40 Facts About Fazang

Fazang was a Sogdian-Chinese Buddhist scholar, translator, and religious leader of the Tang dynasty.

Fazang was the third patriarch of the Huayan school of East Asian Buddhism, a key figure at the Chinese Imperial Court, and an influential Chinese Buddhist philosopher.

Fazang's ancestors came from the Central Asian region of Sogdia, a major center for Silk Road trade, but he was born in the Tang capital of Chang'an, where his family had become culturally Chinese.

Fazang was known for his skill as a translator, knowledge of Sanskrit, and for his efforts to produce a new translation of an extended edition of the Gandavyuha sutra.

Fazang composed an original commentary on the Avatamsaka Sutra, called the Huayan jing tanxuan ji.

Fazang was known as a popularizer and promoter of Huayan teachings, through his relationship with Empress Wu Zeitian and his authorship of several essays on Huayan philosophy, especially Essay on the Golden Lion.

Fazang's surname was Kang, which originated from his place of birth, Kangjuguo.

Fazang's family were Sogdians and lived in an ethnically Sogdian enclave in the imperial capital of Chang'an.

Fazang had a multitude of fellow-disciples although sources only record four primary names: Huixiao, Huaiji, Huizhao, and most famously, Uisang, who went on to establish Hwaeom Buddhism in Korea.

Fazang became disappointed in his initial search for a proper teacher in the capital, and so he went to Mount Zhongnan, where he studied Mahayana sutras, like the Avatamsaka sutra and engaged in Daoist practices of consuming herbal elixirs.

Fazang began his lay discipleship with Zhiyan in roughly 663, however Fazang did extensive traveling and did not remain with his teacher consistently.

Previous biographical sources claim that Fazang was either overqualified for the bodhisattva-precepts or had his ordination situated in a miraculous context, yet both were distorted accounts attempting to validate the lack of evidence Fazang ever had a full ordination.

Between 688 and 689, Fazang was ordered by Empress Wu to build a high Avatamsaka-seat and bodhimanda of Eight Assemblies in Luoyang.

Fazang traveled to various regions, visited his family, and debated with Daoist priests.

Fazang performed some Buddhist rituals to aid the Chinese army, and this strengthened the relationship between Empress Wu and Fazang.

From 700 to 705, Fazang continued translation work on the order of Empress Wu.

Fazang worked with Siksananda's translation team on a new translation of the Lankavatara Sutra, which was completed in 704.

Fazang contributed to the quelling of a political rebellion during this time of unrest.

Fazang was accordingly recognized and rewarded with a fifth-rank title from Emperor Zhongzong in 705.

In 706, Fazang joined Bodhiruci's translation team to work on the Maharatnakuta sutra.

From 708 to 709, a drought threatened the capital area, and Fazang was commanded to perform the proper religious rituals to manifest rain.

Fazang seems to have made use of the esoteric Mahapratisara dharani for the purpose of a rainmaking ritual that is described in the text.

Fazang's greatest influence was upon his dharma friend Uisang, who was a same disciple of Zhian with Fazang and eventually returned to Korea to establish the Korean Huayan school: Hwaeom.

Fazang is credited for having contributed greatly in improving and promoting the technology of wood block carving, which he used for the printing of Buddhist texts.

Fazang took part in Siksananda's translation efforts to translate and edit the 80 fascicle Avatamsaka Sutra.

At a later date, Fazang worked with the pandita Devendraprajna to translate two more chapters of the Avatamsaka sutra.

Fazang wrote numerous works on Buddhism, his magnum opus is a commentary on the Avatamsaka sutra, the Huayan jing tanxuan ji in 60 fascicles.

Fazang depicts the cosmos as an infinite number of interdependent and interpenetrating phenomena, which make up one holistic net, the one universal dharma realm.

Fazang did this in a uniquely Chinese prose that draws on Daoist and classical Chinese influences.

Fazang develops this idea and brings together various Huayan teachings into a holistic view of the entire universe, which Alan Fox calls the Huayan "Metaphysics of Totality".

Fazang was known for the various similes, demonstrations and metaphors he used to explain this idea, including Indra's net, the rafter and the building, and the hall of mirrors.

Fazang uses these characteristics as a way of further explaining the doctrine of perfect interfusion and how wholeness and diversity remain balanced in it.

Fazang's schema is therefore an attempt to provide an ontological middle way.

Fazang equates the most fundamental of the three natures, the "true nature", with the tathagatagarbha.

Furthermore, Fazang argues that since each of the three natures has their derivative aspects, they must have their fundamental aspect.

Fazang writes that nature-origination can be understood from two perspectives: from the perspective of the cause and from the perspective of the fruit.

Furthermore, drawing on the Buddha-nature treatise, Fazang writes that there are three kinds of nature and origination: principle, practice and fruit.

For Fazang, this is true even for temporally distant events.

Fazang thus seems to be rejecting any linear causation and to be supporting some form of retrocausality.

Indeed, Fazang writes that the bodhisattva, after having reached the initial stages of faith, still must transverse the remaining bodhisattva stages.