4. The Buddha-nature Thought in the Huayan School

Along with the Tiantai School in China, the Huayan School is also the major school that appealed to the intellect and scriptures in order to establish its doctrines. Huayan 華嚴 is the Chinese translation of the Avataṃsakasūtra^[1] (Flower Ornament Sūtra). The Huayan School took its name from this scripture which served as the basis for its own particular concern. The central philosophy of the Huayan School is the Universal Causation of the Realm of Existence (Dharmadhātu) . This means that the entire universe arises simultaneously. All dharmas have the characteristics of universality, specialty, similarity, diversity, integration, and differentiation. In other words, all dharmas are in the state of Thusness (Tathatā). In its static aspect, Thusness is the realm of Principle (Li); in its dynamic aspect, it is manifestation, the phenomenon, the realm of Facts (Shi). The two realms are so interpenetrating and interdependent that the entire universe arises through mutual causation.^[2] Similarly, for sentient beings, when Thusness is still covered by defilements, it is called Buddha-nature; whenever Thusness is uncovered, it is called Dharmakāya or Nirvāṇa. Thus, Buddha-nature and Dharmadhātu are concerned through Thusness. In other words, according to Huayan School, the universal characteristic of Buddha-nature is Dharmadhātu. Such thought of universal characteristic of Buddha-nature was held by Fazang, the third patriarch of this school.

Huayan traditions usually maintain that Fashun (557-640 CE) was the first patriarch of this school. The second patriarch was Zhiyan (602668 CE). Among Zhiyan disciples was Fazang (643-712 CE), who was usually considered to be the real founder of the school, because he was the systematizer of this school.

In his youth, Fazang was a member of the translation bureau of “Tripiṭaka Master” Xuanzang (600-664 CE); however he did not agree with the Xuanzang‘s view that only certain beings possessed the Buddhanature. According to Fazang, the Buddha-nature‘s characteristic is universal, hence all beings, including sentient and non-sentient beings possess Buddha-nature.^[3] Fazang‘s position with regard to this doctrine owes much to the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith, as well as to some other texts which bore on the matter. While relying heavily on the basic structures of the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith, Fazang nevertheless took these ideas further than they had been in that text. That text, as well as his other sources, stopped with what Fazang called the “identity of the phenomenal and absolute,” but the Buddha-nature doctrine which we encounter in Huayan is unique in its picture of a conjunctively whole universe correctly seen as the mutual identity and interdependence of all the disjunctively separate objects which constitute it, this totality being none other than the One Mind and the body of the Buddha. This is the identity of phenomenon with phenomenon, a doctrine missing in the Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith and other Sources.^[4]

After Fazang came Chengguan (737-838 CE); and following Chengguan was Zongmi (780-841 CE), the fifth patriarch of this school. Zongmi first followed the practices of the Chan School, but after reading a commentary on the Avataṃsaka-sūtra by Chengguan, he embraced the Huayan system. Then he preached the Huayan tenets in Lo-yang, and during one of his lectures a person in the audience was so emotionally touched that he cut off his arm as a sign of conversion. Shortly after his death in 841 CE, the anti Buddhist persecution of 845 occurred. Under such circumstance no more Huayan master arose and this school declined.^[5]

Basing on the Buddha-nature doctrine and analyzing the mind, Zongmi proposed the doctrine of “Sudden Enlightenment followed by Gradual Cultivation”.^[6] Zongmi followed Shenhui in criticizing the Northern Chan of Shenxiu for its emphasis on a graduated course of meditation. However, while he maintained that Shenhui‘s teaching was ‘sudden’, he held that it contained a gradual component as well. He described Shenhui‘s teaching in regard to practice and enlightenment as advocating the necessity of a sudden experience of enlightenment to be followed by a gradual process of cultivation, in which the practitioner‘s insight into his true nature is systematically deepened until it becomes integrated into every aspect of his life.^[7] He contends that ‘sudden’and ‘gradual’are complementary rather than mutually exclusive terms. After making the further point that the terms have a broad range of meaning that varies according to context, he goes on to enumerate a number of different contexts in which they are used.^[8] In contrast to his predecessors in the Huayan tradition, Zongmi does not establish the sudden teaching as a separate category in his system of doctrinal classification. Rather, like the eighth century reviver of the Tiantai tradition, Chanran, he maintains that in a doctrinal context the terms ‘sudden’and ‘gradual’refer to methods by which the Buddha taught, not to separate teachings. He said that the term ‘sudden teaching’refers to the fact that “whenever the Buddha encountered a person of superior capacity and insight, he would directly reveal the true dharma to him,” enabling him to become suddenly awakened to the fact that his true nature or Buddha-nature is wholly identical with that of all Buddhas. ‘Sudden’thus refers to the method by which the Buddha directly revealed the truth to persons of the highest spiritual aptitude. Zongmi identified the sudden teaching with the teaching of those sūtras that expound the Tathāgatagarbha or Buddhanature doctrine. Zongmi went on to point out that within the context of Buddhist practice the terms ‘sudden’and ‘gradual’are used in a variety of ways. However, according to Zongmi, if one engages in spiritual cultivation without having first experienced enlightenment, then it is not authentic practice (若未悟而修非真修也)^[9] . For Zongmi, sudden enlightenment is the experience in which one sees that one‘s true nature or Buddha-nature, Buddha-wisdom. Nevertheless, even though the practitioner has gained an insight into his own true nature, realizing his identity with all Buddhas, he still is not fully liberated, because he has yet to root out the seeds of his misperception of himself as a separate and self-existing entity. Therefore he must still engage in a long process of cultivation.

To sum up, from the thought of Thusness (Tathatā) and One Mind in Avataṃsakasūtra as well as in the scriptures of the Tathāgatagarbha literature, the Huayan School established its main doctrine of Universal Causation of the Realm of Existence (Dharmadhātu). Besides, Buddhanature was also the fundamental thought for Zongmi, the fifth patriarch of this school, to build his doctrine of “Sudden enlightenment followed by gradual cultivation”, which was the detailed explanation to the concept of sudden enlightenment advocated by Chan masters.

Thus, from the above presentations, we can see that the doctrine of Buddha-nature has wide influence and importance in the thought of the schools which refer to the nature of existence (schools of Dharma-nature) such as the Nirvāṇa, Chan, Tiantai and Huayan. Now, we continue to study the importance of Buddha-nature in the establishment of the concept of the Ālayavijñāna in the schools of dharma-nature such as the Dilun School and the Shelun School as well as in the Faxiang School, the typical school of Dharma-character. While the Dilun advocates that the Ālayavijñāna is the pure consciousness in its nature, the Shelun maintains that it is both pure and defiled and the Faxiang holds that it is the defiled consciousness. The theory of origination from the Ālayavijñāna which appears the earlier translation is called the theory of origination from the noumenal consciousness, for the earlier translators considered phenomena as the Buddha-nature itself or as manifestations of the Buddha-nature; this may also be called the doctrine of Dharmatā, or the nature of Dharma (faxing). Here, xing 性 meaning the Tathatā which, according to this doctrine, develops itself into phenomena. This thought of Buddha-nature and noumenal consciousness is advocated by the Dilun School and the Shelun School, which is also similar with the concept of Buddha-nature held by such schools as Nirvāṇa, Chan, Tiantai, and Huayan.

The later translators, on the other hand, conceive the Ālayavijñāna as the phenomenal and not noumenal; because the phenomena are here explained as the manifestations of the phenomenal ālaya, we call this mind-theory the theory of origination from the phenomenal consciousness; this is the doctrine of Dharma-lakṣaṇa (Faxiang) or characteristics of Dharma. Here, xiang 相 denoting a phenomenon (ālaya) which develops itself into phenomena (all existing things). In the case of Dharma-lakṣaṇa, the Buddha-nature is not identical with the Ālayavijñāna, but is considered as the foundation upon which the Ālayavijñāna manifests all existing things.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The first full translation of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra was completed by Buddhabhadra around 420 CE (60 fascicles, Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T10n278]); the second translation (80 fascicles, Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T10n279]) was completed by Śikṣānanda around 699 CE.; the third was completed by Prajñā from another version of this sūtra namely Gandavyūha (40 fascicles, Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T10n293]), around 798 CE.

[2]:

Wm. Theodore de Bary (Ed.), Source of Chinese tradition, p. 329.

[3]:

Kenneth K. Saṃyuttanikāya. Ch‘en, Buddhism in China: Aṅguttaranikāya Historical Survey, p. 314.

[4]:

Francis H. Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra, p. 53.

[5]:

Kenneth K. Saṃyuttanikāya. Ch‘en, op. cit., p. 316.

[6]:

N. Gregory (Ed.), Sudden and Gradual Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, op. cit., p. 279.

[7]:

Ibid., 280.

[8]:

Jeffrey Broughton, Kuei-feng Tsung-mi: the Convergence of Ch’an and the Teachings, Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1975, p. 139.

[9]:

Chanyuanchuquanjiduxu 禪源諸詮集都序 Taisho Tripiṭaka (CBETA 2011) [T48n2015], p. 0407c.