Toward a New Image of Paramartha (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies)

Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha are often regarded as antagonistic Indian Buddhisttraditions. Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally credited with amalgamating thesephilosophies by translating one of the most influential Tathagatagarbha texts inEast Asia, the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana, and introducing Tathagatagarbha notions into his translations of Yogacara texts. Engaging with the digitalized Chinese Buddhist canon, Ching Keng draws on cluesfrom a long-lost Dunhuang fragment and considers its striking similarities withParamartha’s corpus with respect to terminology, style of phrasing, and doctrines.In this cutting-edge interpretation of the concept of jiexing, Keng demystifies theimage of Paramartha and makes the case that the fragmentholds the key to recover his original teachings.

Değerlendirmeler

For well over a century Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars have labored over the question of how, why, and with what warrant the Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha traditions of Indian Mahayana Buddhism came to be so distinctively and consequentially intertwined in Chinese Buddhist thought. The focus of these labors has long been the inestimably influential text known as the Mahayana Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its alleged association with the work of the Indian Missionary Paramartha. In this learnèd and rigorously argued study, Keng has given us a Paramartha untethered from the Awakening of Faith thereby allowing us to see him more clearly as a faithful, albeit original, exponent of Yogacara doctrine. Keng's exemplary study will surely came to be recognized as essential to all future study of themedieval development of Chinese— and Indian — Buddhist doctrine.