Setting the Scene

From the late-nineteenth century, Yang Wenhui attempted to revive Chinese Buddhism, which had been in decay for centuries, by publishing core doctrinal texts, chief among them the Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith. The Treatise was to be the basis of this reformed Buddhism because it concentrated on faith and provided for access to the Pure Land, thereby countering the inroads of Japanese Buddhism and Christianity. In 1922, however, his student, Ouyang Jingwu, based on Yogācāra doctrine, argued that the Treatise was not Mahāyāna because it maintained the existence of a permanent, unconditioned, underlying entity (ti) that could condition ignorance, something conditioned, without the seeds needed to do so.

Buddhism · Christianity · Doctrine · Epistemology · Faith · Ignorance · Statement (logic) · Theology · Chinese history and philosophy · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy · Religious studies