The four dharmadhatus as a reflective sequence
Move through four ways of seeing the same world, from phenomena, to principle, to the two ways they do not obstruct each other, as a sequence of attention rather than a ranking.
Why it works
The four-dharmadhatu scheme is a Huayan account of four realms of reality: the realm of phenomena, the realm of principle, the non-obstruction of principle and phenomena, and the non-obstruction of phenomena with phenomena. A reader who meets each in turn is asked to see the same things as particulars, as expressions of one principle, as particulars that express that principle without contradiction, and finally as particulars that do not obstruct one another. The sequence is used as a contemplation because it moves attention from detail toward relation, without asking the mind to drop the detail.
How to do it
- Pick a single event from the day. Start by describing it as a particular thing with its specific details: the time, the place, the people.
- Shift to the principle behind it: the general pattern, such as change, cause and effect, or the shared conditions it depends on.
- Hold both views together. Notice that the particular is an expression of the principle, and that the principle is nowhere except in particulars.
- Move to the last view: notice how this event does not block other events from happening, and how each event lets others occur.
- Finish by returning to the particular event and noticing what has changed in how it looks.
Evidence
The four-realm scheme is traditionally associated with the Huayan patriarchs. The Wikipedia summary (read 2026-10-14) lists the four realms in the order used here, but its attribution rests on a dead source, so this page could not verify which patriarch first set the scheme out. I found no fetchable study of this sequence as a practice. (mechanistic)
This page could not verify which Huayan patriarch first set out the four-realm scheme, and I have not read a scholarly source on its origin.
Sources
Common mistake
Treating the four as stages to pass through and be finished with. They are four ways of seeing the same things, and the practice is returning to particulars with a wider view.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Huayan Buddhism and Indra’s Net: Mutual Containment in the Flower Ornament School
- Indra’s net reflection: one object containing its conditions
Take one ordinary object or event and trace how it holds the reflections of its causes, its makers and the people it touches, until the boundary you started with looks porous.
- The golden lion: form and its substance
Take a figure that has a clear shape, and contemplate how it is made of one substance that does not change when the shape is broken or remade.
- Samantabhadra’s ten vows as an aspiration practice
Read the Avataṃsaka’s closing vows of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra as ten aspirations to act, and use them to shape what you intend to do with your practice.
- Seeing mutual containment in work and home
In an ordinary relationship or task, notice the parts of other people’s lives that are present in what you do, and what your choices contain of them.
- Choosing between Huayan and interbeing for a given moment
When two Buddhist ways of seeing dependence both seem right, use a small set of questions to see which one fits the situation in front of you.
Related concepts
- Dependent Origination: How Suffering Arises and Ceases
The twelve-link chain as a map of how suffering sustains itself — and where to step off
- Engaged Buddhism: Interbeing, the Mindfulness Trainings and Practice in the World
How Thích Nhất Hạnh and Buddhist movements across Asia joined meditation and social action — and how it is practised
- Śūnyatā: Emptiness and the Two Truths in Madhyamaka
Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: why nothing has a fixed essence, and why that is not the same as nothing
- Buddha-Nature (Tathāgatagarbha): A Buddha Hidden in Every Being
The Mahāyāna teaching that a buddha is already present in every being, and how practitioners work with it
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