Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng shū 大方廣佛華嚴經疏
Commentary on the Great, Vast Buddha-Flower-Garland Scripture by 澄觀 Chéngguān (撰)
About the work
The Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng shū — universally known in East Asian Buddhist scholarship as the Huāyán shū 華嚴疏 or the Qīngliáng shū 清涼疏 (after the author’s epithet) — is the great commentary of 澄觀 Chéngguān (738–839) on the new (80-fascicle) [[KR6e0010|Huáyán jīng]] of 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda. In 60 fascicles, it is the most influential single commentary on the Avataṃsaka in any East Asian language, and the foundational text of the mature Tang Huáyán school’s doctrinal tradition. Together with its own much larger sub-commentary, the [[KR6e0012|Suí shū yǎn yì chāo 隨疏演義鈔]] (T1736, 90 fasc.), it is the classical scriptural-exegetical achievement of the Huáyán school in its post-Fǎzàng generation.
The work opens with one of the most celebrated single passages of Tang Buddhist parallel prose: “Going forth and returning without limit, motion and stillness from a single source; containing all wonders with abundance to spare, transcending words and thoughts in its loftiness — this can only be the Dharma-realm. Cleaving open the profound and subtle, illuminating mind and object, exhausting principle and consummating nature, penetrating to the result and bringing in the cause, vast and harmonious, broad and complete — this can only be the Dà fāngguǎng fó huáyán jīng.” (往復無際。動靜一源。含眾妙而有餘。超言思而逈出者。其唯法界歟。剖裂玄微。昭廓心境。窮理盡性。徹果該因。汪洋冲融。廣大悉備者。其唯大方廣佛華嚴經焉。)
Prefaces
The work is prefaced by Chéngguān’s own xù 序, conventionally counted as the work’s first item (“并序”), and constitutes the most articulate single statement of the mature Huáyán doctrine of the Dharma-realm (法界, dharmadhātu) and of the place of the Avataṃsaka in the Buddha’s teaching career. The preface develops a systematic doctrinal frame: (i) the cosmic sweep of the Dharma-realm, in which the entire universe of phenomenal manifestation arises from a single source and is mutually interpenetrating in its differentiations; (ii) the supreme status of the Avataṃsaka among the Buddha’s teachings, as the immediate post-awakening exposition (the so-called 第二七日 dì-èr qí-rì — the “second period of seven days” of the Buddha’s preaching career); (iii) the seven places and nine assemblies (七處九會) of the cosmic Avataṃsaka preaching; and (iv) the ten-fold structural-doctrinal scheme of the sūtra: ten beings preaching, ten places, ten times, ten dependences, ten verses, ten audiences, ten arrangements, ten symbols, ten openings, ten ends. The preface concludes by setting out the commentator’s method — xuán tán 玄談 (preliminary doctrinal essay) followed by chapter-by-chapter exegesis.
Abstract
The composition of the Huāyán shū can be dated by Chéngguān’s own colophon and by the contemporary biographies (Sòng gāosēng zhuàn T2061; the Huá yán jīng zhuàn jì xù lù 華嚴經傳記續錄 of Zhōngmì 中密) to the period 784 – 787 CE, when Chéngguān was resident at the Dà Huáyánsì 大華嚴寺 on Mt. Wǔtái 五臺山. The author was then in his forty-sixth to forty-ninth years and had completed his Tiāntái, Chán, and Huáyán-school training; the Shū is the first major literary monument of his maturity. The bracket adopted here (784 – 787) reflects this securely-attested period.
The Shū is the work in which the doctrinal innovations of [[KR6e0004|Fǎzàng’s Tànxuán jì]] are taken up, refined, expanded, and re-anchored to the new (80-fascicle) text. Three intellectual moves are particularly consequential. First, Chéngguān integrates the doctrinal apparatus of Tiāntái Buddhism — particularly Zhànrán’s reading of the Lotus Sūtra and the Yuán-jué jīng 圓覺經 — into the Huáyán doxography, producing a synthesis (“the Lotus is the perfect teaching, but the Avataṃsaka is more perfect-than-perfect”) that reshaped the Tang Buddhist doctrinal landscape. Second, he draws extensively on the Hé-zé Southern Chán of 神會 Shénhuì for the doctrine of the spiritual perception (神知 shén-zhī) of the Dharma-realm, integrating Chán mind-doctrine into Huáyán metaphysics and laying the foundation for 宗密 Zōngmì’s later Chán-Huáyán synthesis. Third, he re-formulates the Five Teachings doxography of Fǎzàng with greater nuance, bringing in Three Vehicles and the One Vehicle in a more articulated structure that became standard for subsequent East Asian Mahāyāna doxographers.
The work is divided into a preliminary xuán tán 玄談 (covering the title, the historical setting of the sūtra, the doctrinal status of the Avataṃsaka, and the methodological frame of the commentary — these occupy roughly the first 10 fascicles), followed by chapter-by-chapter exegesis of the 39 chapters of the 80-fascicle text (the remaining 50 fascicles). The treatment is encyclopaedic, citing some 130 distinct Mahāyāna sūtras and śāstras, the entire corpus of Huáyán literature down to Chéngguān’s own time, and major Tiāntái, Chán, and Yogācāra works. Through Chéngguān’s disciple 宗密 Zōngmì, the Shū and its sub-commentary became the basis of the entire later East Asian Huáyán / Hwaeom / Kegon scholastic tradition.
The Taishō text is established on the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana (高麗藏 / 麗) collated against the jiǎ 甲 Japanese alternate witness; the textual tradition is unproblematic. Chéngguān himself wrote the great sub-commentary [[KR6e0012|Suí shū yǎn yì chāo 隨疏演義鈔]] (T1736) to expand and clarify the Shū, and the two works always circulated together; the huì běn 會本 (“combined edition”) of the Shū and Chāo together with the sūtra (T0279) became the standard study-format from the Sòng onwards.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located. For the xuán tán portion in summary form see Hamar 2002.
- Hamar, Imre. A Religious Leader in the Tang: Chengguan’s Biography. Studia Philologica Buddhica Occasional Paper Series 13. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2002. — The standard Western-language study; biography, doctrinal-historical context, and partial translation of the Shū’s opening.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. — Several chapters address the Shū.
- Cook, Francis H. Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.
- Gimello, Robert M. Chih-yen (602–668) and the Foundations of Hua-yen Buddhism. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1976. — Foundational background.
- Yoshizu Yoshihide 吉津宜英. Kegon zen no shisōshi-teki kenkyū 華厳禅の思想史的研究. Daitō shuppansha, 1985.
- Kimura Kiyotaka 木村清孝. Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi 中国華厳思想史. Heirakuji shoten, 1992 — chapters on Chéngguān.
- Sakamoto Yukio 坂本幸男. Kegon kyōgaku no kenkyū 華厳教学の研究. Heirakuji shoten, 1956.
- Liu Ming-Wood. The Teaching of Fa-tsang and Cheng-kuan. Articles in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and elsewhere.
- Gregory, Peter N. Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-mi’s Yüan jen lun. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1995. — Indispensable for understanding Chéngguān through his disciple Zōngmì.
- Zhāng Wényǎng 張文良. Chéngguān Huáyán sīxiǎng yánjiū 澄觀華嚴思想研究. Beijing: Religious Culture Press, 2008.
Other points of interest
- Chéngguān’s commentary is the first systematic Huáyán treatment of the new translation of the Avataṃsaka; it is responsible for establishing the 80-fascicle text — rather than the older 60-fascicle text on which Fǎzàng had written — as the canonical study-base of the Huáyán school from the late eighth century onward.
- The Shū’s opening passage on the Dharma-realm is one of the most frequently cited and anthologised passages in Chinese Buddhist literature, much imitated in later Buddhist and Daoist parallel prose.
- The work was carried to Korea by Chéngguān’s contemporaries and made the basis of Hwaeom curricula by the Goryeo period; in Japan it became the doctrinal foundation of the Kegon school at Tōdai-ji and Kōzen-ji 高山寺. The fourteenth-century Japanese Kegon master Myōe Kōben 明恵高弁 (1173–1232) wrote extensively on it.