Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Indra's net a lesson in holograms from ancient times.



"Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image." –Alan Watts[1]
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),[2] pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination),[3] and interpenetration[4] 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.[2]