Chapter 4 · A Thousand-Year Textbook and the Song Controversies

Part One · Sources and Formation

The Three Great Works had been transmitted—but where could a beginner enter sixty fascicles of writing? And when a body of learning had passed down for centuries, what caused disputes within its own house? This chapter tells two stories: the origin of a textbook and the self-account of a family dispute. In fact, they are one story. Both show that later generations took this body of learning seriously.

1 · Calamity in the Teaching Treasury, and Its Return from the Eastern Sea

We begin with a calamity. The “Account of Origins” appended to the Outline of the Tiantai Four Teachings records that the King of Wuyue asked Dharma Master Ji of Guoqing Monastery for instruction. The preface says that 「at Tiantai's Guoqing Monastery there was a Dharma Master Ji」 〔0774a07〕 and later calls him 「Master Ji,」 living at Luoxi. Master Ji answered as follows. The preface writer transmits the narrative at a later remove; its original punctuation consists only of 「full stops」 and is reproduced as recorded:

「In former times the warfare of the An Lushan rebellion brought devastation. More recently, the Huichang persecution burned and destroyed the teaching treasury in China, leaving it almost entirely damaged and incomplete. Now only in Goryeo, east across the sea, does the teaching flourish; the complete books are there.」 〔《天台四教儀》卷首緣起·T46n1931 0774a09–11·待譯·寂法師語·序家轉錄〕 『In today's words: In former times the warfare of the An Lushan rebellion brought devastation. More recently, the Huichang persecution burned and destroyed the teaching treasury in China, leaving it almost entirely damaged and incomplete. Now only in Goryeo, east across the sea, does the teaching flourish; the complete books are there.』

The An Lushan rebellion and the Huichang persecution had left the Tiantai teaching treasury in China almost wholly damaged and incomplete. The complete books survived across the eastern sea. Books can burn. Beyond the 『fish-and-lu copyists' errors』 of the preceding chapter, this is a harsher way for a text to disappear. The preface continues:

「Thereupon a state letter and gifts were prepared, and an envoy was sent to Goryeo to seek the commentaries and treatises of the Tiantai school. The ruler of Goryeo then commanded a monk named Chegwan to make a return embassy and bring the Tiantai corpus back to us.」 〔同序·0774a11–13；「贄弊」字形照錄〕 『In today's words: Thereupon a state letter and gifts were prepared, and an envoy was sent to Goryeo to seek the commentaries and treatises of the Tiantai school. The ruler of Goryeo then commanded a monk named Chegwan to make a return embassy and bring the Tiantai corpus back to our land.』

「Once Chegwan arrived, he received instruction from Master Ji at Luoxi and remained there until his death. At this point the great teaching flourished anew.」 〔同序·0774a13–14〕 『In today's words: Once Chegwan arrived, he received instruction from Master Ji at Luoxi and remained there until his death. At this point the great teaching flourished anew.』

The Goryeo monk Chegwan brought the corpus, studied with Master Ji at Luoxi, and 「at this point the great teaching flourished anew.」 The Tiantai books were sent home. A Chinese body of learning survived two fires in its own land because its books had been kept across the eastern sea.

2 · A Textbook for a Thousand Years

The single fascicle Chegwan left became the first lesson for beginners over the next thousand years. Its opening sentence says:

「The Great Master Zhizhe of Tiantai used the Five Periods and Eight Teachings to classify and interpret the sacred teachings of the Buddha's lifetime as they flowed eastward, exhausting them without remainder.」 〔高麗沙門諦觀錄《天台四教儀》·T46n1931 0774c13–14·待譯〕 『In today's words: The Great Master Zhizhe of Tiantai used the Five Periods and Eight Teachings to classify and interpret the sacred teachings of the Buddha's lifetime as they flowed eastward, exhausting them without remainder.』

A brief note on the life of a term: the four-character expression 「Five Periods and Eight Teachings」 occurs in this fascicle by Chegwan, twice within the work, but not in the Profound Meaning or the General Meaning of the Eight Teachings. A synopsis has its own language. Chegwan describes his method of compilation:

「Methods such as these are scattered through the extensive texts. I now follow the great works and record a concise outline of their essentials.」 〔同卷·0774c19–20〕 『In today's words: Methods such as these are scattered through the extensive texts. I now follow the great works and record a concise outline of their essentials.』

The preface writer explains why this fascicle alone circulated: 「Only the text of this first fascicle is circulated because its phrases are concise and its meaning easy to understand. Students who truly rely on it can comprehend the broad outline of the Buddha's entire teaching」 〔0774a17–19·序敘事〕. At the end of the fascicle, Chegwan himself sends readers back to the extensive work:

「If you wish to understand this in detail, please read the ten fascicles of the Fahua Xuanyi. They distinguish in full, as in a bright mirror, the modes by which all buddhas of the ten directions and three times teach the Dharma.」 〔同卷·0780c24–26〕 『In today's words: If you wish to understand this in detail, please read the ten fascicles of the Fahua Xuanyi. They distinguish in full, as in a bright mirror, the modes by which all buddhas of the ten directions and three times teach the Dharma.』

The textbook knows that it is an entrance, not a replacement: for detailed understanding, read the Profound Meaning. This form had an earlier predecessor in the General Meaning of the Tiantai Eight Teachings. Its opening attributes it to Guanding, while its close says 「Recorded by the Tiantai monk Mingkuang at Santong Monastery」 〔T46n1930 0773c13–14·待譯〕; the layers of attribution are recorded separately. It opens with a medicinal simile:

「Sudden, gradual, secret, and indeterminate are the modes of transformation, like medical prescriptions. Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, and perfect are the dharmas through which beings are transformed, like the flavors of medicine.」 〔《天台八教大意》·T46n1930 0769a14–15·待譯〕 『In today's words: Sudden, gradual, secret, and indeterminate are the modes of transformation, like medical prescriptions. Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, and perfect are the dharmas through which beings are transformed, like the flavors of medicine.』

At its close, it calls itself 「the opening chapter for studying doctrine and contemplation」 〔0773c09·錄者層〕. Opening chapter, synopsis, entrance: the self-placement of these texts remains consistent. They do not seize the extensive works' place. They stand at the door and receive the person entering.

3 · The Song Controversies — Zhili's Own Account

In the Song, Siming Zhili composed commentaries on both the Profound Meaning and the Words and Phrases of the Golden Light Sutra. Both are repeatedly cited in the textual-study layer of this edition's annotated Golden Light as evidence for collation. In the preface to his Record of Gleanings from the Profound Meaning, Zhili explains why he took up his brush. It is a first-person account, reproduced here as his statement and recorded without adjudicating the dispute:

「Gushan's work was largely occupied with dissolving the text, and in the middle he also destroyed and removed the contemplation of mind. This was truly unbearable; therefore I now take up my brush, gleaning the meanings left behind by the former master and the text abandoned by later people, so that the two paths of teaching and practice will not become blocked.」 〔宋四明沙門知禮述《金光明經玄義拾遺記》自序·T39n1784 0012b09–12·待譯〕 『In today's words: Gushan's work was largely occupied with explaining the wording, and in the middle he also removed the contemplation of mind. This was truly unbearable to watch; therefore I now take up my brush, gleaning the meanings left behind by the former master and the text abandoned by later people, so that the two paths of teaching and practice will not become blocked.』

「This was truly unbearable; therefore I now take up my brush.」 Zhili believed that Gushan's work—the same book calls him 「Master Yuan of Gushan」 〔T39n1784 0029b28〕—had removed the layer of contemplating the mind, and so he took up his brush to recover what had been left behind. What had been removed? Precisely the layer between teaching and contemplation that turns reading into practice. The gap with which Chapter 0 opened became a written controversy in the Song. The self-account in his commentary on the Words and Phrases explains the defects of lecture records:

「His disciples gathered in great numbers and competed to record what they heard, privately giving it form in scrolls. Moreover, because the brush was entrusted to other hands, it instead constrained the far-reaching purport. When scriptures and treatises were cited as evidence, the wording contained many errors. Whenever I came to such a passage, I could not avoid lamenting it.」 〔知禮《金光明經文句記》自敘·T39n1786 0083b08–11·待譯〕 『In today's words: His disciples gathered in great numbers and competed to record what they heard, privately giving it form in scrolls. Moreover, because the brush was entrusted to other hands, it instead constrained the far-reaching purport. When scriptures and treatises were cited as evidence, the wording contained many errors. Whenever I came to such a passage, I could not avoid lamenting it.』

Disciples competed to make records, the brush was entrusted to other hands, and the wording contained many errors—so he rewrote the commentary. Yet in the same self-account, he also says that he 「continued to draw on the worldly texts and historical precedents in Gushan's Searching the Hidden as supplementary aid」 〔0083b12〕. The same brush both rebuked with 「This was truly unbearable」 and adopted with 「continued to draw on.」 Such is Zhili's own statement; the family dispute appears as he himself described it. Later generations called this Song controversy 『the Home-Mountain and Off-Mountain dispute.』 The four characters do not occur in either of these works by Zhili—the mechanical counts are both zero—but are a later name. This book records the event and its words without adjudication.

4 · Entrances and Family Disputes

How did later generations study Tiantai? The forms themselves answer: opening chapter, synopsis, 「students who truly rely on it」; and once the study deepens, 「please read the ten fascicles of the Fahua Xuanyi.」 What caused dispute? Seriousness about the record. May contemplation of mind be removed? Can a lecture record be trusted? Only people who treat books as a lifeline would argue over such things. A body of learning that had been burned by fire, sent home across the sea, and contested with the brush now lies before you. What do those eight characters at the textbook's opening—the Five Periods and Eight Teachings—actually classify? The first chapter of the next part, Chapter 5, opens the answer.

Author · Shi Huijing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · 二〇二六 · 夏