Talk:Dushun

Content to be merged
The Indian Avatamsaka Sutra is its central scripture. This school originated in China. It is known as Kegon in Japan. The Avatamsaka's seminal chapter once circulated separately and is known as The Gandavyuha Sutra. Each designation is roughly equivilent to Flower Garland or Flower Ornament.

Of this scripture D.T. Suzuki has written: "The grand intuitions -- grand not only in scope and comprehensiveness but in penetration -- which make up the substance of the Gandavyuha, are the most imposing monument erected by the Indian mind to the spiritual life of mankind. 

Garma C.C. Chang further dilates:

"There is no other Buddhist scripture, to the best of my knowledge, that is superior to Hua-Yen in revealing the highest spiritual inspiration and the most profound mystery of Buddhahood. This opinion is shared, I believe, by the majority of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist scholars. It is small wonder that the Hua-Yen has been regarded as the "crown" of all Buddhist teaching, and as representing the consummation of the Buddhist insight and thought. 

M.C. Gardner concludes:

"The game we are playing in any pilgrimage, be it for gold, grail or God is always and ultimately the search for ourselves. In the world of the Upanishads is found "tat tvan asi" (thou art that) serving as the pass phrase into the realm of the self.  In the Buddhism of the Prajnaparamita Sutras we found the formula expressed as "rupam sunyata sunyataiva rupam" (form is emptiness and emptiness is form).  This is a bit more abstract. The Buddhists believe our essential being as "anatman" (no atman or no soul).  Any form that we abstract from the world's unity is possessed of sunyata (emptiness). We can see that this 'thou' is as empty as the 'that' which it beholds.  Each is equivalent to the other. The Gandavyuha and the Hua-Yen school have taken these abstractions to their outlandishly logical conclusion: You are everybody and everybody is you.  Tu Shun's succint formulation is: 'First, one in one. Second, all in one. Third, one in all. Fourth, all in all.'" 

Locale is demarcated by boundaries. The Hua-Yen school refers to this as the "Lokadhatu." A boundary is as close as your flesh or as distant as the farthest star. This enlargement of state or being is known as the "Dharmadhatu." The Hua-Yen perceives a world beyond definition without boundary. Paradoxically, their thinking sees each realm interpentrating every other. The everyday world they call the "Dharmadhatu of Shih." The universe as a whole is designated as "Li." The dialectic of the two is the "Dharmhadhatu of Shih and Shih." This vision is the internpenetration of any particular with any other particular and the universe as a whole is formulized as "Shih-shih-wu-ai." This notion of the inner causation and dependent coorgination of all time and space in any moment of locale of time and space is also termed "pratityasamutpada."

In playing with this concept it became evident that not only did one thing reflect another, "pratihasa" but each thing was fully present in the other, "vyapti." Each dharma is generally viewed in distinction but for the Hua-Yen each separate item in the universe was not only distinct but also radically the same, "samata." The universal purity is "amalacitta," which is also the ontologic principal of the Buddha pervading the universe. It is possessed or enters through any being we isolate by vitue of "anupravesu."

Any aspect of the Lokadhatu is shot through and through with the infinite. It can be seen as an effect of the entire agency of universal causation; as the efficient and originating cause of every effect to which we give time and placement. To quote Tu Shun:

"Shih is completely identical, and not partially identical, with Li. Therefore, without causing the slightest damage to itself, an atom can embrace the whole universe." 