Indra's Net

Last night I had dinner with a couple of friends, something that would probably be good to do more often, as it is so easy to be isolated here in San Francisco, home to eight hundred thousand people. I brought a video to watch about Joseph Campbell, titled "Sukhavati, Place of Bliss." It was late as we watched it, and I've seen it at least five times, so I was nodding off to sleep now and then, but I still was impressed and moved by Campbell's energy and passion and his message.

I felt, as a usually do when I watch it, both energized/inspired and somewhat sad. He manages, in this video, to connect the globe's religions and myths together to show an eternal similarity of origin and how there is no beginning to the origin of these myths upon which all religions are based. His message is: God is within you. He is so so so passionate about this and he made it his mission to impress this upon whomever he could. He focuses much upon the Goddess, and the way he does so makes everything (about existence) so obvious. The video was produced posthumously and was very well produced, with incredible music by Gabrielle Roth, and fantastic images and video of sacred places and art and people around the world, mixing in Campbell's voice and sections of him teaching.

A main allegory he refers to is Indra's Net from Hinduism:

Suspended above the palace of Indra, the Buddhist god who symbolizes the natural forces that protect and nurture life, is an enormous net. A brilliant jewel is attached to each of the knots of the net. Each jewel contains and reflects the image of all the other jewels in the net, which sparkles in the magnificence of its totality.

So, basically we, each of us, is a jewel in this "net" and so we all reflect each other. We are all connected. The awakening to this truth is, I believe, paramount to not just the survival of humans on Earth (Who wants to merely survive?), but the high quality of life for all life forms here.