EVERYTHING IS A PLAYER

There is a lot going on backstage, behind the scenes, just out of sight.  This is the realm of ji ji muge, as it is called in Zen, which is the mutual interpenetration of all things and events.  A spider’s web is what it is likened to, where every dew drop on the web is reflected in every other dew drop on the web. 

Nothing happens in existence that is not reflected throughout all of existence, philosopher Alan Watts explained.  In this way, there is no such thing as a single event.  There are only multiple, concurrent events. When anything is born into this world, it is born everywhere in the world.  Whatever it does in its life, affects everything else in the world. 

The presence and doings of anything make the world what it is on any given day.  The world would not be what it is at any particular moment were it not for the presence and activities of any given thing.  Every snail is king, Alan Watts put it.  Everything is a player.