Zhǐguān jìzhōng yìyì 止觀記中異義
Variant Readings in the Cessation-and-Contemplation Notes expounded by 道邃 (Dàosuì / Xīngdào / Zhǐguān héshàng, 說); compiled by 乾淑 (Qiánshū, 集)
About the work
A single-juan late-Táng record of variant readings (yìyì 異義) in 湛然 Zhànrán’s Zhǐguān fǔxíng (KR6d0131, T1912), expounded by 道邃 Dàosuì — the tenth Tiāntái patriarch and 最澄 Saichō’s Chinese teacher — and compiled by his disciple 乾淑 Qiánshū. Body attribution: Jǐn lù Suì héshàng zhǐguān jìzhōng yìyì / Tiāntái dìzǐ Qiánshū jí 謹錄𨗉和尚止觀記中異義 / 天台弟子 乾淑 集 (“Respectfully recorded: Suì héshàng’s variant readings in the Zhǐguān jì; Tiāntái disciple Qiánshū compiled”).
Prefaces
The text in the X55n0918 recension carries Qiánshū’s brief editorial framing. The work opens directly with the body content: “[Where the] preface says: ‘untainted total in three’ — the Jìjiā [Zhànrán] meaning is easy to know. The héshàng [Dàosuì] said: take the three realms as three — that is the cessation-object; the untainted as one — that is the cessation-subject; from the prior progressive-cultivation of the untainted, the three realms-prison originally [is]; therefore [we] use the three realms as three, the untainted as one — combined as four.”
Abstract
The Zhǐguān jìzhōng yìyì documents Dàosuì’s interpretive variants on Zhànrán’s Zhǐguān fǔxíng — i.e., Dàosuì’s distinctive interpretive readings as the tenth-patriarch successor to Zhànrán. The work is consequently of substantial historical importance both as evidence for the post-Zhànrán Tiāntái scholastic tradition’s continued interpretive development and as a witness to the doctrinal-textual debates that accompanied the consolidation of the Tiāntái scholastic apparatus.
The composition is bracketed within Dàosuì’s productive period at Tiāntáishān after Zhànrán’s death (782) and before Dàosuì’s encounter with Saichō (804). A defensible bracket of c. 800–850 covers the work’s likely productive period.
Translations and research
- Penkower, Linda L. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993.
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku kenkyū 唐代天台学研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975.
- Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士. Heian shoki Bukkyō shisō no kenkyū 平安初期仏教思想の研究. Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1995. (For the Saichō–Dàosuì transmission context.)
Other points of interest
The work is one of the few surviving documents of Dàosuì’s distinctive interpretive contribution to the Tiāntái tradition — Dàosuì’s own writings being otherwise scarce in the canonical apparatus, despite his foundational role as Saichō’s teacher and as the institutional bridge between the Chinese Tiāntái tradition and the Japanese Tendai school. The Yìyì is consequently of disproportionate importance for the modern reconstruction of late-Táng Tiāntái scholastic activity at Tiāntáishān itself.