Maha ̄ya ̄na bodhisattvas, this teaching is coupled with a pre-
sentation of the three insights, emptiness (gu), provisional ex-
istence (jia), and the middle, or reconciliation of these two
(zhong), in a sequential manner. This is the Separate Teach-
ing, as each defilement is cut off separately. When the three
insights are taught, cultivated, and realized simultaneously,
and when the three defilements are cut off all at once, this
is the Perfect Teaching.
The teaching of the Huayan period is the Perfect Teach-
ing, but not exclusively so; it also contains traces of the Sepa-
rate Teaching. The Deer Park period is devoted exclusively
to the Pit:aka Teaching. The third period, the miscellaneous
Maha ̄ya ̄na or Vaipulya period, contains elements of all four
teachings, and the fourth period teaches the Perfect Teaching
but with strong traces of both the Common and Separate
Teachings. In the fifth period, the Lotus Sutra is purely the
Perfect Teaching, with no admixture of any of the other
teachings, whereas the Maha ̄parinirva ̄n:a Su ̄tra constitutes a
subsidiary teaching, and includes all of the four types of
teachings.
Meditation. According to Guanding, Zhiyi’s teaching
of meditation can be traced to the master Huisi, and compre-
hends “three types of stilling and insight meditation” (san-
zhong zhiguan): the gradual attainment of stilling and insight
(taught in full in Zhiyi’s Shichan poluomi ziti famen, T. D.
no. 1916), the indeterminate attainment of stilling and in-
sight (represented by his Liumiao famen, T. D. no. 1917),
and the perfect and sudden attainment of stilling and insight
(represented by the Mohe zhiguan).
The Mohe zhiguan is divided into ten major sections;
sections one and seven are further subdivided into important
subdivisions. Section one is entitled Dayi, (“great teaching”)
and is subdivided into (1) generating the bodhicitta (in which
ten types of good and bad bodhicitta are enumerated); (2)
cultivating the great practice, in which four types of sama ̄dhi
are enumerated: the “samadhi of perpetual walking,” the “sa-
madhi of perpetual sitting,” the “samadhi of half-walking and
half-sitting” (which, coupled with the perpetual recitation of
the Nembutsu, became important in Japanese Tendai and
Pure Land practice), and the “samadhi of neither walking nor
sitting”; (3) experiencing the great result (i. e., the
sam:bhogaka ̄ya); (4) rending asunder the great snare of
doubts, in which the author refutes doubts and objections
based on other writings and teachings; and (5) returning to
the great source, nirva ̄n:a.
Section two discusses the name (Stilling and Insight) of
the text. Section three discusses its characteristics; section
four states that this practice embraces all dharmas; section
five discusses whether this practice is partial or perfect; and
section six gives some twenty-five external and internal prep-
arations for the practice of meditation. Section seven is enti-
tled “The Real Practice” and is subdivided into ten subdivi-
sions. According to section seven, on the first of the devotee’s
intensive meditations he or she should meditate on “the three
thousand dharmas in one instant of mind” (yinian sanqian),
a practice that has become one of the hallmarks of Tiantai
meditation. This teaching states that the devotee’s five
skandhas presently contain all of the dharmas (“the three
thousand dharmas”) of existence. These three thousand are
the ten realms of rebirth (hell, pretas, animals, asuras, hu-
mans, devas, ́sra ̄vakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas, and
Buddhas) multiplied by the ten “suchnesses,” or real, tangi-
ble characteristics (nature, external characteristics, body,
power, creative ability, causes, conditions, results, recom-
penses, and the totality of the Absolute), in turn multiplied
by the three realms (the realm of sentient beings, their physi-
cal lands, and their five skandhas).
The remaining portions of section seven elucidate
meditational practices designed to remove the influences
(va ̄sana ̄s) of one’s past karman. At this point the Mohe zhig-
uan comes to an abrupt end; that is, it ends at the seventh
subdivision of section seven; the remaining sections (eight to
ten) are missing, although the names of their titles are known
from the introduction to the work: Section eight is con-
cerned with karmic results, section nine with the teachings,
and section ten with the general purport. There are two tra-
ditional reasons given for this abrupt ending to the text: Ei-
ther Zhiyi was asked to speak for a certain period of time and
his time ran out, or he was beginning to speak of states of
attainment that could not be expressed in words. That is to
say, if the devotee progressed as far as was already described
in the text, the devotee would automatically know the end-
ing of the book.
Introductory manuals. Even though the major writ-
ings of the Tiantai tradition are large, voluminous works,
early on it became obvious to Zhiyi that his thought would
be best presented in shorter epitomes of his teachings. One
of the distinctive features of the Tiantai tradition is that it
produced a number of one-volume works that present the
salient points of Tiantai doctrine in a brief, easy to remember
form.
One of the first of these works was Guanding’s Tiantai
bajiao dayi (The Major Points of the Eight Teachings of the
Tiantai; T. D. no. 1930). Another popular one volume in-
troduction to Tiantai thought is the Tiantai sijiaoyi (Kor.,
Cho ̆ndee sagyo ̆ngui; T. D. no. 1931) by the Korean monk
Chegwan (Chin., Tiguan). This text is divided into two sec-
tions: The first describes the “five periods” (in the teaching
career of the Buddha) and the “four teachings” (four types
of doctrine preached by S ́a ̄kyamuni); the second describes
the meditational practice of the lineage. With this arrange-
ment the author appears to separate the doctrinal from the
practice aspect of the teaching, a point upon which he was
criticized by later writers (e.g., Zhihxü).
Another short, one-volume introductory work is the
Jiaoguan kangzong (T. D. no. 1939) by the Ming dynasty
master Zhixu (1599–1655). In this work Zhixu attempts to
present the orthodox Tiantai teachings without any admix-
ture of his own interpretations, yet his definition of orthodox
Tiantai are the thoughts of the shanjia masters of the Song9178 TIANTAI