"faith in" is misleading: In other words, the treatise is not discussing "Faith in the Mahayana," rather it is presenting the Mahayana style of faith, which is faith in the true suchness of mind. Content The text is divided into five sections, and often summarized as “One Mind, Two Aspects, Three Greatnesses, Four Faiths, and Five Practices". Following two introductory chapters dealing with the oneness of mind and motivations for the text's composition, part three focuses on two aspects of mind to clarify the relationship between enlightenment and ignorance, nirvana and samsara, or the absolute and the phenomenal. Part four describes five practices that aid in the growth of faith, emphasizing calmness and insight meditation. Part five describes the benefits that result from cultivating the five practices. According to the Awakening of Faith:‘Consciousness has two aspects which embrace all states of existence and create all states of existence. They are: (1) the aspect of enlightenment, and (2) the aspect of nonenlightenment.’ Written from the perspective of Essence-Function () philosophy, this text sought to harmonize the two soteriological philosophies of the Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) and the Eight Consciousnesses (or Yogacara) into a synthetic vision based on the "One Mind in Two Aspects" doctrine. According to Whalen Lai, this doctrine holds that "self and world, mind and suchness, are integrally one. Everything is a carrier of that a priori enlightenment; all incipient enlightenment is predicated on it." Paul Williams explains the main teaching of the Awakening of Faith thus:The Awakening of Faith itself takes the tathagatagarbha as the substratum of samsara and nirvana. This Mind has two aspects – the Mind as Suchness or Thusness, that is, the Absolute Reality itself, and the Mind as phenomena. Between them these two aspects embrace all there is....The essential nature of the Mind is unborn, imperishable, beyond language. Differentiation (i.e. phenomena) arises through illusion, fundamental ignorance of one’s true nature...The Absolute Reality is empty, ‘Because from the beginning it has never been related to any defiled states of existence, it is free from all marks of individual distinction of things, and it has nothing to do with thoughts conceived by a deluded mind’. Nevertheless, to avoid misunderstandings, ‘the true Mind is eternal, permanent, immutable, pure, and self-sufficient; therefore it is called “nonempty.”’ Commentaries Commentaries on the Awakening in Faith were composed in China, Japan, and Korea by numerous exegetes. Commentaries composed before the mid 9th century