The ultimate purpose of this study is to place the position that Chinese Hua-yen Buddhism assumes in the history of the Mahayana Buddhist thought. Hua-yen typically shows a bilateral aspect of a cultural phenomenon; it is often acclaimed as being a culmination of Chinese Buddhism on one hand, and is also criticized for its secession from original teaching of the historical Buddha on the other. Given the Buddhist terminology, a cause (hetu), which is Buddhism taught by the Buddha, Sakyamuni, through interaction with conditions (pratyaya), which are the cultural settings of India and China, gave birth to an effect (phala), which is Hua-yen.
India is the cradle of Buddhism and produced the Avatamsaka-Sutra (Hua-yen ching), while China provided Buddhism with the exuberant Classics, one of which is Taoism, handed down from pre-Han dynasties. If either one of these factors is ignored, the peculiarities of Hua-yen thought would not expose themselves to us. The author, therefore, bearing in mind the Indian Buddhist traditions, such as the doctrines reserved in the Agama, Madhyamika and the Yogacara scriptures, mainly focuses on the Taoist impact on the Hua-yen philosophy.
Of Taoist philosophical branches or sectarian movements, Neo-Taoism founded by Wang Pi and Kuo Hsiang exerted critical influences on Chinese thinkers to come, irrespective of their fields of philosophy: first, through so-called Ch'ing-t'an (the Pure Discourse) movement, which dominated the intellectual environment of mediaeval China for nearly 400 years in the Wei-Chin Nan-Pei dynasties (A.D. 214-589), Neo-Taoism centered a social circle where three major Chinese thoughts, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, interacted under relatively free circumstances; second, through Hsuan-hsueh (the Profound Learning) consisting of one Confucianist and two Taoist Classics, it established and completed Chinese metaphysics which served the backbone of Chinese philosophical thought.
This is the cultural milieu that Hua-yen sprouted, grew, and bore fruit. More specifically, the paradigm of Hua-yen doctrine embodied in Li-shih (Noumenon and Phenomena), t'i-yung (Substance and Function), etc. were imported from the Taoist worldview and penetrated the fabric of Hua-yen ontology.
