Korea Journal of Buddhist StudiesISSN:1598-0642(Print)불교학연구회

Bunhwang Wonhyo(芬皇 元曉, 617~686) was a philosopher in the Korean Shilla Dynasty. He was a successor to the Buddha's wise thought and merciful life on the basis of One Mind(一心)-Reconcilement(和會)-Interfusion(無碍). His One Mind philosophy opened a new way for researching the human abyss and world essence. The breadth of his enlightenment also enabled many people to live in the vast sea of Buddha dharma, as his manner of thinking and living opened up completely new, unique, and encompassing vistas well beyond the conventional limits of his age, people, religion and philosophy. Wohyo’hs One Mind philosophy was based on the One Mind-Two Approaches(一心二門) formulation described in Awakening of Mahāāa Faith . He was not restricted by the commonly accepted view of Awakening of Mahāāa Faith , wherein One Mind is understood in light of dualistic opposition of the Combined Consciousness of True and False(眞妄和合識).28) On the contrary, he applied a different view of One Mind to Combined Consciousness, unlike the Āaya-vijñ)āa view of the Consciousness-Only school that tried to understand One Mind as True Consciousness of Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom(大圓鏡智). Therefore, his understanding of One Mind is very dynamic and elastic. The dynamics and elasticity are also caused by the dualistic structure of Awakening of Mahāāa Faith (大 乘起信論), that divides One Mind into two characteristics such as white-clean and dirty-contaminated. Wonhyo, who investigated deeply into the suffering mind in order to determine whether to classify the unenlightened person and Buddha as two or whether to unify them, also made One Mind open to the Ninth Consciousness(九識) without restricting the range of it to Eight Consciousnesses(八識). This ground of understanding is due to Wonhyo’s dynamics and Mystical Understanding. Wonhyo connects One Mind to Tathāata-garbha(如來藏), while saying that ‘it is called Tathāata-garbha because the body of One Mind is defined as Original Enlightenment(本 覺) and it causes phenomenon depending on ignorance.’ In order to explain this, he ‘coins’the expression of Mystical Understanding and provides expands the existing understanding of One Mind by adding the meaning of Mystical Understanding to the understanding of One Mind. And he explains Mystical Understanding on the basis of the property of Nirmāiṇ-kāa that does not adopt inanimate objectivity, which shows that Wonhyo's One Mind exposes the changeable meaning of an absolute aspect and the unchangeable meaning of a phenomenal aspect at the same time. Wonhyo quoted the concept of Miraculous Understanding in order to explain changeability of an absolute aspect rather than its unchangeability, and unchangeability of a phenomenal aspect rather than its changeability. And finally, Wonhyo’-s Mystical Understanding of One Mind shows that the real nature of Original Enlightenment is miraculous by itself. And the meaning of Mystical Understanding belongs in the Ninth Consciousness, Amala-vijñ-āa, rather than being restricted to the eighth consciousness, Āaya-vijñāa. In this way, Wonhyo harmonizes the Eight Consciousnes-ses theory of Awakening of Mahāāa Faith and the Nine Consciousnesses theory of Vārasamāhi–ūra(金剛三昧經論) through dynamics and Mystical Understanding of One Mind. As a result, Wonhyo enlarged the extension of One Mind understanding by granting the meaning of dynamics and Mystical Understanding to One Mind, which challenged the existing interpretation of his time.