Seeding Peace in the Cloud
As the virtual domain continues to billow in all directions, engaged Buddhists must translate their practices into the language of our time.
The third-century Avatamsaka Sutra unfurls a bedazzling, poetic vision of Shakyamuni Buddha’s perceptions on awakening to true awareness beneath the Bodhi tree. Reflecting the diamond-like clarity of enlightenment, the world reveals itself to the Buddha as an interpenetrating matrix of shimmering phenomena expanding through the infinity of inner and outer space. Here the legendary metaphor of Indra’s great cosmic net is presented as a vast, spider-like web stretching across the cosmos:
A single glittering jewel hangs in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number . . . 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. (Cook, 1977)
For Mahayana Buddhism, in particular the influential Huayan (Flower Garland) school, which developed in seventh- and eighth-century China, Indra’s net is celebrated as a potent allegory for the fractal nature of interdependent reality (Skt: pratityasamutpada) and the core principle of emptiness (Skt: sunyata) as the net connects all yet has no center.
Of the myriad practitioners inspired by this sutra’s celestial illustration of interbeing, Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh brings the concept eloquently down to earth. Guiding the reader’s attention back into the present, Thay’s well-known Clouds in Each Paper simile reads:
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So, we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.
Ephemeral yet imminent, clouds also play a foundational role in the activities of our life online. As Thay himself might have expressed it:
If you are a poet, you will also clearly see the clouds floating in this computer screen. For without clouds, the reservoirs would be empty; without reservoirs, data centers could not be cooled; and without data centers, we could not weave the nets of information through which this webpage arises. If clouds did not animate our atmosphere, virtual clouds could not animate our digi-sphere. So, we can say that clouds and the cloud inter-are.
Looking deeper into this virtual cloud, we may similarly glimpse a swirling meshwork of other beings reflected and refracted such that the glowing black mirror before us reveals our own participation as a polished “eye/I” on the spiraling net…