Great Calming and Contemplation
composition: secureauthorship: probable
witness: recorded by the disciple Guanding from lectures of 594
Lectures taken down by a disciple set out a complete Buddhist meditation system and, with it, the classification scheme that organises the whole canon into one coherent teaching.
- contradictions in the canon resolved as teaching adapted to hearers
- three thousand realms contained in one moment of thought
- meditation set out as a complete graded system
- a Chinese school organised around a classification rather than a single text
Zhiyi's lectures, recorded by Guanding, present the practice of calming and contemplation in exhaustive detail, including the famous analysis of the three thousand realms contained in a single moment of thought. Equally consequential is his doctrinal classification, which sorts the contradictory mass of translated sutras into periods and methods of the Buddha's teaching, so that apparent inconsistency becomes pedagogy adapted to different hearers. This move let Chinese Buddhism treat the entire imported canon as a unity, and made the Lotus Sutra its culmination.
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