2. Objects appear to us as images.　The mind may be likened to a gigantic mirror in which the properties of the universe are reflected.　We only see events as in a mirror.　These images are not the things in themselves but rather constitute a virtual reality.　This is all we have.　While we may impute form and structure, causality and relatedness to images we do not through our senses actually contact them as they appear.

　　 3. Descriptive knowledge is thus necessarily indirect.　There is a metaphorical account of this in a description of a monk teaching a pupil.　The monk appears in the mirror of the pupil, the pupil appears in the mirror of the monk.　The teaching is likewise mirrored and so is the acknowledgement of any understanding.　The nature of knowledge is “such.”

　　 4. Furthermore different properties may be assigned to apparent things by different minds, persons or teaching.　For example water may be said to be a liquid, H2O, melted ice, congealed vapour, molecules or quanta depending upon the perspective offered.　Yet all of these perspectives exhibit simultaneous mutual arising──furthermore they are each participant in the other showing simultaneous mutual “entering,” and again each contains all the

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others.　When we are aware of these relationships we have a “Totalistic” or “round” picture of how a thing is.　Although any thing is empty of inherent existence it never the less may appear under any one of these mutually penetrating guises.　Thus “emptiness is precisely form.”　The wonderful metaphor of Indra’s net captures this vision nicely.　Above the palace of Indra hangs a Great net from which are suspended millions of multifaceted crystals.　Each reflects all the others in never ending mutuality.

　　 5. The events that appear to us as things──such as a man falling off a horse or an aircraft crash, has two aspects; the described event itself (with all the mutual penetration of potential descriptions) and the underlying causality that may be invisible──the principles that govern the happening.　In Hua-yen the first is called the realm (dharmadhaatu) of shi, the second the realm of li.　There is no obstruction of shi by li as they are mutually interpenetrable.　This leads to a number of contemplations: the principle that li embraces shi, the principle that shi embraces li, the principles that production of shi must depend on li, that shi illustrates li, that shi may be annulled by li, that shi may render li invisible, that while li is shi and all things/events are li yet li is not itself shi nor are shi li.

　　 The practical application of this is clear.　Consider the life of a wood, the insects depend on the foliage, the birds depend on the insects, falcons depend on the small birds, the trees depend on humus which comes from the remains of living creatures.　There is here a complex system well researched in ecology through the application of systems analysis and cybernetics to structures such as woods, organisms, digestive processes etc.　Yet we still affirm quite logically that all these events are “empty.”　Systems analysis was foreshadowed centuries ago in the thought of these Chinese sages.

　　 Here then is a powerful vision as to how emptiness expresses itself in forms.　In meditation one may take up many aspects of the

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same phenomenon and through seeing their inter-dependence and lack of inherent existence allow them to merge into one understanding or experience.　When the self also participates totally in that experience that one thing becomes uncharacterisable.　Experience thus becomes empty, yet as soon as thought reappears the categories reestablish themselves.　An emphasis in Dharma understanding on emptiness must necessarily also invoke form.　The two are co-dependent.　Meditation implies action and vice versa.

　　 Master Tung-shan in T’ang Dynasty China formulated a similar teaching known as the Five Ranks that depict the integration of opposed dualities as may occur in the practice of meditation.　The first rank places the relative within the universal: the second places the universal within the relative; the third is the principle of emerging from the universal (i.e. the appearance of the ten thousand things from a unified sense of emptiness); the fourth is an integration of the particulate and the universal in one vision in which however their separation is still apparent; the final rank is unity itself without divisions.　Each rank is never the less present in all the others.

　　 Europeans appear to have had little to do with such an inclusive picture of Dharma.　Perhaps our civilisation is somewhat tired after all the strains of this century and inclined to opt for the better known or apparently safer routes.　In the USA a more exploratory attitude predominates which, although it may sometimes seem a little naive to European eyes, is also often highly creative showing a way forward that is not in contradiction with a full understanding of tradition.　John Daido Loorie, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York State has written a wonderful little book (1999) in which the above principles of “holographic” interdependence are shown to be basic to an understanding of wilderness and hence to all environmental study.　Quoting Thoreau and Snyder he reveals an American vision of the wild that echoes in