ABSTRACT
With the foregoing explanation of the Philosophy of Emptiness as a foothold, we may now proceed to discuss the Philosophy of Totality as construed by the four Hwa Yen masters, Tu Shun, Chih Yen, Fa Tsang, and Ch'eng Kuan. The gist of Hwa Yen philosophy can be summarized in two phrases: mutual penetration (or mutual entering), and mutual identity. Mutual identity is almost an equivalent of the Heart Sūtra's dictum that form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form, whereas mutual penetration corresponds to the principle of dependent-arising of the Śūnyatā doctrine which states that no thing, whether concrete or abstract, mundane or transcendental, has an independent or isolated existence, but all things depend upon one another for their existence and functions. The mutual penetration principle of Hwa Yen, however, seems to have gone one step further; it makes the concept of dependent-arising more explicit by proposing the following three graphic phrases: simultaneous-mutual-arising, simultaneous-mutual-entering, and simultaneous-mutual-containment, which are indicated in the diagram below.
