Huayan

Huayan, “Flower Garland”, is a school of Chinese Buddhism named after the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, a vast scripture in which the Buddha’s enlightenment is shown as a universe of countless worlds, each reflecting all the others. Its thinkers made of this vision one of the most ambitious philosophies of Buddhism.

Huayan describes reality as the dharmadhātu, the “realm of reality”, seen in four ways: as a realm of particular phenomena; as a realm of principle, emptiness itself; as the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena, since emptiness is nothing but the phenomena and they nothing but emptiness; and, finally, as the non-obstruction of each phenomenon with every other. Because nothing has a nature of its own, each thing is constituted by everything else, and so contains the whole universe within it.

The school taught through images. In Indra’s net a jewel hangs at every knot, and each jewel reflects every other, with all their reflections. Fazang is said to have shown the teaching to the Empress Wu with a golden lion, in which the gold is principle and the lion’s form phenomena, and with a Buddha image set among mirrors, so that it was reflected without end. Huayan placed its own teaching at the summit of the Buddha’s teachings, as the “perfect” or “round” teaching.