Corresponding to false imagination (vikalpa), right knowledge, and suchness are the three modes of being: the mere fictions of false imagination; the relative existence of things, under certain conditions or aspects; and the perfect mode of being. Corresponding to this threefold version of the modes of being and awareness is the trikaya doctrine of the Buddha (the apparitional body, the enjoyment body, and the dharma body), a doctrine that was systematized by Yogachara thinkers.
The Yogachara school was represented in China primarily by the Faxiang (or Dharmalaksana; also Weishi) school, called Hossō in Japan. Paramartha, an Indian missionary-teacher, introduced the basic Yogachara teachings to China in the 6th century, and his translation of the Mahayana-samparigraha-shastra provided the foundation for the Silun school. Silun was succeeded as the major vehicle of Yogachara thought in China by the Faxiang school, which was founded by Xuanzang, the 7th-century Chinese pilgrim-translator, and his main disciple, Kuiji. Xuanzang went to India, where he studied the works of Dharmapala (died 561) and taught at the Vijnanavada centre at Valabhi. When he returned to China, he translated Dharmapala’s Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi and many other works and taught doctrines that were based on those of Dharmapala and other Indian teachers. Xuanzang’s teachings were expressed systematically in Fayuanyilinzhang and Weishishuji, the basic texts of the Faxiang school.
Faxiang, the Chinese translation of dharmalakshana (Sanskrit: “characteristic of dharma”), refers to the school’s basic emphasis on the peculiar characteristics (dharmalakshana) of the dharmas that make up the world that appears in human ideation. According to Faxiang teaching, there are five categories of dharmas: 8 mental dharmas (chittadharma), comprising the 5 sense consciousnesses, cognition, the cognitive faculty, and the store consciousness; 51 mental functions or capacities, dispositions, and activities (chaitashikadharma); 11 elements concerned with material forms or appearances (rupa-dharma); 24 things, situations, and processes not associated with the mind—e.g., time, becoming (chittaviprayuktasamskara); and 6 noncreated or nonconditioned elements (asamskritadharma)—e.g., space or suchness (tathata).
In Chengweishi lun (“Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine Consciousness Only”), Xuanzang explained how there can be a common empirical world for different individuals who construct or ideate particular objects and who possess distinct bodies and sensory systems. According to Xuanzang, the universal “seeds” in the store consciousness account for the common appearance of things, and particular “seeds” account for the differences.
According to traditional accounts, Faxiang was first taken to Japan by Dōshō, a Japanese priest who visited China, studied under Xuanzang, and established the teaching (now called Hossō) at Gangō Monastery. It was also taken there by other priests, Japanese and Korean, who studied in China under Xuanzang, Kuiji, or their disciples. Thus, the Japanese claim to have received the Hossō teaching in a direct line from its originators, and it continues to have a living and significant role in Japanese Buddhism. Avatamsaka (Huayan/Kegon)
Unlike the Faxiang (Hossō) school, which concentrated on the differentiating characteristics of things and the separation of facts and principles, the Avatamsaka school (called Huayan in China, Kegon in Japan) stressed the sameness of things, the presence of absolute reality in them, and the identity of facts and ultimate principles. It took its name from the Mahavaipulya-Buddhavatamsaka-sutra (“The Great and Vast Buddha Garland Sutra”), often called simply the Avatamsaka-sutra" class="md-crosslink">Avatamsaka-sutra (“Wreath Sutra” or “Garland Sutra”).
According to legend, the Avatamsaka-sutra was first preached by the buddha Vairochana shortly after his enlightenment but was replaced with simpler doctrines because it proved incomprehensible to his hearers. The sutra tells of the pilgrimage of a young man in a quest to realize dharma-dhatu (“totality” or “universal principle”). Three Chinese versions and one Sanskrit original (the Gandavyuha), which contains the last section only, are extant. There is no trace of an Indian sectarian development, and the school is known only in its Chinese and Japanese forms.
The forerunner of the Avatamsaka or Huayan school in China was the Dilun school, which was based on the Shiyidijing lun or Dilun, an early 6th-century translation of the Dashabhumika-sutra (“Sutra on the 10 Stages”). Since this work, which concerns the path of a bodhisattva to Buddhahood, was part of the Avatamsaka-sutra (which came to circulate independently), Dilun adherents readily joined the Huayan school that was established in the late 6th century (?) by Dushun (Fashun), the first patriarch (died 640). The real founder of the school, however, was the third patriarch, Fazang (also called Xianshou; died 712), who systematized its teachings; hence, it is sometimes called the Xianshou school. The school developed further under Fazang’s student Chengguan (died c. 820 or c. 838), who wrote important commentaries on the Avatamsaka-sutra. After the death of the fifth and final patriarch, Zongmi, in 841, Huayan declined because of the general suppression of Buddhism in China in 845. Despite its decline, the school greatly influenced the development of neo-Confucianism (a significant movement in Chinese thought beginning in the 11th century) and is regarded by many as the most highly developed form of Chinese Buddhist thought.
The Avatamsaka school was introduced into Japan by pupils of Fazang and by an Avatamsaka missionary from central India during the period from about 725 to 740. Known in Japan as the Kegon school, it has exerted an important influence in Japanese Buddhism that has continued to the present day.
The school’s most significant doctrine is the theory of causation by dharma-dhatu (“totality” or “universal principle”), according to which all elements arise simultaneously, the whole of things creates itself, ultimate principles and concrete manifestations are interfused, and the manifestations are mutually identical. Thus, in Fazang’s Essay on the Golden Lion, written for the empress Wu Hou, gold is the essential nature or principle (Chinese: li), and lion is the particular manifestation or form (Chinese: shi; literally, “event”). Moreover, as gold, each part or particle expresses the whole lion and is identical with every other part or particle. This model suggests that all phenomena in the universe are expressions of the ultimate suchness or voidness while at the same time retaining their phenomenal character; each phenomenon is both “all” and “one.” All the constituents of the world (the dharmas) are interdependent and possess a sixfold nature: universality, speciality, similarity, diversity, integration, and differentiation.