PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

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Pacific World
brevity and generality the Xiao zhiguan has been the most accessible of the
Tiantai meditation manuals outside of the Tiantai tradition. On the Xiao
zhiguan see Sekiguchi, Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū. It has been translated
into English at least five times: the concise, but incomplete, translation
of Kakuso Okakura, “On the Method of Practising Concentration and
Contemplation,” Harvard Theological Review 16, no. 2 (April 1923): pp.
109–141; the incomplete translation in Swanson, The Great Cessation-and-
Contemplation; and complete translations by Dwight Goddard and Bhikshu
Wai-tao, “The Practice of Dhyana for Beginners,” in A Buddhist Bible,
ed. Dwight Goddard, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (Thetford, VT: E. P.
Dutton, 1938; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 437–496; Lu K’uan
Yü (Charles Luk), “Śamatha-Vipaśyanā for Beginners (T’ung meng chih
kuan),” in Secrets of Chinese Meditation, ed. Lu K’uan Yü (London: Rider
& Company, 1964), pp. 111–156; and Michael Saso, Zen Is for Everyone: The
Xiao Zhi Guan Text by Zhi Yi (Carmel, CA: New Life Center; Honolulu:
Tendai Institute; distributed by University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).
2. See Stevenson, “The Four Kinds of Samādhi,” pp. 50–51. Here
northeastern China for our purposes includes the Yellow River watershed
east of Luoyang and the area northeast of Luoyang and east of the Taihang
mountain range.
3. Jinhua Chen provides a study of late sixth- and early seventh-century
Buddhist meditative traditions from the vantage point of Daoxuan’s
essay, the “Xichan lun” (), or “Critical Discussion on the Practice
of Meditation” appended to the fifth section (of six) of his biographies of
monks characterized as meditators (xichan) in his Xu Gaoseng zhuang (
, XGSZ, Taishō, vol. 50, no. 2060, pp. 595c.26–597b.23). See, Julia Chen,
Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and
Politics, Italian School of East Asian Studies, Essays, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Scuola
Italiana di Studi sull’Asia Orientale, 2002). The translation and much of
his discussion of this essay are also included in Chen, Monks and Monarchs,
pp. 149–179.
4. See K. R. Norman, “Death and the Tathāgata,” in Bukkyō bunkagaku ronshū:
Maeda Egaku hakushi shōju kinen, compiled by the Maeda Egaku hakushi shōju
kinenkai (Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1991), pp. 1–11.
5. Two good recent studies of relics in Buddhism are by John Strong, Relics
of the Buddha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); and David
Germano and Kevin Trainor, eds., Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic
Veneration in Asia (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004).
6. The rise of the visual and its implications for Buddhist culture, doctrine,
and practice has recently been studied by David McMahan, Empty
Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahāyāna Buddhism (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).