Introduction to Tendai Buddhism, Part 1 /The Chinese Tiantai Tradition

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:06]Welcome everyone to our uh ongoing lecture series on Buddhism Buddhism in East Asia etc. Uh today we're going to be looking at the Tendai tradition.

[00:00:21]And just like with Shingon we are going to be uh um breaking this up into two parts. First to look at some of the Chinese traditions and then look at some of the ways that those uh evolve in the Japanese context. Um when we think about um esoteric Buddhism for example, when we think about early Japanese Buddhism the Shingon school tends to get to dominate the conversation as if they have a monopoly on esoteric Buddhism.

[00:00:51]However, the only reason that's the case, well there's two reasons. Number one in the 1400s, the date is escaping me. Um the warlord Oda Nobunaga obliterated Mount Hiei. Uh in the Enryakuji temple complex, the seat of Tendai Buddhism in Japan would be kind of like if you had if it was like Harvard and um uh the Vatican combined and you just dropped an atom bomb on them. So that basically knocked Tendai out of the the loop for [music] to a significant degree. Tendai remains a very small school of Japanese Buddhism today. Um um but throughout much of its history uh Tendai was the dominant tradition in Japan and the dominant driver of esoteric Buddhist culture.

[00:01:37]Uh so um Yeah, so so that's the first thing. The first thing is that Mount Hiei gets obliterated so Shingon gets to fill that gap and then the other thing is that you know, at a time when uh you know, these warlords were burning down massive temples um one of them was on the way to Mount Kōya to burn it down.

[00:01:56]But uh there's a monk who met them en route and was somehow able to convince them not to. Um so, that has meant that historically since the 14, 1500s, 1600s, and so on, um >> [snorts] >> uh Shingon has really gotten to dominate the conversation on Esoteric Buddhism, but Tendai has a lot to offer as well.

[00:02:15]So, uh actually, you could argue it has had more uh impact and influence as well, right? The major schools of Buddhism today in Japan, um the Pure Land schools, the Zen schools, uh the Nichiren schools, uh many of the Japanese new religions that are Nichiren offshoots, all draw from Tendai.

[00:02:36]So, it's really important to study Tendai.

[00:02:39]Um today we're going to be focusing on the Chinese tradition.

[00:02:42]Uh once again, I'm um uh Aaron. I'm a Buddhist priest and uh professor of Japanese studies. And if you have any questions or want to follow up and dig into this stuff some more, please feel free to let me know.

[00:02:56]Um so, let's get into it.

[00:02:59]All right. Like last time, I want to frame this conversation around the question of sect and school.

[00:03:05]>> [clears throat] >> In Japan today, there are large sectarian institutions known as shū or shūha uh that really dominate the scene in Buddhism. Uh these organizations have been able not only to write the history of Japanese Buddhism, but in many ways, write the history of Buddhism in East Asia. So, we tend to think of Buddhism as if it were comprised of discrete sectarian entities, schools, and sects, and so on. All right, the term in Chinese is zōng. Term in Japanese is shū. Uh and while today we can kind of think of that as sect or school, in Japan, for the rest of East Asia, and throughout the rest of East Asian history, zōng can mean the essence of a teaching, or even essence of Buddhism, um a lineage, uh and sometimes the lineage is only two or three people long, right? Uh it's important to keep that in mind. Uh sometimes a lineage claim may go all the way back to the Buddha, right? Um a a particular tradition or approach to Buddhism or just an area of specialization, often academic specialization. Any of these can be referred to as a zong or shu.

[00:04:11]Sectarianism is not common in East Asian Buddhism.

[00:04:14]Uh as I mentioned uh in our in our last uh conversations, uh in medieval in you know medieval Europe, in uh in you know early modern Japan, sectarianism matters. For the rest of the Buddhist world, it simply does not.

[00:04:32]Um so, we have areas of study like Sanlun and Faxiang, which in some ways correspond to Madhyamaka and Yogacara.

[00:04:39]It's a little complicated. Uh we also have traditions like Tiantai and Huayan that are, you know, in some in some sense uh text-based. Uh we also have um Zhenyan, which would be Shingon uh in Japanese, the mantra schools, you know, one expression of uh East Asian esoteric Buddhism.

[00:04:57]Uh then we have Chan or Zen uh and Jingtu or Pure Land. And the thing is that by and large, these are non-exclusive, meaning that you can study all of them or specialize. Uh it it in the the college classroom, I often explain to students that it's kind of like having a like a college major. The Think about like a double major and a minor, right?

[00:05:20]So, let's say you're majoring in Sanlun studies, you know, Madhyamaka and Pure Land, right? With also maybe a minor in some Zen. Actually, that's a really common combination. That That's That's kind of what like you know, later Chinese Buddhism is very in some sense like Zen Pure Land with a little bit of esoteric stuff sprinkled in. Um Vietnamese Buddhism often looks like that. Korean Buddhism often looks like that. So, these things are um mutually influential, um often overlapping, and mutually informative. So, you can look at, for example, Zen or Chan and you can look at the way that Tiantai philosophy influenced Chan, how Chan Buddhists responded to or drew upon Tiantai philosophy, how Madhyamaka, Yogacara, esoteric Buddhism, how for a lot of Zen Buddhists, their day-to-day practice looks kind of Pure Landy, right? And why is that? Well, it's cuz everything overlaps with everything else, right? But from the Pure Land perspective, we have commentators in the Tiantai, you know, Tiantai lineages, Jinyan, Fazang, you know, etc., all of whom have something to say about the Pure Land. Is it this mind? Is it a postmortem destination? Is it both? Is it neither? Is it something else? It's good stuff. So, these are just basic areas of study that often overlap. So, let's not think of them as sect or school or as exclusive or essentialized in some kind of way, right?

[00:06:43]Now, when we talk about the Tiantai tradition, this is where I think it gets kind of interesting because Tiantai is a place.

[00:06:51]Uh it eventually becomes a kind of a lineage that people are thinking about.

[00:06:56]Um it has a particular, you know, particular texts that are emphasized and particular practices that are emphasized.

[00:07:01]Um one of the things that I enjoy about studying Tiantai philosophy or, you know, Tiantai or Tendai Buddhism. So, Tiantai in China is Tendai in Japan.

[00:07:12]Um some people, when they're first exploring Buddhism, they learn about all the different schools and then they encounter something like Tendai and they're like, "Wait a minute. You're kind of doing everything.

[00:07:23]How eclectic."

[00:07:25]And this one time in my time studying with, um you know, members of the Japanese Tendai as well as Chinese Tiantai traditions, uh what I've heard people say is, "No, it's not eclectic." Cuz, you know, eclectic would, you know, kind of be sloppy, right? It's comprehensive. And I think that when we think about Tiantai or Tendai, instead of thinking of it as a school of Buddhism, we should rather think of it as an approach to, you know, trying to have a comprehensive account of Buddhism, not just Mahayana, but Buddhism as a whole. And as such, it is universally relevant to Buddhists who want to, you know, think with a deep tradition. Um one of the most important text that's come out is Paul Swanson's, um but by the way, I didn't set this here so that I could pull it out for this talk. This just happens to be, you know, right here by my desk because it's that important. So, the, um you know, the translation of the great work by Jerry, uh Clear Serenity and Quiet Insight, now available in a two-volume edition with the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, which I have up here somewhere.

[00:08:40]Not sure. Anyway, um very important, but I would also want to show you something very clever we have here.

[00:08:47]You'll notice on the cover is two wings.

[00:08:51]The two wings of the Tiantai tradition are study and practice.

[00:08:59]Uh something we'll talk about a little bit more here in just a moment, but study and practice.

[00:09:04]According to Jerry, the founder of Tiantai, some people emphasize one over the other.

[00:09:10]And he says you got to have both. Like there has to be a balance of study and practice.

[00:09:15]Um I think that I think that's really interesting.

[00:09:17]So, um lineage theory. So, if later um generations come to imagine Jerry as a founder and that Jerry is drawing upon the Madhyamaka tradition, so they loop in Nagarjuna. Everybody in the Mahayana world you know, adds Nagarjuna to their lineage theory, and of course, da da da, back to the Buddha, just like in Zen, okay?

[00:09:38]Um then uh one of the texts is the Lotus Sutra. We'll talk about why talk about why maybe that's so important. Um a a practice that is really central for Tiantai is known as Zhiguan. Uh whenever you see a zhi, it's going to have kind of a j sound.

[00:09:53]Um and again, that I I would encourage us to think of it as comprehensive, not necessarily eclectic.

[00:10:00]All right, so Zhiyi. Um uh I I I don't remember if I mentioned this, but back in the day when I was studying at Koyasan University and learning about uh medieval Japanese Shingon traditions, um my advisor at the time, the head of the esoteric Buddhist research group, told me that a lot of the stuff that we tend to attribute to Kukai is in some sense already formulated by Zhiyi in China.

[00:10:26]And he said, "If someone had told me that when I was a young monk, I would've been mad, but now I'm older and I know more. So, that I was like, "Oh, thank you for sharing. Have fun."

[00:10:35]Um Zhiyi is active in China, you know, the five the around the 500s, at a time when you know, Buddhism has been flowing into China for a couple hundred years at this point. You have different areas of study that are flourishing. You've got uh doctrine masters, Vinaya masters, that's the monastic rules and regulations. You got chanting masters, meditation masters, uh specialists in different uh doctrinal or textual lineages.

[00:11:03]Uh there's been a couple hundred years of wrestling over how do we use Chinese words to talk about Buddhism? Because the the first few generations, the first few centuries in China, you're having to borrow all this language from what's basically Taoism.

[00:11:20]And these words mean something, right?

[00:11:22]It's just like what we have in English right now, right? Like the the words we have to talk about religion in English are usually Christian words.

[00:11:29]So, how do they work? So, for example, I go to Japan, I get a certificate, it's up here somewhere. All right, and not somewhere, it's it's up there. And you know, I have this little piece of paper that says Sōryō that I'm a Sōryō. Well, what what do we call that in English? Is it a monk, a minister, a pastor, a rabbi? Like you know, but we have all these English words or Hebrew words or Latin words that they don't quite match. That's so so in American Buddhism, we're still figuring out how do we talk about Buddhism in English.

[00:12:01]Zhiyi is kind of at this point in Chinese history where you know, we've got good translations of texts that read like good Chinese. Um that is one of the fun things about reading like really early Chinese Buddhist texts is it's it's hard to read in a way that you know, of course it's Chinese, it's hard to read, but like like it's really hard to read cuz they haven't quite standardized the vocabulary yet, right?

[00:12:23]So, Zhiyi is at this point where we're you know, stuff is congealing. You know, congealing. You know, the people are figuring out how to make Buddhism Chinese.

[00:12:33]So, he's buddies with the emperor and the emperor kind of tasks him with how do you make sense of all this?

[00:12:40]So, Zhiyi develops a Panjiao.

[00:12:44]He's not the first one to develop a Panjiao or a doctrinal classification system, but his Panjiao is one of the most successful one of the most successful and one of the most influential. There are a lot of other doctrinal classification systems developed before and after, but this one's really important and given how important um Tendai Buddhism is in Japan, learning a bit about his Panjiao system, I think it will be of benefit to us. So, it's called the Five Times and Eight Teachings and we're going to talk about it here in a moment.

[00:13:13]In the same way that he constructs a comprehensive doctrinal system, he also develops a comprehensive approach to meditation known as Zhiguan, often called calming or insight and I'm going to talk about some of the ideas behind that as well.

[00:13:28]So, why the Lotus Sutra?

[00:13:31]Uh one of the texts that Jurei emphasizes as being representative of the ultimate teaching of the Buddha is the Lotus.

[00:13:39]And if his task is to take a comprehensive account of Buddhism, what better text than the Lotus Sutra, which emphasizes the unity of the apparent diversity of Buddhism?

[00:13:54]Throughout this text, we see examples where someone thought Buddhism was like this, but we realize that in all the different approaches to Buddhism, there's this oneness.

[00:14:04]Even [snorts] great villains like the monk Devadatta, Buddha's evil cousin, turns out to be a great Bodhisattva. Those monks who had rejected the Mahayana turn out to get their own prediction of future Buddhahood as a, you know, you know, follower of the Bodhisattva path ultimately to Buddhahood.

[00:14:22]Uh there there are a lot of other great stories like that. Um one of the classic examples of this is in chapter 3, where we find the very famous burning house parable. Uh one time in Japanese class, when I was in Yokohama, I had to give a class presentation, and I didn't know what to talk about, so I just talked about this.

[00:14:40]And my friend was like, "I know that story. My grandma told me something about that. What is that?" And then I explained it. He's like, "Ah, it's from a Buddhist Sutra, of course, right?" I thought that was really funny. But um so, the burning house parable is basically this. There's a There's a father who comes home, and his house is ablaze. He calls to his kids and says, "Hey guys, come on out. You're in danger."

[00:15:00]And uh if you spend any time with kids, you know that when you tell them to do something, they listen immediately.

[00:15:05]Nope, they don't.

[00:15:07]So, the father has to figure out a way to coax them out. And he says, "Hey guys, outside right now, I have three animals pulling three carts. You've got an ox, a a deer, and a goat. And each one has a has a cart and they're full of toys. You got PlayStations and Pokémon cards and whatever the heart could desire. Come on out, right? And when the kids come out, uh you know, they rejoice. They run out of the house, run out of the burning house, >> [music] >> and what they discover is that in fact, instead of these three animals, they have these giant white oxen that have even cooler stuff than they could have imagined.

[00:15:44]And uh So, this is revealed, of course, that the burning house is samsara, the wise father is the Buddha, and the three vehicles are the three basic approaches to Buddhism in the early tradition, the Bodhisattva lineage or the the Bodhisattva approach, the Shravaka or the non-Mahayana approach, and the Pratyekabuddha or solitary Buddha approach. Um but, what is revealed is that all of these ultimately ultimately lead to the Bodhisattva path. Um so, you could say that the Lotus Sutra is suggesting that all of us, whether we know it or not, are already on the path to awakening. We are all little bitty baby Bodhisattvas on the path to awakening, and whatever we may be practicing in terms of, you know, Buddhist practice, and they I think this ultimately ends up encompassing all religions, actually.

[00:16:32]Uh uh are ultimately on the path. You know, that all paths leading up the same mountain. Now, within the Lotus Sutra, in my opinion, this does not move beyond a hierarchical universalism. This is a an a kind of universalistic approach that says, "Everybody sits at the table, but don't forget who's at the head of the table."

[00:16:54]I uh I would suggest that within the Tiantai system, they take it a few steps further, where, let's say, your Muslim friend is not secretly a Bodhisattva, but rather your Muslim friend as a Muslim is accepted as they are, right? Uh your, you know, Catholic grandma is not not you know, not going to have a deathbed vision of of Mother Mary who turns out to be the Bodhisattva of Compassion, but rather Mary, right? As a Catholic like you know, and it maybe moves in a direction that is maybe truly universal. I don't know.

[00:17:36]This is a thing that I've been thinking about for a little while. Um, Tiantai philosophy does some pretty cool stuff.

[00:17:41]There's a scholar named Brook Ziporyn.

[00:17:43]I don't have that one on hand. My apologies. Brook Ziporyn um emptiness and omnipresence. He does a really good job of getting into Tiantai philosophy and kind of seeing the way that diversity is dealt with within the Chinese Tiantai tradition, which again is in some ways inspired by the Lotus Sutra, but I think takes it some really interesting directions. Um, one of the other great chapters of Lotus Sutra is dedicated to the Bodhisattva of Compassion known as Guanyin in Chinese or Avalokiteshvara in um Sanskrit. The um I have had uh students who are non-binary or trans who really vibe with Guanyin because she's sometimes depicted as a male, sometimes depicted as female. Notice I'm using the pronoun she because I do most of my work in East Asia. When I see statues of her, I see a female deity, right? Um, but in this chapter 25, she explains that she will appear to you in whatever form is most appropriate for you. A boy, a girl, a king, a queen, a god, a Buddha, a Bodhisattva, a dragon, like whatever you need, that is the form that this Buddha or Bodhisattva will take for you. This ends up you know, this is one example from one Buddhist text, but we find this across the Mahayana where Buddhas and Bodhisattvas use upaya or skillful means to guide you in whatever form is most appropriate for you. Right? Maybe it's Zen, maybe it's Shingon, maybe it's Pure Land, maybe it's Catholicism, it whatever, right?

[00:19:17]Whatever your path, that's the path that reality will you know, find you on, right? So, Lotus Sutra becomes important, but it's just one of many texts that Jury is going to draw upon and you know, systematize. So, five times eight teachings. Let's start with the five times. According to general Buddhism, if we can invoke such a thing, the Buddha taught different things to different people at different times. And this is because each of us has our own unique challenges, afflictions, problems, advanta- advantageous karmic defilements or or something like that, right? That you know, like my issues are not your issues and and vice versa. You know, the Buddha is often compared to a doctor who gives a a medicine appropriate to the affliction, right? Somebody who is in cancer treatment versus someone with a headache, they're going to get radically different medicine. In the same way, someone who you know, has a bit of anxiety versus someone who's a member of a persecuted minority is going to have a different experience of being a human being, right? So, they will require different teachings.

[00:20:27]So, one way to organize all of this diversity is to say that the Buddha taught different things in you know, kind of slowly revealing the big picture. Now, this is a Mahayana approach. The Mahayana is going to be on top, but um so, starting off, we have the so-called Huayan period. This is the idea that the the Avatamsaka Sutra was taught by the Buddha you know, kind of automatically upon awakening. And only the high-level Bodhisattvas knew what he was putting down at that point. So, this is right up immediately upon achieving awakening.

[00:21:01]This is the big picture, right? This is the executive summary of the whole thing, right?

[00:21:05]But, the early disciples were not ready for that, so he accommodates the teaching.

[00:21:10]Goes the Deer Park period. This is where the non-Mahayana teachings are delivered.

[00:21:16]Then we have the Vaipulya period.

[00:21:18]Vaipulya means extensive, and it's essentially another term for Mahayana, okay? Uh these are the early Mahayana teachings or you know So, Vimalakirti, Srimala Devi Sutra, the Golden Light Sutra, and others.

[00:21:32]Eventually we get to the Perfection of Wisdom period. This is the you know the Prajnaparamita, where we really start to get into emptiness. And again, Zhiyi is uh engaging seriously with the concept of emptiness. And I think part of partly it's because emptiness gives us a way to talk about the blurred boundaries between traditions, right? You you read this text, these are its teachings. Read this text, these are its teachings. How do you put those together, right? Uh this is something that I think especially in Chinese and Korean Buddhism they're really good at doing, and I think Zhiyi helps pioneer that. How do we build these systems together?

[00:22:09]And then finally we get to the the ultimate teaching, which for Zhiyi is going to be the teachings that all paths are one, the Lotus Sutra, and that all beings possess Buddha nature, uh the Nirvana Sutra.

[00:22:20]Uh next week when we talk about Tendai Buddhism, this issue of Buddha nature becomes really key.

[00:22:28]Uh it becomes a a major point that people are debating about. Um you know, are there those who are excluded or is everyone included? Uh when Tendai Buddhism is first brought to Japan by really not first brought to Japan, but first really systematized and established in Japan, uh the question of the universality of Buddha nature is one of the big sticking points. But for Zhiyi, absolutely, right? All beings have Buddha nature.

[00:22:54]>> [sighs] >> Next, the Eight Teachings. Eight Teachings are two groups of four. These are different ways that the teachings are expounded. So, the the we have four modes of teaching.

[00:23:04]One is sudden, like boom. You know, the Buddha awakens and then automatically is revealing ultimate reality. Uh and this is, you know, the Avatamsaka Sutra. Avatamsaka Sutra is is a big text. Like, it's encyclopedic in scope in English.

[00:23:21]Uh it it's probably a compendium of a lot of perhaps independently circulating texts in India that then get kind of brought together and then translated into Chinese a couple times. Yeah. Then we get the gradual teaching. So, these would be teachings that are um you know, there's kind of a graduated curriculum from the most basic to the most profound. So, the Agamas, this would be the early Buddhist teachings, the um the or the, you know, the kind of foundational Buddhist teachings, then the more extensive Mahayana teachings, and then ultimately kind of the uh philosophical scriptural literature we find in Prajnaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom.

[00:24:01]Next, we have this interesting term uh mimitsu or himitsu kyo.

[00:24:07]Uh you can translate that as esoteric teachings, but it doesn't mean esoteric teachings in the sense we were talking about last time. Uh esoteric or it's kind of hidden, right? Uh that that there is a secret underlying meaning to certain teachings.

[00:24:23]So, uh this is this idea that perhaps some people are going to hear the same teaching, but un- unbeknownst to them, they're going to comprehend it differently than other people. So, you think you're hearing the same thing, but each person is deriving a different benefit, right? Uh this reminds me of the of the the medicinal herbs chapter of the Lotus Sutra, where the Dharma rain falls and all of the different kinds of plants are going to absorb that rain in the way that's most appropriate for them and grow in their own unique way. Yeah.

[00:24:57]So, again, you hear the Heart Sutra, I hear the Heart Sutra, we're different people. We're going to experience that, you know, engage with that deep differently.

[00:25:07]Then we have the indeterminate teaching.

[00:25:08]This is that, you know, beings are going to benefit from a teaching according to their basic according to their needs.

[00:25:16]And again, this is a way of accounting for the different ways that we receive teaching, the different teachings that we students laugh when I say this, but you know, what do you vibe with? You know, that seems like a silly question, but I I think in Buddhist context it it's kind of has kind of a technical meaning, you know, you encounter something and depending on your karmic conditioning, you may relate to it positively, negatively, neutrally, and so on. And that's true for different Buddhist teachings and approaches as well.

[00:25:47]So, five through eight, we've got the four kinds of content. So, the content of the teachings. So, one would be the Tripitaka. Tripitaka. Again, non-Mahayana teachings.

[00:25:59]Then you have the shared teachings.

[00:26:02]Um this would be teachings that are kind of relevant to Mahayana and Hinayana. There's some teachings that just kind of, you know, overlap. This is also going to include some Yogacara and Madhyamaka.

[00:26:14]Then we have distinct teachings. So, these are the teachings that are distinct to the Bodhisattva path. So, this would include um you know, the as well journey's teaching of the three truths, which we'll talk about here in a moment.

[00:26:26]That'd be emptiness, provisional reality, and the middle from which you can embrace both, you know, ultimate truth and, you know, ordinary truth at the same time.

[00:26:36]Then we get the perfect teaching. Uh this is that the term perfect teaching, by the way, is sometimes a synonym for Tientai.

[00:26:44]And and this first character here, Yuan or En, uh uh can mean circle, can mean perfect, can mean round.

[00:26:53]Um so you could think again of of the Tiantai teachings as the well-rounded teachings, right? And again, this is rooted in the Lotus and the Nirvana Sutra. Um in particular, I want to the uh a teaching derived from the Lotus Sutra is the 10 suchnesses, the 10 uh you know, or or or 10 realms.

[00:27:10]Uh this is, you know, from from Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, gods, Shravakas, and so on. You know, so there's 10 10 levels, right?

[00:27:18]These 10 levels are each mutually inclusive. Yeah, so the Buddha realm is going to include the hell realms, the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm, and so on, all the way up to the Buddha realm. The hell you know, the hell realm is going to include the Buddha realm, the Bodhisattva realm, and so on. So each of the 10 is mutually inclusive.

[00:27:36]That's 10 * 10, 100 * the three realms, uh form, not form, desire, I believe, equals 3,000.

[00:27:46]Uh so we have the um 3,000 in a single thought moment, right?

[00:27:53]Um so uh each each ex- each perspective from which you can experience reality is actually mutually inclusive of all other perspectives, right? Um the great trichiliocosm, I believe is the term, 3,000 world. The great 3,000 world uh can be revealed in a single thought moment, right?

[00:28:17]So um [snorts] >> [clears throat] >> uh a single so ichinen. Uh and then ichinen uh this is this is the same term as in nembutsu. Uh so we'll see this, you know, showing up again later, but in a single thought moment, you're actually already including all things. Nothing is left out. Uh and we can think again of uh dependent arising that um any one thing in the universe is actually um depends upon every other thing to exist.

[00:28:52]So, that that's you, that's me, that's this pencil right here that I saved from the from the dog earlier.

[00:28:59]Uh the the dog that tried to eat the pencil there in a mutually, you know, um you know, connected relationship and so on. All right. So, uh again, like this, you know, important work by Zhiyi, the Mohe Zhiguan, uh recently translated to English, and also uh So, I highly recommend checking out the Swanson translation uh published by University of of Hawaii Press, but also a simplified version of this has been um is what's great about the three-volume version is that it has a supplementary text and all of the academic apparatus for digging deeply into the Mohe Zhiguan, uh but also the the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, the Society for the Promotion of Buddhism, has also produced a two-volume somewhat pared-down version that is also available to download for free, uh should you be interested in wrestling with a very difficult but very important text from the history of East Asia. So, Mohe is maha, like great. Zhiguan, this is this kind of comprehensive approach to meditation. You have zhi, meaning to stop. This is a translation of the Sanskrit term shamatha, which is often translated as something like calming meditation or something like that. Uh for Zhiyi, this includes dhyana or chan meditation. Zhiyi was aware that Zen was kind of becoming a thing, but he did not have a great opinion of it. He felt that a lot of what he was seeing is kind of these characters that become kind of enveloped in the mythology of Bodhidharma. He's like, "You guys don't study enough. You know, you claim to be teaching outside the scriptures." Like, "No, you need the scriptures. You need to study and your meditation needs to be balanced with that. You can't just do one or the other. Now, the Chan critique that is, you know, Zen Buddhist like, "Ah, you you Tendai guys, you read too much. You don't practice enough." The the Tendai critique is, "Ah, you Zen guys don't know how to read or, you know, or or or whatever." So, I I think that I think that's really funny. But, uh for early Japanese Tendai and for, you know, Jurei's time, uh this Jurei Guan system is supposed to be inclusive of what we might call Zen. Uh later on, uh Zen is transmitted to Japan uh by a Tendai monk and kind of becomes its own thing, but uh again, it's important to think about how all of these different lineages, approaches to practice, and doctrinal areas of specialization can all overlap. All right? Esoteric Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, uh Zen, Tendai, Shingon, Hosso, Kegon, whatever. It's all good, right? These things can all overlap.

[00:31:41]So, uh the the next part, Guan, uh is Guan is a translation of Vipassanā. Can also mean contemplation, visualization, insight. Um one of the ways that this has been explained to me is like like stabilizing meditation and analytical meditation or a calming and insight or um um another explanation that I've heard is that you imagine that the mind is like a fish bowl. I have a lot of fish bowl based metaphors. And day to day, this fish bowl is, you know, you know, being jostled about.

[00:32:17]Uh there's some dirt being thrown in there, some mud, sticks, twigs. But, eventually, if you just take that bowl and you set it down, eventually, all the soot will slowly settle to the bottom and it will be clear.

[00:32:31]And from that clear state of mind, you're able to then engage in more um insightful analysis of objects in reality.

[00:32:40]So these two go together.

[00:32:43]There has also been a kind of Vipashyana movement within modern Burmese Theravada Buddhism which has some some interesting overlap here as well. So four basic approaches to cultivating um Jerkwan or you know, calming and insight meditation.

[00:33:04]Drawing upon the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra or the Samadhi of seeing Buddhas of the present uh Jury develops this approach with constant sitting meditation for 90 days, constant walking meditation for 90 days, both sitting and walking meditation and neither sitting nor walking.

[00:33:23]Um on Mount Hiei today there is a >> [clears throat] >> constant walking hall and when I was in Japan for ordination uh we took a visit to Mount Hiei and as we were walking by the constant walking or constant practice hall uh what we could hear somebody reciting Namu Amida Butsu Namu Amida Butsu in a very exhausted voice because again you're supposed to be doing this practice constantly for 90 days. Um within this framework the chanting of the name of Amitabha becomes very important.

[00:34:00]Uh during this constant sitting your mind is going to wander. You're going to get tired, you're going to falter.

[00:34:06]Recite the name. Either mentally but eventually becomes vocally. Uh and the same thing for the constant walking and so on. So as reciting the name of Amitabha becomes um you know, incorporated into this.

[00:34:20]Uh so so once again this is and and the consequence of this is that uh so again like that sorry.

[00:34:28]This is in part drawn from the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra and within the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra, it says, "Hey, you can pick any Buddha or Bodhisattva you you know pick any Buddha you want, but let's pick Amitabha, right?" Zhiyi basically says the same thing, but the consequences of picking Amitabha is that in Chinese Tiantai, Korean Cheontae, and Japanese Tendai, a lot of important Pure Land work is being done in those spaces, and it goes all the way back to the teachings of Zhiyi, okay? So, four different approaches, and in this context, right? Like you have, let's say, an image of the Buddha and you're sitting, you come to realize that the holy Buddha and the mundane sentient being are actually not really separate, that this this perceived boundary between awakening and the foolish being begins to break down.

[00:35:17]It's one of the cool things about meditation, it it transforms your mind, transforms how you're able to see and understand the world.

[00:35:25]Um one of the teachings that emerges from this is called the three truths.

[00:35:30]Uh and then this is a way of reading Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna talks about emptiness or openness. I hear so this term translating emptiness, kong, can mean open, it can also mean sky. So, you think empty, [music] think open, yeah? That things are not fixed, things are not static.

[00:35:50]But that's not my conventional experience. My conventional experience is, you know, stuff around me, that the world is set uh in a way. Um I I I get tangled in my own notions and ideas uh and anxieties, uh but really the world is so much more than that.

[00:36:08]The middle could be thought of as encompassing both.

[00:36:13]Uh that emptiness is not some other state of existence, but it's right here, right now.

[00:36:18]It's conventional reality truly understood.

[00:36:23]Uh and there are a lot of different ways that various Buddhist traditions get at this. You know, before I was awakened, there was you know, mountains were mountains, rivers were rivers. Upon awakening, something else. After awakening, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. Uh so, emptiness ultimately comes back around to affirm conventional reality. And one of the ways that Jury E gets at that idea is this notion of the middle.

[00:36:47]Um another way that I like to think about it is, you know, [sighs] my my my my good hippie friend might say, "Hey, man, it's all stardust. It's all oneness, bro." It's like, "Okay, sure. Yeah. We're all just made of energy." Like, "Yeah, that's true.

[00:37:02]That's great. But, I'm hungry. I'm sad.

[00:37:05]I'm persecuted. I'm whatever." Like, yes, it might all be stardust, but I'm living this human experience.

[00:37:14]And a lot of the time it's really hard, right? The first noble truth, life is characterized by dukkha.

[00:37:22]Right? So, the bodhisattva is able to reconcile these two visions of reality.

[00:37:26]The truth, yeah, it's all just stardust, man. But, also, you have pain, right?

[00:37:31]Think of Avalokiteshvara.

[00:37:32]Avalokiteshvara who as well has a an image of Amitabha in her crown. Her name means, "The lord who looks down, hears the cries of the world."

[00:37:43]Yeah? So, perceiving emptiness in the Heart Sutra and responding compassionately, um you know, to help sentient beings uh foundational here, right? And I think that you know, the teachings of Jury is one place where we get to see these ideas come together.

[00:37:59]Okay.

[00:38:00]So, I'm going to pause there for now, and we will continue on next time.

[00:38:06]Um I'm uh very excited to continue exploring different Buddhist traditions.

[00:38:11]Uh maybe we'll even get around to doing some stuff on Tibet. I'm a I'm a big fan of the the life of Milarepa. So, we're going to do something on Tibet at some point, that'd be fun.

[00:38:20]Um but yeah, so, uh please feel free if you have any questions, you want to follow up, you want to dig more deeply in or get some references to some of the some of the things I was mentioning, Brooks Ziporyn, Paul Swanson, a few others.

[00:38:33]Studying Tiantai is really important.

[00:38:35]Oh, I have one more story I want to share before before we wrap up. This one time I was looking for some resources in Chinese on Tiantai.

[00:38:43]And I stumbled into this message board, I believe from from some people in Taiwan.

[00:38:49]And this person was asking, like, "Hey, I you know, I'm looking for a I've been reading the works of of Master Zhiyi and I would like to attend a, you know, service at a Tiantai temple."

[00:39:00]And a a monk, a Taiwanese monk, then responded and said, "That's not really how Buddhism works here.

[00:39:07]You know, technically, all of us have lineage all of us monks have lineage in Chan, but we all study the works of Zhiyi. So, it's not sectarian in that sense." And I thought that was really interesting. And that's also why you should learn Chinese because then you get to experience these other insights into how people are thinking about Buddhism and how it's working on the ground. For example, near me, there is the Dharma Drum Mountain Retreat Center, and they will sometimes do, you know, you know, you know, shamatha vipassana meditation, studies of the works of of Zhiyi, and you know, these are monks from all over the world and you know, I've often taken students there and continue to.

[00:39:48]It's a really great place to study. So, any case, we'll stop there. Next time we'll dig into Japanese Tendai and some of the unique developments there that both incorporate insights from the Chinese Tiantai tradition, but then also go off in some interesting directions.

[00:40:04]Thank you.