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Golden Lion's Roar Chapter 1
“Gold does not have a separate nature,” only through the “skillful hand of the craftsman” does it manifest as a “golden lion”; this example opens the Lion’s Roar Chapter to discuss “conditioned arising,” seeing that “all phenomena arise depending on conditions,” “not self-arising,” “not independent.” By contemplating “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” we transcend the two notions of “being and non-being,” touch “true emptiness, wondrous existence,” and realize “nirvana—the ultimate reality beyond being and non-being.”
Dharma Teacher Fa-tsang (643–712), “the third patriarch of the Hua Yen school,” “expounded the Avatamsaka Sutra up to 30 times,” “composed the Lion’s Roar of the Avatamsaka School with 10 topics,” continuing the lineage:
- Zhiyan
- Dushun
- Fazang
- Chengguan
-
Zongmi
(The Five Patriarchs of Hua Yen; sometimes adding “Asvagosa, Nagarjuna” to become “The Seven Patriarchs of Hua Yen”).
In the teachings presented:
• Four kinds of conditioned arising: karmic arising, consciousness arising (alaya), suchness arising (noumena), dharma realm conditioned arising.
• Three self-natures: imagined nature—mental construction, dependent nature—arising by relying on conditions, perfected nature—true ontological ground.
• Three non-natures: no-nature of characteristics, no-nature of arising, ultimate no-nature—“overturning the notion of ‘nature,’ helping us not to be caught in concepts.”
“The lion is provisionally existent, named by mental construction”; seeing “dependent arising” we let go of illusions, realizing “perfected nature” where there is “no birth, no death.” Just as “steam, mist, clouds, snow” are all “unchanging H₂O,” phenomena are “illusory existences” only to point to the ontological ground, “through illusory phenomena we understand that the ontological ground is there.”