With great impact on the development of Chan, this was the approach taken by the Chinese Huayan thinker, Fazang (643–712). Although proponents of Chan often stressed its distinctiveness, Chan monastics lived in community with monks and nuns who had allegiances to other Buddhist traditions. Indeed, rather than being a source of doctrinal schisms, the scriptural commentaries and philosophical essays being produced by thinkers from the full range of Buddhist traditions can be thought of as constituting a shared scaffolding for engagement in “Buddhist studies”. Fazang was among the most respected Buddhist intellectuals of his time. In contrast with those who understood the Mahāyāna assertion of the emptiness (śūnyatā) of all things as an assertion about the absence or negation of identity—an assertion that denied ultimate actuality to things as individual existents—Fazang linked realizing the emptiness of all things to realizing that interdependence is an internal or constitutive relationship. That is, interdependence consists in dynamic interpenetration. In a move that paralleled the description in the Awakening of Faith of the “one mind” (yixin, 一心) of ultimate reality as having two aspects—ti (體), “embodied structure” and yong (用) “function”—Fazang held that the dharmadhātu or realm of truth/ultimate reality should be seen nondualistically in terms of both informing principles (li, 理) and phenomenal experiences (shi, 事). That is the dharmadhātu or realm of truth/ultimate reality is at once a realm of shi or experiential matters (事法界, shi fajie); a realm of li or informing patterns/principles (理法界, li fajie); a realm of the mutual non-obstruction of li and shi (理事無礙法界, li-shi wuai fajie); and a realm of the mutual non-obstruction of shi and shi (事事無礙法界, shi-shi wuai fajie). Thus, very much in keeping with the fact that the Sanskrit term, “dharma”, can mean a specific existent, a phenomenal unit or a teaching, the nonduality of the dharmadhātu implies a relationship of mutual determination between the domains of metaphysics and epistemology.