Abstract

Chinese Buddhist thought is more than a case of “Indianization” or “Sinicization,” and even less, “Distortion.” Chinese Buddhist thought should be grasped, first, in its own terms and only then in terms of the possible influences or confluences that flowed into it. The present article will seek to look into the concept of “Suchness vasana” (perfumation by the Buddhist absolute, Suchness, upon avidya, ignorance) as used by the Huayan school in China. Then it will show how, in the elaboration of this idea, Fazang, the key patriarch of the Huayan school, apparently drew on a mode of thought that is derived from the Yijing, the Book of Changes. It is in the nature of the present article that only the Chinese influence will be underlined and that the Indian contributions to the formation of a theory of a “dynamic Suchness” will only be briefly touched upon. Scholars have long noticed the Daoist influence of Chinese Buddhological thinking, especially within the Ch'an and the Hua-yen circles. However, too often scholars only suggest impressionistic parallels, between, say, the book Laozi and the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch or between Mencian humanism (“Every man can be Sage Yao and Shun”) and the idea that “Every man can be Buddha.” Such presentations of Chinese influence bypass the various problems involved in the long and thorny history of conflict, compromise, mutual self-discovery, and fertilization between the two cultural traditions. The present article will try to be much more concrete by documenting and analyzing the series of incidents that led to a datable innovation on Fazang's part.