MOHE ZHIGUAN

The Mohe zhiguan is a work by Zhiyi (538–597). It was transcribed from his lectures by his disciple Guanding (561–632), and it is considered one of the "Three Great Works of Tiantai" and a comprehensive manual of Tiantai practice. The title means "The Great Calming and Contemplation," zhi and guan being the Chinese translations of the traditional Buddhist terms śamatha and vipaśyana (Pāli, vipassanā). In Chinese, the first term means literally "stopping," the latter "contemplating"; for both Zhiyi distinguishes "relative" and "absolute" types. Relative stopping and contemplating are each interpreted, in typical Tiantai manner, as having three aspects:

1. Stopping as putting an end to something.
2. Stopping as dwelling in something.
3. Stopping as an arbitrary name for a reality that is ultimately neither stopping nor nonstopping.

1. Contemplation as comprehending something.
2. Contemplation as seeing through something.
3. Contemplation as an arbitrary name for a reality that is ultimately neither contemplation nor noncontemplation.

The first sense of stopping corresponds to the second sense of contemplation (ending something as seeing through it); the second sense of stopping corresponds to the first sense of contemplation (dwelling in something as comprehending it); and the third senses of both correspond to each other (each is a provisional name for an absolute reality that can be described alternately as quiescent, illuminating, both, or neither). On the basis of this interpervasion of stopping and contemplating, Zhiyi establishes the "absolute (or perfect-sudden) stopping and contemplating." Zhiyi first gives an overview of the ritual procedures for practice in the "four samādhis": the "constantly sitting," "constantly walking," "half sitting and half walking," and "neither sitting nor walking" samādhis. The first three are specific ritual practices, during which Tiantai doctrinal contemplations were to be simultaneously applied. The fourth samādhi, known also as the "samādhi of following one's own attention," while also associated with particular texts and practices, was more broadly applicable. This involved the contemplation of each moment of subjective mental activity (good, evil, or neutral) as it arose, and the application of the Tiantai three truths doctrine to see its nature as empty, provisionally posited, and the mean—that is, as the absolute ultimate reality that pervades and includes, and is identical to, all other dharmas.

After this overview, Zhiyi describes "ten vehicles of contemplation." The first of these ten vehicles is the contemplation of (1) the realm of the inconceivable. It is here that Zhiyi gives his famous teaching of "the three thousand quiddities inherently entailed in each moment of experience" (yinian sanqian). All possible determinacies are here to be seen not as "contained" in or "produced by" a single moment of experience, but as "identical to" each moment of experience, just as a thing is identical to its own characteristics and properties, or to its own process of becoming and perishing. As a supplement to this practice, Zhiyi then describes nine other contemplations of the same object in terms of (2) bodhicitta, (3) skillful pacification of the mind, (4) universal refutation of all dharmas, (5) recognition of obstructions and throughways, (6) adjustment of aspects of the way, (7) curative aids, (8) understanding stages of progress, (9) forbearance, and (10) freedom from attachment to spiritual attainments. The text applies these ten methods first to one's own conditioned existence as such, and then to other more specific objects of contemplation, such as karma (action), illnesses, defilements, and so on.

See also:Tiantai School; Vipassanā (Sanskrit, Vipaśyanā)

Bibliography

Donner, Neal. "Chih-i's Meditation on Evil." In Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society, ed. David W. Chappell. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1987.

Donner, Neal. "Sudden and Gradual Intimately Conjoined: Chih-i's T'ien-t'ai View." In Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.

Donner, Neal, and Stevenson, Daniel B. The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i's Mo-ho chih-kuan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.

Hurvitz, Leon. Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk. Brussels: Institut Belges Des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1980.

Ng Yu-kwan. T'ien-t'ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1993.

Stevenson, Daniel. "The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T'ient'ai Buddhism." In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Brook Ziporyn