Shí bùèr mén 十不二門
The Ten Non-Dual Gates by 湛然 (Zhànrán / Jīngxī Zhànrán, 述)
About the work
A short single-juan compendium of the ten non-dual gates (shí bùèr mén 十不二門) — a distinctive Tiāntái doctrinal apparatus articulating the non-duality of various polarities in the Tiāntái yuánjiào 圓教 framework. Composed by Zhànrán 湛然 (711–782) as an extracted concentration of the central doctrinal contributions of his Fǎhuá xuányì shìqiān (KR6d0007, T1717). Body attribution: Táng Jīngxī zūnzhě Zhànrán shù 唐荊溪尊者湛然述.
Prefaces
The text in the Taishō recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with Zhànrán’s editorial framing: “Now this trace-gate [the first half of the Lotus Sūtra in Tiāntái’s exegesis] discusses its cause-and-effect together with self-and-other, causing one age’s teaching-gate to fuse-and-penetrate to enter the wonderful. Therefore all various meaning-explanations all are regarding the four-doctrines [the sìjiào of Tiāntái] and the five-flavours [the wǔwèi of Tiāntái], the intent being to open the teaching, all to enter the manda [the supreme cream-flavour of perfect-doctrine]. Contemplation-of-mind is the teaching-and-practice’s pivotal-mechanism…”
Abstract
The Shí bùèr mén extracts ten doctrinal non-dualities from Zhànrán’s Shìqiān: (1) sèxīn bùèr 色心不二 (form-mind non-dual); (2) nèiwài bùèr 內外不二 (inner-outer non-dual); (3) xiūxìng bùèr 修性不二 (cultivation-nature non-dual); (4) yīnguǒ bùèr 因果不二 (cause-effect non-dual); (5) rǎnjìng bùèr 染淨不二 (defilement-purity non-dual); (6) yīzhèng bùèr 依正不二 (dependent-and-rectified non-dual); (7) zìtā bùèr 自他不二 (self-other non-dual); (8) sānyè bùèr 三業不二 (three-karmas non-dual); (9) quánshí bùèr 權實不二 (provisional-real non-dual); (10) shòurùn bùèr 受潤不二 (receiver-and-moistener non-dual).
The work is one of the most influential of Zhànrán’s productions in Tiāntái scholastic history: it became the textual foundation for Sìmíng Zhīlǐ’s foundational shānjiā polemical work, the Shí bùèr mén zhǐyào chāo (KR6d0158, T1928), which established the xìngjùè doctrine and the broader shānjiā doctrinal apparatus.
The composition is bracketed within Zhànrán’s mature productive period c. 750–782.
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.
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.
- Hibi Senshō 日比宣正. Tōdai Tendaigaku kenkyū 唐代天台学研究. Tokyo: Sankibō, 1975.
- Ziporyn, Brook. Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013.