大方廣佛華嚴經 · T279 · tr. Śikṣānanda, Tang, 695–699 CE · 80 fascicles · Complete

The Avataṃsaka Sūtra

The largest translation project on this site: the "Flower Garland Sūtra" in its standard eighty-fascicle form, translated fascicle by fascicle from the beginning, with no fixed schedule for completion. This is Vairocana Buddha's own sūtra — not a teaching delivered in ordinary speech to an ordinary audience, but a direct vision of the awakened state itself, in which Indra's net of mutually reflecting jewels becomes a description of how reality actually works: every phenomenon contains and is contained by every other, without contradiction and without end.

Translator: Ru-Yi Meditation Center Source: Taishō T279 (Śikṣānanda, Tang) Status: complete — all eighty fascicles and all thirty-nine chapters of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra now translated in full, ending with chapter 39 (入法界品, entering the dharma-realm)

Chinese: 《大方廣佛華嚴經》, "The Sūtra of the Buddha's Great, Vast, Flower-Adorned [Wisdom]" — universally known by its short title, 華嚴經, "the Flower Garland (or Flower Adornment) Sūtra."
This translation: Translated by Śikṣānanda (實叉難陀), a monk from Khotan, at the Tang court between 695 and 699 CE, at Empress Wu Zetian's own request — the newer and now-standard of the sūtra's two major complete Chinese translations, roughly 693,500 characters across eighty fascicles and thirty-nine chapters (品).
Other versions: An earlier translation by Buddhabhadra (佛馱跋陀羅, Eastern Jin, c. 420 CE) survives in sixty fascicles (T278) and remains the version most classical commentary, including Fazang's own Tanxuanji, was written against. A separate, later translation by Prajña (般若, 798 CE) is not a third complete translation of the whole sūtra but an expanded standalone edition of its final chapter alone — the Gaṇḍavyūha, Sudhana's pilgrimage — closing with the Vows of Samantabhadra, already translated in full on this site as its own page.
Structure: Traditionally described as seven assemblies (七處) held across nine gatherings (九會) in eight different locations, moving from the earthly bodhimaṇḍa where the Buddha had just attained awakening up through a sequence of heavens and back to earth again — thirty-nine chapters in all, opening with the Wondrous Adornment of the Lords of the World (世主妙嚴品) and closing with Sudhana's pilgrimage to fifty-three teachers in the Gaṇḍavyūha.
Scale: Roughly 693,500 characters of source text across eighty fascicles — about 6.2 times the length of the Liang Huang Bao Chan (the largest completed project on this site to date) and nearly eight times the length of the Lotus Sūtra. This is being translated fascicle by fascicle, with no target date for completion; already-related material — Vasubandhu's treatise on the Ten Grounds chapter and the standalone Vows of Samantabhadra — is already complete on this site.
Commentary: Reading notes throughout draw, where cited, on the general doctrinal framework the Huayan school built around this sūtra — most consequentially Fazang's (法藏, 643–712) systematization of the "unimpeded interpenetration of phenomena" (事事無礙) and Chengguan's (澄觀, 738–839) massive commentary written specifically for this eighty-fascicle translation. Where no specific classical passage is cited, notes are Ru-Yi's own.

About This Sūtra

Every other sūtra on this site opens with the Buddha teaching to an audience that can understand ordinary speech. The Avataṃsaka does something different: its first chapters describe, in a single unbroken cascade of imagery, the scene of the Buddha's own enlightenment as beheld directly by advanced bodhisattvas — a bodhi tree of vajra and lapis lazuli, a throne reflecting the whole cosmos, an assembly of deities so vast it is described only by naming a fraction of it before saying "and so on." Traditional exegesis reads this not as poetic excess but as the sūtra's own method: reality described the way an awakened mind actually perceives it, before that perception is narrowed down into a teachable sequence of doctrine.

What later became the systematic teaching of the Huayan school — the "unimpeded interpenetration of phenomena and phenomena" (事事無礙法界), the image of Indra's net in which every jewel reflects every other jewel reflecting it back — is already present in this opening vision, before a single word of formal doctrine has been spoken. The sūtra's traditional structure carries this same logic forward through its bodhisattva path: the ten faiths, ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and ten grounds are not ten separate stages to be completed one after another so much as ten ways of describing a single, total realization from different angles — which is also why this site's translation of Vasubandhu's treatise on just the Ten Grounds chapter alone already runs to fifty-two parts.

How This Page Will Grow

Given the sheer scale involved, this sūtra is being translated fascicle by fascicle, each part covering a natural narrative or doctrinal unit rather than a fixed length — some parts will cover a whole fascicle, others (particularly the sūtra's famous, extraordinarily long assemblies of named deities) only a portion of one. There is no schedule for completion; this index will be updated as each new part goes live.

The Parts

Part 1 世主妙嚴品之一（初） · Fascicle 1 (of 80) · The awakening site, and the assembly of bodhisattvas led by Samantabhadra

The Avataṃsaka Sūtra

About This Sūtra

How This Page Will Grow

The Parts

Resources