Indra’s Net

Drawing together the interconnectedness of all of us

Last October, I went on a meditation retreat in Massachusetts (a little closer to home) with my two sisters at Kripalu Yoga Center. Not that we are serious students of Buddhism (we are all atheist Jews), but we try to spend a weekend together, just us, no partners, adult children, or grandchildren, once a year when we can.

It is a time to discuss the reverberations of long-buried childhood experiences, and to share feelings and thoughts we wouldn’t share with anyone else. Although the rest of the year we live very different lives, each with our own private challenges, during these few precious days we have a bit of space and time to share how our life stories and our deepest feelings are intertwined.

The retreat focused on loving-kindness meditation, led by two American Buddhist converts, Stephen Cope and Missy Brown. One of my sisters had already studied and practiced this form of meditation (Metta); the other had no interest in being lectured to by an old white man at this point in her life. But I, as the youngest, dutifully listened and took notes. (Metta, as I understand it, is Chesed, loving-kindness, in our tradition.)

One of the things I learned about was Indra’s net: a metaphor originating in Hindu cosmology and central to Mahayana Buddhism, where Metta meditation is rooted. Indra’s net (or web), we were told, is an infinite glittering net with a jewel at each node, and in each jewel you can see reflections of all the other jewels. Our job is to love our tiny corner of the net, and through that, love the whole.

Yesterday, doing laundry in preparation for my long-awaited trip to India (nearly two years in the planning), I came across a folded piece of paper sitting on top of the washing machine. I opened it to find my diagram of Indra’s net. Then, at 4:45 am this morning, I got a text from my host in India: the government was halting all foreign visitors to the university where I was to be a scholar-in-residence. Some visitors already in transit were currently stranded.

Probably not the best time for a trip across the world (my original flight was scheduled to connect through Doha). But it made me think about how we are all caught up in a common human story, whether we want to be or not, and that story is impossibly complex and difficult to comprehend, much less to predict. No one knows whether or how the violence at play in the Middle East will be resolved, or how it will ultimately affect every person on this fragile planet we call home.

There is another small sketch on that folded notepaper from our meditation retreat. Its pretty rough but I can tell you what it illustrates: a Zen parable. A monk chased by a tiger leaps off a cliff to avoid being devoured, only to find another tiger waiting at the bottom. Grabbing some vines on the way down, he notices a beautiful, ripe strawberry, and then sees a mouse gnawing at the vine that is temporarily saving him. He plucks the strawberry and savors its sweetness as he falls to his inevitable end.

This is not a sad story. I love strawberries, and blueberries, and many other kinds of berries, and watching the hummingbirds that will return to our backyard soon. I’m reminded of Humphrey Bogart’s words in Casablanca: “I’m not good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” In Casablanca, they all went on to do the work they had to do to try to make the world a better place.

So in the meantime, I will love my tiny, sparkling corner of the infinite net as best I can. And enjoy the strawberries.