On the Ālayavijñāna in the Awakening of Faith: Comparing and Contrasting Wŏnhyo and Fazang’s Views on Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna

TL;DR

Comparing Wŏnhyo's and Fazang's commentaries on the *Awakening of Faith*, this article argues that two distinct interpretations of tathāgatagarbha and ālayavijñāna existed in Wŏnhyo's day, and that Wŏnhyo's twofold reading of tathāgatagarbha opens the possibility that the treatise's doctrine of ālayavijñāna is not doctrinally incompatible with early Yogācāra.

Key findings

• Wŏnhyo holds that the mind-essence (i.e., tathāgatagarbha) of ālayavijñāna has a twofold nature — both arising-and-ceasing and neither-arising-nor-ceasing — as set out in the third of three views he presents in the *Kisillon so* (T1844:44.216c28–217a21), where the first view is attributed to the *Yogācārabhūmi* and the second to the *Awakening of Faith*.
• Fazang, by contrast, describes tathāgatagarbha as having only the single nature of neither-arising-nor-ceasing (Yiji T1846:44.255a29–b03), and identifies the two types of original enlightenment (pure-in-nature and conforming-to-impurity) with the "nature of realization," treating them as two names for one-natured tathāgatagarbha rather than a genuine distinction.
• Consequently, Wŏnhyo explains the neither-identical-nor-different unification in ālayavijñāna as twofold (non-identical and non-different, each grounded in one aspect of tathāgatagarbha's twofold nature), whereas Fazang treats it as a single interfused state, "the unification of truth and delusion" (C. *zhenwang hehe*).
• The article suggests that on Wŏnhyo's reading, the *Awakening of Faith*'s ālayavijñāna need not conflict with early Yogācāra, whereas Fazang's "synthetic" consciousness — with neither-arising-nor-ceasing tathāgatagarbha directly interacting with the arising-and-ceasing mind — is what has made the treatise appear doctrinally incompatible with early Yogācāra.

Methods

• Comparative textual/exegetical study of two East Asian commentaries on the *Awakening of Faith*: Wŏnhyo's (617–686) *Kisillon so* (T1844) and *Taesŭng kisillon pyŏlgi* (T1845), against Fazang's (643–712) *Dasheng qixinlun yiji* (T1846), with reference also to Wŏnhyo's *Yŏlban chongyo* (T1769) and Fazang's *Huayan wujiao zhang* (T1866).
• Primary sources are cited from the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō; the *Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra* recensions (Gunabhadra's four-fascicle T670 and Bodhiruci's ten-fascicle T671) supply the shared doctrinal reference point for both commentators.
• Analysis proceeds by close reading of key passages on tathāgatagarbha, original enlightenment, and the twofold unification in ālayavijñāna, including a figure adapted from Whalen Lai (1980, p. 252) to represent Fazang's mutual interfusion of Thusness and nescience.

Limitations

• The paper states no explicit limitations section.
• Evident from the text: the argument is confined to two commentaries and their doctrinal sources, so claims about "two distinct interpretations" rest on this comparison rather than a survey of the wider commentary tradition (the paper itself notes other early commentaries, e.g., Tanyan's and the Dunhuang *Dasheng qixinlun shu*, took significantly different perspectives).
• The attribution of Wŏnhyo's third view to Wŏnhyo himself is inferential: the paper acknowledges it "is not directly stated" in the *Kisillon so*, though it argues the *Pyŏlgi*'s "評曰" makes his advocacy clear.