Fǎhuá sānmèi chànyí 法華三昧懺儀
Repentance Liturgy for the Lotus Sūtra Samādhi by 智顗 (Zhìyǐ / Tiāntái dàshī, 撰)
About the work
A single-juan repentance liturgy (chànyí 懺儀) by Zhìyǐ 智顗 for the Fǎhuá sānmèi 法華三昧 (“Lotus Sūtra samādhi”) practice. The work is the foundational liturgical text of the East-Asian Lotus Sūtra meditative-confessional tradition and the principal scriptural authority for the standard Tiāntái Lotus Sūtra repentance ritual cycle.
Prefaces
The text opens with the Fǎhuá sānmèi chànyí kāndìng yuánběn xù 法華三昧懺儀勘定元本序 (“Preface to the Original Text Examined-and-Fixed of the Lotus Sūtra Samādhi Repentance Liturgy”), providing editorial framing for the standard Tiāntái recension.
Abstract
The Fǎhuá sānmèi chànyí is one of the most institutionally significant Tiāntái productions: it provides the standard liturgical apparatus for the Fǎhuá sānmèi practice that was systematised by Zhìyǐ in the Móhē zhǐguān and that became the central meditative-devotional practice of the Tiāntái school. Through the work’s institutional centrality, the Fǎhuá sānmèi practice became one of the principal forms of medieval East-Asian Buddhist devotional cultivation.
The composition is bracketed within Zhìyǐ’s productive period c. 575–597.
Translations and research
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Tiāntái Four Forms of Samādhi and Late North–South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T’ang Buddhist Devotionalism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987.
- 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.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “Buddhist Practice and the Lotus Sūtra in China.” In Readings of the Lotus Sūtra, eds. Stephen F. Teiser and Jacqueline I. Stone, 132–150. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Links
- CBETA online text T1941
- DDB entry
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (590) — Ng Yu-Kwan [吳汝鈞]. Tʼien-Tʼai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika. Tendai Institute of Hawaii / Buddhist Studies Program, University of Hawaii, 1993.