's Net of Gems."
Imagine the universe as an infinite, three-dimensional net. In every place that the strings meet, there is a gem. And every one of these gems reflects every other gem. Now, what happens when you move one gem? It changes (at least the appearance of) all the others. This is a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all things, much like the modern "Butterfly Theory."
So in one of the halls we passed on our way out, called the Huayan Shijie or "Avatamsaka World," there were four statues of my favorite Buddha, Vairochana (Piluzhena). What's more, the hall is full of mirrors, reproducing the Buddha into infinity--not unlike the "Net of Gems."
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The temple I worked in near Los Angeles had a room in its museum with a similar illustration: mirrors on four sides, and twinkly lights strung throughout. If you looked at one wall, you could see the other, and so into infinity. When I build my own temple, I'd like to make a room like that.
And that is that. Until next time, then, may you and your loved ones and all sentient beings be well and happy.
Adios, Amigos!
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