Customer Reviews

The Awakening of Faith: Attributed to Asvaghosha (Translations from the Asian Classics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an indispensable text in the Mahayana and, within the Mahayana, Zen traditions. The translation is interspersed with extensive notes and commentaries from classic ancient Chinese and Korean commentators, and includes honest discussions of possible variant translations of difficult phrases. Highly recommended to anyone with a serious interest in the root texts of the Mahayana tradition.

For me, the highlight of this text is its depiction of faith, not as a blind grasping towards the truth, but as trust with conviction. The difference is important in today's world where the meaning of faith has been eviscerated of its positive affirmation of a path - conviction arising from a sure understanding, rather than just an adopted belief - to become more a label of anti-experiential assertion. Thus in today's world to have faith is to believe in the absence of evidence, while in this context to have faith is to have become permeated with the enlightened aspect of Suchness. The value of a text such as this is not the programmatic ideas that it presents, but the underlying understanding that these ideas point to. If one merely forms an attachment to the conceptual ideas, one is not developing faith.

The translator's introduction and commentary, much of which is taken from a few Chinese and Korean scholars, but especially that of Fazang, is generally excellent. One caveat is that there are a few places within the text where the typographic style of setting off the commentary from the base text is not adhered to (ex. top of pg 65 of reprint edition), potentially confusing the reader.

The introduction to the reprint edition by Abé is suspect. He starts with a whopper of a misunderstanding when he states: "... the Awakening of Faith boldly posits as the ultimate reality the minds of sentient beings in their everyday existence." The "minds" (plural and individuated) are presented as the permeation of ignorance and not the "ultimate reality". So I recommend caution in reading these remarks.

James Corrigan
An Introduction to Awareness

A must read for all cultivators. Down to earth reading about having faith in the path and getting onto the path. When you awaken some day to feel that something is missing in your life and question what is it all for. This book, read with an open mind and heart will push you into the right direction.

There are three chapters in this document plus a bunch of historical add-ons and whatnot, interesting enough in suggesting that the author is truly unknown. The first Chapter on interpretation of the "Principle of Mahayana" contains the meat of the matter. The second two chapters are not-so-good. Here is a small summary of the 4 stages of enlightenment (suchness) posited in the first chapter.

The first three are collected as "nonfinal enlightenment" covering states said "not to be enlightened to the fountainhead of the mind". These states of comprehension are:
1) the ability to prevent incorrect (wrong) thought from arising
2) enlightenment in appearance: aware of the changing nature of thought but free from thoughts subject to change (ie those having foresaken rudimentry attachments thereto.
3) approximate enlightenment: those aware of the temporary abiding state of thoughts, who are not arrested by them and therefore are free from thought suggesting that the components of the world (their experience) is "real"

4) final enlightenment: to be fully enlightened to have reached the fountainhead of the mind - ie those free from deluded thought, able to percieve that which is beyond thought, and to have thus awakened to the perception that ALL THOUGHT can be likened to "dream only".

There is a concise discussion on emptiness therein including enlightenment and non-enlightenment. Excellent!! Highly recommended though subject to much padding...
The Journey To Enlightenment