3.2 (c): The Dhyāna in the Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Hua-Yen)

[Full title: 3.2: The Dhyāna in Mahāyāna Sūtras (c): The Dhyāna in the Avataṃsaka-sūtra (Hua-Yen) (i.e., “the Doctrine of Totality”)]

The dhyāna owes much of its character and color to the Avataṃsaka sūtras and to the Chinese Hua-yen (Jpn., Kegon) school that developed from them. The massive Avataṃsaka sūtra (Chin., Hua-yen dung; Jpn., Kegongyō), known to us today chiefly through three Chinese translations of sixty, eighty, and forty books, respectively, is actually a compilation of several originally independent texts, the earliest of which, the Daśabhūmika sūtra, may date from the first century of the common era. The work of assembling these disparate texts was probably not completed much before the mid-fourth century, or shortly before the transmission of the text to China, where Buddhabhadra and others made the sixty-book translation between the years 418 and 421. It is this text that serves as the scriptural warrant for the Hua-yen school. The second and longer sutra (eighty books), translated into Chinese by iksananda (659–699), contains expansions and additions to the recension in sixty books.^[1] The fortybook Chinese translation (also known as the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra) is the work of the Buddhist monk named Prajñā. Composed independently of the two previous sūtras, it presents the same basic material as the others and is preserved in its Sanskrit original. ^[2] The Sanskrit word avataṃsaka means “garland” or “wreath”;the name of the Chinese school, Gaṇḍavyūha, is composed of the words ganda (Chin., hua) meaning “flower” and vyūha (Chin., yen) meaning “ornamentation.”

The Avataṃsaka sutras (i.e., “the Doctrine of Totality”) presuppose the work of the two main philosophical schools of Mahāyāna–the school of the Middle Way and the Yogācāra School. The metaphysics of emptiness (śūnyatā) and the teaching on “mind only” (vijñāptimātra) are integrated into the sūrras. Nevertheless, the Avaraṃsaka sūtras preserve their own special message, which has profoundly influenced the dhyāna. Although the Wisdom sūtras and the doctrine of Mind-only led to the formation of different philosophical schools in India, the Avaraṃsaka sūtras have really no equivalent in any of the Indian Mahāyāna schools. Only some time after the translation of the basic sūtras did the Hua-yen school take shape in China. The patriarchs of this school were contemporaries of the early the dhyāna movement in China.

The Hua-yen school holds a prominent place in Mahāyāna Buddhism. According to tradition, it was during the first three weeks after attaining the Great Enlightenment that Śākyamuni delivered the sermon recorded in the sūtra. Because his listeners were not able to grasp the deep content of his message he later turned to a style of preaching more accessible to those whose religious capacities were as yet unprepared for more profound teachings. The followers of the Hua-yen school thus characterize their doctrine, in contrast to that of other Buddhist teachings, as the “full” or “perfect” teaching and extol their sūtra as the “king of the sūtras.” Suzuki places particular importance on the relationship between Hua-yen and the dhyāna. For him, “Dhyāna is the practical consummation of Buddhist thought in China and the Kegon (Avataṃsaka) is its theoretical culmination.” The two are related in such a way that “the philosophy of Zen is Kegon and the teaching of Kegon bears its fruit in the life of Zen.”

The Chinese Hua-yen school translated the daring symbolism of the Avataṃsaka sūtras into philosophical concepts. The Tract on the Mediruion of Dharmadhātu, composed by the First Patriarch, Tu-shun (557–640), marks the high point in the school’s speculative metaphysics.^[3] The Third Patriarch, Fa-tsang, is considered the second founder of the school. Under his direction the movement grew and earned high and widespread esteem. Tsung-mi (780–841), who appears in the line of succession as the Fifth Patriarch, became one of the better known figures in Chinese Buddhism. On the dhyāna family tree he is listed as the head of a flourishing dhyāna school of his time. Pursuing the path of enlightenment, he considered the Kegon teaching the highest expression of the Buddha truth. This is evident in many of his writings, especially in his Treatise on the Origin of Humanity, which is still studied zealously today and used as an introduction to Buddhist thought. Fa-yen, the founder of one of the “Five Houses” in Chinese the dhyāna, stressed the basic principle of Kegon metaphysics: sameness in difference and difference in sameness. During the Sung period, the inner affinity of the dhyāna to Kegon led to a complete assimilation of the latter by the Chinese Zen masters. The preference shown the Avataṃsaka sūtras and Kegon metaphysics persists undiminished to this day in Japan.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See Zen Buddhism: A History, p. 46.

[2]:

See the important studies of Suzuki on the Avataṃsaka sūtras in Essays, III, pp. 21-214; and G. C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hua Yen (University Park, 1971).

[3]:

For an English translation, see C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hua Yen (University Park, 1971), pp. 207-23.