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Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna (Reconstructed Sanskrit: Mahāyāna Śraddhotpāda Śāstra;[1] traditional Chinese: 大乘起信論; simplified Chinese: 大乘起信论; pinyin: Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn; Japanese: 大乗起信論; Korean: 대승기신론; Vietnamese: Đại thừa khởi tín luận) is a text of the Mahāyāna branch of Buddhism.
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While the text is attributed by the faithful 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] Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally thought to have translated the text in 553. However, many modern scholars now opine that it was actually composed by Paramartha or one of his students, though other experts dispute that it has anything to do at all with Paramartha[4]. Śikṣānanda translated or re-edited another version, perhaps during 695-700.
Written from the perspective of Essence-Function (tiyong) 體用, this text sought to harmonize the two soteriological philosophies of the tathāgatagarbha (or Buddha nature) and ālayavijñāna (or yogacara) into a synthetic vision based on the One Mind in Two Aspects.
Although often omitted from lists of canonical Buddhist texts, the Awakening of Faith strongly influenced subsequent Mahayana doctrine. 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. In great part due to the commentaries by Weonhyo, 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.
The view of the mind in the 'Awakening of Mahayana Faith' (Chinese: Ta-sheng ch'i-hsin lun) had a significant import on the doctrinal development of the East Mountain Teaching.[5]