Shāndìng zhǐguān 刪定止觀
The Abridged-and-Corrected Cessation-and-Contemplation by 梁肅 (Liáng Sù / Liáng Jìngzhī, 述)
About the work
A three-juan mid-Táng abridgement of 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s Móhē zhǐguān (KR6d0130, T1911) by 梁肅 Liáng Sù (753–793), the mid-Táng polymath and lay Buddhist scholar associated with the Tiāntái school. The work is one of the most influential mid-Táng productions on the Móhē zhǐguān: it provides an accessible abridged recension of Zhìyǐ’s massive ten-juan meditation manual, suitable for use as both a study aid for serious students and as an introductory text for non-specialist readers.
Prefaces
The text opens with the Chóngkān Shāndìng zhǐguān xù 重刊刪定止觀序 (“Re-engraving Preface”) by 吳克巳 Wú Kèjǐ, sobriquetted Kǎiān 鎧菴 (“Armor Hut”), a Sòng-period editorial patron. Wú’s preface frames the work’s contemporary significance: “Marvelous indeed: the world-saving Way-illuminating book — unexpectedly again circulating in the present day. Causing the kings, dukes, and great men to know there is this book — they certainly will not reach the point of trusting slander to abolish-and-destroy [it]. Causing the gentry-and-elders to know there is this book — they certainly will not reach the point of establishing arguments to suppress [it]. Causing those opening the Chánguān (meditation-gate) to be able to read this book — would they be willing to use the jiàowài biéchuán [special-transmission-outside-teaching, the Chán slogan] to deceive themselves?”
Abstract
Liáng Sù’s Shāndìng zhǐguān is the standard mid-Táng abridgement of the Móhē zhǐguān, providing a more accessible recension of Zhìyǐ’s massive meditation manual without sacrificing the essential doctrinal-meditative content. The work was extensively used as a study aid in the late-Táng and Sòng Tiāntái pedagogical traditions and was reprinted in the Sòng (per Wú Kèjǐ’s preface) for renewed circulation.
The composition is bracketed within Liáng Sù’s productive period c. 780–793 (terminated by his death at age 41). The abridgement coincides with Liáng Sù’s broader Tiāntái-promotion activity at the late-Táng court, including his correspondence with 湛然 Zhànrán and his various Tiāntái-tradition encomia and inscriptions.
The work is consequently of substantial historical importance both as a Tiāntái scholastic production and as a witness to the late-Táng literati-monastic intellectual exchange around Tiāntái meditation. Liáng Sù’s status as a Hànlín Academy lay Buddhist provided institutional standing for the abridged recension, and his literary reputation ensured its wide circulation in subsequent Tang-Sòng literati Buddhist circles.
Translations and research
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku kenkyū 唐代天台学研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975. (Standard treatment of mid-Táng Tiāntái scholarship, including Liáng Sù.)
- Penkower, Linda L. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993.
- 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.
- Donner, Neal, and Stevenson, Daniel B. The Great Calming and Contemplation. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.
Other points of interest
Wú Kèjǐ’s Sòng preface explicitly frames the Shāndìng zhǐguān as a polemical instrument against the Chán-school’s jiàowài biéchuán 教外別傳 (“special-transmission-outside-teaching”) slogan, suggesting that the Sòng reprinting was motivated in part by the Tiāntái scholastic tradition’s defensive engagement with the dominant Chán institutional position of the period. The preface is consequently a useful witness to the Sòng-period Tiāntái-Chán doctrinal dispute over the proper relation between scholastic study and meditative practice.