“The Awakening of Faith” is composed of essences from many Sutras and Shastras, and even to this day, there is ongoing debate in academia revolving around its authenticity and translators. This thesis aims to investigate how “faith” became the core in “The Awakening of Faith”, how it has stayed historically significant, and what implication it has brought as well as how it revealed the spirit of Chinese Buddhism in the Mahayana. By utilizing semantic interpretation, literature analysis, and historical analysis as approaches to identify the core values in “The Awakening of Faith” and canvassing how the sense of “faith” and “thoughts of Tathāgatagarbha” developed throughout the history of Buddhism, the author identified a framework embedded in “The Awakening of Faith” consisting of factors of faith, enlightenment, and practice to unite the essence and the phenomena. In this framework characterized as “dependent arising within Tathāgatagarbha,” “enlightenment” can’t be expressed by words, requiring “faith” to realize it and in turn benefit us, and “faith” encourages sentient beings to “practice.” Furthermore, if sentient beings have the potential of achieving enlightenment, enlightenment will occur with practice. Faith hence becomes the important connection in between. Therefore “The Awakening of Faith” includes “faith” in its title to emphasize such relationship. By establishing “faith” as the precondition for conjoining Mahayana, “The Awakening of Faith” expands the idea of “nature of mind” in Buddhism to a far extreme, from the idea of “pure nature of the mind” in original Buddhism through transformation between functional mind and phenomenal mind in early Buddhism to the construct of “Tathagata” and avidya in “The Awakening of Faith.” In other words, it is about to demonstrate the essence of Mahayana via the mind of sentient beings, as “the mind” is not only the virtuous part that leads to enlightenment but also the ground of unwholesome conducts of sentient beings. Nonetheless, “The nature of mind is eternal, always correspond to purity of dharma,” points out that defilement does not correspond to the pure mind by which emphasizes the uniqueness of “nature-enlightenment” in terms of mind-nature in Chinese Buddhism. It means “There is no difference between sentient beings and Buddha.” “The Awakening of Faith” expounds the ideas of fundamental enlightenment, non-enlightenment, start-up enlightenment, and repeated learning in order to help all sentient beings to give rise to their awakening faith. Moreover, it simplifies the way to Buddhahood to empirical practices that enable all the sentient beings of whatever roots to attain Buddhahood. In conclusion, the core discourse in "The Awakening of Faith" refers to “the nature-enlightenment is originally retained and the illusory is essentially empty”. To attain Buddhahood doesn’t mean to seek for Buddhahood alternatively, but to return to the innate mind that the sentient beings originally have. Nevertheless, this significance is esoteric to ordinary people, and only by means of faith that the teaching of nature-enlightenment can lead the sentient beings to attain Buddhahood. Therefore, faith, enlightenment, and practice summated to become broadly influential in Chinese Buddhism.
