Prolegomenon for Fazang’s Essay on the Golden Lion

Fazang is a seminal figure for the tradition of Huayan Buddhism. Essay on the Golden Lion is the most widely translated into English of his writings. Yet systematic English-language scholarship on Fazang's Essay is relatively sparse. Scholars agree that the central focus of the Essay is the relation between principle and thing — a relation akin to the one between emptiness and form and, according to Fazang, also akin to the relation between the golden substance of a lion statue and the statue itself. Scholars disagree about what principle is. They also disagree about how Fazang conceptualizes the relation between principle and thing. This paper develops a novel interpretation for Fazang's conception of the principle-thing relation. The methodology involves situating Fazang's metaphor of the golden lion in relation to prior efforts, by Chinese Buddhists, to conceptualize the emptiness-form relation and using theoretical considerations, from some of Fazang's other writings, to interpret various remarks Fazang makes about his metaphor of the golden lion.