Utopia as Process in the Gaṇḍavyūha: A Narrative Analysis and Its Comparative Implications

Recent scholarship in both Buddhist and Christian contexts has increasingly explored connections among utopia, the Pure Land, and the Kingdom of God, reinterpreting them as dynamic, this-worldly processes. Yet the role of narrative form in articulating such processual understandings remains underexplored. This study examines how the Gaṇḍavyūha (Ru fajie pin 入法界品) constructs the bodhisattva path through narrative structure, with particular focus on the episode of the Night Goddess Vāsantī. Using a narratological framework, the analysis integrates Seymour Chatman’s distinction between Story and Discourse with four analytical categories—Words, Dialogue, Actions, and Narration—adapted from Robert Alter’s work on biblical narrative. Close reading demonstrates that doctrinal meaning emerges through patterned interactions among perception, speech, action, and retrospective narration. Within this configuration, saṃsāra is presented as a closed and hazardous realm, while encounters with spiritual friends function as transformative interventions that redirect the practitioner’s trajectory. The avadāna structure further situates present attainment within an extended causal continuum, highlighting the reproducibility of the path. The study argues that the Gaṇḍavyūha presents a narrative model of practice in which utopia is not a fixed destination but an ongoing process enacted through a sequence of encounters. From a comparative perspective, this model offers a conceptual basis for Buddhist–Christian dialogue by highlighting relational and processual dimensions of transformation as they emerge in discussions of utopia, the Pure Land, and the Kingdom of God, without presupposing doctrinal equivalence.