Huayan

Huayan is a Chinese Mahayana Buddhist school centered on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. It teaches that all phenomena mutually interpenetrate without losing their distinct identities.

Avataṃsaka Sūtra: A vast Mahayana Buddhist scripture portraying the cosmos as a network of interdependent phenomena and bodhisattva practices. This scripture supplies Huayan’s central textual authority and its expansive vision of reality.
Interpenetration: A relation in which distinct phenomena mutually include or affect one another without collapsing into sameness. Mutual interpenetration is Huayan’s defining account of the relation between all phenomena.
Dushun: A Chinese Buddhist monk traditionally regarded as the first patriarch of the Huayan school. Huayan lineage accounts place Dushun at the school’s beginning.
Buddhism in China: The historical development of Buddhist teachings, institutions, and practices within China. Huayan arose through Chinese interpretation of Mahayana scriptures and Buddhist philosophy.
Kegon: The Japanese Buddhist school descended from Chinese Huayan and centered on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Kegon is Huayan’s direct transmission into Japanese Buddhism.
Indra’s Net: A Buddhist metaphor for a limitless net whose jewels reflect every other jewel, illustrating mutual interdependence. Huayan uses this image to make mutual interpenetration vivid.
Li and Shi: A Huayan distinction between principle, or ultimate reality, and particular events or things. Their nonobstruction explains how ultimate principle is present in each particular phenomenon.
Zhiyan: A Chinese Buddhist monk and early Huayan patriarch who systematized teachings drawn from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Zhiyan helped establish the doctrinal framework inherited by later Huayan thinkers.
Buddhist Text Translation in China: The translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, which shaped Chinese Buddhist schools and their terminology. Chinese translations of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra made Huayan’s principal scripture available for study.
Hwaeom: The Korean Buddhist tradition descended from Chinese Huayan and focused on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Hwaeom shows how Huayan teachings took distinctive institutional form in Korea.

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