Dr WANG Xingyi, Department of Chinese History and Culture

Avijñapti Rūpa in Abhidharma Literature and Its Rebirth in Yogācāra. AAR, Annual Conference of Religious Studies. American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, United States, 17-21 November 2023.

Abstract
Scholars have long concluded that after Vasubandhu (ca. 4th c.) turned to Mahāyāna Buddhism, he abandoned the concept of avijñapti-rūpa, the hallmark concept of Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣikas doctrine, and attributed its function to volition (cetanā). In East Asian Yogācārin thinking, however, the influence of avijñapti-rūpa, does not cease because of Vasubandhu’s change of position. A crucial reason is that Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist thinkers constructed the entire theory of monastic vows and precepts around the concept of avijñapti-rūpa. In this paper, I want to explore the intrinsic connections between scholastic Buddhist exegetes, mainly classified as Buddhist epistemology or philosophy in modern Buddhist studies, and Buddhist ethical thinking (śīla), both derived from the understanding of monastic rules and helped to shape monastic practice. This paper is divided into four sections: (1) to illustrate the definition of avijñapti-rūpa in the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣikas literature and in other early Buddhist thought before Vasubandhu; (2) to reconstruct how Vasubandhu redirects avijñapti-rūpa to volition (cetanā) against his imagined opponents, and to discuss the potential costs of such a reorientation; (3) to survey the agreement between East Asian Yogācāra thinkers, exemplified by Kuiji’s Biao wubiaose zhang, together with the sub-commentaries of Kuiji; and (4) to examine Tibetan Vinaya masters in terms of their support for the Vaibhāṣika position in their discussion of the nature of the monastic vow, regardless of their own doctrinal affiliation. Through the study of avijñapti-rūpa, I argue that that there is no unsurpassable division between Abhidharma and Mahāyāna doctrine, and therefore we should evaluate the influence of Abhidharma literature beyond the ascribed philosophical and doctrinal affiliation.