The Avatamsaka Sutra Today: The Perfectly Interconnected World of the Flower Treasury

Some may ask: In this age of information overload, breakneck speed, and all kinds of everyday anxieties, what relevance can an ancient classic written more than two thousand years ago still have for us?

The answer is that the wisdom of the Avatamsaka Sutra is precisely the antidote and nourishment our age needs most.

· As the ecological crisis grows ever more severe, we urgently need a worldview that sees nature as a living community bound to us by blood and sharing our fate, rather than something we may conquer and exploit at will. The Avatamsaka Sutra’s teaching of “the interdependent arising of the dharmadhatu” provides the highest philosophical foundation for this ecological perspective. It tells us that harming the environment means harming ourselves, and that adorning the world means adorning our own minds.

· As social division and clashes between civilizations continue to unfold, we urgently need wisdom that can rise above an either-or mindset and recognize the potential for different individuals, groups, and cultures to depend on and enrich one another. The Avatamsaka Sutra’s vision of “unimpeded interpenetration among all phenomena” is the deepest interpretation of an ideal society where differences coexist in harmony and each culture’s beauty is shared with all.

· When people feel lost, lonely, and adrift in fragmented lives, we urgently need a perspective that can reveal the sacred and the sublime in the most ordinary things, and discover the infinite and eternal within our finite lives. The Avatamsaka Sutra tells us that a single good thought can pervade the entire dharmadhatu, and a single good deed can adorn a whole land. Each of us is a jewel in Indra’s Net, unique in its own right and reflecting the radiance of the entire net. Our lives have irreplaceable value and dignity.