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your opinion on the Avatamsaka Sutra??? plz help

DanielR

Active Member
Hello,

what is your opinion of the Avatamsaka Sutra?

The Hua Yen school claims this sutra is somewhat superior.

Has anyone read it, it's very long and pretty expensive lol, I own a copy but haven't got to read it yet (Thomas Cleary's version)

What do Zennies think of it?? Is it true that it's the philosphy on which Zen is based, while Zen is more the practice? It's hard to believe that :-/, or is this a claim by Hua Yen???

Thanks <3
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Hello,

what is your opinion of the Avatamsaka Sutra?

The Hua Yen school claims this sutra is somewhat superior.

Has anyone read it, it's very long and pretty expensive lol, I own a copy but haven't got to read it yet (Thomas Cleary's version)

What do Zennies think of it?? Is it true that it's the philosphy on which Zen is based, while Zen is more the practice? It's hard to believe that :-/, or is this a claim by Hua Yen???

Thanks <3
@crossfire is the studious one on matters like this. I just sit.
 

DanielR

Active Member
Thanks for your replies

That´s actually what I was looking to hear

I mean it is kind of poetic but reading or studying 1600 pages didnt strike me very Zen like
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Is it true that it's the philosophy on which Zen is based....

Hi Daniel, although I'm a member of this DIR, I don't normally respond to threads in it other than to read them because my memory of things isn't what it used to be. However, I have reasons to suspect the Avatamsaka Sutra has had relatively little influence on any of the Japanese Zen schools. But my last course in which I studied Japanese religious history was about 40 years ago. I imagine you could look it up if you're interested.


...reading or studying 1600 pages didnt strike me very Zen like

Your comment reminded me of something Zhaozhou is reported to have said (so I googled around and found this translation):

Zhaozhou asked a monk, “How many sutras do you read in a day?”
The monk said: “Maybe seven or eight. Sometimes even ten.”
Zhaozhou said, “Oh, then you can’t read scriptures.”
The monk asked, “Master, how many do you read in a day?”
Zhaozhou: “In one day I read one word.”
 

DanielR

Active Member
Hi Daniel, although I'm a member of this DIR, I don't normally respond to threads in it other than to read them because my memory of things isn't what it used to be. However, I have reasons to suspect the Avatamsaka Sutra has had relatively little influence on any of the Japanese Zen schools. But my last course in which I studied Japanese religious history was about 40 years ago. I imagine you could look it up if you're interested.




Your comment reminded me of something Zhaozhou is reported to have said (so I googled around and found this translation):

Zhaozhou asked a monk, “How many sutras do you read in a day?”
The monk said: “Maybe seven or eight. Sometimes even ten.”
Zhaozhou said, “Oh, then you can’t read scriptures.”
The monk asked, “Master, how many do you read in a day?”
Zhaozhou: “In one day I read one word.”

Thank you Sunstone!

I'm not opposed to reading long scriptures but 1600 pages IS a lot lol :)

The Avatamsaka also sounds extremely superstitious from what I've read

I like the picture of Indra's Net though!!
 

Buddha Dharma

Dharma Practitioner
I accept that the bulk of it is a compilation of several distinct Sutras in origin, with commentary and some apocryphal material- as critical scholarship tends to say about it. That aside- it's a nice work. Very influential in many Mahayana circles.

Other schools wouldn't likely dispute it's authentic material. Like the Sutras it draws from, or things it preserved from now lost works.

As I understand it, the Avatamsaka Sutra is thought to in part preserve lines of text from now lost early Buddhist works. It is of course questionable how faithful the transmitters were.
 
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Buddha Dharma

Dharma Practitioner
I hope Thich is okay now, I know he's 90+ and I remember he almost (?) died. He's such an inspiration!

He is holding out well, but he knows the impermanence of the life of this world. It will indeed be a great loss to Western Buddhism when he passes.

For the well-adjusted Buddhist mind, death is like finally being able to take off tattered old rags at the end of a long journey and cast them to the winds.
 

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
Hello,

what is your opinion of the Avatamsaka Sutra?

The Hua Yen school claims this sutra is somewhat superior.

Has anyone read it, it's very long and pretty expensive lol, I own a copy but haven't got to read it yet (Thomas Cleary's version)

What do Zennies think of it?? Is it true that it's the philosphy on which Zen is based, while Zen is more the practice? It's hard to believe that :-/, or is this a claim by Hua Yen???

Thanks <3

I have read it and love it! No need for you to read the entire sutra at once though. It is a central source for Mahayana bodhisattva teachings of Buddha.

Try this old classic for an introduction to the sutra: The Buddhist Teaching of Totality by Chang.

Also there are many individual chapters translated, with commentary by Chan Master Hsuan Hua:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...J3U7KIGD&rh=n:283155,k:flower+adornment+sutra
 

DanielR

Active Member
I have read it and love it! No need for you to read the entire sutra at once though. It is a central source for Mahayana bodhisattva teachings of Buddha.

Try this old classic for an introduction to the sutra: The Buddhist Teaching of Totality by Chang.

Also there are many individual chapters translated, with commentary by Chan Master Hsuan Hua:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_15?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=flower+adornment+sutra&sprefix=flower+adornmen,stripbooks,201&crid=45ZRJ3U7KIGD&rh=n:283155,k:flower+adornment+sutra

Thank you, I've finished reading The Buddhist Teaching of Totality 2 weeks ago, it's a very good book, not just on Hua Yen but on Mahayana in general!!

Thanks for the recommendation!
 

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
Thank you, I've finished reading The Buddhist Teaching of Totality 2 weeks ago, it's a very good book, not just on Hua Yen but on Mahayana in general!!

Thanks for the recommendation!

Aside from picking one of Master Hua's commentaries, another way to dip into the Avatamsaka corpus is this short work. It is part of the commentary on the final chapter 39. - a Guide as the subtitle says.

Entry Into the Realm of Reality: the Guide - AbeBooks

Also out there is the text of just chapter 39 - Entry into the Realm of Reality, trans. by Cleary - in a single volume for $40 or so used.
 

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
To encourage the study (in volume one) of this seminal chapter 12, here is the Kalavinka Press translator's summary of it:

Chapter 12
Foremost Worthy

Having already spoken of the merit of the pure conduct, Mañjuśrī began
this chapter by asking Foremost Worthy Bodhisattva to expound on the
meritorious qualities associated with making and cultivating the resolve to
attain bodhi, whereupon Foremost Worthy replied with three hundred and
seventy-two verses in which he made it clear that the meritorious qualities
flowing from this are measureless, how much the more so when the bodhisattva
then fully cultivates the grounds and perfections.

Foremost Worthy then observed that, when the bodhisattva arouses the
resolve to attain highest bodhi, this is a result of causes and conditions of
which the first and foremost is faith in the Buddha, the Dharma, and bodhi.
Having generated such faith, he then does not seek worldly aims such as
the five objects of desire, kingship, wealth, personal pleasure, or great fame.
Rather, he makes this resolve with the aim of extinguishing the suffering of
beings and enabling them to attain the highest happiness.

Foremost Worthy then pointed out that it is due to this faith that the bodhisattva
is then able to uphold the precepts, cultivate the bases of training,
and fulfill all the meritorious qualities. Foremost Worthy then embarked
on a long series of some forty-five “if this, then that” verses by which he
described how it is that each of the subsequent developments based on faith
and cultivation result in the highest levels of accomplishment on the path
to buddhahood.

Foremost Worthy then proceeded to describe how the bodhisattva then
uses the skillful means of appearing in the forms of all different kinds of
beings in order to successfully teach right Dharma to all beings, thus carrying
out the Dharma works of all the great bodhisattvas and buddhas, sometimes
using song, dance, discussions, and worldly arts and skills to spread
the Dharma, sometimes becoming village elders, caravan guides, kings,
great officials, or physicians, and sometimes becoming even large trees on
a vast plain, medicine, a trove of jewels, sometimes becoming renunciates
from other religious traditions, manifesting in all these different ways for
the sake of turning beings to the path of right Dharma.

Foremost Worthy next described in some eighty stanzas a supreme
“happiness” samādhi developed by the bodhisattva by which he is able
to liberate the many kinds of beings, emanating many different kinds of
inconceivable radiance that enable all who see these lights to take up the
training. He then described this bodhisattva’s amazing uses of right concentration
by which he may enter concentration in a single pore and emerge
in any manner of different phenomena, summarizing this very long section
by saying, “This is what is meant by the inconceivable sovereign mastery of
samādhi of those of countless meritorious qualities.”

Foremost Worthy continued on to the end of the chapter rhapsodizing
on the qualities and capacities that ultimately develop from the momentous
act of long ago having made the resolve to attain the highest enlightenment,
the resolve that finally, after the passage of countless lifetimes of
using innumerably many different skillful means to bestow every kind of
marvelous benefit on every sort of being then ultimately culminates in the
realization of buddhahood. When Foremost Worthy came to the end of his
verses, the lands of the ten directions shook and moved in six ways, the
light of Māra’s palaces became obscured, the wretched destinies came to a
standstill, and the buddhas of the ten directions all appeared directly before
him, touched the top of his head with their right hands, and said in unison,
“It is good indeed, good indeed that you so quickly proclaim this Dharma.
We all rejoice in accord with this.” It was at this point that the second of this
sutra’s eight assemblies came to an end.
 
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