WŎNHYO

Wŏnhyo (Break of Dawn, 617–686) is widely considered to be the most influential thinker, writer, and commentator in Korean Buddhist history. Arguably the first major contributor to the development of an indigenous approach to Korean Buddhist doctrine and practice, Wŏnhyo wrote over eighty treatises and commentaries on virtually every influential MahĀyĀna scripture then available in Korea, of which over twenty are extant. Reflecting the dynamic cultural exchanges and flourishing doctrinal scholarship and meditative practice occurring within East Asian Buddhism during his time, Wŏnhyo's scholarship embraced the full spectrum of East Asian Buddhism, from the Mahāyāna precepts to the emblematic teachings of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, Tiantai, Pure Land, NirvĀṆa, TathĀgatagarbha, and Huayan. Wŏnhyo's writings were disseminated throughout East Asia and made important contributions to the development of Buddhist doctrinal exegesis.

Wŏnhyo's life has fascinated readers even in modern times and his biography has been the subject of novels, film, and television drama in Korea. Spending the early part of his career as a monk in Korea, Wŏnhyo made two attempts to travel to Tang China (618–907) with his lifelong friend Ŭisang (625–702) to study under Xuanzang (ca. 600–664), a Chinese scholar-pilgrim who was the most respected doctrinal teacher of his time. On the second attempt, Wŏnhyo's biographies state that he had an enlightenment experience that was intimately related to the mind-only theory of the YogĀcĀra school. The accounts vary, but they all revolve around Wŏnhyo having a revelation after falling asleep one evening during his travels. In the most drastic version, recorded in a later Chan hagiographical collection, Wŏnhyo takes refuge from a storm in a sanctuary, but awakens thirsty in the middle of the night and looks in the dark for water. Finding a bowl of water, he drinks it and, satisfied, goes back to sleep. The next morning after he awakens, he finds to his disgust that the place where he had slept was in fact a crypt and what he had taken to be a bowl of water was actually offal in a human skull. Realizing that what he thought was thirst-quenching the night before was disgusting now, he reveled, "I heard that the Buddha said the three worlds are mind-only and everything is consciousness-only. Thus beauty and unwholesomeness depend on my mind, not on the water." The narrative power of this story helped shape East Asian images of enlightenment as a dramatic awakening experience. After this experience Wŏnhyo turned back from his journey, proclaiming that there was no need to search for truth outside one's mind. His friend Ŭisang, however, continued on to China, later returning home to found the Korean branch of the Huayan school (Korean, Hwaŏm).

Wŏnhyo's later affair with a widowed princess produced a son, Sŏl Ch'ong (d.u.), one of the most famous literati in Korean history, and helped to seal his reputation as someone who transcended such conventional distinctions as secular and sacred. After an illustrious career as a writer and Buddhist thinker, Wŏnhyo lived primarily as a mendicant, wandering the cities and markets as a street proselytizer. As his biography in the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms) states, "He used to … sing and dance his way through thousands of villages and myriad hamlets, touring while proselytizing in song. Thus, everyone in the country came to recognize the name 'Buddha' and recite 'Homage to Buddha.'" This same source relates that Wŏnhyo died in a hermitage in March 686, leaving no direct disciples. The Samguk sagi (Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms) also notes that he died as a householder (kŏsa), a male lay Buddhist.

Wŏnhyo's thought system is structured around the concept of "one mind," as illustrated in his commentaries to the Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixinlun). One mind is another term for the mind of sentient beings, which is intrinsically pure and unchanging, but appears externally to be impure and ephemeral. Even though every deluded thought arises from the mind, at the same time, it is that mind itself that provides the capacity to achieve enlightenment. Wŏnhyo outlines a threefold structure for experiencing enlightenment: original enlightenment (hongaku), nonenlightenment, and actualizing enlightenment, which are mutually contingent and mutually defining. Original enlightenment provides the theoretical basis for enlightenment; nonenlightenment is the misconception about the nature of original enlightenment; and actualizing enlightenment is the incitement to practice. Practice here is based on the conditional definition of nonenlightenment, that is, the insubstantiality of defilements. Practice, therefore, does not really involve removing something; it instead is correct knowledge that the defilements we experience in daily life are unreal. The distinction Wŏnhyo draws between original and nonenlightenments, and the attempts he makes to integrate the two, set the stage for notions of the universality of buddhahood in later East Asian Buddhism. The Awakening of Faith itself originally provided the conceptual frame for this notion, but it was Wŏnhyo's elaboration in his commentary to that treatise that provided a more coherent interpretation of this construct and proposed a solution to the tensions inherent in the definition of enlightenment in Buddhist history. This elaboration helped to establish a unique cognitive framework for East Asian Buddhism, and made Wŏnhyo's commentary one of the most influential texts in the East Asian Buddhist tradition.

See also:Faxiang School; Korea; Madhyamaka School; Tiantai School

Bibliography

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, a Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Buswell, Robert E., Jr. "Hagiographies of the Korean Monk Wŏnhyo." In Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Eunsu Cho