LANGUAGE AND TRUTH IN HUA-YEN BUDDHISM

It has been observed in contemporary Buddhist studies that new and distinct ways of expressing Buddhist "ultimate truth" and its relation to ordinary truth and experience began to emerge in the Chinese Buddhist tradition in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. During this period of Chinese history, several systems of Buddhist thought arose that seemed to mitigate the primacy of negative language in references to "ultimate truth" and the predominantly negative evaluation of conventional truth and experience that had dominated the tradition previously. This development has been noticed especially in the Sui/T'ang systems of Buddhist thought, T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen, as well as in later Ch'an thought and practice.