Huayan

Huayan is the Chinese Buddhist school that teaches the interpenetration of all things: each phenomenon contains and depends on every other.

It takes its name from the Avataṃsaka (Huayan) Sutra and developed in Tang-dynasty China in the seventh and eighth centuries. Fazang, its most systematic thinker, is said to have explained it to Empress Wu with the image of a golden lion, every part of which expresses the whole; the image of Indra's net, in which each jewel reflects all the others, is also used. Huayan shaped Korean Buddhism and later Chan. On this site it answers questions on parts and wholes (1.1.3) and on emergence and reduction.