“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infintely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. 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."
Francis Harold Cook
Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra
Exploring How We Connect, And What It Means
When you tell someone that they have an influence on people who are three degrees removed from them, you're telling them that they have an effect on, you know, 10 friends, their 100 friends of friends, their 1,000 friends of friends of friends, suddenly you're telling them that they're responsible not just for themselves but a whole host of people, some of whom they don't even know, and I think that a lot of people, the way they react to that sense of responsibility, is I'm going to actually try to work harder to exert my own will over my own life.
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