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摩訶止觀

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Text ID
KR6d0130
Date
594–594
Dynasty
隋

Móhē zhǐguān 摩訶止觀

Mahā-śamatha-vipaśyanā: The Great Cessation-and-Contemplation spoken by 智顗 (Zhìyǐ / Tiāntái dàshī, 說); recorded by 灌頂 (Guàndǐng).

About the work

The principal Tiāntái 天台 meditation manual and one of the most important meditation-treatises in pre-modern Chinese Buddhism; with the Fǎhuá xuányì (KR6d0006, T1716) and the Fǎhuá wénjù (KR6d0014, T1718), one of the Tiāntái sāndàbù 天台三大部 (“Three Great Treatises of Tiāntái”). The work is a record by 灌頂 Guàndǐng (561–632) of lectures delivered by 智顗 Zhìyǐ (538–597) at Yùquánsì 玉泉寺 in Jīngzhōu 荊州, beginning on the 26th day of the 4th month of Kāihuáng 開皇 14 (= 594 CE), the same productive period as Zhìyǐ’s lectures on the Xuányì (593) and the Wénjù (587).

Prefaces

The text in the Taishō recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with Zhìyǐ’s celebrated opening declaration, recorded by Guàndǐng: “Cessation-and-contemplation, lucid and still — what previous ages have not heard. Zhìzhě [Zhìyǐ], in the Suí Kāihuáng 14, 4th month, 26th day, at the Yùquánsì in Jīngzhōu, throughout one summer expounded — the two-period compassionate showering. Although [his] joyful exposition was inexhaustible, he just reached the seeing-realms [stage] when the dharma-wheel stopped turning; the latter portion was not announced. Yet to drink the stream and seek the source, to smell the fragrance and investigate the root: a treatise says: ‘I…’“. The body attribution: Suí Tiāntái Zhìzhě dàshī shuō / ménrén Guàndǐng jì 隋天台智者大師說 / 門人灌頂記.

Abstract

The Móhē zhǐguān is the principal Tiāntái systematic meditation manual and one of the foundational documents of pre-modern Chinese Buddhist meditative-doctrinal synthesis. Its central organisational framework is the shíjìng 十境 (ten meditative realms / objects) × shíchéng 十乘 (ten vehicles / approaches) matrix, providing a comprehensive framework for the systematic Tiāntái meditative practice. The work also articulates several of Zhìyǐ’s most distinctive doctrinal contributions: the yīniàn sānqiān 一念三千 (three-thousand realms in a single thought), the sānzhǐ sānguān 三止三觀 (threefold cessation and threefold contemplation), the yīxīn sānguān 一心三觀 (threefold contemplation in a single mind), and the zhǐguān bùèr 止觀不二 (non-duality of cessation and contemplation).

The work as preserved is incomplete: Zhìyǐ’s lectures stopped at the jiànjìng 見境 (“seeing-realms”) section without completing the planned exposition of the latter portion. This incompleteness, noted explicitly in Guàndǐng’s preface, became one of the principal scholarly puzzles of subsequent Tiāntái commentary, with 湛然 Zhànrán in his Zhǐguān fǔxíng (KR6d0131) attempting partial reconstruction of the missing latter section.

The work is the textual base for the entire subsequent East-Asian Tiāntái meditative tradition and was carried to Japan by 最澄 Saichō in 805 to become foundational for the Japanese Tendai 天台 meditation tradition. Through the Tendai meditative tradition’s broader influence on subsequent Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Móhē zhǐguān indirectly informed the meditative-doctrinal frameworks of Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren traditions in Japan.

Translations and research

  • Donner, Neal, and Stevenson, Daniel B. The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993. (Standard English translation of the Móhē zhǐguān’s first chapter, with extensive philological and doctrinal apparatus.)
  • Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T’ien-t’ai Buddhism.” In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory, 45–97. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986.
  • Hurvitz, Leon. Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk. Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 12. Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1962.
  • Swanson, Paul L., trans. Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight: T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan. 3 vols. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017–2018. (The standard complete English translation of the Móhē zhǐguān.)
  • Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai 天台学：根本思想とその展開. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.
  • Sekiguchi Shindai 関口真大. Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū 天台小止観の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1954.
  • Sekiguchi Shindai 関口真大. Mokuroku-mokuji-saiin Daishi Shikan-han no kenkyū 目録目次再隠大師止観版の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1969.
  • Stevenson, Daniel B., and Kanno Hiroshi. The Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra’s Course of Ease and Bliss. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2006. (Background on Zhìyǐ’s meditative tradition.)
  • Ng Yu-Kwan 吳汝鈞. T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.
  • Ziporyn, Brook. Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013.
  • Penkower, Linda L. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993.

Other points of interest

The Móhē zhǐguān is one of the most extensively studied Mahāyāna meditation-treatises in modern Buddhist scholarship. Its complex multi-level meditative apparatus — the shíjìng × shíchéng matrix combined with the yīniàn sānqiān cosmological framework — represents the most systematic meditation-cosmological synthesis of pre-modern East-Asian Buddhism. The work’s institutional centrality in the Tiāntái scholastic curriculum, both in China and in Japan, ensured that it was studied continuously from the late sixth century through the modern period.

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