The Awakening of Faith

by Avaghosa

First published in 1967, Yoshito S. Hakeda's translation and critical interpretation of IThe Awakening of Faith/I has become a classic. Hakeda's work, now available in a new edition, presents a beautiful and accessible translation of one of the most influential works in Mahayana Buddhism. Philosophical and religious in its approach, IThe Awakening of Faith/I provides a comprehensive summary of the essentials of Mahayana Buddhism. It explores the path leading to enlightenment and teaches the principles and methods of meditation. However, the text does not advocate a passive retreat into the quietude of meditation; instead it calls for a dynamic social engagement based on compassion and wisdom.PIThe Awakening of Faith/I, commonly attributed to Asvaghosha, has been the subject of voluminous commentaries for more than a thousand years. Hakeda's own interpretive comments illuminate and explain the work and its more esoteric elements. Ryuichi Abe's new foreword examines the importance of IThe Awakening of Faith/I within Buddhism and the influence of Hakeda's translation. For this reissue Abe changed the Wade-Giles transcriptions to Pinyin transcriptions.

Genres: Buddhism, Religion, Philosophy, Nonfiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1974

Reviews

[Paul Raud · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice and short introduction to Mahāyāna Buddhist thought if you’re looking for primary rather than secondary sources. Weirdly enough, it manages to be at times both dense (as well as hard to grasp) and repetitive, so the reader is kept on their toes. Also, yay, enlightenment, here I come!

[Inga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hakeda's translation remains both an impressive feat and a cogent and readable version today as it was at the time of publication. I found that the in text qualifications and explanations for not only the religious principles espoused but for the art of translation as well became as much a part of the text for me as the original itself. Hakeda manages to insert himself into the reader's experience in this way as more than a footnote, but without forcing his views in such a way as to unbalance the text itself.

[JD Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good treatise on the importance of meditation in awakening faith. The ideas it has about Absolute Mind and Relative Mind are much the same as ideas I was dreaming up on my own nearly 50 years ago when I had little exposure to any technical literature in Buddhist thought, a lack that still exists in modern scholarship. Maybe, someday, people will have the resources to make more of the canonical Buddhist literature available to people outside of South and East Asia.

In a historical context, I wonder if any of these ideas filtered west, and, just maybe, have some kind of remote connection with the founding of The Faith by The Prophet. That is, of course, tenuous and highly speculative at best. More directly, apparently just about every Buddhist sect in the Far East regards this terse text as a valuable work. I rated the book so highly because it did get past sectarian beliefs. Because the work is in Chinese, it requires a lot of "reading between the lines," whether in language or in translation.