Huayan
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Huayan (華嚴, Pinyin: huáyán, Sanskrit: Avatamsaka) or Flower Garland is a tradition of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy that flourished in China during the Tang period. It is based on the Sanskrit scripture of the same name and on a lengthy Chinese interpretation of it, the Huayan Lun. The name “Flower Garland” is meant to suggest the crowning glory of profound understanding.</p>
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Historical Background
The doctrines of the Huayan school ended up having profound impact on the philosophical attitudes of all of East Asian Buddhism. Established during the period of the end of the Sui and beginning of Tang dynasties, this school centered on the philosophy of interpenetration and mutual containment which its founders perceived in the Huayan Jing. Yet despite basic reliance on this sutra, much of the technical terminology that the school becomes famous for is not found in the sutra itself, but in the commentaries written by its early founders.
The founding of the school is traditionally attributed to a series of five “patriarchs” who were instrumental in developing the schools' doctrines. These five are: Dushun (杜順), Zhiyan (智儼), Fazang (法藏), Chengguan (澄觀) and Zongmi. Another important figure in the development and popularization of Huayan thought was the lay scholar Li Tongxuan (李通玄). Some accounts of the school also like to extend its patriarchship earlier to Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna.
Although there are certain aspects of this patriarchal scheme which are clearly contrived, it is fairly well accepted that these men each played a significant and distinct role in the development of the school: for example, Dushun is known to have been responsible for the establishment of Huayan studies as a distinct field; Zhiyan is considered to have established the basic doctrines of the sect; Fazang is considered to have rationalized the doctrine for greater acceptance by society; Chengguan and Zongmi are understood to have further developed and transformed the teachings.
After the time of Zongmi and Li Tongxuan the Chinese school of Huayan generally stagnated in terms of new development, and then eventually began to decline. The school, which had been dependent upon the support it received from the government, suffered severely during the purge of 841-845, never to recover its former strength. Nonetheless, its profound metaphysics, such as that of the four dharmadhātu (四法界) of interpenetration, had a deep impact on surviving East Asian schools, especially the Chan school.
Philosophy of the Hua Yen School
The most important philosophical contributions of the Huayan school were in the area of its metaphysics, as it taught the doctrine of the mutual containment and interpenetration of all phenomena: that one thing contains all things in existence, and that all things contain one.
Distinctive features of this approach to Buddhist philosophy include:
- Truth (or: reality) is understood as encompassing and interpenetrating falsehood (or: illusion), and vice-versa
- Good is understood as encompassing and interpenetrating evil
- Similarly, all mind-made distinctions are understood as 'collapsing' in the enlightened understanding of emptiness (a tradition traced back to the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna)
Huayan makes extensive use of paradox in argument and literary imagery. The following quote from Dale S. Wright (1982) summarizes the range of such devices a reader is likely to encounter in a first foray into Huayan literature:
The first type of paradox is modeled after
paradoxical assertions found in many early Mahayana
texts that emphasize the concept emptiness
(k’ung(f)/’suunyataa). Beginning with the assertion
that a phenomenon, X, is empty (k’ung/’suunyaa)
(that is, since X originates dependently, it is
empty of own-being), one moves to the further
paradoxical implication that X is not X. An example
from Fa-tsang is the assertion that “when one
understands that origination is without self-nature,
then there is no origination.”(5)
A second type of paradox is derived from two
doctrinal sources: the Hua-yen concept of “true
emptiness” (chen-k’ung(g) ) and the Hua-yen
interpretation of the dialectic of the One Mind
(i-hsin(h)) in the Awakening of Faith. Whereas the
first type of paradox worked with the negative
assertion that phenomenal form is empty and
nonexistent (wu so yu(i)), the second type reverses
that claim by asserting that any empty phenomenon is
an expression of, and the medium for, the ultimate
truth of emptiness. The union of opposites effected
here is the
identity between conditioned, relative reality and
the ultimate truth of suchness (chen-ju(j)/tathataa) .
Fa-tsang’s paradoxical assertion illustrates this
second type. “When the great wisdom of perfect
clarity gazes upon a minute hair, the universal sea
of nature, the true source, is clearly manifest.”(6)
The third variation of paradox is grounded in the
Hua-yen doctrine of the “nonobstruction of all
phenomena” (shih shih wu-ai(k)). According to this
doctrine, when the ultimate truth of emptiness
becomes manifest to the viewer, each phenomenon is
paradoxically perceived as interpenetrating with and
containing all others. This paradoxical violation of
the conventional order of time and space is best
exemplified by Fa-tsang’s famous Essay on the Golden
Lion.
In each and every hair [of the lion] there is the
golden lion. All of the lions contained in each and
every hair simultaneously and suddenly penetrate
into one hair. [Therefore], within each and every
hair there are unlimited lions.(7)
The common element in all three types of paradox is
that they originate in the tension between the two
truths, between conventional truth (su-ti(l)
/sa.mv.rtisatya) and ultimate truth (chen-ti(m)
/paramaarthasatya). Our task of interpreting the
significance of paradoxical language in Hua-yen
texts, therefore, will begin by working out an
initial interpretation of the two truths and the
relation between them.
See also
References
Wright, Dale S. (1983). Philosophy East and West 32 (3).