Philosopher
Zhiyi
538–597 CE
Also known as Tiantai Zhiyi
Founding figure of Tiantai Buddhism, whose meditation teaching held that a single moment of experience contains, and is identical with, 'three thousand worlds'.
Zhiyi is the first and most representative of the three great figures of Tiantai Buddhism, followed by Jingxi Zhanran and Siming Zhili, whose ideas the school developed between the sixth and eleventh centuries.
He drew one model for his teaching from an obscure passage of the Chinese Nirvana Sutra, reading it as more than the usual Buddhist denial of all four options followed by a provisional affirmation. His Great Calming and Contemplation is his definitive work on meditation, and lays out ritual procedures for experiencing a single moment as the whole of existence.
Key ideas
- Three thousand worlds in one moment
- If the slightest wisp of experience arises, the whole of existence, enumerated as ‘three thousand worlds’, is at once inherent in it and identical with it: neither the same as it nor different from it.
- Contemplation of mind
- Tiantai meditation centres on ‘contemplating the mind’, and Zhiyi’s Great Calming and Contemplation sets out the method, walking through every possible object of experience in turn.
- Any number would do
- The ‘three thousand’ is only one way of counting the totality: Zhiyi pointed out that any number, from none to infinity, would describe it equally well.
- Tradition
- Chinese
- Region
- China
- Themes
- What is ultimately real
Key works
- Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan)
- Read free at Wikisource (in Classical Chinese)
Sources
- Brook Ziporyn, Tiantai Buddhism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy