Avatamsaka Buddhism in East Asia: Origins and Adaptation of a Visual Culture

Description

The volume about Avatamsaka Buddhism in East Asia is the result of a symposium organized in France in 2008. 15 contributions reflect the ways of manifestation and of expression of Huayan doctrines in several geographical regions and at different periods. Compared with previous valuable studies, the present volume intends to open broader perspectives, to give the opportunity to develop opened problematics, based on primary sources, textual and iconological. The Avatamsaka doctrines have developed particular ways of expression and paradigms on the Chinese soil, as a sinized Buddhism, they may be said to have achieved a philosophical revolution in the history of Mahayana: the Absolute is not the goal of the philosophical and soteriological inquiry, but its point of departure. The world is not only an illusion to be transcended but a manifestation of this very Absolute. The Avatamsaka can be seen as the backbone of influencial currents, the Chan or Zen, the Tiantai or Tendai, the Ritualistic Buddhism, the Pure Land teachings, as well as the Song studies. The renewal of problematics on history of religion in the Far East region, as the so-called combined scheme simultaneously philosophical (exoteric) and ritualist (esoteric), gives a meaning to the approach of Avatamsaka current as common denominator linked from China till the Qitan region to Korea and Japan.