화엄불교: 인드라의 보석망 - 프랜시스 쿡 Full text 2
Full text of "hua-yen-buddhism-the-jewel-net-of-indra"
Hua-yen Buddhism the Jewel Net of Indra
Francis H. Cook 1977
==
Contents
Preface
- The Jewel Net of Indra
- The Hua-yen School
- The Indian Background of Hua-yen
- Identity
- Intercausality
- The Part and the Whole
- Vairocan
- Living in the Net of Indra
Notes
Glossary
Index
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2 The Hua-yen School
The universe of the wonderful jewel net of Indra described in the previous
chapter is the teaching of a school of Buddhism which arose and flourished in
China in the T’ang dynasty (618-907), although its intellectual roots are far more
ancient. This form of Buddhism, called Hua-yen (pronounced Hwah-yen, the
last syllable rhyming with ‘‘men’’), looked for its inspiration to a Buddhist
scripture of Indian, or partly Indian, origin named the Avatamsaka Siitra. Hua-yen
“is the Chinese translation of Avatamsaka, meaning ‘Flower Ornament.” The
school or sect of Hua-yen took its name from the scripture which served as the
basis for its own special concern.
When I refer to the “‘school” or “sect” of Hua-yen, I am not suggesting that
Hua-yen was anything like a sect in the Western tradition, for there was no
feeling of sectarian exclusiveness or rivalry involved in belonging to this tradition.
Hua-yen, like the other Chinese scholastic traditions such as T’ien-t’ai, San-lun,
and Fa-hsiang, was more in the order of an academic tradition, devoted to
systematizing, studying, and propagating one particular aspect of the whole of
Buddhist thought. A monk who was associated with the Hua~yen school might
very. well devote his entire life to the study and exegesis of the Avatamsaka Sutra,
writing many learned treatises on the complexities and niceties of that scripture,
but he also very well might practice a form of meditation such as was taught by
the new Ch’an school, or he might recite the name of Amito, the Buddha, as was
done in the Pure Land tradition, and he probably would have an extensive
knowledge of other forms of Buddhism as well. The fifth patriarch of Hua-yen,
Tsung-mi (779-840), for example, was simultaneously a Hua-yen master and a
Ch’an master.
Hua-yen is an example of a peculiarity of Chinese Buddhism, in which
traditions of scholarship and teaching arose and were centered around the study of
one or more Indian scriptural or commentarial works. For instance, the T’ien-t’a1
tradition was primarily concerned with the Saddharmpundarika Sutra, the Fa-
The. Hua-yen School 21
hsiang concerned itself with the Vijfaptimatrata-siddhi, and the She-lun school
concentrated on the Mahayanasamgraha-Sastra. It was as if in the West a group of
Christians were to decide that there was something special about the Book of
Ecclesiastes and start a tradition of study, exegesis, and commentary centering
almost exclusively around this one part of the whole scriptural tradition. They
would still be Christians, with by and large the same beliefs and practices as other
Christians, but because of their primary concern with Ecclesiastes, they would
become known as the “‘Ecclesiastesians” or the ‘Ecclesiastes School.” This is
what the mén did who began the Hua-yen tradition. Their work centered
around one scripture, which for them was not necessarily more correct than any
other Buddhist scripture, but rather was more complete. Though in time it was
considered to be a distinct form of Buddhism, at all times there was more to link
them with the whole larger body of Buddhism than there was to separate them.
Though the Hua-yen masters are distinguished by their scholarly work, they
seem to have been pious Buddhists involved 1n the practical life of Buddhism
also.
Much of the history of the Avatamsaka Sutra, as with many other Mahayana
Buddhist scriptures, 1s still unclear. What does seem clear is that most of the
separate chapters which now constitute the larger work were composed in
Central Asia or even in China.! Though the work was translated into Chinese
from Sanskrit by Buddhabhadra in about 420, only two parts are now wholly
extant in their Sanskrit originals, and with the exception of a brief quotation of
another chapter in the Siksdsamuccaya, there 1s no mention in Indian Buddhist
literature of any other of the many chapters of the Avatamsaka.? This, coupled
with the appearance m the sutra of Central Asian and Chinese place names,
would seem to indicate that much of the sutra was composed outside of India.3
Two very important portions of the sutra do, however, exist in Sanskrit. The
chapter called the “Ten Stages” (Dasabhimika) has apparently also existed from
the time of its composition in the second century of the Christian era as an
independent sutra. The Sanskrit original was edited some years. ago by Johannes
Rahder, and it bears a strong resemblance to the Chinese of Buddhabhadra’s
translation.* Since it first appeared in India, this important text has generally been
the standard in any discussion of the stages a Bodhisattva passes through from the
beginning of his religious career up to final enlightenment. The Hua-yen school
was interested both in this description of the Bodhisattva’s progress and in
several passages which say that the whole world is nothing but Mind. The interest
of Hua-yen in this text was also excited because of Vasubandhu’s commentary
on it, which contained an interpretation of the relationship of the ten stages to
each other which became part of later Hua-yen philosophy. In a way, the
i
22 Hua-yen Buddhism
Dasabhumika 1s one of the most crucial chapters of the larger sutra, because it gives
an epitome of the larger structure, and there is reason to believe that the larger
structure of the Avatamsaka itself was inspired by the Dasabhiimika. Despite its
eventual inclusion m the larger sutra, 1t has always maintained a separate existence
and importance, and with the advent of the work of Bodhiruci in the sixth
century, a separate Chinese school, the Ti-lun, arose which was exclusively
devoted to the study of the sutra and its commentary.
The other chapter for which a complete Sanskrit original exists 1s the Ganda-
vyuha, a very large sutra in itself which now constitutes the final portion of the
Avatamsaka. It also dates from the second century. The Sanskrit text was edited
by Hokei Idzumi and D.T. Suzuki.5 This sutra describes the wandering of the
youth Sudhana, who, in his search for enlightenment, travels about speaking to
various people who can help enlighten him. He receives this teaching from
fifty-two people before he perceives the truth. Sudhana is a Buddhist Everyman,
and his indefatigable search 1s another epitome of the long journey to enlighten-
ment which the Avatamsaka describes in almost excruciating detail. Suzuki has
spoken of it as one of the most dazzling works ever conceived by homo religiosus.
It 1s,.1n fact, similar in many ways to Dante’s Divine Comedy and Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress, but without their terror, superstition, and idolatry. When, at
the end.of his epic journey, Sudhana is ushered into the Tower of Maitreya and
shown the truth, it is the world of the Buddhas, which transcends ignorance,
hatred, and desire. It is tempting to give a résumé of this astonishing work here,
but it would take us beyond the scope of this chapter. However, Suzuki’s Essays
in Zen Buddhism (Third Series) contains an excellent résumé. The Hua~yen was
interested in this work not only for its portrayal of the life of the Bodhisattva, but
also for its rich material on the harmonious and totalistic nature of existence.
There are several theories concerning the composition of the Avatamsaka,
but students of this text are agreed on several points. Somewhere in Central
Asia, probably in the region of Khotan, a single compiler or several compilers,
probably inspired by the Dasabhiimika and Gandavyitha, assembled a number of
independent sutras in such a manner that the finished work gave a very detailed
description of the progress of the Bodhisattva from the time he began his
practice up to his achievement of enlightenment. In some instances, new sutras
may have been composed to fill crucial gaps in this preconceived structure. The
finished work was then translated into Chinese in sixty volumes, by Buddha-
bhadra, in 420; it was later translated by Siksananda, in eighty volumes, in
about 699, and the Gandavyiiha section was separately translated in forty
volumes by Prajna, in the late eighth century.
Reading this mammoth work is, to put it mildly, an unforgettable experience.
The Hua-yen School — 23
Buddhabhadra’s translation, for instance, comprises thirty-four chapters and
‘contains over 400 pages of Chinese in the Japanese Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo
edition with each page comprising over 1,500 Chinese characters. But the sheer
volume of words is nowhere near as formidable as the content itself; like most
Mahayana Buddhist works, everything 1s done on a gargantuan scale. If one
simile is good, ten are always much better. The reader is staggered by the loving
description of scenery, down to the numbers of leaves on the trees, with their
configuration and coloring; with the descriptions of perfumed trees and golden
lotuses, singing birds, clouds that emit wonderful odors and sounds, varieties of
clothing and jewels, the long lists of names of Bodhisattvas and Sravakas assem-
bled to hear the teaching, more numerous than all the sands in a million Ganges
Rivers, and so on for page after page. Moreover, the sutra is a vehicle for many of
the more abstruse and subtle doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism, such as those of
>
““Mind-only” and “Emptiness,” not to mention that which became the special
province of Hua-yen, the doctrine of the infinitely repeated intercausality and
identity of all phenomena. There 1s a great amount of drama and color in the
Avatamsaka, but it 1s all there to serve the overriding concern of Buddhism, to
show man what he must do to become free, and what freedom is.
The richness and profundity: of the sutra began to attract the attention of
Chinese Buddhists from the time of its first translation. There 1s much in the
sutra to attract a pious and zealous Buddhist, but primarily the attraction lies in
the doctrine of identity and intercausality, which is unique to this one sutra.
An academic tradition: of study, exegesis, and teaching gradually grew up
around the sutra, but it was several centuries after its translation before there
existed an independent school as such. During the period from its translation in
the first decade of the fifth century up to the early T’ang, the tradition centered
around the scholarly work of individual monks belonging to various other
academic traditions, as well as the work of schools like the Ti-lun and She-lun,
each working on various problems and contributing their insights to what was
later to be recognized as a separate school. Some of the other traditions, such as
Ti-lun and She-lun, became absorbed into Hua-yen, because the latter thorough-
ly encompassed their own special areas of interest. Even the three men who are
considered now to have been the first three patriarchs of Hua-yen—Tu-shun,
Chih-yen, and Fa-tsang—were not themselves conscious of belonging to some
distinct school called ‘‘Hua-yen”’: it was not until the time of Ch’eng-kuan, the
fourth patriarch (783-839), that a separate school was recognized and given the
name of Hua-yen.
Ihave, from time to time, used the word “patriarch” with reference to leading
figures in the development of Hua-yen, but these early figures in the history of
24 Hua-yen Buddhism
the school did not consider themselves to be anything like patriarchs of a new
school. They were just Buddhists who were especially attracted to one particular
scripture. The patriarchal tradition of Hua-yen, like that of Ch’an and other
Chinese forms of Buddhism, was established much later than the time of the
“patriarchs,” when some need arose to base the teachings of the school squarely
on an unbroken line of masters stretching far back mto Chinese history and often
beyond to a line of Indian masters who in turn were descended in authority
from the Buddha himself. The conferring of the exalted title of ‘master’ or
spokesman for a school was thus often made long after the life of the master in
question. In some patriarchal traditions, there 1s occasionally some real trans-
mussion of doctrine from master to disciple, but often the lineage 1s in great part
fictional.
In the case of Hua-yen, Tu-shun (557-640), the acknowledged first patriarch,
was given that title after the time of Tsung-m1 (779-840), the fifth patriarch, who
himself is recognized as being a Ch’an master as well as Hua-yen master. How-
ever, there 1s real doubt as to whether Tu-shun should be considered a Hua-yen
master at all. Some scholars have suggested Chih-cheng (602-668) as having a
better right to the title, since he was the teacher of Chih-yen, who is recognized
as the second master. Some have suggested that Chih-yen himself was the first
master of Hua-yen.® Nevertheless, the present accepted history according to
Hua-yen has Tu-shun as first master, Chih-yen as the second, and Fa-tsang the
third. After the time of Fa-tsang (643-712), apparently a monk named Hui-yiian
was recognized as the foremost scholar of Hua-yen thought, but the later creators
of the Hua-yen patriarchal lineage apparently felt that his interpretation of Fa-
tsang’s system was not orthodox enough. Therefore, he was made a “nonperson”’;
1.€., he was denied the title of fourth patriarch, and Ch’eng-kuan, even though
born twenty-six years after the death of Fa-tsang and therefore by no means a
real heir to Fa-tsang’s teaching, was given the title of patriarch. The patchy
nature of patriarchal lineages 1s further evidenced by the fact that Tsung-mi could
be considered a patriarch in both Hua-yen and Ch’an simultaneously.
The study of Hua-yen continued, of course, after the tme of Tsung-mi, but
the times were hard for Buddhism. In 845, the great persecution of Buddhism by
the Emperor Wu brought Hua-yen, as well as most other forms of Chinese
Buddhism, to an end, as far as creative vitality is concerned. Only the non-
philosophical forms such as Ch’an and Pure Land continued to develop and
flourish. Some useful commentaries on Hua-yen treatises were composed during
the Sung dynasty and later, but by that trme, Hua-yen had ceased to exist as an
independent entity, and Tsung-mi is the last of the Hua-yen masters. But for that
matter, with the intricate and difficult works of Fa-tsang, Chinese Buddhist
The Hua-yen School 25
philosophical work had really reached its high point, and perhaps not much more
was possible. Part of the reason for the decline of Hua-yen, as well as T’ien-t’ai,
San-lun, She-lun, Fa-hsiang, and’ other academic traditions, was that they
stressed a very high level of intellectual activity, and in limiting their appeal
to the very small number of monks with the talent and taste for abstruse philos-
ophy, they denied themselves the broad base of mass support required to
maintain a tradition in need of money, land, books, and other material resources.
There was, of course, no moral support either, so that Wu did not hesitate to
squash these schools, destroying the monastery-university complexes, defrocking
the monks, and appropriating the wealth of the schools. With no popular support
and without the active support of the emperor, Hua-yen could no longer exist.
The tradition continued to live in Japan, where 1t was imported earlier, as one of
the famous six schools of Nara, but it is safe to say that there was never any real
creative vitality in the Japanese school. In Japan, Hua-yen (or Kegon, as 1t 1s
pronounced there) itself was in turn eclipsed by the great Tendai and Shingon
schools of the Heian period.
The above story of the fortunes of Hua-yen may give the reader the impression
that Hua-yen never amounted to much in the overall history of Buddhism. This
would be an incorrect assessment of the influence of Hua-yen thought. As long
as there is a Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, Hua-yen thought will continue to
guide and inspire the seeker, for, as Hua~yen has always claimed, 1t was the
historical mission of the school to try to present in its fullest and most perfect
form that vision of the truth which is presumably the content of the enlightenment
experience. Hua~yen had accomplished this mission im two ways. First, it had
taken many different strands of Buddhist thought and brought them together
in the form of a grand syncretism. Hua-yen created no new school of philosophy.
Admittedly, even triumphantly syncretic, Hua-yen thinkers saw their task as
that of being able to see the interrelationships between different schools of
Buddhist thought and reassembling them to form their real whole. This can bea
risky enterprise if there is very little real common ground among the various
elements. Imagine someone trying to tack together the philosophies of Aquinas,
Bishop Berkeley, Marx, and Wittgenstein. The result would be a mere patch-
work, because each philosophy is largely discontinuous with the others, despite
certain common presuppositions. However, Hua-yen could achieve a real syn-
cretism because each different philosophical form of Buddhism 1s only part of
the larger whole, and the study of any one aspect 1s no more isolated from its
context than is the brain specialist’s concern isolated from the more general con-
cern for the total organism. It was the peculiar mission of Hua-yen to try, on.a
scale more vast and to a degree more satisfying than any other school of Bud-
26 Hua-yen Buddhism
dhism, to reassemble all the apparently separate, diverse threads of Buddhist
thought and weave them into a seamless whole.
Second, along with its syncretic effort, Hua-yen came to serve as the philo-
sophical basis for the other schools of Buddhism more concerned with practice
and realization. Thus not only 1s there no mutual exclusiveness at all between
Hua-yen and Ch’an, but they are mutually complementary in a most profound
and organic way. The Chinese have a saying: “Hua-yen for philosophy, Ch’an
for practice.” This does not imply a choice, but rather the interrelationship of the
two. As D.T. Suzuki remarked, Hua-yen is the philosophy of Zen and Zen 1s the
practice of Hua-yen.” Put another way, the picture of existence presented by
Hua-yen 1s the universe experienced in Zen enlightenment. Without the practice
and realization of Zen, Hua-yen philosophy remains mere intellectual fun, never a
vibrant reality. Hua-yen, in turn, serves as an intriguing lure to the practitioner,
a stimulus to effort, and a promise of a vision undreamed of in our more common
hours. For these two reasons, Hua-yen 1s far from insignificant in the-history of
Buddhism. A third reason lies in the fact that it mspired some rather impressive
art in China, Japan, and Java, but this lies outside the scope of this book.®
The syncretistic efforts of Hua-yen were so comprehensive that they managed
to include not only most of what was significant in Buddhist thought, but much
of what might be considered the characteristic features of mdigenous Chinese
thought as well. These native Chinese ideas are those usually associated with the
philosophical Taoist traditions of Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, and the Neo-taoists.
It is doubtful that the architects of Hua-yen, such as Chih-yen and Fa-tsang,
deliberately incorporated these Taoist elements into their system, rather, they
were Chinese who had what might be called “pictures” in their minds of how
reality was constructed, and these pictures tended to influence subsequent modes
of thinking. They were presuppositions of the most vital form, fundamental
symbol systems by means of which experience was ordered.
First of all, there is the persistent, characteristic tendency on the part of people
like Fa-tsang to take what might be called a totalistic view of existence. We
first notice this tendency in earlier Taoist literature, particularly in the writings
of Chuang-tzu and the later Neo-taoists. For instance, we find in Chuang-tzu’s
teachings the following:
By what is the Tao hidden that there should be a distinction of true and
false? By what is speech obscured that there should be a distinction of “is”
and “‘is not’? How can the Tao depart and not be there? And how could
there be speech and yet it be not appropriate? The Tao is hidden by petty
virtues. Speech 1s obscured by flowery eloquence. So it is that there are
The Hua-yen School 27
contentions between the Confucianists and Moists, each affirming what the
other denies and denying what the other confirms. But if we are to decide
between their several affirmations and denials, there 1s nothing better than
to apply the light of reason.
Everything 1s its own “‘self’’?; everything 1s something else’s ‘‘other.”
Things do not know that they are other things’ “other”; they only know
that they are themselves. Thus it 1s said that the other rises out of the self,
just as the self rises out of the other. This is the theory that “‘self”’ and “other”
give rise to each other. Besides, [it has been said that] where there 1s life
there 1s death, and where there 1s death, there 1s life. Where there is impos-
sibility, there is possibility, and where there is possibility, there 1s impos-
sibility. It 1s because there 1s “‘is” that there 1s “is not’’; it 1s because there
is “is not’’ that there is “‘is.” This being the situation, the sages do not ap-
proach things on this level, but reflect the light of nature. Thereupon, the
“self”? is also the “other”’; the ‘‘other”’ is the “‘self.”’ According to the “other’”’
there 1s one kind of “‘is” and “‘is not.” According to the “‘self”’ there 1s another
kind of “is” and “is not.” But really are there such distinctions as “‘self”’
and “‘other,’’ or are there no such distinctions? When “self” and ‘“‘other’’ lose
their contrariety, there we have the very essence of the Tao. Only the essence
of the Tao may occupy the center of the circle, and respond therefrom to
the endless opinions from all directions. Affirmation 1s one of the endless
opinions; denial is another. Therefore, it is said that there is nothing better
than the light of reason. [Adapted]?
This passage, as well as the whole section from which it is taken, 1s a criticism of
the partial view of things and an admonition to take a totalistic view of it. With
the substitution of some Buddhist terminology, it could easily pass for a passage
from a Hua-yen text.
It is probably in Chuang-tzu's writings that the totalistic view of existence is
urged strongly for the first ttme in Chinese literature, but we find it again in the
later Neo-taoists, where 1t occurs in an even more pronounced way. Such a view
of things runs, for instance, throughout the pages of Kuo-hsiang’s writings,
particularly in his well-known commentary on the Chuang-tzu, where two
principles in particular are enunciated which will appear several centuries later
in the Hua-yen system. These are the principles of the self-transformation of
things and the necessary interrelationships among these same things. Thus, for
instance, in commenting on the line of Chuang-tzu’s text which says ““Was what
there was before the universe a thing ?,”’ Kuo-hsiang says,
28 Hua-yen Buddhism
In existence, what was prior to things? We say that yin and yang are prior
to things. But the yin and yang are themselves things. What, then, is prior to
the yin and yang? We say that nature (tzu-jan) 1s prior to them. But nature is
simply the naturalness of things. Or we may say that the supreme Tao is
prior to things. But this supreme Tao is supreme non-being (wu). Since it 1s
non-being, how can it be prior? Thus, what can it be that is prior to things?
And yet things are continuously being produced. This shows that things
are spontaneously what they are. There is nothing which causes them to be
such,1° ,
The refusal of Kuo-hsiang to look for any external creative agency prior to the
“ten thousand things” themselves, or to consider even a time prior to being, 1s a
strong foreshadowing of the later Hua-yen doctrine of the self-creation and
self-transformation of a universe which for all practical purposes is beginningless
and endless.
Yet, while Kuo-hsiang denies a cosmologically antecedent creative agent and
insists that things are mutually creative and sustaining through the dynamics of
thezr own interrelationships, this does not mean that things exist in isolation from
each other. In fact, their interrelationship is an extremely profound and intricate
one, reminding us again of the cardinal tenet of Hua~yen—that while the universe
is a universe of particulars with distinct qualities and functions, their existence,
even their reality, lies more in their fundamental interrelationship than 1n their
discreteness. We find a foreshadowing of this in the Kuo-hsiang commentary:
When a man 1s born, insignificant though he be, he has the properties that
he necessarily has. However trivial though his life may be, he needs the
whole universe as a condition for his existence. All things in the universe,
all that exist, can not cease to exist without some effect on him. If one factor
is lacking, he might not exist. If one principle is vrolated, he might not be ‘
living. [My emphasis]*4
This is a striking parallel to some of Fa-tsang’s statements. The Hua-yen picture
of existence presented in the Treatise (from which much of this material is drawn)
1s so close to Kuo-hsiang’s that it would be difficult to deny strong influences.
In the final pages of his Treatise, Fa-tsang illustrates the relationships pertaining
between the individuals of a totality by means of the analogy of a building and a
rafter, which is part of the building, and there too we notice that the total building
1s a necessary condition for the rafter just as much as the rafter is a condition for
the building. Everything needs everything else.
The Hua~yen School 29
' Another element which found its way into the Hua-yen syncretism is the
respect for, and delight in, the natural. It is a persistent trait in Taoist thought, and
1s nowhere as evident as in the poems and landscape paintings of the Taoists and
Ch’an devotees. It 1s an element which 1s absent from Indian Buddhism, where
there was, to say the least, little affection for the natural. However, the Hua-yen
Buddhist world view leads directly to a new attitude toward the natural which is
not only deeply respectful but imbued with a profound gratitude and even
ecstatic appreciation. We need only abandon our usual partial, prejudiced point
of view in order to discover that what was hitherto insignificant, mean, or
loathsome has come to have significance, value, and beauty. A worn pair of
straw sandals, a bamboo dipper, the water in the dipper, all these things are
friends and helpers, worthy of reverence and gratitude.
Closely connected with this love of the natural world and its inhabitants was a
tendency in Chinese Buddhism to interpret the Buddhist goal of enlightenment
as a return to naturalness. In Taoist terms, this meant ceasing to pick and choose
in the artificial, learned manner which has become our nature. By a return to the
“source,” which is that innate ability to respond innocently and in a childlike
manner to experience, the individual transcended those maddening contraries
of “is” and ‘“‘is not” which Chuang-tzu spoke of, and learned the difficult art of
noncalculating action, or the nonaction in action which in Chinese 1s called
wu-wei. The enlightened person is presumably he who has expunged from his
nature the learned responses to life’s situations which lead ordinary men to
favor one experience over another./? In ‘‘returning to the source,”’ the individual
has discovered that inmost core of subjectivity in which all the ferocious contraries
are completely resolved. The difference between this view of the sage and that of
Indian Buddhists can be seen quite clearly when we compare the two as portrayed
in their respective traditions. The Indian figure—a Manjusri, Sakyamuni, or
Avalokitesvara—is dressed in a manner befitting royalty, and royalty they are,
though not a profane royalty. Jewels hang from neck, ears, arms, and legs; the
hair is elaborately arranged; and he wears the robes of a prince. The pose is
especially remarkable. The figure often sits cross-legged in yogic meditation,
regal, aloof, with eyes half closed in eternal samadhi, the faint smile on the lips
betraying the unspeakable bliss of one who has found a peace far removed from
the dust and turmoil of the earthly arena. In contrast, the Chinese saint, perhaps
best portrayed in the figures of Pu-tai and those rascally saints Shih-te and Han-
shan, 1s frequently rather fat, jovial, and totally relaxed. He 1s barefooted and his
hair and clothes (more like rags) are in negligent disarray. He obviously still
enjoys plum wine and a good meal; there 1s nothing of the renunciant about him.
He travels freely from village to village, dispensing goodies from his bag to the
30 = Hua-yen Buddhism
children who tease him and adore him, never for a moment losing the happy, silly
grin of a man who knows who he is (“‘Nobody”’) and where he 1s (““Nowhere’’).
These figures are painted over and over by Chinese artists, and their lesson is
clear. The emancipated individual is not superhuman or royal, like the Indian
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; he would never walk on water or levitate. And who
wants to sit forever in yogic withdrawal when one can play games with the village
urchins? They delight in the ordinary, the simple, and the humble—chopping
wood and carrying water, therein lies the wonderful Way. To the person who
has seen things in their true form, what can there be which 1s really negligible
or contemptible?
These are some of the more important native Chinese influences on Hua-yen.
There were others besides these, such as the tendency of Chinese like Fa-tsang to
think of existence in terms of traditional patterns of thought. The li-shih pattern
is one of these patterns of thought, but since it had particularly weighty con-
sequences for the understanding and use of the Indian Buddhist doctrine of
emptiness (Sinyata), I shall reserve my comments on this pattern for a later
chapter dealing with that doctrine.
However, among these influences, the most crucial insofar as Hua-yen was
concerned. was the strong tendency to take what has been called a totalistic view
of existence, which was discussed in the first chapter. As will be shown in greater
detail later, I believe that a study of Hua-yen will reveal that the whole system of
thought is an elaborate reworking of the Indian concept of emptiness. In this way,
it is a continuation of the Indian Buddhists’ rather general concern with causation.
It is evident from the alternative name which Hua-yen gave itself, the school of
the ‘interdependent origination of the universe” (dharma-dhatu pratityasamutpada),
that their primary concern was to demonstrate a universe in which the foremost
fact was that. of a pervasive, unfailing, vastly intricate intercausality or inter-
conditionality, theimplications of which are inestimable in terms of an individual’s
own relationship with the infinitely multitudinous ‘“‘other.”’ For the Chinese,
the net result of such a philosophical effort was a view of existence which was
totalistic rather than particularistic: In a particularistic view of existence, the
emphasis is overwhelmingly on the discrete individual, whether a human being,
a table, or an atom, and these entities, seen as being each locked up within the
boundaries of its own skin, are considered by and large to be discontinuous with
each other. Despite agreed continuity in such areas as genus, species, blood
relationship, nationality, race, sex, and the like, it 1s felt that each individual 1s
autonomous, isolated within its own skin, and is in no real way identical with,
or continuous with, other individuals. A model for existence seen in this way
would be a basket full of marbles. In a totalistic view of existence, on the other
>
The Hua-yen School 31
hand, while the reality of individuals is admitted, the emphasis 1s on the totality of
being seen as necessarily composed of individuals which sustain each other in an
unimaginably complex network of intercausality and interdependence. The
tendency, then, 1s to see everything in terms of the totality of which it 1s a part.
A good model for this view would be a living body.
This view of things, so evident in Chinese thought and art, happily coincided
in many ways with a view of existence which was imported. from India. The
Chinese did not have to violently force Indian Buddhist doctrines into their own
patterns of thought because there were from the beginning great, important
areas of consensus.1 The influence of indigenous Chinese modes of thought
occurred in part in a subtle but significant change in emphasis and in part in
reinterpretation of several fundamental Indian Buddhist ideas. But this will be
discussed in a separate chapter.
From the standpoint of the Hua-yen school itself, the previous centuries can
be seen as preparation for the final syncretic work of Fa-tsang and a few other
central figures in the history of the school. The Ti-lun school contributed much in
its concentration on the Dasabhumika Sutra and the very important commentary
on it by Vasubandhu. Vasubandhu’s insistence that each of the ten bhumis was
identical with the other nine, that all were empty and existed only by virtue of
conditional interdependence, and that all the qualities of the ten stages were
inherent in any one stage (including the Buddhahood of the final stage) was not
only quite respectable Sinyavada but probably contributed as much to the creation
of the independent Hua-yen school of later times as the data found in the
Gandavyiha and other portions of the Avatamsaka Stra. From the She-lun school
the Hua~yen thinkers inherited the very important results of the work done on
the Mahayana-samgraha, especially with regard to the material in that text dealing
with the nature of Mind. In fact, the Hua-yen system seen as a species of
tathagatagarbha thought owes a very considerable debt not only to the work of
the She-lun scholars, but to the whole tradition of study and exegesis of tathagata-
garbha thought which is epitomized in the highly systematic Ta-ch’eng.ch’i hsin
tun (Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana), a work quoted frequently in Fa-tsang’s
writings. In building the architectonic grandeur of the Hua-yen system, Fa-tsang
and his fellow Buddhists turned to the Mahayanasamgraha, Ta-ch’eng ch’i hsin
lun, and cognate texts and traditions for their ideas on the relationship of the
absolute to the phenomenal, not to the Ch’eng wei-shih lun of the Fa-hsiang tradi-
tion of Hsiian-tsang and K’uei-chi.
Besides these major philosophical or scholastic traditions, the work of many
individual scholar-monks not belonging particularly to these traditions also
helped in the later formation of the Hua-yen school. All during the later part of
32 Hua-yen Buddhism
the political division of China into North and South and into the following Sui
dynasty, a number of monks continued to study the texts, think, and write. They
pondered such problems as the relationship between the two spheres of the
absolute and phenomenal, whether or not the absolute interpenetrated the world
of desire and turmoil, and, what was particularly pertinent to later developments,
whether the “ten thousand things” themselves were ultimately different, or
whether in fact they might be, in some absolute sense, identical. The possibility
of complete identity was offered during the Sm period by Seng-tsan, thus
anticipating the work of the Hua-yen masters.!* The point of this is that Hua-yen
did not emerge full-blown with Tu-shun or any of his successors but was rather
the converging point of much thought which had gone on during previous
generations. Most of it was there by late Sui times (i.e., during the time of
Tu-shun, the first Hua-yen patriarch) and only needed to be mastered and
interrelated within a more comprehensive scheme. This work was to be accom-
plished by the third patriarch of Hua-yen, Fa-tsang, who, though he was presum-
ably third spokesman for the new tradition, was in fact the real creator of what is
now known as Hua-yen.
Fa-tsang’s importance in the history of the Hua-yen school lay in the fact that
he was more successful than any of his predecessors in effecting the great syn-
cretizing work of his school. The foregoing discussion makes it clear that he
was heavily indebted to the work of several generations of earlier Buddhists.
Moreover, his own work began where the work of his immediate predecessor,
Chih-yen, left off, and undoubtedly Tu-shun, the first patriarch, contributed his
share to the growing tradition. However, the work of all these men was incom-
plete from the standpoint of the requirements of the Hua~yen school. They created
pieces of the puzzle, if you will, but it was Fa-tsang, with his remarkable learning,
pious zeal, and, above all, his genius for seeing relationships, who was able to
take all the pieces and create a picture out of them. In essay after essay, he refined
and developed the work of his predecessors, until, it 1s safe to say, the fully
developed philosophy of Hua-yen took form in his hands. His writings, such as
the Treatise, indicate that he had a very wide acquaintance with Buddhist
literature, including the treatises of earlier Chinese Buddhists, and it was out of a
vast knowledge which perhaps only the old Chinese scholars had at one time that
he was able to create a structure which im its perfection was greater than the sum of
its parts. Though his successors, Ch’eng-kuan and Tsung-mi, were able to clarify
certain important facets of Fa~tsang’s thought and even add a few innovations of
their own, it must be said that an appraisal of Fa-tsang’s work will reveal that he
is the de facto founder and the brightest light of the Hua-yen tradition.!5
One final point should be made concerning the Hua-yen school. It 1s true
The Hua-yen School — 33
that for many generations of Buddhists, Hua-yen has been regarded not only as
a philosophical or academic form of Buddhism but as the culmination of Buddhist
philosophical effort. This 1s undoubtedly true, for the most part, but as was
mentioned earlier, it was probably the overwhelming concern with philosophy of
great difficulty that prevented the school from ever gaining a foothold among
the Chinese masses. Yet it is safe to say that Hua-yen, like all forms of Buddhism,
was never an end in itself. The goal of Buddhism throughout its long history has
been to free men from greed, hatred, and ignorance, and whatever we may
isolate from the body of Buddhism as “philosophy” or “practice” was always
pursued with that goal in mind. Therefore, it may have been, and often was,
good philosophy, but that philosophy existed only within the context of the
Buddhist goal. This 1s true of Hua-yen philosophy. Fa-tsang was a great philoso-
pher, but his philosophizing did not exist in a vacuum; it was not engaged in for
the sake of intellectual fun. The Hua-yen universe as described by the philosophers
was meant to be a description of existence as seen in the light of prajna, 1.¢., as
a Buddha sees it. The philosophy thus serves as a kind of road map drawn by
one who has made the journey, observed the terrain, and returned. The words,
admittedly a faint reflection of their referent, serve to guide and inspire us to
seck the reality itself. First there 1s experience, then the philosophy, and either
implicitly or explicitly the demand on the reader to seek the experience itself,
Philosophy grows out of experience and then leads back to experience, a finger
pointing to the moon of interior space. It is significant that Tu-shun, the man who
1s given credit for founding a school called Hua-yen, was not a philosopher at
all, but rather a meditator. The only document now extant which is associated
with Tu-shun, the “Practice of Tranquillity and Insight According to the Five
Teachings of Buddhism,” is centered around meditation; it is not a philosophical
work.!® Tu-shun saw in his meditations the Hua-yen cosmos which later was
transformed into a philosophical system. In fact, all five Hua-~yen masters wrote
treatises on meditation, indicating an ongoing concern with the necessity of
realizing in experience what was otherwise words on paper.'”? With Tsung-mi,
who was a Ch’an master as well as a Hua-yen master, the full circle seems to be
completed, for his writmgs show a return to a primary concern for meditation
and experience. The practical implications of the Hua-yen system, as well as the
background of the philosophical enterprise, are to be found in these treatises on
meditation, and they indicate clearly that men like Tu-shun and Fa-tsang were
not mere armchair philosophers but were aware that Buddhism 1s always more
than philosophy; that it is, in fact, an event, a cataclysmic imner transformation
without which there can be no real Buddhism at all. The Hua-yen picture of exis-
tence 1s grand, beautiful, and inspiring, but it 1s nothing if it 1s not a lived reality.
