“Science” in Huayan Buddhism: The Apologetic Discourse of Zhong Maosen (b. 1973)
Saiping An
Religions March 2, 2026 DOI: 10.3390/rel17030309 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Case study Case report Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Mysticism |
| Keywords | Apologetics Pejorative Reinterpretation Narrative Postmodernism Islam Epistemology Identity music Aesthetics Foundationalism Apprehension Performative utterance Materiality auditing |
| Key findings | Zhong Maosen's apologetic use of modern physical theories to defend Huayan texts is a creative reconstruction that blurs ontological and epistemological boundaries, recasting mystical narratives as prescientific insights. |
Abstract
This study addresses a lacuna in Buddhist modernism scholarship, which has extensively examined Buddhists’ employment of science as an instrument for Buddhist apologetics across Theravada, Yogacara, Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, yet has largely neglected Huayan Buddhism. Taking an influential contemporary Buddhist adherent, Zhong Maosen (b. 1973), as a case study, it analyzes his deployment of modern physical theories—including relativity, string theory, mass–energy equivalence, black hole and dark matter theories—as an apologetic tool to defend Huayan texts. Zhong argues that some narratives in Huayan texts anticipate these physical theories and even depict unrealized technologies. Zhong’s interpretive strategy amounts to creative reconstruction rather than technical correspondence: he blurs ontological and epistemological boundaries between Huayan texts and physics, recasting the mystical narratives of Huayan texts as prescientific insights to defuse pejorative “anti-scientific” connotations. Shaped by his dual identity as a former secular academic and ordained monk, Zhong’s apologetics reconcile his own epistemic shift while situating itself within the historical trajectory of Buddhist modernism’s engagement with the epistemic authority of scientific rationality. This case study attempts to enrich understanding of how science functions as a medium for contemporary Buddhist apologetics and fills the research gap of the modern scientific reinterpretation of Huayan Buddhism.
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