Great Calming and Contemplation (Mohe zhiguan)

Introduction

Zhiyi, founder of the Tiantai school, gave these lectures in 594 at the Yuquan monastery in Jingzhou; his disciple Guanding recorded and edited them. They form a comprehensive manual of meditation that unites calming (zhi, in Sanskrit shamatha) and contemplation (guan, vipashyana), describing preparatory practices, four kinds of samadhi and ten objects of contemplation, from the ordinary constituents of the person to illness, karma and demonic states. The philosophical core is the threefold truth of emptiness, conventional existence and the middle, and the teaching that “three thousand worlds” are present in a single moment of thought. The text became a basis of Tiantai and of the Japanese Tendai school.

Connections

Builds on

• Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakakarika)c. 200 · Nagarjuna