One Big Family

I finished watching the Netflix spinoff series Castlevania: Nocturne, season 2 last week, and I wanted to share this great quote:

Alucard: Your mother and I never met. But when you’ve lived as long as I have, you start to understand. We’re all part of the same story somehow. And these connections run very deep.

Castlevania: Nocturne, season 2, episode 6, “Ancestors”

This inter-connectivity of all beings, all being part of the same story, is a very Buddhist notion.

In Buddhism, especially the Mahanaya tradition (i.e. pretty much all of east Asia, and beyond), there is a famous analogy of the Jeweled Net of Indra (sometimes Brahma). The idea is that within the celestial palace of Indra (or Brahma), there is treasure room, and within that room is a great net woven with jewels at each node.

Now, imagine this great net of jewels, and how each jewel reflects the light of every other jewel. That’s how interdependence works. Shatter, remove, or replace one jewel and the light from the others diminishes as well. So it is with all sentient beings. The effect may not be noticeable, but it does happen.

The entire series of Perfection of Wisdom sutras, including the Heart Sutra, covers this in great detail. The Buddha Vairocana also embodies this truth (especially as described in the massive Flower Garland Sutra); alternatively Amida Buddha does too in some interpretations.

Indeed, there’s many ways to describe it, but the implications are the same: we are all in this together.

Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. Castlevania: Nocturne is great. It covers a lot of characters from later Castlevania games that I didn’t play (Richter, Juste, Maria, etc), which confused me at first, but season 2 builds really nicely on season 1. Great series and worthy spinoff to the original.