The Treasury of Lives

Woncheuk (원측) was born in the Silla Kingdom of Korea in 613, possibly with the status of a prince. He left Korea at the age of fifteen and traveled to Chang'an, the capital of Tang China, to study. There he became a disciple of Fachang (法常 567-645) of the Yogācāra Shelun school 攝論宗 which was based on Asaṇga's Mahāyānasaṃgraha and the writings of Paramārtha (499-569).

He later became a disciple of Xuanzang (玄奘 600-664), the Chinese pilgrim who had traveled to India and returned with new Buddhist scriptures, including Yogācāra teachings of Dharmapāla (530-561). Xuanzang's circle rejected Parāmartha's teaching of the ninth consciousness, or amalavijñāna, emphasizing instead the ālayavijñāna, the eighth consciousness. Woncheuk, however, never fully abandoned Parāmartha's teachings. He held that amalavijñāna was another name for the pure nature of the ālayavijñāna, which was itself pure in nature. Woncheuk also disagreed with Xuanzang about the nature of the icchantika (beings who, by their actions, have lost their buddha-nature and so are unable to ever attain enlightenment). Woncheuk, like those who embraced the later versions of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, taught that all beings possess the capacity to attain enlightenment. These positions were fully presented in his commentary on Xuanzang's translation of the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra.

Woncheuk's fellow disciple Kuiji (窺基 632-682) held more faithfully to Xuanzang's positions, and the communities around the two men came to be seen as rival traditions of Yogācāra. Woncheuk served as abbot of Ximing Monastery 西明寺 in Chang'an and his tradition came to be known as the Ximing, while Kuiji's monastery, Daci'ensi 大慈恩寺, gave its name to his tradition, the dominant of the two.

Woncheuk's commentary did not find a wide audience in China, and only an incomplete copy of the original Chinese composition survives in the Zokuzōkyō collection. It became popular in Dunhuang in the ninth century and as a result was translated into Tibetan. As explained by John Powers, in 735 a monk named Tankuang (曇曠 b. 700) from Dunhuang's Xiuduo Monastery 修多寺 had gone to Chang'an to study. He resided at Ximing Monastery and thus came to know Woncheuk's commentary. He returned to Dunhuang in 774, bringing the commentary with him, and became an influential teacher.

Roughly fifty years later the Tibetan king Relpachen (ral pa chen, b. circa 806, r. 815-836) sponsored the translation of the commentary into Tibetan, as part of a group of Chinese (and Korean) Buddhist scriptures that would eventually enter the Tibetan canon. The translation is listed in the Catalog of the Denkar Palace (lhan/ldan dkar ma) compiled between 815 and 824, with the translator’s name given as Go Chodrub ('gos chos grub, c. 755-849), whose Chinese name was Facheng 法成. The Tibetan title of the resulting translation of the commentary is The Great Chinese Commentary on the Ārya Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra ('phags pa dgong pa zab mo nges par 'grel pa'i mdo'i rgya cher 'grel pa; D 4016).

Woncheuk's is the largest known commentary on the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra. It begins with a discourse on basic Yogācāra doctrine: the three turnings of the wheel, the three natures, and ālayavijñāna, and then proceeds with a nearly word-by-word commentary of the sūtra. As one would expect, because Woncheuk followed Xuanzang's Chinese translation of the sūtra, his commentary does not always align with the Tibetan version of the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra.

Tsongkhapa Lobsang Drakpa (tsong kha pa blo bzang grags pa, 1357-1419), who founded the Geluk tradition, extensively cited Woncheuk's Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra commentary in his Essence of Elegance (legs bshad snying po), his famous treatise on the differentiation between interpretable and definitive statements in the Yogācāra and Madhyamaka scriptures. Tsongkhapa's use of Woncheuk's commentary thus ensured that the Korean monk's views, unwelcome in China, found great fame in the interpretation of Yogācāra in Tibet.