Chapter 6: The Huayan School¶

Tiantai’s perfect interpenetration of the Dharma-realm principally unfolds at the level of thought: three thousand realms in a single thought, the Three Truths simultaneously present, radiating from each present thought to touch the whole. Huayan’s vision is larger. Beginning from the cosmology of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, it extends the insight “all is one and one is all” into the structure of existence as a whole. The discussion is no longer limited to thought. Every thing in the cosmos reflects and includes every other thing. This is perfect interpenetration in a cosmological sense, whereas Tiantai’s tends more toward epistemology and the theory of practice.

I. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra and Huayan’s Textual Foundation¶

What is the Avataṃsaka Sūtra?

The Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, the Flower Garland Sūtra, is the work of Indian Mahāyāna literature richest in cosmological imagination. Its central image is the infinitely adorned cosmic vista manifested at awakening by Vairocana, the Buddha of the Dharma-body: layers upon layers of buddha lands, numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, all mutually including one another without end.

Structurally, the Avataṃsaka was not a single unified Indian source. It is a vast collection assembled from several independent works, the most important being the Daśabhūmika Sūtra, on the ten stages of bodhisattva practice, and the Gaṇḍavyūha, recounting the youth Sudhana’s journey among fifty-three spiritual friends. These circulated independently in India before being compiled into a single great scripture.¹

Chinese translations

The eighty-fascicle version was the principal text used by the Huayan school and remains the commonly circulated version today.

II. Historical Origins of the Huayan School¶

Dushun (557–640)

Tradition regards Dushun as Huayan’s first patriarch. He left no systematic philosophical writings—the attribution of the Gate of Contemplating the Dharma-realm is disputed—and was known principally for teaching contemplative practice. He sketched the “threefold contemplation”: contemplation of true emptiness, seeing that all phenomena are empty; contemplation of the nonobstruction of principle and phenomena, seeing their identity; and contemplation of universal inclusion, seeing the nonobstruction among phenomena. The three correspond to three levels in Fazang’s later four Dharma-realms and provided the initial outline of Huayan cosmology.

Zhiyan (602–668)

Dushun’s disciple and the second Huayan patriarch, Zhiyan was the thinker who truly began to organize Huayan doctrine. He developed the frameworks of the “perfect interpenetration of the six characteristics” and “ten mysterious gates,” laying the foundation for Fazang’s systematic philosophy. His principal writings include the Ten Mysterious Gates of the One Vehicle of Huayan and Record of Searching the Mysteries of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra.

Fazang (643–712)

Fazang, also known as Master Xianshou, was Huayan’s third patriarch and the figure who truly constructed Huayan thought as a complete philosophical system. Descended from Sogdians and born in Chang’an, he had an exceptionally close relationship with Wu Zetian, who reigned 690–705. She was Huayan’s most important political patron. Fazang repeatedly lectured at court, supplying her with religious resources from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra to justify the legitimacy of her rule.³

His principal works included the Record of Exploring the Mysteries of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, an extensive commentary; the Treatise on the Five Teachings of Huayan, a programmatic statement of Huayan doctrinal classification; the Treatise on the Golden Lion of Huayan, a concise teaching written for Wu Zetian using a golden lion as its metaphor; and the Treatise on the Dependent Origination of the Dharma-realm.

Chengguan (738–839)

The fourth Huayan patriarch, Chengguan wrote the Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and other works, further annotating and defending Fazang’s system. He gave the four Dharma-realms their most systematic formulation.

Zongmi (780–841)

Huayan’s fifth patriarch, Zongmi was also an important inheritor of Heze Chan. He explicitly attempted a synthesis of Huayan and Chan, discussed in Section IX. His principal writings include the Prolegomenon to the Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source and Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity.

III. The Four Dharma-Realms: The Basic Framework of Huayan Ontology¶

The four Dharma-realms are Huayan’s most fundamental ontological framework. Systematically formulated by Chengguan, they are rooted in Fazang’s philosophy:²

Correspondences for the first three Dharma-realms can be found to varying degrees in other Buddhist philosophies. The realm of phenomena corresponds to conventional truth, the realm of principle to ultimate truth, and their nonobstruction to Madhyamaka’s parallel two truths.

The fourth is Huayan’s distinctive contribution. “Nonobstruction among phenomena” means that things mutually include one another without the least obstruction, the most radical claim in Huayan philosophy. Its logic is as follows: if every thing manifests the same principle—Dharma-nature or tathāgatagarbha—then through that shared “principle” every thing is connected to every other thing. If all things are thus connected through principle, each thing contains an orientation toward all others. A world in a grain of sand, a cosmos in a flower.

IV. The Perfect Interpenetration of the Six Characteristics¶

The perfect interpenetration of the six characteristics, developed by Zhiyan and systematically elaborated by Fazang, is an analytical framework explaining how each appearance simultaneously possesses six opposing yet interpenetrating characteristics. They form three mutually inclusive pairs:

All six exist simultaneously within any appearance. The key is their “perfect interpenetration.” They are not contradictory opposites, but different aspects of one appearance, mutually identical and all indispensable. Their philosophical significance lies in explaining how “one” and “many” coexist within the same appearance; they are also one logical foundation for the nonobstruction among phenomena.

V. The Ten Mysterious Gates and Indra’s Net¶

The Ten Mysterious Gates

The Ten Mysterious Gates are ten perspectives Fazang used to describe concrete forms of nonobstruction among phenomena. Each explains one dimension in which appearances mutually contain one another.²

Their detailed content is highly technical; only their spirit need concern us here. Each gate explains a specific relation of mutual identity between the one and the many. The one is within the many and the many within the one; the large is contained in the small and the small in the large; this time contains another time and the other time contains this one; a single thought contains an eon and an eon contains a single thought. The ten gates describe the same reality of nonobstruction among phenomena from ten directions.

Indra’s Net

Fazang’s most famous metaphor is Indra’s Net (Indrajāla):

In the palace of Indra hangs an infinite net of jewels, with a jewel at every knot. Each jewel reflects all the others. Each reflected jewel in turn reflects every other jewel, and so on through infinitely layered reflections without end.

The metaphor renders the realm of nonobstruction among phenomena intuitively. Every thing, each jewel, reflects all other things within itself, and every reflected thing in turn contains the reflections of all others—layer after endless layer.

In Chapter 5.1 on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, this book used Indra’s Net as an intuitive image of the emptiness of dependent origination. In Huayan’s framework, the metaphor is developed much more fully into a cosmology.

VI. Dependent Origination of the Dharma-Realm and the Theory of Nature-Origination¶

Dependent origination of the Dharma-realm

In early Buddhism, dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) is a linear causal chain: when this arises, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases. In Madhyamaka, it is the argumentative basis for the absence of intrinsic nature. In Huayan, dependent origination expands into the dependent origination of the Dharma-realm (dharmadhātu-pratītyasamutpāda). It is no longer a linear causal chain, but the simultaneous mutual inclusion of all appearances. Every appearance takes all others as its conditions while also being contained by them all. This is “horizontal” interdependence rather than “vertical” temporal causation.

The theory of nature-origination

“Nature” means buddha-nature, Dharma-nature, or tathāgatagarbha: the pure nature serving as the essence of all appearances. “Origination” means arising or manifestation.

Nature-origination claims that every appearance “arises” from this nature—buddha-nature or Dharma-nature. Appearances neither emerge from nothing nor exist independently; they manifest buddha-nature. “Origination” does not mean that nature first existed in time and appearances arose afterward. Rather, the existence of appearances is the self-manifestation of buddha-nature; they are not two separate things.²

The difference between nature-origination and nature-inclusion

Chapter 10.5 identified their central difference; the table below elaborates it.

The difference is philosophically important. Huayan’s nature-origination stands closer to mainstream tathāgatagarbha—nature is pure and defilement is delusion—while Tiantai’s nature-inclusion fundamentally revises that mainstream.

VII. The Treatise on the Golden Lion of Huayan¶

The Treatise on the Golden Lion is a short work Fazang wrote for Wu Zetian, using a golden lion statue in the palace to illustrate Huayan philosophy’s central concepts. It is the most approachable introduction to Huayan thought.³

The metaphor follows this logic:

Gold equals principle, Dharma-nature or emptiness. Gold is the substance, the lion’s essential material. It possesses no fixed shape of its own and can be cast into any form.

The lion’s shape equals phenomena. Its specific form—claws, teeth, ears, and eyes—is the shape into which gold has been cast. Each part possesses its particular appearance, the characteristic of difference, but every part is gold, the characteristic of identity.

The relation between gold and lion. Gold is wholly the lion—gold is lion, principle is phenomena. The lion is wholly gold—lion is gold, phenomena is principle. This is the nonobstruction of principle and phenomena. Each claw and tooth contains the whole lion, through the relation between universal and particular among the six characteristics, while the whole lion is within every claw and tooth. This is the nonobstruction among phenomena.

At its conclusion, the essay extends the metaphor to the entire Dharma-realm. The whole cosmos is one golden lion. Every appearance, each claw and tooth, contains the whole, the lion; and the whole, the lion, is fully manifested as every appearance, each claw and tooth.

VIII. Huayan’s Relationship to Tathāgatagarbha¶

Huayan “principle”—Dharma-nature or Dharma-realm—and the tathāgatagarbha tradition’s tathāgatagarbha or buddha-nature are functionally the same thing: the unified essence behind all appearances, at once their source and destination. Chapter 7.1 noted the equation in the Śrīmālādevī Sūtra that “tathāgatagarbha is the unconditioned Dharma-realm.” Huayan built its cosmology of dependent origination in the Dharma-realm upon precisely this equation.

Dushun’s Gate of Contemplating the Dharma-realm explicitly connects “contemplation of true emptiness,” the emptiness of the Dharma-realm, to the “Huayan realm.” Fazang’s four Dharma-realms take the “realm of principle”—Dharma-nature or suchness—as their basis and the “realm of nonobstruction among phenomena” as their summit. The structure is exactly a cosmological development of the tathāgatagarbha idea “nature is originally pure, and all phenomena arise from tathāgatagarbha.”

Huayan cosmology therefore develops the tathāgatagarbha question “how does tathāgatagarbha give rise to the myriad phenomena?” into a complete cosmology of “how do the myriad phenomena mutually contain one another?”

IX. Zongmi: An Attempt to Synthesize Huayan and Chan¶

Zongmi (780–841), at once the fifth Huayan patriarch and an important successor in the Heze line of Chan derived from Shenhui, made it his life’s principal work to show that Huayan philosophy and Chan practice were two aspects of the same thing.

The Prolegomenon to the Collection of Expressions of the Chan Source

This work systematically classified the contemporary Chan traditions, including Heze, Hongzhou or Mazu, and Oxhead. Using Huayan’s classificatory framework, Zongmi placed them at different levels and finally argued that the highest Chan and Huayan’s perfect teaching point toward the same reality.

The Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity

Zongmi’s Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity is among the most intellectually original works in Chinese Buddhist history. It asks: what is a human being? Zongmi answers first through Confucian, Daoist, and various Buddhist positions, successively identifying the shortcomings of each, and finally argues that only Huayan tathāgatagarbha theory can completely answer the question “what is human nature?” Human nature is the manifestation of tathāgatagarbha or the fundamental nature of the Dharma-realm within sentient beings.

Zongmi’s attempt at synthesis had limited later influence. He died shortly before the Huichang Persecution of 845, and Huayan never again produced a synthesizing master of comparable stature. His classificatory framework and comprehensive vision nonetheless influenced the development of Song discourse on the “unity of the three teachings.”

X. Historical Influence¶

In China

Huayan’s independent institutional transmission in China essentially ended after the Huichang Persecution of 845. Its philosophy was too abstract, lacking a concrete practice like Chan and a devotional attraction like Pure Land. Yet Huayan philosophy permeated the broader Chinese philosophical tradition in diffuse form.

The “principle” of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism bears an evident intellectual affinity to Huayan “principle,” or Dharma-nature. The Cheng-Zhu proposition “one principle, many manifestations” structurally resembles Huayan’s framework of one principle extending through the myriad phenomena, although Cheng-Zhu philosophers denied Buddhist influence.

Chan, especially its later kōan collections, abounds in echoes of the phrase “all is one, and one is all.”

In Korea

Wonhyo (617–686) and Uisang (625–702) transmitted Huayan thought to Korea. Hwaeom became one of the most important Buddhist schools of the Silla kingdom, 668–935. Uisang studied directly under Zhiyan, Fazang’s teacher, and founded the Korean Hwaeom school after returning. His position in Korean Buddhist history is pivotal.

In Japan

Japanese Kegon was transmitted during the eighth century. Tōdai-ji in Nara—containing the famous Great Buddha Hall and the bronze Nara Great Buddha, Vairocana—is its center. Kegon was one of the six schools of Nara Buddhism.

XI. This Book’s Philosophical Assessment¶

Huayan is a distinctive Chinese contribution to cosmology. “Nonobstruction among phenomena,” the mutual inclusion of all appearances without obstruction, is a distinctive formulation in the history of world philosophy, with no exact equivalent easily found in Indian philosophy, even Mahāyāna. It is a unique cosmology developed in China after digesting Indian tathāgatagarbha, Madhyamaka, Consciousness-Only, and other traditions.

There is an argumentative leap from Indra’s Net to nonobstruction among phenomena. Indra’s Net is an intuitive metaphor: “if every appearance manifests the same Dharma-nature, then through Dharma-nature they are mutually connected.” Yet the step from “mutually connected through Dharma-nature” to “every appearance in the Dharma-realm contains all other appearances” requires further argumentative support. Here Huayan relies principally on faithful expression of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra’s cosmological intuition; strict philosophical inference occupies a secondary place.

Nature-origination has limitations in resolving the tathāgatagarbha predicament. The theory says that everything arises from buddha-nature, a pure nature, while evil is delusion rather than a possibility internal to nature. This preserves tathāgatagarbha’s claim of original purity very well. Yet as Chapter 7.2 noted, it does not solve the old problem: how can pure nature give rise to delusion? Philosophically, Huayan is more vulnerable on this point than Tiantai’s nature-inclusion.

Zongmi’s ambition to synthesize reveals Huayan’s possibilities and limits. Huayan’s grand architecture makes it naturally suitable as a “final integrating framework.” Zongmi used it to integrate Chan and Huayan; Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism unconsciously borrowed from it to integrate Confucianism with Buddhist and Daoist thought.

This book’s position is that Huayan is an imaginative metaphysical and ontological construction whose subtlety and systematic character are unmatched in Chinese Buddhist history. Yet something must be said directly: its imagination flies so far that it travels even farther from Buddhism’s original concern than the tathāgatagarbha tradition does.

Its tension with Madhyamaka is almost structurally identical to tathāgatagarbha’s. Part VII discussed the tension between tathāgatagarbha and Madhyamaka: tathāgatagarbha places a kind of pure reality—buddha-nature or suchness—at the center, while Madhyamaka emptiness is thoroughly negative and recognizes no positive substantial existence. The tension between Huayan’s “Indra’s Net and nonobstruction among phenomena” and Madhyamaka is almost identical. Huayan establishes “all phenomena perfectly interpenetrate, and one is all” as a positive ontological description. Madhyamaka says only “phenomena lack intrinsic nature and dependent origination is illusory.” The latter never guarantees that every appearance really “contains” every other one; it says only that no appearance has a fixed and independent intrinsic nature. “Mutual connection” is not “mutual inclusion,” and “absence of intrinsic nature” is not “a grain of sand contains a trichiliocosm.” Moving from the former to the latter requires an independent argument. Huayan relies principally on the emotional force of intuitive metaphor and a tathāgatagarbha-like presupposition that “the one mind is omnipresent,” not Madhyamaka-style analysis.

Its distance from Buddhism’s original concern. Since Part I, this book has repeatedly identified early Buddhism’s basic problem-consciousness: the Four Noble Truths, not-self, and dependent origination; the aim is to end suffering and leave the round of rebirth; the method is an empirical diagnostic framework. Huayan begins from this point, passes through tathāgatagarbha—the omnipresent purity of mind-nature—and Consciousness-Only—the myriad phenomena as representations of consciousness—and reaches “the one mind includes every phenomenon in the cosmos; Indra’s Net is the nonobstruction among phenomena; principle and phenomena are one.” This road increasingly approaches the Brahman-ātman theory of Brahmanical religion—the cosmology in which Brahman pervades everything and everything is Brahman—and moves ever farther from the early position explicitly rejecting a permanent, universal soul. This does not criticize Huayan’s philosophical creativity; that creativity is real and has profoundly influenced Chinese intellectual history. It points instead to the considerable structural distance between Huayan and Buddhism’s initial problem-consciousness and epistemic tradition, a distance even greater than that already traveled by tathāgatagarbha.

References¶