ZHANRAN

Zhanran (Jingqi Zhanran and Miaole dashi, 711–782) is the ninth patriarch of the Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism and the sixth patriarch following Zhiyi (538–597), the de facto architect of the tradition. Author of the first authoritative commentaries on the major works of Zhiyi, Zhanran revitalized and reformed Tiantai during the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Zhanran trained for twenty years on Mount Zuoji in Zhejiang under Xuanlang (673–754), who became the eighth patriarch, and he remained active in the southeast both in his native Jiangsu and in the environs of Mount Tiantai in Zhejiang. Avoiding the northern political centers, Zhanran declined several imperial invitations, but made pilgrimage to Mount Wutai in Shanxi and instructed the Huayan adept Chengguan (738–838/840) in Suzhou, returning to Mount Tiantai in 775 for the last time. The veracity of his travels in the north has been challenged in the late-twentieth century. Included among Zhanran's disciples are the literati figures Li Hua (d.u.–ca. 774) and Liang Su (753–793), who wrote his memorial inscription.

Zhanran's most influential works are his Zhiguan fuxing zhuanhong jue (Decisions on Supporting Practice and Broadly Disseminating [the Teachings of the Great] Calming and Contemplation) and the Jin'gangbei (Diamond Scalpel). The first is a commentary on Zhiyi's Mohe zhiguan (Great Treatise on Calming and Contemplation), which for the first time identifies that practice-oriented text with the Lotus SŪtra (SaddharmapuṆḌarĪka-sŪtra) and connects it to Zhiyi's two doctrinal commentaries on the Lotus to become the three quintessential texts of Tiantai. The Jin'gangbei is a polemical treatise on insentient tathĀgatagarbha, an idea not articulated in early Tiantai. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, scholars have also recognized that the famous Tiantai "five periods and eight teachings" (wushi bajiao) taxonomy attributed to Zhiyi, which elevates the Lotus as supreme among scriptures and emphasizes a transmission based on the received teaching, is not found in the writings of Zhiyi in the form relied upon by later Tiantai. Rather, it is a product of the times of Zhanran when issues of self-definition came to the fore. Zhanran's interpretations of Tiantai, which debate with the Buddhism of the mid-eighth century (in particular, the Huayan and Chan schools), further catalyzed much of the Tiantai on-mountain/off-mountain (shanjia/shanwai) debates of the Song dynasty (960–1279).

See also:China

Bibliography

Chen, Jinhua. Making and Remaking History: A Study of Tiantai Sectarian Historiography. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1999.

Penkower, Linda. "Making and Remaking Tradition: Chanjan's Strategies toward a T'ang T'ien-t'ai Agenda." In Tendai daishi kenkyū, ed. Tendai Daishi Kenkyū Henshū I-inkai. Kyoto: Tendai Gakkai, 1997.

Ziporyn, Brook. Evil and/or/as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.

Linda Penkower