The Tiantai Bridge: Zhiyi Sets Buddha-Recollection Out in Layers

6.4 The Tiantai Bridge: Zhiyi Sets Buddha-Recollection Out in Layers

The river of Pure Land — Shandao dug it outward, toward the solid. The river of Chan — Huineng dug it inward, toward the mind. Two rivers, parting wider and wider.

Yet between these two rivers stands a man. He takes no side. He set buddha-recollection out in many kinds — high and low, of every sort — so that the outward and the inward, the deep and the shallow, could each take its proper seat. His bridge reaches both banks.

The builder of this bridge is a patriarch of the Tiantai school: Master Zhiyi.

The Four Samādhis: Sorted by How the Body Is Placed, Not by High or Low

When Zhiyi taught practice, he set up a famous framework called "the four samādhis" — constantly seated, constantly walking, half-walking-half-seated, and neither-walking-nor-seated.

At first glance, the four look like four steps rising from low to high. They are not. What sorts them is not rank but how the body is placed: some sit upright all day (constantly seated); some circle on foot all day (constantly walking); some half walk and half sit (half-walking-half-seated); and some are bound to neither walking nor sitting, practicing in the midst of all daily affairs (neither-walking-nor-seated).

Zhiyi himself laid bare the key of this framework in a single sentence: "Methods differ; the contemplative principle is one." The four differ in method — in the posture of the body — but the principle contemplated, the mind at work, is one and the same.

See what this does. It loosens buddha-recollection from a narrow stair, shallow to deep, that must be climbed step by step, into an open square where everyone can find a place. If you love sitting still, there is a seated buddha-recollection. If you cannot sit still and need to move, there is a circling one. If your days are full and you can only practice in the midst of your work, the gate of neither-walking-nor-seated is waiting for you. Place the body however you will; the mind that recollects is one.

The Bridge Itself: Body, Mouth, and Mind, Recollecting Together

Among the four samādhis, one is the true deck of this bridge — the constantly walking samādhi, which is the pratyutpanna-samādhi we met earlier.

Zhiyi describes it like this: for ninety days, the body circles without rest; the mouth chants the name of Amitābha without rest; the mind recollects Amitābha without rest. And he gathered the whole of it into eight characters: "Step by step, sound by sound, thought by thought — only Amitābha." Every step, every sound, every thought, set on Amitābha.

Now look: hidden inside this is a bridge.

The body walks, the mouth chants, the mind recollects — body, mouth, and mind, three together, turned toward the same Buddha. Zhiyi did not single out the chanting of the name, and he did not single out the mind's recollection; he let the two run together, along with the body's circling, neither one slighted.

And do you remember? Chanting the name aloud is exactly the face that Pure Land would later drive outward and establish as the principal practice; recollecting the Buddha within is exactly the face that Chan would later draw inward, until it became "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"

Which is to say: Chan and Pure Land — later two rivers, later even rivals — originally ran together, in one body, inside Zhiyi's constantly walking samādhi. Their parting came of later generations each seizing one face and driving it in one direction to its very limit. But Zhiyi's constantly walking samādhi is the common ancestor of them both: two faces, on one body from the start.

This is the most load-bearing plank of the whole Tiantai bridge.

Buddha-Recollection Carries Its Own Ladder from Shallow to Deep

Zhiyi did one more thing. He pointed out that buddha-recollection, inside itself, hides a ladder running from shallow to deep — that one can reach the very top without ever stepping outside it to climb some other gate.

Citing the ancients, he set out three layers: first, recollect the Buddha's color-and-form — contemplating His features and adornment; next, recollect the Buddha's qualities and dharmas — calling to mind His many virtues, His many dharmas; last, recollect the real Buddha — the true Buddha beyond all form. From form, to qualities, to reality: each layer deeper than the last.

And at the very top, what is the view? Tiantai, at its utmost, says: at once empty, at once conventional, at once middle. Simply turn around and contemplate the very mind that is recollecting the Buddha, and you will see it, right now, as empty (without self-nature), as conventional (dependently arisen, vividly there), and as middle (falling to neither side). Carried to the utmost: "no buddha, no recollection" — all in perfect fusion. Tiantai calls this the "perfect teaching" — the most complete layer of the teaching.

Hear what this means: the summit of buddha-recollection is that most perfect contemplation of mind. You need not decide that buddha-recollection is "too shallow, meant for the dull," and jump out of it — into Chan, into Yogācāra, into Huayan — to reach the perfect teaching. No need. From the plainest holding the name, seeking rebirth, up to the highest "at once empty, conventional, and middle," the whole ladder lies hidden inside this one practice of buddha-recollection. One buddha-name reaches down to the dullest ordinary being, and up to the most perfect contemplation of mind.

Methods Differ; the Contemplative Principle Is One

To gather the whole Tiantai bridge into one sentence, it is still Zhiyi's own: "Methods differ; the contemplative principle is one."

The outward calling of the name (Pure Land), the inward contemplation of mind (Chan); the seated, the circling, the half-sitting-half-walking, the practice stolen from the gaps of a busy day — these many methods differ, each from each. But the mind they point to, the principle they point to, is one. Zhiyi did not press you to choose one road and discard the rest; he set them all in the same square of mind-contemplation, and told you: every one of them leads to the same place.

This is why we call Zhiyi the bridge: he stands between the two rivers of Chan and Pure Land, leaning to neither side, so that people from either bank can find, in him, the road home.

The Bridge Is Built, but the Rivers Still Flow Apart

And yet Zhiyi, in the end, only built the bridge.

He showed that these many ways of recollecting the Buddha are originally one — that Chan and Pure Land could be one and the same thing. But he did not actually take the two great rivers, already running their separate courses, and gather them back into one. What he did was to show that they could be joined; he did not join them.

The ones who truly set their hands to it — who gathered these two long-parted rivers back into a single stream — were patriarchs farther downstream: Yongming Yanshou of the Five Dynasties, and, in the Ming, Yunqi Zhuhong and Ouyi Zhixu.

They would make Chan and Pure Land, truly and completely, one.

In the next chapter — the last of Part Six — we go to watch that confluence, a thousand years in the making.