To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

10 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
ity is not limited to the human kingdom: it takes in every
atomic life that is evolving as we are — all within the webwork
of hierarchies that compose this pulsating organism we
call our universe. Assuredly our great error has been to
regard ourselves as discrete particles adrift in a hostile universe,
rather than as god-sparks struck from the central
hearth of Divinity — as intrinsically one in essence as the
flame of the candle is one with the stellar fires in the core of
our sun.
The ancient Mahāyāna Buddhist, with his penchant for
metaphor, perhaps said it best: in Indra’s heaven is a network
of pearls disposed in such a way that when you look at
one pearl you find all the other pearls imaged in it; everything
in the world likewise is linked with and involved in
every other thing, ‘‘in fact is everything else.’’* How is it
that we humans, supposedly the most advanced of earth
dwellers, have ignored for so long this beautiful fact, especially
when there is scarcely a race or people, clan or tribe,
from the remotest past to the present era which has not
cherished the knowledge of it?
Of course, acceptance of the principle of universal
brotherhood is relatively simple compared to living it. All
of us have diªculty at times living harmoniously with ourselves,
let alone with others. Perhaps a first step would be to
accept ourselves, to be friends with the whole of our nature,
recognizing that when we do so we are accepting our lower
tendencies along with our higher potentialities. In this
acceptance we automatically are accepting others, their frail-
*Cf. ‘‘Avataṃsaka-sūtra,’’ Japanese Buddhism, pp. 109 ‒10.