The Avatamsaka Realm: The Unfolding of the Four-stage Training (I)

From December 12 to 28, 2025, Ling Jiou Mountain held its annual Avatamsaka Dharma Assembly. It is a great delight that so many participants enthusiastically take part in this exceptionally auspicious and sacred gathering year after year. After attaining enlightenment, the very first scripture elucidated by the Buddha was the Avatamsaka Sutra. In this discourse, the Buddha fully revealed the entire process and scope of the Avatamsaka realm that he himself had realized, presenting the complete path of realization to sentient beings. Subsequently, the Buddha’s teachings were systematized into four distinct stages, forming a comprehensive framework of Dharma education.

In essence, the Four-stage Training is none other than the Avatamsaka teaching itself. However, because the profundity of the Buddha’s awakened realization is exceedingly difficult to comprehend in its entirety, it was provisionally divided into four phases to facilitate progressive understanding. The first of the four stages—the Agama Stage—focuses on uprooting attachment to the self. It is precisely because of attachment to the self that cyclic existence arises. Thus, during the Agama Stage, this issue is elucidated in a clear and accessible manner: within physical form, no self can be identified; within internal naming designations, there is likewise no self; and within external forms, no self can be found. When neither internal nor external phenomena contain a self, what then is there to contend over? What basis remains for resentment, hostility, or enmity?

The second stage is the Prajna Stage, which expounds the teaching of emptiness. All phenomena are emptiness; nowhere can one find any truly inherent existence. Yet habitually, beings grasp at what lacks intrinsic substance. Whereas the Agama Stage aims to eradicate attachment to self, the Prajna Stage strives to dismantle attachment to phenomena. Together, these are expressed as “the self is unattainable, and all phenomena are unattainable.” When one has thoroughly internalized both the Agama and Prajna teachings, the mind no longer fixates on anything whatsoever.

Once attachment to self and attachment to phenomena have been eradicated, the next step is the engendering of bodhicitta. Accordingly, the Lotus Sutra teaches the subsequent generation of bodhicitta. Only through bodhicitta can the Buddha’s mind-seal be transmitted, enabling more beings to encounter the Dharma and transcend cyclic birth and death. In the present age, many people are unable to find a meaningful direction in life. Therefore, it is essential to propagate the Buddhadharma in order to liberate suffering beings and help them resolve the fundamental delusion of existence. Only through the Dharma is there a true path forward; only through the Dharma can the way out of life’s impasse be found.

To practice Dharma is to refrain from mistaking notions for the objective reality of samsara. All notions are themselves causes of cyclic existence. Therefore, we must eradicate both the notion of self and attachment to self, and likewise uproot the attachment to all phenomena. These correspond to the realization of the emptiness of self and the emptiness of phenomena. Only by realizing both can afflictions be brought to an end and cyclic birth and death truly cease. To be able to study and practice the Buddhadharma is truly a profound blessing—especially to participate in a Dharma assembly focused on the Avatamsaka state of the Buddha’s realization and to recite the Avatamsaka Sutra together. Such an opportunity is indeed a rare fortune accumulated over countless lifetimes.