Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (reconstructed Sanskrit title: Mahāyāna śraddhotpādaśāstra;[1] Chinese: 大乘起信論; pinyin: Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn; Japanese: 大乗起信論; Korean: 대승기신론; Vietnamese: Đại thừa khởi tín luận) is a text of Mahayana Buddhism. Though attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, the text is regarded as a Chinese composition.

The text

Origin and translations

While the text is attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, no Sanskrit version of the text is extant. The earliest known versions are written in Chinese, and contemporary scholars believe that the text is a Chinese composition.[2][3][4][5]

Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally thought to have translated the text[6] in 553. However, many modern scholars now opine that it was actually composed by Paramartha or one of his students.[7] King remarks that, although Paramartha undoubtedly was among the most prolific translators of Sanskrit texts into Chinese, he may have originated, not translated, the East Asian Yogācāra text of the Buddha-nature Treatise (Chinese: 佛性論) as well as the Awakening of Faith.[8][lower-alpha 1] Other experts dispute that it has anything to do at all with Paramartha.[9]

A later translation or reedited version was attributed to the Khotanese monk Śikṣānanda (active 695-700).[10]

Title

The term Mahayana points not to the Mahayana school, but to tathatā "suchness" or "the Absolute":[11]

The title of the text, the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, should therefore be understood as the "Awakening of Faith in the Absolute", not in Mahayana Buddhism as distinguished from Hinayana Buddhism.[11]

Content

Written from the perspective of Essence-Function (simplified Chinese: 体用; traditional Chinese: 體用; pinyin: tǐyòng), this text sought to harmonize the two soteriological philosophies of the Buddha-nature and Eight Consciousnesses (or Yogacara) into a synthetic vision[12] based on the One Mind in Two Aspects:

In the words of the Awakening of Faith — which summarizes the essentials of Mahayana — self and world, mind and suchness, are integrally one. Everything is a carrier of that a priori enlightenment; all incipient enlightenment is predicated on it. The mystery of existence is, then, not, “How may we overcome alienation?” The challenge is, rather, “Why do we think we are lost in the first place?”[13]

Commentaries

Commentaries include those by Jingying Huiyuan 淨影慧遠, Wonhyo 元曉, Fazang 法藏 and Zongmi 宗密, as well as others no longer extant.

Influence

Although often omitted from lists of canonical Buddhist texts, the Awakening of Faith strongly influenced subsequent Mahayana doctrine.

Chan (Zen)

The view of the mind in the Awakening of Faith had a significant import on the doctrinal development of the East Mountain Teaching.[14]

Korea

In great part due to the commentaries by Wonhyo,[15] the Awakening of Faith ended up having an unusually powerful influence in Korea, where it may be the most oft-cited text in the entire tradition. It also provided much of the doctrinal basis for the original enlightenment thought found in the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment.

English translations

The Awakening of Faith

Commentaries

Notes

  1. ↑ On these points, King cites Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China: Paramartha's 'Evolution of Consciousness' , Diana Y. Paul, 1984, Stanford University Press.
  2. ↑ A Christian-influenced translation by a Baptist missionary, Tarocco, Franceska (2008). Lost in Translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its modern readings, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71 (2), 335

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hubbard, Jamie (1994, 2008). Original Purity and the Arising of Delusion. Smith College, p.1. Internet Archive
  2. ↑ Nattier, Jan. 'The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?'. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Vol. 15 (2), 180-81, 1992. PDF
  3. ↑ Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha by Robert E. Buswell. University of Hawaii Press: 1990. ISBN 0-8248-1253-0. pgs 1-29
  4. ↑ Tarocco, Franceska (2008). Lost in Translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its modern readings, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71 (2), 323
  5. ↑ Muller 1998, p. 64.
  6. ↑ Tarocco, Franceska (2008). Lost in Translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its modern readings, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71 (2), 324-325. (T. 1666, pp. 576)
  7. ↑ Grosnick, William, H. The Categories of T'i, Hsiang, and Yung: Evidence that Paramārtha Composed the Awakening of Faith. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 12 (1), 65-92, 1989. Internet Archive
  8. ↑ King 1991, p. 22.
  9. ↑ Keng Ching, "Yogacara Buddhism Transmitted or Transformed? Paramartha (499-569 C.E.) and His Chinese Interpreters," Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2009
  10. ↑ Tarocco, Franceska (2008). Lost in Translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its modern readings, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 71 (2), 328. (T. 1667, pp. 583bc-584a)
  11. 1 2 Hakeda 1967, p. 28.
  12. ↑ Lusthaus, Dan (1998). Buddhist philosophy, Chinese. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge.
  13. ↑ Lai, Whalen (2003), Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey. In Antonio S. Cua (ed.): Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy (PDF), New York: Routledge, archived from the original (PDF) on November 12, 2014
  14. ↑ Zeuschner, Robert B. (1978). "The Understanding of Mind in the Northern Line of Ch'an (Zen)", Philosophy East and West, Volume 28, Number 1 (January 1978). Hawaii, USA: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 69-79
  15. ↑ Park, Sung-bae (2003). Wonhyo's Faith System, as seen in his Commentaries on the Awakening of Mahayana Faith, International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 2 (2), 25-45

Sources

External links

Dictionaries

Translations

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