Zhiyi

Zhiyi was a Chinese Buddhist monk and philosopher, in effect the founder of the Tiantai school, named after the mountain in Zhejiang where he lived and taught. He arranged the many Buddhist scriptures reaching China into a single scheme with the Lotus Sutra at its summit, and built a unified system of doctrine and meditation. Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan), compiled by his disciple Guanding from lectures begun in 594, is his fullest guide to meditative practice. His idea of the threefold truth influenced later Chinese, Korean and Japanese Buddhism.

Key ideas

• The threefold truth: things are empty, provisionally real and the middle, and each of these contains the other two.
• Three thousand realms are present in a single moment of thought, so every state of mind contains all possible states.
• Calming (zhi) and contemplation (guan), stilling the mind and seeing clearly, must be practised together.
• The Buddha's diverse teachings form a graded whole, culminating in the Lotus Sutra.

Major works

• Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan) (594)
• Mysterious Meaning of the Lotus Sutra (Fahua xuanyi) (593)
• Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra (Fahua wenju) (587)

In the Book corner

• Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan) 594 CE (lectures; edited by Guanding) · Advanced
  The major meditation treatise of Zhiyi, founder of the Tiantai school, delivered as lectures in 594 and recorded and edited by his…

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