Tiāntái chuán Fó xīnyìn jì 天台傳佛心印記
Record of the Tiāntái Transmission of the Buddha’s Heart-Seal by 懷則 (Huáizé / Hǔxī Huáizé, 述)
About the work
A single-juan Yuán-period Tiāntái treatise by Hǔ-xī Huáizé 虎溪懷則 articulating the Tiāntái claim to authentic transmission of the Buddha’s heart-seal (xīn-yìn 心印) — the doctrinal-meditative essence of awakening — through the Tiāntái lineage. Body attribution: Yuán chuán Tiāntái-zōng jiào Xīng-jiào dà-shī Hǔ-xī shā-mén Huáizé shù 元傳天台宗教興教大師虎谿沙門懷則述 (“composed by the Tiāntái-school doctrine-transmitting Master Xīngjiào of the Yuán, the Hǔxī śramaṇa Huáizé”).
Abstract
The Tiāntái chuán Fó xīnyìn jì is one of the principal Yuán-period Tiāntái doctrinal manifestos, articulating the school’s distinctive claim — particularly emphasized through the xìngjùè 性具惡 doctrine — that the Tiāntái tradition uniquely transmits the Buddha’s authentic heart-seal. The work draws on Zhànrán’s Shí bùèr mén and Jīngāngbēi and Zhīlǐ’s Zhǐyào chāo as foundational doctrinal authorities and provides the Yuán-period institutional defense of the shānjiā tradition against rival school claims (particularly Chán claims to exclusive transmission of the heart-seal).
The work opens with the celebrated declaration: “Just one jù (possess) character, further manifests our school’s nature-possession of good. Other masters also know about possession of evil through yuán and liǎo [the Tiāntái’s secondary causes and conditions]; others all cannot fathom. Should know our school’s xìngjù [nature-possession] merit, the merit…”
The composition is bracketed within Huáizé’s productive period c. 1280–1350.
Translations and research
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.
- Ziporyn, Brook. Evil and/or/as the Good. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.
Other points of interest
The work’s polemical claim — that the Tiāntái tradition uniquely transmits the Buddha’s heart-seal through the xìngjù doctrine — was the principal Yuán-period Tiāntái rejoinder to Chán-school claims to exclusive transmission and demonstrates the continuing institutional vitality of the Tiāntái scholastic tradition under Mongol rule. The work’s title appropriates the standard Chán-school “heart-seal transmission” vocabulary while redirecting the claim to Tiāntái doctrinal-meditative authority.