Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna is a text of Mahayana Buddhism. Though attributed to the Indian master Aśvaghoṣa, no Sanskrit version of it exists and it is now widely regarded by scholars as a Chinese composition. Contents. 1 The text. Origin and translations; Title; Content . The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna Doctrine—the New Buddhism.
Table of contents
- 2. Contours of Pure Land Buddhist Thought
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- Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - Wikipedia
- 1. Introduction
- Japanese Pure Land Philosophy
In other words, concretely, how should persons of the nembutsu carry on their lives? This view, however, sometimes shaded into ethical and eschatological concerns. If, because it is taught [in the Larger Sutra ] that birth is attained with but one or ten utterances, you say the nembutsu heedlessly, then faith is hindering practice. As your faith, accept that birth is attained with a single utterance; as your practice, endeavor in the nembutsu throughout life. The master, in short, failed to achieve a clear doctrinal resolution of this issue of religious life.
Above all, the emergence of such issues within the context of a thoroughgoing application of the general Mahayana critique of self-attachment in religious praxis gave rise to the most innovative philosophical reflection in the Japanese Pure Land tradition. Let us turn here to several basic issues in Pure Land Buddhist thought that 1 emerged from problems of practical engagement but were given characteristic treatment specifically in Japan, and 2 may be considered to have received philosophical attention in the sense that, regarding them, Japanese Pure Land Buddhists were forced, by intra-sectarian debate, to seek a degree of intellectual self-understanding distinct both from scholastic Buddhist discourse and from the kind of realization achieved through religious engagement.
In addition, for convenience, I will discuss these issues under the headings of metaphysics, anthropology, hermeneutics, and ethics.
2. Contours of Pure Land Buddhist Thought
In fact, the four headings are best understood as slightly differing perspectives on essentially the same central problem: What enables such apprehension? What is its significance for human existence? How does it come about? And what implications does it hold for the conduct of life? This thinking characterized by the discriminative perception of the world of beings rooted in the nondiscriminative apprehension of reality may be seen in relation to the question of the real existence of beings born in the Pure Land in the following passage from the sixth century Chinese Pure Land thinker Tanluan — We see that from very early in the East Asian tradition, as well known in Japan, Pure Land thinkers applied the Mahayana logic of the nonduality and interpenetration of discriminative and nondiscriminative realms to Pure Land concepts.
Regarding the nature of Amida Buddha, perhaps the most natural approach for the modern mind is to focus on the relationship between Amida and Sakyamuni. It is common to say, therefore, that Sakyamuni belongs to the realm of historical fact and actual existence, while Amida is fictive. This view is supported by the modern understanding of the relationship between the two buddhas.
Amida Buddha has never appeared directly as a historical personage, and there are no teachings or words that can be attributed to him. Thus, it is common to view the story of Amida as a narrative fashioned by Sakyamuni or a later figure to express the content of his own religious insight.
In this view, Amida is a fiction whose origins lie in the experience of Sakyamuni. In fact, there is basic continuity in the perspective on Amida among the Mahayana schools, and it stands diametrically opposed to modernist assumptions. For Mahayana Buddhists, reality resides not fundamentally with the historical existence of Sakyamuni as such, but rather with that for which he is recognized as buddha, or that which is the motive-force for his appearance in the world, his attainment of buddhahood, and his teaching of dharma.
Reality assumes form in order to emerge into the consciousness of sentient beings and thereby guide beings beyond the attachments and compulsions of their discriminative, reifying, conceptual grasp of their own existence and the things of the world around them. Concerning the central purport [of the Larger Sutra ]: Sakyamuni discarded the supreme Pure Land and appeared in this defiled world; this was to expound the teaching of the Pure land and, by encouraging sentient beings, to bring them to birth in the Pure Land.
Amida Tathagata discarded this defiled world and emerged in the Pure Land; this was to guide sentient beings of this defiled world and bring them to birth in the Pure Land. This is none other than the fundamental intent with which all buddhas go out to the Pure Land and emerge in the defiled world. Without Sakyamuni, Amida would remain unknown to beings in this world and his work of leading all to his buddha-field would go unapprehended; without Amida, Sakyamuni would have no effective means of liberating beings and his teaching mission would be futile. In place of a linear chronology, we have a motif of movement between the timeless and mundane time, by which the temporality of karmic causation and discriminative thinking is broken.
For Shinran, it is the motive-force of wisdom-compassion that underlies the historical existence of Sakyamuni—that in fact made him buddha—and this wisdom-compassion is itself the life of Amida Buddha. Shinran focuses on the pattern in the sutras by which, prior to expounding dharma, the Buddha enters a profound samadhi and delves to the nondiscriminative wisdom that transcends words and concepts. On emerging from the samadhi, he reemerges into the realm of words and responds to questions from his disciples. While his words are those of ordinary human discourse, they give expression to the samadhi he attained.
Sakyamuni proceeds to deliver the teaching of Amida Buddha. From the perspective of this sutra, were it not for Amida, whose Buddhahood lies at the heart of the samadhi of great tranquility, Sakyamuni himself would not be Buddha. At the same time, were it not for Sakyamuni, the teaching of Amida would not be disclosed to the world. Thus, the relationship between Amida and Sakyamuni is not that between two distinct figures, or between the religious symbol taught and the teacher. It may be said that while meditative traditions in Buddhism tend to emphasize the elimination of delusional thinking and the apprehension of formless reality free of the imposition of egocentric discrimination, the Pure Land tradition is attentive to the compassionate working of reality to awaken beings incapable of eradicating conceptual thought.
It does so by manifesting itself in forms and approaching beings. Since beings cannot attain such wisdom, reality as such cannot be grasped. Because the Pure Land path is not based on such praxis, the use of such terms is unnecessary. There are two aspects. One is to believe deeply and decidedly that you are a foolish being of karmic evil caught in birth-and-death, ever sinking and ever wandering in transmigration from innumerable kalpas in the past, with never a condition that would lead to emancipation. Second [of the three minds] is deep mind, which is true and real shinjin. One truly knows oneself to be a foolish being full of blind passions, with scant roots of good, transmigrating in the three realms and unable to emerge from this burning house.
Three points may be noted here. First, the self-awareness of the practitioner indicated by Shan-tao is that of a human being wholly incapable of fulfilling Buddhist practices. This is expressed in eschatological terms of endless entrapment in samsaric existence: In other words, the self-reflection implied in deep mind is, in its opposite aspect, at the same time deep trust in the salvific power of Amida. The third point is that while human being and Buddha stand thus as thoroughgoing opposites—the being filled with afflicting passions and lacking any goodness that might lead toward enlightenment, on the one hand, and the Buddha freely exerting the power of wisdom-compassion, on the other—deep mind arises as a unitary awareness out of the interaction of being and Buddha.
Self-reflection and trust arise simultaneously. Without the approach of Amida, not only trust, but also genuine self-awareness is unattainable. Although Buddhism is vast, in essence it is composed of no more than the three learnings [of precepts, meditation, and wisdom. In meditation, I have not attained even one. In wisdom, I have not attained the right wisdom of cutting off discriminative thinking and realizing the fruit….
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Shinran, for example, distinguishes various types of bodhi-mind and identifies that of the true Pure Land path with his conception of shinjin. If they have the ability to give rise to trust, can they not perform other practices also? That which is real suchness, thusness, nondual reality, buddha-nature, etc. The question of the nature of the relation leads to the problem of hermeneutics. Issues of hermeneutics are central to the Japanese Pure Land tradition because of the discontinuity it asserts between the ordinary awareness of beings and the enlightened wisdom-compassion of the Buddha, which is the source and ultimate content of the teaching.
The narrative settings of the Pure Land teachings in the sutras were regarded as particularly significant in this regard.
Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - Wikipedia
From her cell, Vaidehi beseeches the Buddha to teach her a way to be born in a world free of such treachery and turmoil. Shinran emphasizes the distance between this world and the realm of enlightenment by asserting that at the point in history when conditions were ripe for teaching and reception of the Pure Land path, the entire drama of regicide and betrayal was played out by incarnated bodhisattvas precisely to allow for the introduction of the Pure Land teaching.
It is, therefore, the condition of self-reflection and repentance that allows for the reception of the Pure Land teaching. In the latter view, the various contemplative exercises and the disciplines and study taught by the sutra are meant to reveal the wisdom-compassion of the vow, which grasps all beings without discrimination, whatever their capacity. In other words, the sutra teachings are not to be taken literally, but as means to awaken beings so that they entrust themselves to the vow. In Shinran, the activity of the vow is more direct, for he asserts that shinjin in beings is itself the mind of Amida and that Amida gives his mind to beings.
This oneness manifests itself as the nembutsu.
Precisely how it was given remained an issue. The effects of the oneness are manifested not only in the occurrence of birth in the Pure Land at death, but also in various ways in present life. One should not pursue such benefits for their own sake, but they naturally come about for the person of the nembutsu whose birth in the Pure Land is settled. He speaks, for example, of the elimination of the effects of past evil acts through repentance zange metsuzai.
As seen here, ethical behavior is not prescribed and undertaken as another form of praxis, but Other Power may function of itself in the life of the nembutsu practitioner to suppress evil and manifest compassion action. The people who are trying to obstruct the nembutsu are the manor lords, bailiffs, and landowners in the local areas …. The ethical ideal of genuinely compassionate action—action that leads others to liberation from ignorance—exists in the present for the nembutsu practitioner as a goal one looks forward to in the future, beyond all falsification by self-attachments.
It is the teleological fulfillment of human existence that unfolds only by Other Power. At the same time, that goal, as the content of birth in the Pure Land that is already settled in the present, pervades present existence, interfused with the karmic burden of the samsaric past. The term modernity commonly indicates the cultural principles stemming from the European Enlightenment that became dominant globally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including such ideals as reason, empirical science, individualism, freedom, and so on.
Political stability, including religious institutions, had continued without significant threat or conflict for nearly two and a half centuries, during which a relatively peaceful, prosperous, and culturally active citizenry flourished.
1. Introduction
After being forcibly opened to foreign commerce in , Japanese leaders emerged who were fearful of the efforts by Western powers to exert control over the country through utilizing internal conflict. They sought fundamental political change without large-scale civil warfare and successfully effected a shift in power from the shogunate nominally to the emperor in Further, they entered upon a deliberate program of importing and adopting Western learning, technology, and sociopolitical institutions.
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Christianity was perceived as woven into the fabric of modern civilization and as providing the moral foundation for Western advances. Hence, some Japanese believed the successful assimilation of Western technology and social institution would require the adoption of Christianity. Buddhist reform movements were beginning to arise, but on the whole it was a period for regrouping, apologetics, and new organizational rather than intellectual development. The observations and criticisms by Christian missionaries regarding Japanese Buddhism during this period reveal the challenges to which Buddhists sought to respond.
An example is a lecture delivered by M. As Japanese Buddhists pointed out in their first encounters with Christianity, the notion of divine incarnation fits easily into a broad Japanese Buddhist paradigm of the emergence of form from formless reality. For Gordon, God as creator serves as the linchpin for the other two key doctrines, sin and salvation.
The Japanese Buddhist response to modernity from the beginning of the twentieth century tended to be dominated by two interrelated trends: In terms of actual content, therefore, it was at first closely associated with Christianity. For Buddhists, philosophy and religion became a means not only to position Buddhism in relation to Christianity, but also to distance it from Christianity to its own advantage, particularly in relation to modern scientific knowledge. He employed both categories in characterizing the aims and approach of Buddhism, seeking to demonstrate its superiority to Christianity.
In Buddhism, this is namely the overturning of delusional thought and the awakening of enlightenment. On the other hand, when the superstitious practices that have attached themselves to Buddhist life are stripped away, its fundamental mode of thought, rooted in reason and causality, is seen to resemble scientific and philosophical thought.
In this, it is distinct from Christianity, which Inoue believes is grounded in revelation and divine creation. This language was seen to resonate with the Buddhist tradition, providing it with broad categories by which Japanese Buddhists were able to situate their traditions in modern, philosophically recognizable frameworks. That conversion experience, he maintained, lends Christianity a power lacking in Japanese Buddhism, which he saw as moribund and widely discredited in modern times.
Admittedly, the Christian concepts of sin and forgiveness are absent from Pure Land Buddhism. Like Inoue, he speaks of the finite and infinite or absolute as mediated by reason in philosophy and by faith in religion. Kiyozawa is distinctive, though, in his decidedly practical orientation, exploring the encounter with the absolute in religious life. In his late twenties, he undertook an ascetic discipline of daily life and diet that ended after several years when he contracted tuberculosis. In the last five years of his life, he was strongly attracted to the introspective spiritual cultivation of equanimity and indifference to contingencies that he found in the early scriptures of Buddhism and especially in the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.
Although Kiyozawa makes little mention of Christianity in his writings beyond, for example, reflections on the doctrines of creation or monotheism from a comparative philosophical perspective, we find in his journal in , amid passages from Epictetus and other classical texts, references to biblical passages in standard English notation.
The references suggest a close familiarity with the Bible, probably from his youth. Instead of seeking, like his teacher, to build on the legitimacy of philosophy and science, carving out a place for Buddhism beyond the limitations of a rational philosophical analysis of life experience, Soga stood within Shin Buddhist teachings and sought to show their vital significance. He did so by drawing on broader Mahayana Buddhist concepts, comparing them at times with Christian modes of thought.
While temple institutions had pursued the study of Christian theology for polemical purposes, it appears that by the turn of the twentieth century, some Buddhist philosophers had gained a new confidence of their own, allowing themselves to be stimulated by Christian theological ideas. Soga not only counters criticisms that Amida is merely mythical and that Pure Land Buddhism lacks historical foundations, but also strongly affirms in doctrinal terms the immediacy of personal religious experience in Shin.
There is also the matter of the temporal dimension in this relationship. Previously the Japanese Pure Land tradition had articulated the Mahayana logic of the nonduality of the temporal and the uncreated or transtemporal. Christianity challenged Japanese Buddhists by teaching a personal religiosity and a stringent individual moral responsibility. Kiyozawa offers a prominent example of the attempt to engage those issues.
Regarding the narrative of the origin of Amida Buddha and the Pure Land, which Gordon and other Christian missionaries regarded as obvious fictions created late in the Buddhist tradition, Soga may have found resources for resolution in the very Christian sources behind the criticisms. The Japanese Mahayana tradition had already developed it own concepts of the compassionate emergence out of emptiness or formless reality as well as the nonduality of the karmically conditioned and unconditioned. Those ideas provided an openness to and point of entry into certain areas of Christian and Western philosophical thought.
Kyoto School Japanese Philosophy: Suzuki — has noted, The Japanese may not have offered very many original ideas to world thought or world culture, but in Shin we find a major contribution the Japanese can make to the outside world and to all other Buddhist schools. Contours of Pure Land Buddhist Thought 2. Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Thought 3.
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Reflection on Reality 4. Introduction Before proceeding to a consideration of Japanese Pure Land Buddhist thought, it may be useful to note two intertwined difficulties that it presents for modern Western readers in particular: Contours of Pure Land Buddhist Thought Two fundamental elements of early Mahayana practice contributed significantly to the development of the Pure Land path. In the Mahayana sutras and treatises it is frequently taught that sentient beings are in the final analysis unborn, like empty space.
In what sense do you speak of birth in the Pure Land? The same is true of preceding thought and succeeding thought. The reason is that if they were one and the same, then there would be no causality; if they were different, there would be no continuity. This principle is the gate of contemplating sameness and difference; it is discussed in detail in the treatises. Intellectual Reform The Japanese Buddhist response to modernity from the beginning of the twentieth century tended to be dominated by two interrelated trends: People are apt to consider this as an old tale that has nothing to do with their present selves.
In fact, however, the one-moment wherein Dharmakara Bodhisattva evoked the faith of sincere entrusting is an absolute moment that embraces innumerable eons. Paramartha was traditionally thought to have translated the text in the 6th Century CE [2] [9] in However, many modern scholars now opine that it was actually composed by Paramartha or one of his students. 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. 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.
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Part four describes five practices that aid in the growth of faith, emphasizing calmness and insight meditation. Part five describes the benefits that result from cultivating the five practices. Written from the perspective of Essence-Function simplified Chinese: 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.
Japanese Pure Land Philosophy
Commentaries on the Awakening in Faith were composed in China, Japan, and Korea by numerous exegetes. Although often omitted from lists of canonical Buddhist texts, the Awakening of Faith strongly influenced subsequent Mahayana doctrine. It reflects an important stage in the synthesis of Indian and Chinese Buddhist thought, and the elevation of the tathagatagarbha doctrine to a central place in Chinese Buddhist soteriology.
The Awakening of Faith is thought to have played a role in the Huayan doctrine of the interpenetration of phenomena. In great part due to the commentaries by Wonhyo, [20] 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 Faith had a significant import on the doctrinal development of the East Mountain Teaching.
In Tendai , it is often used to explain the original enlightenment thought doctrine. Medieval Tendai Original Enlightenment Thought is established. It indirectly influenced the sects of the Kamakura period. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Paramartha's 'Evolution of Consciousness' , Diana Y.