Huayan Buddhism
640 – 900
Everything contains everything else. Each thing reflects all the others without any of them losing its distinctness.
- Active
- 640 – 900
- Where
- Tang China
- Also
- 華嚴宗 Huáyán zōng
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- Chinese
The claim
The unobstructed interpenetration of phenomenon and phenomenon. Not merely that every particular relates to the universal, but that every particular contains every other particular entirely.
What it held
Huayan takes the most extravagant image in Buddhist literature — Indra's net, in which every knot holds a jewel reflecting every other jewel and every reflection of every reflection — and treats it as a literal description of how things stand.
The argument is about dependence. If a thing is what it is only in relation to everything else, then everything else is constitutive of it, and is therefore in it. A rafter is not part of a building; if the rafter is genuinely what it is only as a rafter of this building, the whole building is in the rafter.
Fazang is said to have demonstrated this to Empress Wu with a hall of mirrors and a golden statue at the centre, and again with a gold lion: the gold and the lion-shape cannot be separated, neither is prior, and each is entirely present in every part.
The fourfold dharmadhatu grades the insight: things; principle; principle and things unobstructed; and finally things and things unobstructed, which is where Huayan goes beyond every other school.
What this yields ethically is a strong holism — no action is local, because no thing is separable from the rest.
How it argued
Argument from mutual dependence, with sustained use of concrete demonstration: mirrors, a statue, a building, a lion.
What it was arguing against
Accounts on which particulars relate only through a shared universal, and any position that leaves things externally related.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether interpenetration is coherent or a picture. Whether it collapses distinctions it claims to preserve.
Common misconceptions
That it is mysticism. The fourfold scheme is an argument with steps, and Fazang's demonstrations were designed to make each step visible.
How it began
The Avatamsaka Sutra, an enormous and visionary text, given a systematic philosophy by Fazang under Tang patronage.
What became of it
The school declined after the persecution of 845, but its metaphysics was absorbed by Chan and Neo-Confucianism and continues in Japanese Kegon.
Lasting influence
Chan's philosophy is largely Huayan's. Neo-Confucian holism draws on it. Twentieth-century process and ecological thought have taken it up, sometimes carefully.
Why it still matters
It is the most developed premodern metaphysics of internal relations, and the natural comparison for contemporary structural realism and for ecological holism.
Put another way
Indra's net: every jewel reflecting every other, and every reflection reflected again.
Where to start
The Golden Lion. It was written as an introduction and still works as one.
The surprising bit
Fazang explained the doctrine to Empress Wu by building a room lined with mirrors with a lamp and a golden buddha at the centre, so she could see infinite regress rather than be told about it.
In their own words
In each of the jewels are reflected all the other jewels, and in each reflection again all the others.
The gold and the lion arise together, perfectly complete.
Connections
- Answers
- Yogacara Buddhism, Madhyamaka Buddhism
- Opposed by
- Tiantai Buddhism
- Influenced
- Chan (Zen) Buddhism (Chinese), Cheng-Zhu School
The verdict
The most audacious metaphysics in Buddhism, demonstrated to an empress with mirrors.