Wonhyo's Philosophy of Mind

General Introduction

1 General Introduction Contents 1. BuddhisT PhilosoPhy of Mind in eAsT AsiA 3 1.1. Grounding in Basic Buddhist Philosophical and Soteriological Approaches 3 1.2. Madhyamaka: Dependent Arising and Emptiness 7 1.3. Problems with Transmission of Karma and Abhidharmic Solutions 9 1.4. The Need for a More Detailed Map of Consciousness 10 1.5. Yogācāra: The Middle Path and Mind-Only 11 1.6. Liberation in Yogācāra 14 1.7. Tathāgatagarbha 14 1.8. Intermixture 16 1.9. The Base Consciousness: Pure, Defiled, Neither, or Both 17 1.10. The Xuanzang Effect 18 1.11. The Fate of East Asian Yogācāra 19 1.12. Yogācāra Influences on Wŏnhyo 20 1.13. Buddhist Logic 23 2. Wŏnhyo as “harmonizer” 24 2.1. The Meaning of Hwajaeng 24 2.2. Not Doing P’angyo 25 2.3. Approaches to the Study of Hwajaeng 26 2.4. Wŏnhyo’s Writings, Logic, and Modes of Inquiry 28 2.5. Philological Analysis: Terminological Bases for Hwajaeng 30 2 General Introduction 2.6. Paradigmatic Bases for Wŏnhyo’s Perspective of Harmonization 34 2.6.1. The One Mind 34 2.6.2. Two Truths 36 2.7. Harmonization, Faith, and Distance from Language 38 2.7.1. Linguistic Hwajaeng and Nonlinguistic Hwajaeng 38 2.7.2. Nonconceptual Faith as the Final Destination 40 3. The TexTs 42 3 1. Buddhist Philosophy of Mind in East Asia Modern scholars have come to distinguish two major streams of early East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. Both of these were based on Indian antecedents, and both conducted thorough examinations of the constitution and transformative potential of human consciousness, particularly the potential for sentient beings to be liberated from the suffering of cyclic existence. These are the doctrinal streams of Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha. Although these two currents of Buddhist thought held differing views on such matters as the basic moral quality of the human mind and the possibility of universal enlightenment, they did share extensively in the content of their doctrines and practices, as well as their technical terminology. These were the two most significant philosophies of mind to be received, studied, and interpreted by Wŏnhyo (617–686), and they provided the basic framework for his own philosophical perspectives.1 We will pay special attention to Wŏnhyo’s treatment of these two doctrinal streams below, but first we will briefly review their general course of development, paying special attention to their symbiotic relationship. 1.1. Grounding in Basic Buddhist Philosophical and Soteriological Approaches The Buddhist philosophies of mind received by Wŏnhyo were the product of many centuries of reflection on psychological, epistemological, and soteriological questions, whose origins lay as far back as the first couple of centuries after the passing of Śākyamuni Buddha. As Buddhism developed in the philosophically sophisticated and religiously variegated milieu of India, there arose the need to provide rational explanations for those aspects of its doctrines that contradicted the general tenets of the non-Buddhist Indian religious worldview, which are generally subsumed under the rubric of Brahmanism. Such basic Buddhist teachings as anātman (no-self) and pratītya-samutpāda (dependent arising), for example, were formulated as critiques of various Indian theories of causation, both Vedic and non-Vedic. These schools countered Buddhist paradigms with their own sophisticated arguments, making it necessary for Buddhists to explain and defend their positions. Like most of his contemporaries in the ancient Indian philosophical world, Śākyamuni Buddha was interested in attaining spiritual liberation (mokṣa) from the cyclic flow of conditioned existence (saṃsāra) characterized by suffering and unsatisfactoriness (duḥkha). And like most of his contemporaries, the Buddha emphasized that this liberation could be realized only by means of an accurate insight into the true nature of the world—that is, through a direct and correct apprehension of reality.2 Yet while Śākyamuni shared the aim of spiritual 4 General Introduction liberation—and the indispensable role of insight in attaining it—with most of his Brahmanical contemporaries, his explanations of these processes attempted to avoid the “essentialist” views endemic to Brahmanism.3 In other words, the Brahmanical philosophers thought that liberation could be attained through a realization of the ontological identity between one’s true self (ātman) and the cosmic self (Brahman), both of which are characterized as immutable, changeless , and independent...