『大乗起信論』思想の展開―生命の源泉として如来蔵思想―=Development of the Thought Found in Treatise on the Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna: Tathāgatagarbha Thought as the Source of Life
As is well-known, Buddhism is concerned with solving the problem of human suffering; the fact that Buddhist theories hold a solution for this has been reaffirmed only recently. This is the recognition that human existence is a state of suffering. Therefore, as a matter of doctrine, the Buddha teaches that life is a series of afflictions. Fundamental countermeasures are also expounded in Tathāgatagarbha Thought (nyoraizō shisō) in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Moreover, modern society is also fraught with other difficulties, such as the fact that children cannot always be born even when they are wanted. These, too, I consider to be problems of the human mind. Herein is something that has been regarded as the eighth sense (alaya-vijnana – a consciousness forming the base of all human existence) by Western researchers. In other words, whereas the former studies the world of human consciousness as the world of what Freud called the world of the “unconscious” – the seventh sense (manas-vijnana – a defiled mental consciousness, which gives rise to the perception of self) – the latter also studies alaya-vijnana (deep consciousness). In other words, the world of suffering is a matter of the mind, and we perceive both the existence of suffering and the existence of comfort together as external stimuli from the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, faith, and wisdom (knowledge). Therefore, I consider the world of the human mind, based on the principles of Buddhism, in correspondence to the idea of the circle of life, focusing on reincarnation and the idea of the four stages of existence, namely birth, life, death, and limbo.
