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Willams: Seeing through Images 71
NOTES
1. I.e., the area surrounding the modern city of Nanjing () and extending
south and southeast, the so-called Jiangnan () region. The Japanese
scholarship on early Tiantai (Jpn. Tendai) meditative practices is enormous.
For general surveys of the meditative corpus see, for example, Sekiguchi
Shindai, Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū (Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1954); and
Ikeda Rosen, Maka shikan kenkyū josetsu (Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1986).
A useful treatment of the specific meditation manuals compiled by Zhiyi
is Sekiguchi Shindai, Tendai shikan no kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1969). The only treatment in English of the Tiantai corpus of meditative
visualization practices, especially those organized under the rubric of
the fourfold samādhi (sizhong sanmei, ) system, is by Daniel
Stevenson, “The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T’ien-t’ai Buddhism,” in
Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory, Kuroda
Institute, Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 4 (Honolulu: University
of Hawai’i Press, 1986), pp. 45–97; and “The T’ien-t’ai Four Forms of
Samadhi and Late North-South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T’ang Buddhist
Devotionalism” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987). For a discussion
of Zhiyi’s great meditative manual, the Mohe zhiguan (), together
with a translation of its first, synoptic chapter, see Neal Donner and Daniel
Stevenson, ed. and trans., The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study
and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan,
Kuroda Institute, Classics in East Asian Buddhism (Honolulu: University
of Hawai’i Press, 1993). The Mohe zhiguan is being completely translated
into English by Paul Swanson; for his annotated translation of the first
six fascicles (juan, ), roughly 40 percent of the whole text, together
with substantial quotations from Zhiyi’s earlier meditation manuals and
a dictionary of Tiantai terminology, see Paul Swanson, trans., The Great
Cessation-and-Contemplation (Mo-ho chih-kuan) (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing
Co., 2004), CD-ROM. Much of Swanson’s material is online: http://www.
nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/staff/staff.htm. Among the other writings
on meditation attributed to Zhiyi two meditation manuals stand out: the
Shichan boluomi cidi famen ( Taishō, vol. 46, no. 1916),
known in the literature by a variety of names but commonly referred to as
the Cidi chanmen and the Xiuxi zhiguan zuochan fayao ()
(Taishō, vol. 46, no. 1916), commonly known as the Xiao zhiguan (), or
Small Śamatha-Vipaśyanā. In contrast to he Mohe zhiguan, which describes
the “perfect and sudden” (yuandun, ) approach to meditation, the Cidi
chanmen outlines the gradual approach. Although virtually unstudied by
Western scholars, significant portions of this manual are quoted in the
notes to Swanson’s translation of the Mohe zhiguan. Perhaps because of its