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修習止觀坐禪法要

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Text ID
KR6d0143
Date
575–597
Dynasty
隋

Xiūxí zhǐguān zuòchán fǎyào 修習止觀坐禪法要

Essential Methods for Cultivating Cessation-and-Contemplation in Sitting Meditation by 智顗 (Zhìyǐ / Tiāntái dàshī, 述)

About the work

A single-juan short Tiāntái meditation manual by 智顗 Zhìyǐ, more commonly referred to as the Xiǎo zhǐguān 小止觀 (“Lesser Cessation-and-Contemplation”) to distinguish it from the Móhē zhǐguān (the “Great” Zhǐguān). The work is one of four major Tiāntái meditation manuals attributed to Zhìyǐ, and the most accessible — designed for beginning practitioners and lay readership rather than for advanced scholastic audiences.

Prefaces

The text in the Taishō recension carries the editorial framing: “The Tiāntái Cessation-and-Contemplation [tradition] has four texts: 1, the Yuándùn zhǐguān (Perfect-Sudden Cessation-and-Contemplation), expounded by the Great Master at Yùquánsì in Jīngzhōu, recorded by Zhāngān [Guàndǐng] in ten juan; 2, the Jiàncì zhǐguān (Gradual-Sequential Cessation-and-Contemplation), expounded at Wǎguānsì, recorded by the disciple Fǎshèn, originally in thirty juan, [later] redacted by Zhāngān into ten juan — the present Chánbōluómì [T1916, KR6d0144] is this; 3, the Bùdìng zhǐguān (Indeterminate Cessation-and-Contemplation), produced by the Great Master at the request of Chén Shàngshūlìng Máo Xǐ, in one juan — the present Liùmiàomén [T1917, KR6d0145] is this; 4, the Xiǎo zhǐguān (Lesser Cessation-and-Contemplation), the present text — the Great Master …“.

This editorial framing — preserving Zhìyǐ’s own four-text Tiāntái meditation typology — is one of the most important documents of the Tiāntái meditative tradition’s institutional self-conception.

Abstract

The Xiǎo zhǐguān is the most widely circulated of Zhìyǐ’s meditation manuals and the principal pedagogical instrument by which Tiāntái meditation reached non-specialist audiences in pre-modern East-Asian Buddhism. Its compactness (one juan) and accessibility (substantially less doctrinal than the Móhē zhǐguān) made it the standard introductory meditation manual of the Tiāntái tradition through the medieval period.

The work was extensively translated into modern languages and remains one of the most widely read Buddhist meditation manuals in modern English-language Buddhist publications.

Translations and research

  • Sekiguchi Shindai 関口真大. Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū 天台小止観の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1954. (The standard modern critical study of the Xiǎo zhǐguān.)
  • Donner, Neal, and Stevenson, Daniel B. The Great Calming and Contemplation. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993. (Background on Zhìyǐ’s meditation tradition.)
  • 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.
  • Saso, Michael. Zen Is for Everyone: The Xiao Zhi Guan Text by Zhi Yi. Carmel, CA: Sumeru Press, 2000. (English translation.)
  • Luk, Charles 陸寬昱, trans. The Secrets of Chinese Meditation. London: Rider & Co., 1964. (Includes English translation of the Xiǎo zhǐguān.)
  • Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.

Other points of interest

The four-text typology of Tiāntái meditation manuals — Yuándùn / Jiàncì / Bùdìng / Xiǎo zhǐguān — preserved in the Xiǎo zhǐguān’s editorial framing is one of the most important institutional self-conceptions of the Tiāntái tradition. The four texts collectively represent the comprehensive Tiāntái meditative apparatus: the Móhē zhǐguān for the perfect-sudden approach (advanced practitioners), the Chánbōluómì for the gradual-sequential approach (systematic Buddhist scholastic study), the Liùmiàomén for the indeterminate approach (varied institutional contexts), and the Xiǎo zhǐguān for accessible introductory practice.

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