The Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith (dasheng qixin lun 大乘起信論)[1] represents a classical example in the formulation of the distinctly East Asian Buddhist doctrine of Buddha-nature. This doctrine asserts the innate purity of mind and, on that basis, promises enlightenment or “salvation” indiscriminately to all sentient beings. It appears in the treatise as the doctrine of “inherent awakening” (benjue 本覺) and, in that form, contributes to the adaptation of the originally Indian Buddhism to the religious, philosophical, and cultural milieu in East Asia.
The treatise was first introduced to the West, as is well known, through Suzuki Daisetsu’s 鈴木大拙 English translation in 1900.[2] It was looked upon as a representative work of the Eastern thought,[3] and has since remained a well-known subject in the Western study of Buddhist and East Asian philosophy. Apart from the high-profile debates over the provenance of the treatise,[4] Western scholars have also been drawn to various other topics about or related to the treatise, such as the sinification of Buddhism in Chinese Huayan, the practical soteriology in Korean Hwaeom, the transformation of medieval Japanese Buddhism, and the debates over the nature and identity of Buddha-nature thought in the modern intellectual movement called “Critical Buddhism,” to name just a few examples.[5]
Despite such scholarly attention, however, there has not yet appeared a definitive English translation of the treatise. The best Western translation to date is actually in French (Frédéric Girard, 2004), and the most well-known and most widely used English translation (Yoshito Hakeda 羽毛田義人, 1967) is not only dated, but also filled with numerous translational infelicities.[6] Other English translations thereafter are generally not adequate introductions to the treatise.[7] There has thus long been a call for a new English translation, a call that recently received an excellent response in an Oxford Chinese Thought project under the title of Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith, which is the object of the current review.
This new translation is the work of four leading scholars in the field—John Jorgensen, Dan Lusthaus, John Makeham, and Mark Strange—who have been writing prolifically on Buddhist and East Asian philosophy and are thus ideal translators for the treatise. The translation is the product of a long process of concerted effort, starting as a workshop exercise in 2012, growing over the years to incorporate researches from various perspectives, and eventually appearing in 2019 as the second of the Oxford Chinese Thought series, a series aimed to introduce the riches of Chinese thought to the West.
