The Huayan University Network by Erik J. Hammerstrom

Author:Erik J. Hammerstrom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The Four Dharmadhātu

All premodern and modern historians of Buddhism identify the Six Characteristics and the Ten Profound Gates as central tenets of Huayan thought. A third concept discussed by many but not all40 is the Four Dharmadhātu (sifajie), which the philosopher and scholar Jin Y. Park has argued represents the very culmination of Huayan thought.41 The concept of the Four Dharmadhātu was developed by the fourth patriarch Chengguan. He used several different Dharmadhātu models in his writings, including threefold, fourfold, and fivefold ones, but since the time of Zongmi the tradition has held the fourfold model to be definitive.42 The Four Dharmadhātu model discusses the two key Chinese philosophical concepts of principle (li 理) and phenomenon/a (shi 事). Shi is fairly straightforward, effectively referring to the concrete things and events in the universe. Li, however, is more complex owing in part to its long history within the Chinese philosophical tradition and the wide range of meanings the character itself can take.43 In the context of Buddhist thought, li generally refers to the fundamental nature of reality, which is emptiness. To be more precise, as Robert Gimello notes in his well-known discussion of emptiness in Huayan Buddhism, li is not the principle of emptiness, but the principle that things are fundamentally empty, empty of permanence, essence, and autonomous existence.44 There has been a tendency both inside and outside the Sinitic Buddhist tradition to reify the category of li by treating it as the really existing substrate of reality. This tendency is reflected in some scholars’ translation of li as “noumenon.” I believe neither the idea nor this translation is an accurate reflection of the term in Huayan and choose to follow those scholars who translate li as “principle.”

The pair “principle and phenomena” is elaborated to a great extent within Huayan Buddhist thought. These discussions are focused on the same central concerns as those that define the Ten Profound Gates—namely, the nature of the relationships between phenomena and the underlying emptiness of those phenomena. Chengguan’s Four Dharmadhātu model is the most common framework within Huayan for discussing the relationship of principle and phenomena.

In both of his major commentaries on the Huayan Sutra, Chengguan shows a clear interest in articulating Huayan thought in terms of the relationship between principle and phenomena. In his thinking, he drew much inspiration from the Method for Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu.45 This text is of singular importance as a source of thought and practice within the Huayan tradition. I outline the history and content of this text in chapter 6 in a discussion of its adoption as a meditation manual in several modern Huayan institutes. For the present, it is important to note that the Method for Contemplation of the Dharmadhātu develops a basic discussion of emptiness into one on the relationship between principle and phenomena.46 It describes three contemplations or views of reality that one should practice in succession: (1) Contemplation of True Emptiness (zhenkong guan 眞空觀), (2) Contemplation of the Nonobstruction of Principle and Phenomena (lishi

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