Li Tongxuan; one true dharma realm; Avataṃsaka-sūtra; Xin huayan jing lun; Book of Changes; yin-yang and five phases; correlative thinking
摘要
Li Tongxuan (635-730), a lay Buddhist thinker in the early Tang period, explicated the Avataṃsaka-sūtra on the basis of his thesis of one true dharma realm (一眞法界), which denies any discrimination between the realm of sentient beings and that of the Buddha. He paid a special attention to the fact that the bodhisattvas appearing in the chapter “Names of the Tathāgatas” of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra are associated with specific directions. He provided an explanation of the correlation by referring to the Book of Changes and the yin-yang and five phases theory. Since his thesis of one true dharma realm eliminates the boundary between the sacred (i.e., Buddhist) and the profane (i.e, non-Buddhist), it was quite natural for him to explicate the Buddhist scripture by relying on the indigenous Chinese philosophy and language. The method of his exegesis can be labelled as “correlative thinking” in that it unraveled symbolic meanings of a certain concept by relying on implications of another correlated concept. For instance, when Li Tongxuan came across a passage in which the Buddha’s Immovable Wisdom is said to come from the Golden World of the East, he explicated its meaning with the schema that describes the growth and extinction of metal, one of the five phases. He then showed that Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra have the titles “Boy” and “Elder” because the trigrams gen and zhen associated with their abodes have such implications. He also maintained that the south symbolizes emptiness (śūnyatā) because the associated trigram li is understood as empty in the middle. He further stated that the southeast indicates verbal edification because the associated trigram xun has the meaning of language and wind.
Although his explication of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra heavily relied on indigenous Chinese thought, it should be labelled a Buddhist exegesis. For he associated each of the ten directions with one of the ten perfections (pāramitā). It is also noteworthy that he correlated those directions with the stages of bodhisattva practice that range from the ten faiths up to Buddhahood. This means that he intended practitioners to pursue a higher religious value without being indulged in the present secular life, although he adopted the secular philosophy. Such an exegetical fashion resonates well with his notion of one true dharma realm, which regards the existential foundation of sentient beings as the very abode for enlightenment.
