Abstract

This dissertation explores diverse facets of the Chinese Huayan tradition by analyzing the thought of the lay exegete Li Tongxuan (635–730). Although Li's ideas have been considered idiosyncratic and even heterodox from the standpoint of the "orthodox" five Huayan patriarchs, we should not restrict our perspective to this narrow framework. As a lay scholar who had a strong practical orientation, Li had a solid literary background in indigenous Chinese philosophy and applied this knowledge to the explication of the newly translated eighty-fascicle Flower Garland Sūtra ( Dafangguang fo huayan jing, Avatamsaka-sūtra ). Thus his exegesis is characterized by practicality and concreteness on the one hand and marked by originality and intuitiveness on the other hand.