New Voices in Tiantai Studies

This paper analyzes Zhiyi's 智顗 (538-597) “Shi chan boluomi cidi famen” 釋禪波羅蜜次第法門 (T1916) as an edited record of oral preaching on the subject of meditation rather than only a system for teaching the theory or the practice of meditation. By examining Zhiyi's characteristic methods of expounding individual meditation teachings, the paper argues that Zhiyi intended to teach his audience a systematic method to perform exegesis on meditation texts, rather than teaching meditation practice per se. The result of its application, achieved through the repetitive overlaying of exegetical structures and timely prescription of “homework”, serves this pedagogical goal. Furthermore, it shows that Zhiyi’s originality lies not just in his synthesis of “meditation theory”, but also in his dynamic way of preaching, which provides exegetical formulas capable of turning every transmitted teaching into his own teaching.

Vigorous debate arose in early Song (960-1279) Tiantai Buddhism during a period of institutional and intellectual flourishing. The “Home Mountain-Off Mountain” controversy, as this event came to be known, refers to the Song Tiantai schism and the initial doctrinal disputes from which it emerged. Each side offered competing interpretations of a fundamental ambiguity inherent in the writings of the Tang master Zhanran 湛然 (711-782). I focus on the development of the supposedly heretical Qiantang community’s soteriology which amalgamated “tathāgatagarbha” doctrine within their own vision of Tiantai orthodoxy. I explain how members sought to demonstrate Tiantai was capacious and flexible enough to accommodate “tathāgatagarbha” ideas through explanations grounded in the “Nirvana-sūtra” and Zhanran’s texts, as well as classical Tiantai thought. More broadly, I seek to illuminate the wider early Song embrace of “tathāgatagarbha” thought and its representative Chinese texts, a momentous shift towards buddha-nature in the history of Chinese Buddhism.

What became of the Tiantai school after the famous “Home Mountain-Off Mountain” debates of the early Northern Song? How did Tiantai monks assert their presence and relevance in a Buddhist landscape dominated by the Chan school? This paper is a step towards understanding the social-institutional history of the Tiantai school as it (re)emerged in the Buddhist world of the Song dynasty. It takes the career of Huiguang Ruone 慧光若訥 (1110-1191), abbot of the Upper Tianzhu Monastery (“Shang Tianzhu si” 上天竺寺) in Hangzhou, to argue for the elevation of the school to national importance in the early decades of the Southern Song (1127-1279). It explores how Ruone was made national Sangha Registrar (“senglu” 僧錄), thus situating his monastery at the political center of the Buddhist world for centuries to come.

During the 17th century, a Buddhist master called Zhixu智旭 (1599-1655) wrote a Memorial Statement in which he made a deliberate distinction between two “Shuilu” (“Water-and-Land”) ritual traditions known as the “Northern Shuilu” and “Southern Shuilu.” The “Southern Shuilu” is represented by a ritual manual compiled and redacted by two Tiantai Buddhist masters respectively in the 13th and 16th centuries, while the “Northern Shuilu,” with a murky origin, demonstrates a highly synthetic and esoteric feature. This paper compares these two “Shuilu” traditions with a particular focus on the sociopolitical contexts in which they were produced and practiced. It aims to explore the changing relationship between the Song Tiantai Buddhism and other religious traditions such as Esoteric Buddhism and Daoism by examining how the negotiations of sectarian boundaries and the doctrinal content of these rituals gave rise to the different ritual practices of the same soteriological goal of universal salvation.