BUDDHISM IN CENTRAL ASIA AND CHINA 189Chih-i's thought had a far-reaching influence on east Asian Buddhism.
Even those who did not read his work came to assume that he had proven the
internal coherence ofBuddhism once and for all, so they could get on to other
work. He established the doctrine of the Buddha-nature as the ultimate Bud-
dhist teaching, a position that was accepted by all east Asian schools of doc-
trine and practice. His writings on meditation, in particular, formed the matrix
in which the Ch'an schools developed. Many later Ch'an meditation guides,
even into the eleventh century, repeated large portions of The Great Calming
and Contemplation verbatim. Unlike the later Ch'an schools, however, Chih-i
did not deprecate gradual methods of teaching or practice. According to him,
Buddhism was similar to a complete course of medical science. A person with
a limited view might not see the necessity for certain medicines or techniques,
but a truly skilled doctor knows the variety of illnesses that can occur and the
need for a full panoply of techniques for dealing with them. However, the
strength of the T'ien-t' ai system, its comprehensiveness, was also its weakness
in that it required its followers to diffuse their energies in an effort to master
all areas of doctrine and practice. This may be one of the reasons why, in the
seventh century, many T'ien-t'ai monks went over to the newly developing
Ch' an schools.
During the sixth century, however, Chih-i and T'ien-t'ai in general re-
ceived strong support from the ruling house of the Sui dynasty, which felt that
the school's integration of southern scholarship with northern meditation and
devotional methods paralleled its policy of political integration. The connec-
tion with the Sui ruling house, however, meant that the school was eclipsed
during the early T' ang dynasty. In the eighth century, Chan-jan (711-82) re-
vived the school in response to what he saw as the mistaken views of Hua-
yen. Chan-jan was re~ponsible for reformulating Chih-i's views into a matrix
that came to be the school's slogan: the five periods and the eight teachings.
The five periods corresponded to the five flavors; the eight teachings were ac-
tually two lists of four categories. The first list consisted of four methods of
teachings: sudden, gradual, secret (one teaching that meant different things to
different groups), and variable (one teaching that gave sudden results to one
group and gradual results to another). The second list consisted of four doc-
trines: tripitaka (doctrines particular to the Hinayana, such as the Wings to
Awakening); shared (common to both the Hinayana and the Mahayana); dis-
tinctive (exclusive to Mahayana); and complete (totally comprehensive). In
this manner Chan-jan sorted out three separate ways of classifying the Bud-
dha's teachings-in terms of chronology, method, and doctrine-while at the
same time tracing the complex relations among the three. Thus he managed.
to clear up an issue that the Hua-yen patriarch Fa-tsang had confused.
T'ien-t' ai was practically wiped out during the troubled years of the ninth
century. Texts were destroyed, and it was not until the latter part of the Five
Dynasty period (907-60) that the ruler of Chekiang was able to send to Korea
for copies ofT'ien-t'ai texts to be brought back to China. The Korean monk
Chegwan (d. 971) not only brought the texts but also composed a short sum-
mary ofT'ien-t'ai doctrines (mistakenly attributing Chan-jan's innovations to