Suí-dynasty monk, founder of the Sānjiējiào 三階教 (“Three Stages Teaching”) movement. Native of Wèijùn 魏郡 (modern Hénán). Ordained at Fǎzàngsì 法藏寺 in Xiàngzhōu 相州; later moved to the capital Cháng’ān at the invitation of Gāo Jiǒng 高熲, where he founded the Huàdùsì 化度寺 Wújìnzàng 無盡藏 institution — a monastic perpetual-charity treasury that became the financial spine of the Sānjiē sect. Xìnxíng’s doctrine of the mòfǎ 末法 (Final Dharma) age held that in the present degenerate epoch (“third stage”) only the universal pǔfǎ 普法 (universal teaching) is efficacious, and proposed practices including pǔjìng 普敬 (universal reverence — bowing to every passer-by as a future Buddha, modelled on the Sadāparibhūta-bodhisattva 常不輕菩薩 of the Lotus Sūtra) and rènè 認惡 (self-acknowledgment of evil). His writings include Sānjiē fófǎ 三階佛法 (4j.), Dùīgēn qǐxíng fǎ 對根起行法, the Dàshèng wújìnzàng fǎ 大乘無盡藏法 (KR6v0053) and the disputed Fóxìng wèndá (KR6v0052) and Fóxìng guān xiūshàn fǎ (KR6v0092). Sānjiē was repeatedly proscribed (in 600, 695, 699, 713, 725) and effectively died out by mid-Táng; almost the entire literature was lost from the canon and is reconstructed from Dūnhuáng witnesses. The standard biography is in Xù gāosēng zhuàn 續高僧傳 j. 16. Modern study: Yabuki Keiki 矢吹慶輝, Sangaikyō no kenkyū (1927); Hubbard, Absolute Delusion, Perfect Buddhahood (2001); Nishimoto Teruma, Sangaikyō no kenkyū (1998).