Commentary on the Awakening of Faith

A commentary by the Silla monk Wonhyo on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a short treatise traditionally attributed to Aśvaghoṣa but probably composed in sixth-century China. Wonhyo also wrote a separate set of notes on the same text. In his preface he argues that the treatise unites the two great Mahāyāna schools: Madhyamaka, which refutes without establishing anything, and Yogācāra, which establishes without refuting. The commentary then follows the treatise's teaching of One Mind with two aspects: the mind as suchness, unchanging, and the mind as arising and ceasing. These meet in the storehouse consciousness, where enlightenment and delusion are joined. Wonhyo explains the treatise's distinction between original enlightenment, already present in every being, and actualised enlightenment, gained through practice, using its image of water stirred into waves by the wind of ignorance. His reading influenced Fazang and later Huayan thought in China, and it remains central to Korean Buddhism.

It shows Wonhyo's method of reconciling rival doctrines rather than choosing between them, and gives one of the clearest accounts of the One Mind teaching that runs through East Asian Buddhism.