Yogacara Buddhism Transmitted or Transformed? Paramartha (499-569 CE) and His Chinese Interpreters

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the Yogacara Buddhism transmitted by the Indian translator Paramartha (Ch. Zhendi) underwent a significant transformation due to the influence of his later Chinese interpreters, a phenomenon to which previous scholars failed to paid enough attention. I begin with showing two contrary interpretations of Paramartha`s notion of jiexing. The traditional interpretation glosses jiexing in terms of "original awakening" (benjue ) in the Awakening of Faith and hence betrays its strong tie to that text. In contrast, a contrary interpretation of jiexing is preserved in a Dunhuang fragment Taisho No. 2805 (henceforth abbreviated as T2805) The crucial part of this dissertation consists in demonstrating that T2805 and the Awakening of Faith represent two competing lineages of the interpreters of Paramartha. The first clue is that modern scholars have voiced objection to the traditional attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Paramartha. In addition, I discovered that striking similarities exist between T2805 and Paramartha`s corpus with respect to terminology, style of phrasing, and doctrine. I further draw attention to the historical testimonies about two different doctrinal views held by Paramartha`s interpreters. Therefore, I argue that there were two lineages in the name of Paramartha`s disciples around 590 CE: the indirect lineage interpreted Paramartha through the lens of the Awakening of Faith; and the direct lineage---represented by T2805---preserved Paramartha`s original teachings but died out prematurely. Later Chinese Buddhist tradition mistakenly regards the indirect lineage as Paramartha`s true heir and attributes the Awakening of Faith to Paramartha. This implies that Paramartha may have agreed with Xuanzang (600--664) much more than scholars used to assume. For example, Xuanzang`s characterization of the the notion of "aboriginal uncontaminated seeds" looks very similar to how Paramartha depicts jiexing. It also implies that we should distinguish the strong sense of the notion of "tathagatagarbha" in the Awakening of Faith from its weak sense. The fact that even Vasubandhu endorses the weak sense of "tathagatagarbha" strongly challenges the received wisdom that Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha were two distinct and antagonistic trends of thought in India