About Chengguan (monk)

Chengguan (738–839) was an important representative of the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, under whom the school gained great influence. Chengguan lived through the reigns of nine emperors and was an honored teacher to seven emperors starting with Xuanzong (玄宗) until Wenzong (文宗). The General Survey of Longxing’s Chronology chronicled during Southern Song and A Brief Account of the Five Patriarchs of Fajiezong of Qing recorded a difference of one year in Chengguan’s birth year, but both documented that he lived to be 102. According to the Song Biographies of Preeminent Monks Chengguan had studied the vinaya, the Three Śāstras when they were popular studies in the south and under more than one teacher, perused commentaries such as Awakening Faith in the Mahāyāna, studied the Avataṃsaka Sūtra with Indian master Fashen 法詵, the Lotus Sūtra and the Vimalakīrti Sūtra and their treatises, the Chan methods of north and south, not to mention the various Chinese philosophical classics, historical works, philology, the Siddham script, Indian philosophies, the four Vedas, the five sciences, mantras, and rituals. This erudite intellectual lectured on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and its insights, including his various commentaries.