The Jewel Net of Mother & Daughter

A Letter to My Mother on the Occasion of Her 85th Birthday

My stepfather Les snapped this photo of me & my mother in January 2008 just before we said our goodbyes at the Southwest International Airport in Fort Myers, FL.

Dear Spark Zen readers, today’s post is an homage to my mother Eileen McGinnis who turns 85 on Monday, Sept. 4th—a day after her youngest granddaughter Skylar turns 11. In celebration of my mother and mothers everywhere I offer my heart unadorned and forever grateful to my biggest champion, my bestie, whose love and support buoyed me through many a trying time. Love abides.

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You made it Mom! You Brooklyn-born badass! You victorious, vociferous virgo! Eighty-Five! You forward-thinking, COVID-defeating, quilt-creating Momma! Salud! Sláinte!

Given that death is certain but the time of death uncertain, I thought I’d write this letter now while you’re still alive. What good is an homage after your ears can no longer hear it? So many of my friends’ mothers have already passed away; I feel blessed and grateful that you’re still a presence in my life: A precious time-being that occupies space on this spinning mass of earth, wind, water, and fire. 

And, Mom, if you were already dead, I’d be wailing and reeling with paroxysms of grief. Uh, TBH, I’m crying now as I finish this at Tara’s house in an upstairs bedroom while you’re downstairs in your lilac-colored “Mom cave.”

Mom, of course you were in the room when I was born. You told me so many times how desperate you were to have a daughter after having two sons. When the doctor informed you that I was girl, you shouted: “It damn well better be.”

Will I even be in the room, Mom, when you utter your last words? What will your last words be? Will they be as fiery and fierce as the first words you uttered in my infancy? Or will they be soft and reassuring to my grieving adult self?

Mom, during our services at San Francisco Zen Center we often chant the “Loving-Kindness Meditation,” and there’s a stanza that catches in my throat because it conjures you in my heart-mind:

“Even as a mother at the risk of her life

Watches over and protects her only child,

So with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things.”

You were always my biggest champion, Mom, protecting me from being molded into a “good girl.” In our mostly Italian-American, Roman Catholic, working-class neighborhood, you defended my unconventional “girl” ways and encouraged my independence.

On October 30, 1967, you set the stage for my non-conforming, rebellious, and “demi-girl” self by christening my infant head with a very non-Italian name: Heather More—a nod to your Scottish mother and Irish grandparents. Your inspiration was the heather flourishing on the moors in Wuthering Heights. When I was a pre-teen, you told me that you gave me this name because I was going to need to be strong to survive in a world dominated by men. How prophetic.

You gave me this name despite the Code of Canon Law of the Vatican that strongly discourages Catholics from giving their children “a name foreign to Christian sensibility.” In other words, name your kids after a Catholic saint, which was definitely the expectation back then. You skillfully circumvented this by pretending that my middle name was in homage to Sir Thomas More—a rebel in his own right—and not the windswept, craggy moor that the brooding, forlorn Heathcliff haunted.

Since I began practicing Sōto Zen Buddhism in 2001, there’s a phrase that I’ve heard countless times: “causes and conditions.” It’s impossible to fathom all the causes and conditions in our lives that dynamically generate who we are—the psycho/emotional/physical self—in each nano-moment of existence. Who knows how naming me “Heather More” affected the trajectory of my life? I ended up earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in English literature and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Was this because I was “Heather” instead of “Concetta” like Poppa wanted to call me?

Mom, your presence has always felt elemental to me: the solidity of earth, the ubiquity of wind, the profundity of water, and the intensity of fire.

Although I feel that I’ve flourished in many ways in this patriarchal world, there was much suffering, as you know. In Buddhism, suffering or dukkha is the proximate cause of faith. I think your searching for psycho-emotional health through 12-step programs and meditation influenced my own spiritual seeking. In this way, I’m grateful to you, of course, and I also feel fortunate that suffering zagged my path so it zigged with the Eightfold Path of Buddhism. What I love about Buddhism, Mom, is that it’s radical, healing, and inspiring. What’s more is that the ancient teachers used such vivid, innovative, and poetic language to illuminate The Great Matter of the Cosmos.

The Jewel Net of Indra is one of these teachings. It’s the central metaphor in Hua-yen Buddhism—one of the most profound and abstruse foundational philosophies that dates back to ancient Hindu thought, predating the Buddha’s birth in the 5/6th century BC. I’m not an expert in Hua-yen Buddhism, but it doesn’t take scholarly expertise to be enthralled, enchanted, and intrigued by this Jewel Net.

In the Hindu tradition, Indra is a powerful God who is the king of Svarga, the celestial abode of the devas (god-like deities), who resides in a palace in Amaravati, the capital city of this heavenly realm. Within this realm, a net is strung that extends infinitely in all directions. In each intersection of the net hangs a single, shimmering jewel. Since the net is infinite, the jewels are innumerable and infinite as well. Even more spectacular than this is that each individual jewel reflects all the other jewels in Indra’s Net. And, even more astonishing than this is that this reflecting process also occurs in each of the jewels being reflected in the one jewel we’re gazing at. 

“Thus each individual is at once the cause for the whole and is caused by the whole, and what is called existence is a vast body made up of an infinity of individuals all sustaining each other and defining each other. The cosmos is in short, a self-creating, self-maintaining, and self-defining organism.”¹

Whew! This dazzling jewel net of profound, unfathomable interrelatedness is not so easy to comprehend for us Westerners inculcated by capitalism, duped by materialism, steeped in individualism, raised in racism, and colored by classism. All these -isms are the manifestations of the false belief in the false borders our human minds love to construct.

The Hua-yen philosophy undergirds most, if not all sects of Buddhism, and this is most especially true for Zen. What’s most transformative and wondrous about this Jewel Net is that the existence and identity of each being—sentient and non-sentient—depends on the existence and identity of every other thing that exists.

For me, when I think of Indra’s Jewel Net, I visualize you, me and Tara as neighboring gems suspended in sparkling silence: You’re a vivid, vibrant, indomitable blue sapphire. I’m a passionate, protective opal; and Tara is a caring, patient red garnet. We are close enough to feel each other’s presence, reflect each other’s brilliance, and admire each other’s differences. 

Your brilliant blue suffused me with an aspiration to search beyond the horizons that were set for me at birth. To question authority, reality, and identity. Tara’s rich red hue softened the hard edges of my heart, and comforted me through many a despairing time. None of us exists without the other.

After my priest ordination, at Christopher's wedding, on the beach!

Mom, of course I would not be here if it weren’t for you. Not only here as in being alive, but here as in being a Sōto Zen Buddhist priest. Here as in writing, creating, contemplating. Mom, I think that you would have been a Buddhist had you been born during the Baby Boomer Generation rather than the Silent Generation.

You’re the first person who mentioned the word “meditation” to me after you and Poppa learned Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s at Wainwright House in Rye, NY. This place was a refuge for your budding spirituality and 12-step work. I recall you and Poppa at random times during the day telling us kids that you were going to meditate. You’d retreat into your bedroom, close the door, and emerge 20 minutes later. It perplexed my 10-year-old self.

Here I am, 46 years later an ordained Sōto Zen Buddhist priest. Neither of us could’ve ever predicted this. Who knows during which lifetime that course was mapped? Who knows how your and Poppa’s learning Transcendental Meditation affected me? Is this when the seed of spiritual contemplation was planted in my heart-mind? 

When I told you that I was going to quit my six-figure job and live at a Zen monastery, you did not bat an eye. You were so understanding, encouraging, and congratulatory. It was as if I told you that I had gotten a promotion or received an award. You also did not bat an eye when I called you from the monastery and told you that I was in a relationship with a woman. You also did not bat an eye when your children dated women and men of color. For a woman who was born in 1938, you were truly ahead of your time, and I am immensely grateful for your open-minded heart.

Tara's 7th birthday, my parents' wedding, my older brothers

None of us four children would exist without you and Poppa and your parents and their parents and on and on. There is no single cause of creation. Everything exists in relation to everything else throughout space-time-being. What were all the causes and conditions that came together to create the Jewel Net of the Iarusso-McGinnis clan? None of us will ever know.

And for me, Mom, that’s all beside the point. What matters now and forever is that you are the garnet of my heart, the sapphire of my mind, and the opal of my eye.

1. Cook, Francis H. Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park & London, 1977.