Paramārtha (Sanskrit, Devanagari: परमार्थ; traditional Chinese: 真諦; simplified Chinese: 真谛; pinyin: Zhēndì) (499-569 CE) was an Indian monk from Ujjain, who is best known for his prolific Chinese translations of Buddhist texts during the Six Dynasties era.[1][2] He is known as one of the four great translators in Chinese Buddhist history (along with Kumārajīva and Xuanzang).[3] He is also known for the various oral commentaries he gave on his translations which were written down by his disciples (and now only survive in fragmentary form).[1] Some of Paramārtha's influential translations include Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa, Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha, and Dignāga's Ālambanaparīkṣā & Hastavālaprakaraṇa.[1][4]
Paramārtha is associated with some unique doctrines. He is traditionally seen as having taught the doctrine of the "immaculate consciousness" (amalavijñāna, Ch: amoluoshi 阿摩羅識).[5][6] He is also seen as the source of the doctrine of “original awakening” (benjue [本覺]).[2] Paramārtha is also associated with various works on Buddha-nature that became extremely influential in Chinese Buddhism. These include the Treatise on Buddha Nature (Foxing lun 佛性論) and the Mahayana Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qi xin lun 大乘起信論), a key work for Huayan and Chan Buddhism.[1][2] However, modern scholars have expressed doubts about the attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Paramārtha (as well as numerous other texts), and scholarly opinion remains divided, often due to discrepancies between ancient Chinese catalogs.[2]
Due to his teachings which synthesize Yogacara thought with Buddha-nature ideas, Paramārtha is traditionally seen as a key figure of the Shelun School (攝論宗), a major tradition of Chinese Buddhist thought in the 6th and 7th centuries as well as a major figure of the Faxing school (法性宗, “School of Dharma-nature”).[2] The distinctive doctrine of the Faxing school was "the existence of a pure and transcendent element within the mind, in which case liberation would simply be a matter of recovering that innate purity."[2] This was opposed to the view of Xuanzang and his school, which held that the mind was impure and had to be totally transformed.[2]