Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

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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 the Indian master Aśvaghoṣa, the text is now partly regarded as a Chinese composition.^{[lower-alpha 1]}

The text

Origin and translations

While the text is attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, no Sanskrit version of the text is extant. The two earliest existing versions are written in Chinese, and contemporary scholars widely accept the theory that the text is a Chinese composition.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} However, D.T. Suzuki accepted its Indian Sanskrit origin, while acknowledging that it was unlikely the first historical Aśvaghoṣa was the author, and it is more likely that the attribution to Aśvaghoṣa was an honorific appellation due to the profundity of the treatise.

There is no doubt that the Lanka is closely connected in time as well as in doctrine with The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana generally ascribed to Asvaghosha. While he may not have been the author of this most important treatise of Mahayana philosophy, there was surely a great Buddhist mind, who, inspired by the same spirit which pervades the Lanka, the Avatamsaka, the Parinirvana, etc., poured out his thoughts in The Awakening. Some scholars contend that The Awakening is a Chinese work, but this is not well grounded."^[7]

Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally thought to have translated the text^[8] in 553. However, many modern scholars now opine that it was actually composed by Paramartha or one of his students.^[9] 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.^{[10][lower-alpha 2]} Other experts dispute that it has anything to do at all with Paramartha.^[11]

A later translation or reedited version was attributed to the Khotanese monk Śikṣānanda (active 695-700).^[12]

Title

The term Mahayana points not to the Mahayana school, but to tathatā "suchness" or "the Absolute":^[13]

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.^[13]

Charles Muller argues that the terminology "faith in" is misleading:

In rendering the title of the Dasheng qixin lun as Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith, as opposed to Hakeda's "Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna" I am following the position put forth by Sung Bae Park in Chapter Four of his book Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment. There he argues that the inner discourse of the text itself, along with the basic understanding of the meaning of mahāyāna in the East Asian Buddhist tradition does not work according to a Western theological "faith in..." subject-object construction, but according to an indigenous East Asian essence-function 體用 model. Thus, mahāyāna should not be interpreted as a noun-object, but as a modifier, which characterizes the type of faith.^[14]

In other words, the treatise is not discussing "Faith in the Mahayana," rather it is presenting the Mahayana style of faith, which is faith in the true suchness of mind.

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^[15] 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?”^[16]

Commentaries

Commentaries up to mid 9th century Chinese and Korean include those by Jingying Huiyuan 淨影慧遠 Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 44, No. 1843 大乘起信論義疏 Dasheng qixinlun yishu; two by Wonhyo 元曉 Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 44, No. 1844 起信論疏 Gisillon so and Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 44, No. 1845 Daeseung gisillon byeolgi; by Fazang 法藏 Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 44, No. 1846 大乘起信論義記 Dasheng qixinlun yiji; and by Zongmi 宗密, as well as others no longer extant. There are also commentaries from Japan.

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.^[17]

Korea

In great part due to the commentaries by Wonhyo,^[18] 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

• Hakeda, Yoshito S., trans. (1967), Awakening of Faith—Attributed to Aśvaghoṣa, with commentary by Yoshito S. Hakeda, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08336-X 
• Richard, Timothy (1907), The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna Doctrine—the New Buddhism, Shanghai: Christian Literature Society, OCLC 464637047 ^{[lower-alpha 3]}
• Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitaro (1900), Aśvaghoṣa's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, OCLC 4975000  (Śikṣānanda`s version)

Commentaries

• Vorenkamp, Dirck, trans. (2004), An English Translation of Fa-Tsang’s Commentary on the Awakening of Faith, Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, ISBN 0773463739 

Notes

References

Footnotes

Sources

External links

Dictionaries

• Entry in the Dictionary of East Asian Buddhist Terms
• Entry in Soothill and Hodous Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms
• Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (log in with userID "guest")

Translations

• Chinese text of the Awakening of Faith (大乘起信論) provided by Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association