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AVATAMSAKA SUTRA, the DEVELOPMENTAL PEAK of Pratltya-SAMUTPADA THEORY Chapter III

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AVATAMSAKA SUTRA, the DEVELOPMENTAL PEAK of Pratltya-SAMUTPADA THEORY Chapter III CHAPTER III AVATAMSAKA SUTRA, THE DEVELOPMENTAL PEAK OF PRATlTYA-SAMUTPADA THEORY Chapter III AVATAMSAKA SUTRA, THE DEVELOPMENTAL PEAK OF PRATlTYA-SAMUTPADA THEORY HLl. AVATAMSAKA SUTRA: HISTORICAL SKETCH As known to many people, Buddhism is a doctrine on human life, a great religion for man’s sake in mankind history. The Buddhist doctrine is the practical teachings that can help one get rid of all afflictions and sufferings so as to achieve the real happiness. Therefore, what is considered here is that how we can realize and apply significantly what the Buddha taught into our daily life. In accordance with this tendency, the Buddha’s teaching, generally speaking, reclassified into two vehicles or Yanas, that is, HTnaydna and Mahdydna. Those who follow HTnaydna Buddhism try their best to observe and practice exactly the Buddha’s teaching in all activities of their daily life, so they do want nothing to be changed significantly according to time and circumstance. While, those who embrace Mahdydna Buddhism can be considered as followers of developing Buddhism; those who observe and practice properly what the Buddha taught, apply intelligently and skillfully with a little bit change in accordance 6 0 with the developments of the human society; however they never divert from the essentials of Buddhism. Actually, there is no any vehicle in Buddhism. But since it depends on circumstance, time and condition as well as faculty of people who are observing or listening to Buddha’s teaching that is understood and practiced differently. For this reason, there is the discrimination or division of the two vehicles as mention above. In a sense, the system of Mahdydna Buddhist scriptures, as HTnaydna has done, has presented numerous useful methods that can be well worth considering and practicing. Among them, Avatamsaka Sutra with its wonderful thought can make us open our insight of themselves and the universe in which we live. The Avatamsaka Sutra, the full Sanskrit name of which is Buddhdvatamsaka- mahavaipulya-sutra as mentioned in Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, is a text revealed by the Buddha, after attaining enlightenment at the site of the bodhi-tvQQ and elsewhere, through the agency of Samantabhadra, and M aiyusri and many other great bodhisattvas. Here he speaks of the causative deeds of a Buddha and their resulting merits, very much like a garland of miscellaneous flowers.* That is why the Avatamsaka Sutra has been translated into English under the names such as ‘The Garland Scripture’ or ‘The Flower Ornament Scripture’. Here the term 'Avatamsa' means a ring shaped ornament. It literally indicates that all the virtues that the Buddha has accumulated by the time He attains G. P. Malalasekera, Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, Vol. II, p. 435. 61 enlightenment, very much like a beautiful garland of flowers that adorns Him. While the 'Vaipulya' is a title given to a Sutra, it propounds the vast, perfect, inexhaustible tenets of the Sutra. However, with the rise of Mahdydna Buddhism the Buddha is no longer simply as a historical one, He is personalized and philosophized as the spiritual existence of the Dharmakdya (the Body of Dharma), one of the conceptions of Triple body of the Tathdgata or Trikdya developed by Mahdydnists. The Dharmakdya is a reality and tantamount to Suchness or knowledge of Suchness, while two other forms of the Tathdgata {Nirmdnakdya, the Body of Transformation and Sambhogakdya, the Body of Bliss) are provisional existences.* In this sense, the term ‘‘avatarnsa' symbolically indicates all existences which are conditionally chained each other like “a garland of flowers” - and is the expression of the eternal spirit which could not perish with vicissitudes of corporeal existence. The Avatamsaka sutra therefore is another way of expounding pratitya-samutpdda theory revealed by the Buddha. It includes all the Buddhist teachings in a harmonious, multifaceted array as the most profound and important philosophy of Buddhism. Unfortunately, the whole Avatamsaka sutra has not been preserved in Sanskrit, but two very important chapters of the text are extant as the Dasabhumika and the Gandavyuha. Both these chapters broke off from the parent text and became independent D. T. Suzuki, Outline of Mahdydna Buddhism, pp. 253-59. 6 2 texts. The Dasabhumika is a work on the ten stages of bodhisattva, while the Gandavyuha is a work relating the wandering of Sudhana in search of enlightenment, and constituting the concluding portion of the Avatamsaka sutra. It could be noted that the Gandavyuha is another way of saying ''Avatamsaka sutra' which is represented in Chinese called Hua-yen-ching. Here, it does find the similarities in the various titles of the Siitra. As we know, the Gandavyuha and the Avatamsaka have been more or less indiscriminately used for the Chinese Hua-yen. Ganda means Hua or flower, i.e., ordinary flower, tsa-hua; and vyuha means yen, i.e., chuang-yen or ornament, array. According to Fa-tsang’s commentary on the Hua-yen Siitra, its original Sanskrit title is given as chien-na-p ’iao-ho, which stands as nearly as the Chinese phonetics for the transliteration of Gandavyuha. Then chien-na is understood as ‘common flower’ and p ’iao-ho as ‘decoration’. Avatamsaka, as explained above, means ‘garland’, or ‘flower decoration’, and may be regarded as an equivalent to hua- yen} Nevertheless, there is a Mahdydna Siitra bearing the specific title Gandavyuha as one of Nine Principal Buddhist Sutras in Nepal, which can make confusion. This belongs to the group of the Mahdydna SUtras known in Chinese as belonging to the Hua- yen-ching, and in fact is the final chapter of the Hua-yen-ching both of sixty and eighty fascicles, and corresponds to the Hua-yen- D .T. Suzuki, Essay in Zen Buddhism, Vol. Ill, p. 70. 63 ching translated into Chinese by Prajnd in forty fascicles. This final chapter is called in Chinese, and in Tibetan, the “Chapter on Entering into the Dharmadhdtu’' (Sanskrit, Dharmadhdtupravesay To avoid confusion it may be better to apply the Sanskrit title Avatamsaka to the entire group of the Hua-yen and Gandavyuha to the forty fascicles Hua-yen only. Hence, the Avatamsaka w ill include the Gandavyuha, which latter in spite of Fa-tsang’s authority, is specifically the name reserved for the “Chapter on Entry into the Realm of Reality” III.2. COMPILATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUTRA Historically speaking, the Avatamsaka Sutra, a masterpiece o f Mahdydna Buddhist Scriptures formed the basis of Chinese Hua-yen and Japanese Kegon schools of Buddhism. Based on this text, the Chinese Hua-yen school was founded by Tu-shun (557- 640) and organized by Fa-tsang (643-712). The Kegon School was imported to Japan during the Nara Period (710-794) of its history.^ It is such events that there is little certainly regarding the composition of Avatamsaka sutra. Research indicates that much of the text may have been composed in central Asia or perhaps even in China. It was presumably translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Buddhabhadra around 420 C.E.^ Therefore, in order to have a ' Ibid, p. 71. " Junjiro Takakusu, The Essential of Buddhism Philosophy, p. 112-117. ^ Charles S. Prebish, Historical Dictionary of Buddhism, p. 61. 6 4 certain proper knowledge of the developmental history of the Hua- yen Sutra. Here, it would be necessary for us to have a glance into some accounts concerning the first introduction of Buddhism in china before the Avatamsaka Sutra appeared. Natural and silent as the rising sun, the history based on Buddhist propagation often accompanies with nonviolence and it is mainly based on the principle of winning the hearts, so it is very difficult to determine exactly the date of the introduction of Buddhism into a certain country in the ancient time. The introduction of Buddhism in China is not an exception. Therefore, various legends were forged in order explain the first appearance of Buddhism in this vast continent. Here we can pick up some typical one. The first legend concerning the introduction of Buddhism in China is the arrival of group of Buddhist monks, headed by the sramana Shih-li-fang with a number of sutras at the capital of Ch’in Shih-huang-ti (221-208 B.C.E). The first Emperor, unwilling to accept the doctrine, immediately had them put in jail. But at night the prison was broken open by a Golden Man, sixteen feet high, who released them. Moved by this miracle, the emperor bowed his head to the ground and excused himself.' Next, Wei shou (506-572 C.E), the compiler of Wei-shu, the history of the T ’o-pa Wei, states in the chapter on Buddhism and Taoism of this work that the famous explorer Chang ch’ien, who E. Zurcher, The Buddhist Conquest o f China, pp. 19-20. 65 in 138 B.C.E was sent to the country of the Yueh-chih and “opened up the west”, after his return to China reported on Buddhism in India, “and then the Chinese for the first time heard about Buddhism”. The same tradition in an even more apodictic form is repeated by Tao-hsuan in his Kuang hung-ming chi of 664 C.E. The story is certainly apocryphal - as we shall see, the compiler of the Hou-Han shu, the history of the Later Han (hence before 446 C.E), even stresses the fact that Chang ch ’ien in his reports on the Western regions never mentioned Buddhism.* Another account tells us that the famous golden statue of the Hun king which in 120 B.C.E was capture by the Han general Ho C h ’u-ping in the region of Kara-nor, and which in the earliest sources is named “the golden man (used by) the king of the Hsiu- ch ’u in sacrificing to heaven”, has sometime been regarded as a Buddhist image.
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