Fazang (643–712)

The monk-scholar Fazang is one of China’s great Buddhist thinkers. Drawing on Buddhist scriptural literature and exegetical and systematic works of his predecessors, he fashioned a highly elaborate philosophy that served to provide a rational explanation of his vision of the way things really are. Huayan philosophy is an attempt to show rationally and systematically how the many phenomena that make up existence abide harmoniously in a double relationship of identity and interpenetration. Fazang was credited by his successors with being the third patriarch of the Huayan school.