ings earned him the informal title of jizhu, the Master of
Commentaries. Zhanran died in 782, and was buried next
to the remains of Zhiyi. For his role in propagating Tiantai
doctrines at a time of their eclipse Zhanran has been termed
“the patriarchal restorer of the Tiantai tradition” (Tiantai
zhongxing zu). He had some thirty-nine disciples, including
Daosui and Xingman, as well as the academician Liang Xiao.
Zhanran’s fame rests on his literary works. These in-
clude commentaries on Zhiyi’s three major works: Fahua
wenju ji (T. D. no. 1719), Fahua xuanyi shiqian (T. D. no.
1717), and the Zhiguan fuxing zhuanhongjueh (T. D. no.
1912). In addition to these, Zhanran also reedited the Nie-
pan shu and composed three commentaries on the Weimo
jing (Vimalak ̄ırtinirde ́sa Su ̄tra), a selection of significant pas-
sages from the Mohe zhiguan (his Zhiguan wenju), works on
Huayan (his Huayan gumu), on selected topics in Tiantai
doctrine (Jingang bi lun and Shibuer men, important works
in the subsequent Song-dynasty shanjiashanwai debates), and
a number of introductory manuals of meditation.
Zhili. Zhili, later to be counted as the seventeenth patri-
arch of the Tiantai tradition, was born in 960 in Siming
(Chegiang Province). At the age of six, he lost his mother,
and his father sent him to live in a local monastery. It was
there, at the age of fourteen, that he received full ordination.
At nineteen he began his study of Tiantai doctrine with Yi-
tong (Kor., Uˇito ̆ng). After Zhili had been with Yitong for
one month the master had him lecture on the Xinjing (the
Prajña ̄pa ̄ramita ̄hr:daya Su ̄tra), and after a period of three
years Zhili was giving all of his master’s lectures. Yitong died
in 988; in 991 Zhili took up residence in the Qianfu Si,
where he stayed for four years, lecturing on Tiantai doctrines
and writings. As his students grew in number the accommo-
dations of the Qianfu Si proved to be too small, so in 995
he moved to the Baoen Yuan; in the following year the abbot
of the Baoen Yuan resigned his office and Zhili was able to
turn the monastery into a Tiantai teaching center.
Zhili’s entire life was devoted to religious instruction.
In addition to a voluminous corpus of writings, twenty-three
titles by one account, and his lectures on the major Tiantai
works and commentaries, he also pursued a rich liturgical
and meditative career. He was responsible for the construc-
tion of hundreds of monasteries, the mass printing of Tiantai
literature, the casting of devotional images, and the inaugu-
ration of an “Assembly for the Recitation of the Name of the
Buddha and for Giving the Precepts” (nianfo shijie hui), con-
vened annually on the fifteenth day of the second month.
But Zhili is perhaps best known for his role in the so-called
shanjiashanwai debates, the seminal Tiantai dispute of the
Northern Song period (960–1127).
The shanjia (“mountain school,” the “orthodox” posi-
tion) centered around Zhili and his followers; the shanwai
(“outside the mountain,” i. e., non-orthodox) position cen-
tered around the monks Qingzhao and Jiyuan. The dispute
turned on whether the correct object of meditation should
be the “mind as it currently is,” defiled and ignorant, or the
“true mind,” in which case the devotee was to visualize a
deity or some other transcendental object in order that the
mind might take on the feature of the object of meditation.
In the course of the debate the authenticity of various works
popularly attributed to Zhiyi and Zhanran was also disputed,
so that what came to be at issue was the very question as to
which teachings would be recognized as “orthodox” Tiantai
doctrine. The debate was joined initially in a series of corre-
spondence between Zhili and his shanwai counterparts
Wuen, Qingzhao, and Jiyuan. Many of these documents are
preserved in Zhili’s collected works, the Siming zunzhe jiaox-
ing lu (T. D. no. 1937). In the course of this correspondence
Zhili made a case for the everyday mind, replete with defile-
ments as it is, as the proper object of meditation, a point
around which a variety of notions concerning the nature of
the Absolute also crystallized.
By the time of his death in 1028 Zhili had gathered
around him a large number of students, more than thirty of
whom were his close disciples. Zhili also personally ordained
over seventy monks.
Zhixu. The scholar-monk Zhixu was born in 1599 in
the Suzhou district of present-day Giangsu Province. In his
youth he was an ardent student of the Confucian classics.
Like many of the Confucian scholars of his day, he had an
intense dislike for Buddhism and even composed an essay
purporting to refute Buddhist doctrine. But at the age of six-
teen he chanced to read the Zizhilu and the Zhushuang suibi
of the master Yunqi Zhuhong (1535–1615) and was con-
verted to Buddhism. At nineteen he underwent an enlighten-
ment experience while reading the Lunyu (Analects) of Con-
fucius; as his biographer put it, “he was enlightened to the
mind (xinfa) of Confucius and Yanzi.”
In 1638 Zhixu resolved to compose a commentary on
the Fanwan jing (T. D. no. 1815), the standard Chinese
Maha ̄ya ̄na text treating the precepts. Undecided as to which
doctrinal point of view he should adopt in his explanation
of the text, he made four tokens in order to practice a rite
of divination in front of a Buddha image. On these tokens
he wrote “the Huayan tradition,” “the Tiantai tradition,”
“the Weishi tradition,” and “my own tradition,” respectively,
signifying by this last that he would develop his own under-
standing of the Buddha’s teachings. In this rite, the token
marked with the Tiantai tradition came to the fore, and from
this time onward he composed all of his textual commen-
taries based on Tiantai principles.
In the summer of 1655 Zhixu fell ill, and on this occa-
sion compiled the Jingtu shiyao (Ten Essential Works on the
Pure Land), an anthology of ten essays dealing with the Pure
Land doctrines. At the end of summer his illness abated and
he was then able to complete his magnum opus, the forty-
four-volume Yuezang zhijin and the five-volume Fahai guan-
lan. Later that year his illness returned, whereupon he estab-
lished a Pure Land religious sodality and composed a set of
vows for the group. He also composed some stanzas on seek-
ing rebirth in the Pure Land (the Qiusheng jingtu jie). Zhixu9180 TIANTAI