---
title: "The Ocean-Seal Samādhi of the Avataṃsaka"
author: 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 5 — SAMĀDHI: From the Pāli Jhāna to Silent Illumination and the Huatou · Part VIII · Lotus and Huayan"
series_short: SAMĀDHI
volume: 5
paper_id: SAMADHI-P28
paper_number: 28
part: Part VIII · Lotus and Huayan
part_number: 8
date: 2026-06
version: "1.0"
license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
---

# The Ocean-Seal Samādhi of the Avataṃsaka

**Concentration's Capstone over the Dharma-Realm — Fazang's Ocean-Seal Manifestation and the Completion of the Volume's Spine**

*中文主題：華嚴〈賢首品·普賢三昧品〉之定的法界收頂——法藏海印炳現與全卷脊柱之完成*

---

## Abstract

This paper sets out the thesis that the Avataṃsaka's Ocean-Seal samādhi (*sāgaramudrā-samādhi*, 海印三昧) carries "concentration" to the very limit of its outward reach — a concentration in which the whole dharma-realm (*dharmadhātu*, 法界) appears at once, and at every point simultaneously: it is the samādhi-form of dharma-realm dependent-origination. Its scriptural archetype lies in the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter, where Samantabhadra enters "the samādhi of the Tathāgatagarbha-body of all Buddhas Vairocana," such that the swirling sea of the dharma-realm is wholly drawn in, and within every single mote of dust there is a Samantabhadra equally entering this one same samādhi; the "Sage's Crown" chapter ties this concentration directly to manifestation in a single thought-moment — "in a single thought-moment it pervades the ten directions … the spiritual power of the Ocean-Seal samādhi." Fazang then rebuilds the Ocean-Seal from a name within scripture into the *ocean-seal's blazing manifestation* (海印炳現), the essential body of the teaching (教體) upon which the whole of Huayan rests for its simultaneous total manifestation. This paper argues that the Ocean-Seal's reach outward to the limit, set against Chan's living concentration drawn inward to the limit, forms two poles that mirror each other and jointly bear witness to the one spine of this volume — that concentration is not a station among the four jhānas and eight attainments. Carrying forward the preceding paper's concentration-as-conduct of the Lotus, the present paper completes that spine, and lays a single faint thread toward the volume's closing question of concentration's return to *prajñā*.

**Keywords:** the Ocean-Seal samādhi (海印三昧, *sāgaramudrā-samādhi*), the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation (海印炳現), the dharma-realm capstone (法界收頂), the samādhi of the Tathāgatagarbha-body of Vairocana (毘盧遮那如來藏身三昧), the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence (同時具足相應門), all at once in a single thought-moment (一時頓現), the essential body of the teaching (教體), Fazang (法藏), the Huayan school (華嚴宗), concentration at the measure of the dharma-realm (定之法界量)

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## I. Concentration Vast as the Dharma-Realm

To speak of concentration today is, for the most part, to picture an inward, downward, personal achievement: tuning oneself stiller, more single-pointed, less pulled about by thought, as though concentration had only one direction of travel — inward, drawing in. The preceding paper, working through the Lotus's "Peaceful Practice" chapter, already pried that picture open once: concentration need not be accomplished only on the cushion; it can be spread across the four postures of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, becoming a concentration-as-conduct that runs through the bearing of a whole body — what was there called "in all four postures the mind ever in concentration." That extended concentration from "a stretch of time within a sitting posture" out to "a manner of conduct present, at no moment absent, throughout one body."

The present paper pulls the lens open by a further order of magnitude. The Ocean-Seal samādhi, as the Huayan school establishes it in the "Sage's Crown" and "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapters, presents not "the mind ever in concentration through the bearing of one body" but "the whole dharma-realm blazing forth at once within a single concentration." Here the measure of concentration is no longer bounded by one person's body but by the entire dharma-realm: the myriad images appear together within it, and not in sequence but everywhere at once. For a reader who keeps imagining concentration as ever more deeply, ever more like a still inner engineering driven ever further inward, this is a pointer in the opposite direction — concentration can grow vast enough to be of one measure with the whole dharma-realm.

It is worth marking first the tension between these two directions. The road followed in the earlier papers ran mostly inward: drawing the mind fine, holding the object single, letting the scattered settle, until not a thought arises. The sense of accomplishment on that road is "ever less, ever purer." The Ocean-Seal follows the reverse road: rather than narrowing its object, it stretches the object to the utmost — so vast that no single dharma stands outside it, the whole dharma-realm within the field of this one concentration, and every point of it appearing thus, together, at once. One drawn inward until there is nothing further to draw in, one reached outward until there is nothing further to reach: the two directions look opposed, and the final paper of this volume will show that the two bear witness to one and the same matter; here it is enough to set the outward pole firmly in place.

The bounds of this paper must be fixed at the outset. The Ocean-Seal's naming-field — how it is singled out within the naming-grammar of the hundred-and-eight samādhis, and how it is positioned over against the Śūraṅgama samādhi as the king among samādhis — was laid out in this volume's earlier paper on the Mahāyāna expansion of samādhi, which in plain words handed to the present paper the thread of "the Ocean-Seal as the dharma-realm capstone, the integrated system of the ocean-seal's manifestation."[^1] This paper therefore does not restate the naming-grammar but takes up that bequest directly, following scripture and Fazang's system to establish the Ocean-Seal as "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm." Further, what this paper takes is the *axis of concentration* — the very event of Samantabhadra's entry into samādhi at the opening of the assembly; the dimensions of offering and giving carried by the Avataṃsaka–Samantabhadra–Entry-into-the-Dharma-Realm complex belong to another axis and are not treated here.[^2] Likewise, the full metaphysical system of dharma-realm dependent-origination and the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena (the complete unfolding of the ten profound gates, the perfect fusion of the six characteristics, the ontology of "one is all") is not what this paper takes; it takes only the single joint where that system meets the study of concentration — namely, that what "the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence" rests upon is the Ocean-Seal samādhi — and does not unfold the whole ocean of meaning.[^3]

## II. The Scriptural Ground: One Thought-Moment's Total Manifestation

The name "Ocean-Seal samādhi" appears in scripture in the "Sage's Crown" chapter. There, recounting the spiritual power and use of the bodhisattva's samādhis, a verse ties the power of the Ocean-Seal directly to the total manifestation of "in a single thought-moment pervading the ten directions": "In a single thought-moment it pervades the ten directions … all of this it can manifest — the spiritual power of the Ocean-Seal samādhi."[^4] Two things in this line are crucial. First, what is manifested is *all* of the ten directions, not one corner or one object. Second, the manner of manifesting is "in a single thought-moment" — not a sequential traversal but a simultaneous appearing-together within one thought. In other words, what the Ocean-Seal marks is not how fine or how deep the meditator has drawn the mind, but this one matter — *making the dharma-realm appear at once*; the spiritual power lies precisely in this capacity of concentration to manifest the whole all at once.

Immediately following this verse, the text sets the Ocean-Seal beside the Avataṃsaka samādhi, the two pointing to a single power that gathers in the whole: "by the power of the Buddha-Avataṃsaka samādhi, within a single mote of dust one enters samādhi and perfects the samādhis of all motes of dust."[^5] To "enter samādhi within one mote and perfect the samādhi of all motes" is to say that the concentration upon one mote already gathers in the concentration upon all motes — this and the Ocean-Seal's "single thought-moment manifesting the ten directions" are two statements of the same power that gathers in the whole: the Ocean-Seal speaks of it as the dharma-realm's appearing-together, the Avataṃsaka samādhi speaks of it as the mutual containment of one and all, and beneath both lies the same matter — that concentration may be reckoned not by quantity but by "the whole, at once."

The Ocean-Seal's figure should also be pointed out here, to be developed by Fazang in §IV. The Ocean-Seal takes its image from the great sea: once wind and waves have stilled and the sea-water has cleared, then heaven and earth and the myriad images, all of them, are sealed and reflected upon its surface at once. The point of the figure lies not in "stillness" but in "wholeness" and "at once" — not in mirroring one thing more clearly but in the myriad images appearing together in a single moment, not one of them unmanifested. Note that this figure differs in one crucial respect from the common simile of "polishing a mirror to reflect things": what the mirror-simile stresses is mostly clarity or brightness of reflection — a purity of degree; what the Ocean-Seal stresses is the *wholeness* and *evenness* of what is sealed — the sea's surface does not single out one thing for fine reflection but raises all images at once into joint manifestation, and that joint manifestation has no before-and-after. So the Ocean-Seal as a concentration cannot be measured on the scale of "depth of concentrative power"; what it marks is a structure of "the whole, present and appearing together at once," not a state of mind that can run shallow or deep. With this, scripture has set out the skeleton of the Ocean-Seal samādhi: manifestation in a single thought-moment, the ten directions appearing together, one mote gathering in all. For the complete *event* of "the dharma-realm appearing at once within concentration," one must return to the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter.

## III. The Archetype: Samantabhadra's Entry into Samādhi

The most complete scriptural archetype of the Ocean-Seal samādhi lies not in the "Sage's Crown" chapter, where the name "Ocean-Seal" occurs, but at the very opening of the whole sūtra, in the moment Samantabhadra enters samādhi. The "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter recounts how Samantabhadra, at the opening of the assembly, enters samādhi by the spiritual power of the Buddha; the text names his samādhi and describes the field within it:

> Then the bodhisattva-mahāsattva Samantabhadra, before the Tathāgata, seated upon the lion-throne of the lotus-treasury, by the spiritual power of the Buddha entered into samādhi. This samādhi is named: the Tathāgatagarbha-body of all Buddhas Vairocana, entering equally into the sameness-nature of all Buddhas, able to display within the dharma-realm the images of the many … the swirling sea of the dharma-realm, none of it not drawn in … wholly able to contain the dharma-realm of the ten directions; the ocean of the wisdom-light of the Buddhas of the three times all arises from this.[^6]

This passage is the pivot of this paper. Let its sense be parsed. First, the name of this samādhi is "the Tathāgatagarbha-body of all Buddhas Vairocana" — the concentration is no longer named after a single object as its support (as the *kasiṇa* totalities are named after earth, water, or fire as their objects) but is measured by "the treasury-body of the Buddhas" and "the sameness-nature of all Buddhas"; the very content of the concentration is the simultaneous embrace of the entire field of all Buddhas. (The doctrine of the Tathāgatagarbha-body of Vairocana as dharmakāya is not unfolded here; only the one face of it — as "the measure of this samādhi" — is taken.) Second, "able to display within the dharma-realm the images of the many" and "the swirling sea of the dharma-realm, none of it not drawn in" — what appears within the concentration is the *whole* dharma-realm, as the sea's surface mirrors the myriad images, as the sea-swirl gathers in a hundred rivers, with no aspect of the dharma-realm standing outside it. Third, "the ocean of the wisdom-light of the Buddhas of the three times all arises from this" — this concentration is not the passive undergoing of the dharma-realm's reflected appearance but the very source-state from which the dharma-realm issues: the wisdom-ocean of the Buddhas arises from it. Taken together, these three complete the scriptural form of the Ocean-Seal samādhi's "dharma-realm appearing at once within concentration."

More crucial still is the stroke that immediately follows, which presses "appearing together" all the way to "everywhere at once." The text goes on: not Samantabhadra alone enters this samādhi, but within every single mote of dust there is an equal number of Samantabhadras, each entering this one same concentration:

> … of all the motes of dust of this land, within each single mote there are world-ocean-mote-number Buddha-fields, within each field there are world-ocean-mote-number Buddhas, before each Buddha there are world-ocean-mote-number Samantabhadra bodhisattvas, and all of them likewise enter this samādhi of the Tathāgatagarbha-body of all Buddhas Vairocana.[^7]

This line is the sharpest doctrinal foothold of the Ocean-Seal samādhi. It says not merely that "the dharma-realm appears together within a concentration" (this is wholeness in *space*) but that "this one event of entering samādhi occurs simultaneously within every single mote of the dharma-realm" (this is simultaneity in *position*). In other words, the Ocean-Seal's "at once" is twofold: the myriad images appearing together within a single thought is simultaneity in *time*; the Samantabhadras within every mote equally entering is simultaneity in *place*. Concentration is here pressed to an outermost point — it is not a stretch of mind accomplished by some one person in some one place, but the samādhi-form of the very matter that "the dharma-realm itself is, at each of its points, simultaneously appearing thus, together." This is exactly the scriptural ground for carrying concentration to the measure of the dharma-realm: the Ocean-Seal is not "I behold the dharma-realm as appearing-together" but "the dharma-realm appears together thus of itself, and that appearing-together is itself a concentration."

Here a further point must be pressed, to mark the Ocean-Seal off from ordinary "states of concentration." On the usual understanding, a concentration has one who enters and an object entered, and a division of entering and exiting — a concentration is a state some person attains and maintains over a span of time. This stroke of the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter turns that whole frame over: the one who enters this concentration is not "a" Samantabhadra but an equal number of Samantabhadras within every mote of the dharma-realm, all entering together; the object entered is not "an" object but the appearing-together of the whole dharma-realm. With this, the correlative pairs — "one who enters / object entered," "entering / exiting," "the concentrator / the state of concentration" — all lose their accustomed purchase here, not because they are denied but because the concentration has been stretched so wide as to gather them all in. The Ocean-Seal as "the samādhi-form of dharma-realm dependent-origination" has its sense precisely here: it is not a concentration occurring at some place *within* the dharma-realm but the very matter of the dharma-realm's "simultaneous mutual identity" *as a whole*, presented as a concentration. What Fazang will later call the "essential body of the teaching" gathers up exactly this layer.

## IV. Fazang's Ocean-Seal Manifestation: The Samādhi as the Essential Body of the Whole Teaching

Scripture gave the Ocean-Seal its skeleton and archetype; the one who forged it into an integrated master-machine of the study of concentration was Fazang. Fazang's decisive step was to rebuild "the Ocean-Seal" from a samādhi-name within scripture into "the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation" — a mechanism explaining *how the dharma-realm can manifest simultaneously and all at once* — and then to judge it the essential body of the teaching upon which the whole of Huayan stands. This is where "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm" lies: concentration here is no longer one among the concentrations but the very crown that gathers in the whole teaching.

First, the *Cultivation of the Profound Meaning of the Avataṃsaka: Discernment of the Return to the Source by the Exhaustion of Delusion* establishes "one substance, two functions," whose first function is "the constant function of the ocean-seal sealing the myriad forms," and it fixes the root sense of the Ocean-Seal by the figure of the great sea:

> First, the constant function of the ocean-seal sealing the myriad forms. By "ocean-seal" is meant the original awareness of suchness. Delusion exhausted, the mind clarified, the myriad images appear together — just as the great sea raises waves through wind, and when the wind ceases the sea-water clears, and there is no image not manifested. … The scripture says: the forest of forms and the myriad images are sealed by a single dharma. By "single dharma" is meant the one mind. … Hence it is called the Ocean-Seal samādhi.[^8]

Here Fazang plainly marks three senses of the Ocean-Seal. First, the Ocean-Seal is the original awareness of suchness — so the "concentration" of the Ocean-Seal is not a psychological state cultivated into being but the clarifying function of original awareness itself. Second, "delusion exhausted, the mind clarified, the myriad images appear together" — the Ocean-Seal's capacity to make the myriad images appear together turns not on "applying force in beholding" but on "delusion exhausted, the mind clarified": as the clearing sea leaves no image unmanifested, so the mind with delusion exhausted seals the myriad images at once. This grounds the Ocean-Seal's "wholeness and simultaneity" in a clarified mind-substance, not in some technique of visualization. Third, "the forest of forms and the myriad images are sealed by a single dharma" — the reason the myriad images can appear together without obstructing one another is that they are alike sealed by "a single dharma (the one mind)"; the "seal" of the Ocean-Seal takes just this sense of "one seal, myriad images."

Second, Fazang then joins the Ocean-Seal to the first of the ten profound gates. The *Treatise on the Divisions of the Doctrine of the One Vehicle of Huayan* (the *Treatise of the Five Teachings*), judging the first of the ten profound gates, "the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence," states outright that what this gate rests upon is the Ocean-Seal samādhi:

> First, the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence. These ten meanings above correspond simultaneously to form one dependent-origination. There is no distinction of before and after, beginning and end … This rests upon the Ocean-Seal samādhi. Blazing forth, it is accomplished by simultaneous manifestation.[^9]

The ten profound gates are the rubric by which the Huayan school sets forth dharma-realm dependent-origination; this paper does not unfold the whole system of the ten gates but takes only this one joint with the study of concentration — the reason the first and foremost "simultaneous completeness" *can* be "simultaneous" is that what it rests upon is precisely the Ocean-Seal samādhi. In other words, the "simultaneous correspondence, no before-and-after" of the whole of dharma-realm dependent-origination is, for Fazang, not an abstract ontological assertion but is tied to a concentration: *this rests upon the Ocean-Seal samādhi, blazing forth in simultaneous manifestation*. The dharma-realm's simultaneity is the Ocean-Seal's simultaneity.

Third, in the *Record of Probing the Mystery of the Avataṃsaka*, Fazang presses this step to its furthest point: he establishes "the ninth, the gate of the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation," and judges that all the inexhaustible teachings take this ocean of samādhi as their essential body:

> The ninth, the gate of the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation … it is solely by taking this ocean of samādhi as the essential body of this teaching.[^10]

The "essential body" is the root on which a teaching stands and from which it issues. Fazang here judges the Ocean-Seal to be the very root upon which the whole of Huayan rests for its simultaneous total manifestation — not one samādhi among the scriptures, but the master-source, in the study of concentration, of "why this teaching can be spoken thus and manifest thus." Consider the weight of this judgment: to ask after a teaching's "essential body" is to ask on what, finally, this teaching's discourse and field of vision stand. Fazang's answer is: upon the Ocean-Seal samādhi. That is to say, the dharma-realm's total manifestation all at once, "one is all," the complete presence of host and guest, of which Huayan speaks — the reason these do not fall into empty talk but truly have a ground — is that they are, by their nature, the forms blazing forth within a single concentration (the Ocean-Seal). The Ocean-Seal is thus not merely "a samādhi Huayan happens to mention" but "the very samādhi on which Huayan's being Huayan depends." The Ocean-Seal of scripture (the name in the "Sage's Crown" chapter, the event in the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter) is here gathered up as the crown of the teaching — and this is the precise meaning of what this paper calls "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm": at the level of the classification of teachings, the Ocean-Seal is set in the highest rank, gathering in the whole teaching.

Taking Fazang's three steps together, the "blazing manifestation" of the "ocean-seal's blazing manifestation" (simultaneous manifestation, none unmanifested, no before-and-after) has its mechanism not in an externally applied power of beholding but in the one mind's delusion-exhausted clarifying. Delusion exhausted, the mind clarified, and the myriad images of themselves appear together; the myriad images' appearing-together is alike sealed by one mind, one dharma; this one mind's sealing of the myriad images is what the ten profound gates' "simultaneous completeness" rests upon; and this simultaneous completeness is the essential body of the whole of Huayan. One thread runs straight down: original awareness — delusion exhausted, the mind clarified — the myriad images sealed by one — simultaneous completeness — the essential body. The full breadth of the Ocean-Seal's sense as "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm" lies entirely within this one thread. Chengguan, too, in his commentary, follows this same gathering, threading the sense of the dharma-realm's simultaneous manifestation through the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation, adding nothing to and subtracting nothing from what Fazang established, while making yet plainer its standing as the master-machine of the teaching.[^11]

One philological note must be appended. The phrase so often spoken of in dharma-realm dependent-origination, "infinitely multiplied, endlessly interpenetrating" (重重無盡), is a coinage of the exegetes — Fazang, Chengguan, and the like — not scripture of the "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter; in citing it one should mark it as the exegetes' gloss, and not pass it off as a scriptural quotation.[^12] The point of this note is to hold the line of this paper's discipline — "establish the Ocean-Seal by scripture, its blazing manifestation by Fazang's coinage" — and not let the exegetes' summarizing language be back-filled as scriptural ground.

## V. A Middle-Path Correction: The Ocean-Seal Is a Samādhi, Not Merely the Metaphysics of Interpenetration

The thesis this paper establishes — that the Ocean-Seal samādhi is "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm," the concentration that carries concentration to the measure of the dharma-realm — is, on the present scholarly map, a proposition widely passed over yet seldom singled out by name. The following takes three voices as interlocutors, and corrects two terms easily slid together.

First, Francis H. Cook glosses Huayan's dharma-realm dependent-origination and the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena by the figure of "Indra's Net," reading Huayan's totality as a relational ontology — all dharmas mutually containing, mutually mirroring, just as the jewels of Indra's net each reflect the others.[^13] *What is sound:* this is the most classic English-language entry into "infinitely multiplied, endlessly interpenetrating," and the mutually-containing totality it describes is exactly the content the Ocean-Seal gathers in. *What is to be pressed further:* Cook reads totality chiefly as an ontological "fact" (all dharmas are mutually containing of themselves), yet gives no place to "the *concentration*-form by which one accedes to this totality"; this paper argues that the Ocean-Seal is precisely that concentration which "makes the dharma-realm appear at once" — totality is not only a fact asserted but a matter manifested within a concentration. (The dimensions of offering and giving carried by the Huayan complex belong to another axis and are not re-entered here.)

Second, Robert M. Gimello reads Huayan as a fusion of contemplative experience (the realization of contemplative practice, of the path of seeing) with metaphysics, holding that Huayan's root lies in meditative-contemplative experience rather than pure philosophy.[^14] *What is sound:* this is the closest ally of this paper — he has already refused to reduce Huayan to pure metaphysics and reconnected it to contemplative experience. *What is to be pressed further:* his "root in contemplation" is framed broadly (close to mystical experience in general), and does not single out "the Ocean-Seal" by name, establishing it as a concentration of determinate structure, the dharma-realm capstone; this paper is precisely an attempt, in the direction he has opened, to draw this concentration tight by name.

Third, the volume of Huayan studies edited by Imre Hamar (including Kimura Kiyotaka and others) represents the current scholarly baseline, examining dharma-realm dependent-origination from the angles of doctrine, history, and art; Fazang's textual authority receives careful critical treatment within it.[^15] *What is sound:* this is the common ground of current Huayan research. *What the gap is:* even amid so thorough a survey, "the Ocean-Seal as a concentration" is never an organizing category — research on dharma-realm dependent-origination runs mostly along the axes of doctrine, classification of teachings, and transmission, while "the Ocean-Seal = concentration's dharma-realm capstone," a synthesis taking concentration as its axis, remains a thinly disclosed gap. This paper's contribution is just this: to gather the threads scattered across the "Sage's Crown" chapter, the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter, and Fazang's treatises, along the axis of concentration into one meaning — the Ocean-Seal is that concentration which carries concentration to the measure of the dharma-realm and makes the dharma-realm appear at once. (Thomas Cleary's introductions to Huayan are noted here but not cited.)[^16]

Viewing the three together, one common blind line shows: the totality of dharma-realm dependent-origination is, in the scholarship, mostly handled as a proposition "about how all dharmas relate to one another" — ontological, doctrinal, a matter of the history of doctrinal classification. Few ask: what *kind* of concentration is it that lets this totality "appear at once"? And this is exactly where Fazang set his attention — not content to assert "all dharmas mutually contain," he wished to tie this mutual containment's simultaneous manifestation to the one concentration of the Ocean-Seal, and judge it the essential body of the teaching. What this paper does is to lift Fazang's step out of the context of the classification of teachings and set it back into the context of the study of concentration: the Ocean-Seal is not an appendix outside dharma-realm dependent-origination but the concentration-form on which dharma-realm dependent-origination depends for its being "something that can be manifested at once."

Two terms are to be corrected, lest they be wrongly merged.

The first: **"the Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi" (師子奮迅三昧) is not the lion-samādhi of the eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka*.** Commentators often adduce a further "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi" in Huayan to cite alongside the Ocean-Seal for the dharma-realm's wholeness. But on the face of the text, the eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka* (T0279) has no such name as "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi"; its dharma-realm lion-samādhi reads in the scripture as the **Lion's-Stretch samādhi** (*siṃha-vijṛmbhita*, 師子頻申三昧): the Buddha enters the Lion's-Stretch samādhi, and all the worlds are wholly adorned and purified, whereby the Jeta grove is expanded.[^17] The name "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi" issues from the *Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom* and the *Larger Prajñāpāramitā* line, and its reading as "mastery in entering and exiting the concentrations" was treated in this volume's earlier papers on non-abiding concentration and the Mahāyāna expansion of samādhi; should this paper take up the lion-samādhi, it renders it uniformly as "Lion's-Stretch" and cites the eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka*, taking the one face of the dharma-realm's total purification, neither conflating two names and two senses nor restating the "mastery in entering and exiting" reading.[^18]

The second: **the Ocean-Seal is not "one of the ten great samādhis."** The ten great samādhis listed in the "Ten Concentrations" chapter (Universal Light, Wondrous Light … Dharma-Realm Mastery, Unobstructed Wheel, and so on) do not include the Ocean-Seal; the Ocean-Seal is a term of the "Sage's Crown" chapter, the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter, and Fazang's system. Hence one must not list the Ocean-Seal as "one of the ten concentrations" and number it among the ten great samādhis — the Ocean-Seal's standing is not as one within the ten concentrations but as that crown which Fazang judged to be "what simultaneous completeness rests upon, the essential body of the whole teaching."

## VI. Conclusion: Outward to the Limit, Inward to the Limit — One Spine

The Ocean-Seal samādhi has carried "concentration" to the furthest reach of its outward extent. It is not the road inward of drawing the mind ever finer, holding the object ever more single, but the reverse road of stretching concentration to be of one measure with the whole dharma-realm: within a single thought-moment the ten directions appear together, within every mote a Samantabhadra equally enters, the forest of forms and the myriad images sealed and manifested at once. Fazang further judged this one concentration to be the essential body of the whole of Huayan — the Ocean-Seal is not one among the concentrations but the crown that gathers in the whole teaching and lets the dharma-realm manifest simultaneously and all at once. This is the sense of "concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm."

Set back into the spine of this volume, its place becomes clear. This volume has from the first been dismantling one equation: concentration does not equal the graded stations of the four jhānas and eight attainments, is not the single-plank bridge of "ever deeper sitting, ascending rung by rung." The earlier papers dismantled it from various directions — the Pāli tradition's own jhāna-ladder was re-surveyed; Chan drew concentration inward to the limit (the living concentration of freedom-from-signs amid signs, of the body at ease whether speaking or silent, moving or still); the preceding Lotus paper spread concentration across the four postures (the concentration-as-conduct of "in all four postures the mind ever in concentration"). The Ocean-Seal established here is the last fulcrum of this spine: it reaches concentration outward to the limit. Chan's living concentration (inward to the limit) and Huayan's Ocean-Seal (outward to the limit) form just these two poles, inner and outer — one drawn inward to freedom-from-signs amid signs, one reached outward to the dharma-realm's appearing-together — and what the two poles jointly bear witness to is one and the same matter: that the essence of concentration lies not in the stations of the four jhānas and eight attainments, that concentration can be both drawn inward until there is no further inward and reached outward until there is no further outward, and that both alike are concentration. Carrying forward the preceding paper's concentration-as-conduct, the present paper here completes that spine: the Lotus spread concentration across the bearing of one body, Huayan carries concentration to the measure of the dharma-realm, and the single part of Lotus-and-Huayan is thereby brought to a close.

As for how this concentration, pressed out to its two poles inner and outer, finally turns back toward *prajñā* — how it completes the three trainings in mutual fulfilment with wisdom — that is the task the volume's final paper alone will bear; here only a single thread is pointed at from afar, not unfolded in this paper.[^19]

Concentration may be as small as a single thought's clarifying, or as vast as the measure of the dharma-realm; and of its vastness, Huayan marks it in one line — **in a single thought-moment it pervades the ten directions.**

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## Notes

[^1]: The Ocean-Seal's naming-field (its positioning within the naming-grammar of the hundred-and-eight samādhis, the Śūraṅgama samādhi as the king among samādhis, the "Sage's Crown" verse as its seed) is treated in this volume's paper on the Mahāyāna expansion of samādhi (SAMĀDHI P15, *Samādhi as Mahāyāna Expansion*); that paper in plain words handed to the present paper the development of the Ocean-Seal as the dharma-realm capstone, the integrated system of the ocean-seal's manifestation. This paper takes up that bequest and does not restate the naming-grammar.

[^2]: The "giving" axis of the Avataṃsaka–Samantabhadra–Entry-into-the-Dharma-Realm complex (the broad cultivation of offerings, the offering of Dharma, the "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter as the final form of giving) is the home ground of another series (DĀNA, Part 8); this paper takes the axis of concentration (the event of Samantabhadra's entry into samādhi) and does not treat the vows of Samantabhadra or the matter of giving.

[^3]: The full system of dharma-realm dependent-origination and the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena (the complete unfolding of the ten profound gates, the perfect fusion of the six characteristics, the ontology of "one is all") is not what this paper takes; it takes only the single joint with the study of concentration — that what "the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence" rests upon is the Ocean-Seal samādhi. For the doctrinal view bound up with "one is all," see the relevant papers of this project's eight-part series.

[^4]: *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (eighty fascicles), T0279, fascicle 14, "Sage's Crown" chapter (twelfth), p. 0073c19.

[^5]: Ibid., T0279, fascicle 14, p. 0074a04. The Ocean-Seal (the dharma-realm's appearing-together) and the Avataṃsaka samādhi (one mote gathering in all concentrations) are set side by side as one and the same power that gathers in the whole.

[^6]: *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (eighty fascicles), T0279, fascicle 7, "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter (third), pp. 0032c26–0033a03. Per T0279 the form is "Vairocana" (毘盧遮那). The quotation abridges at two places, "vast and unobstructed, like unto space" and "giving rise to all samādhi-dharmas."

[^7]: Ibid., T0279, fascicle 7, pp. 0033a08–a14. Within each mote a field, within each field a Buddha, before each Buddha world-ocean-mote-number Samantabhadras, all equally entering this one same samādhi — this is the scriptural ground of "everywhere at once."

[^8]: *Cultivation of the Profound Meaning of the Avataṃsaka: Discernment of the Return to the Source by the Exhaustion of Delusion*, T1876, pp. 0637b21–b28 (set forth by Fazang). The first of the "one substance, two functions" is the constant function of the ocean-seal sealing the myriad forms.

[^9]: *Treatise on the Divisions of the Doctrine of the One Vehicle of Huayan* (the *Treatise of the Five Teachings*), T1866, pp. 0505a13–a16 (set forth by Fazang). The first of the ten profound gates, "the gate of simultaneous complete intercorrespondence," states outright that what it rests upon is the Ocean-Seal samādhi.

[^10]: *Record of Probing the Mystery of the Avataṃsaka*, T1733, p. 0119c11 ff. (set forth by Fazang). Establishes "the ninth, the gate of the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation," judging the ocean of the Ocean-Seal samādhi to be the essential body of the whole of Huayan.

[^11]: Chengguan, following Fazang's sense of the ocean-seal's blazing manifestation, gathers the dharma-realm's simultaneous manifestation; see the *Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra*, T1735 (set forth by Chengguan).

[^12]: "Infinitely multiplied, endlessly interpenetrating" (重重無盡) is a coinage of the exegetes — Fazang's *Record of Probing the Mystery*, the *Treatise of the Five Teachings*, Chengguan's *Commentary*, and the like — not scripture of the "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter; in citing it one should mark it as the exegetes' gloss and not present it as a scriptural quotation.

[^13]: Cook glosses Huayan's dharma-realm dependent-origination and the unobstructed interpenetration of phenomena by the figure of "Indra's Net," reading totality as a relational ontology. For the bibliographic entry, see the References.

[^14]: Gimello holds Huayan's root to lie in the fusion of contemplative experience with metaphysics, rather than in pure philosophy. For the bibliographic entry, see the References.

[^15]: The volume of Huayan studies edited by Hamar (including Kimura Kiyotaka and others) represents the current scholarly baseline, examining dharma-realm dependent-origination from the angles of doctrine, history, and art. For the bibliographic entry, see the References.

[^16]: Cleary's introductions to Huayan are noted here but not cited. For the bibliographic entry, see the References.

[^17]: *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (eighty fascicles), T0279, fascicle 60, "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter, p. 0320a12 ff. The eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka* reads "Lion's-Stretch samādhi" (師子頻申三昧), not "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi."

[^18]: The name "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi" and its reading as "mastery in entering and exiting" are treated in this volume's papers on non-abiding concentration (SAMĀDHI P14) and the Mahāyāna expansion of samādhi (P15), issuing from the *Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom* / *Larger Prajñāpāramitā* line, a different scripture and different sense from the eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka*'s "Lion's-Stretch"; this paper does not restate it.

[^19]: The comprehensive treatment of concentration's return to *prajñā*, and of concentration and wisdom completing the three trainings in mutual fulfilment, is reserved for the volume's final paper; it is not developed here.

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## Primary Source Index

| Short | Full Title | Number | Translator / Author |
|-------|------------|--------|---------------------|
| Avataṃsaka | *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (eighty fascicles) | T0279 | trans. Śikṣānanda (Tang) |
| Return to the Source | *Cultivation of the Profound Meaning of the Avataṃsaka: Discernment of the Return to the Source by the Exhaustion of Delusion* | T1876 | Fazang (Tang) |
| Treatise of the Five Teachings | *Treatise on the Divisions of the Doctrine of the One Vehicle of Huayan* | T1866 | Fazang (Tang) |
| Probing the Mystery | *Record of Probing the Mystery of the Avataṃsaka* | T1733 | Fazang (Tang) |
| Commentary on the Avataṃsaka | *Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra* | T1735 | Chengguan (Tang) |

## References

- Cook, Francis H. *Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra.* University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977.
- Gimello, Robert M. "Chih-yen and the Foundations of Hua-yen Buddhism." PhD diss., Columbia University, 1976.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. *Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism.* Asiatische Forschungen 151. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007.
- Cleary, Thomas. *Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism.* Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1983.

## Cross-Reference

- **SAMĀDHI P15, *Samādhi as Mahāyāna Expansion*:** the Ocean-Seal's naming-field (the naming-grammar of the hundred-and-eight samādhis, the Śūraṅgama samādhi as the king among samādhis, the "Sage's Crown" verse as its seed) is established there — the present paper takes up that explicit bequest and develops the Ocean-Seal as the dharma-realm capstone, the integrated system of the ocean-seal's manifestation; for the naming-grammar see that paper.
- **SAMĀDHI P14, *Non-Abiding Concentration*:** the "mastery in entering and exiting" reading of the Lion's-Roused-Vigour / transcendence samādhi is its home ground — the present paper takes the one face of the dharma-realm's total purification in the eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka*'s "Lion's-Stretch samādhi"; for the "mastery in entering and exiting" reading see that paper.
- **DĀNA, Part 8 (the dharma-realm offering of Huayan):** the offering-and-giving dimensions of the Avataṃsaka–Samantabhadra–Entry-into-the-Dharma-Realm (the broad cultivation of offerings, the offering of Dharma, the "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter as the final form of giving) are its home ground — the present paper takes the axis of concentration (the event of Samantabhadra's entry into samādhi); for the axis of giving see that part.
- **SAMĀDHI P27, *The Lotus's Peaceful-Practice Samādhi* (this part's first paper):** the Lotus's concentration-as-conduct, spreading concentration across the four postures — the present paper carries it forward and completes the part's spine by reaching concentration outward to the measure of the dharma-realm.
- **SAMĀDHI P31 (the volume's final paper):** concentration's return to *prajñā*, concentration and wisdom completing the three trainings in full — §VI of the present paper points at a single thread only, to be made plain in the final paper.

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*Paper:* SAMĀDHI-P28 · *The Ocean-Seal Samādhi of the Avataṃsaka* · **SAMĀDHI · Part VIII · Lotus and Huayan**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates (六行門)
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations are verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka — the *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* in eighty fascicles (trans. Śikṣānanda of the Tang, T0279: the "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" chapter on the samādhi "the Tathāgatagarbha-body of all Buddhas Vairocana"; the "Sage's Crown" chapter on "the Ocean-Seal samādhi's spiritual power"; the "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" chapter's "Lion's-Stretch samādhi"); the *Cultivation of the Profound Meaning of the Avataṃsaka: Discernment of the Return to the Source* (Fazang of the Tang, T1876); the *Treatise on the Divisions of the Doctrine of the One Vehicle of Huayan* (Fazang, T1866); the *Record of Probing the Profundities of the Avataṃsaka* (Fazang, T1733 — "this samādhi-sea alone is the essential body of the teaching"); and the *Commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (Chengguan of the Tang, T1735). Volume and page follow the Taishō. The eighty-fascicle *Avataṃsaka*'s lion-samādhi reads "Lion's-Stretch" (師子頻申), distinct from the "Lion's-Roused-Vigour samādhi" (師子奮迅) of the Larger Prajñā line treated in P14 and P15. Cook, Gimello, and Hamar (with Kimura) are cited by paraphrase only, for dialogue and contrast, not doctrinal equation.
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

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*Concentration small as a thought's clarifying, vast as the dharma-realm's measure: and where it is vast, the whole of it is sealed at once upon a single stilled surface — in a single thought-moment, pervading the ten directions.*