Queequeg wrote: ↑Sat Oct 31, 2020 11:21 pm
From the article OP referred to.
1. Take note that Zhili is not a patriarch of the Tendai lineage in Japan. Transmission to Japan happened before he appeared. I vaguely recall that he had a correspondence with Japanese Tendai teachers, but they anticipated his answers to certain questions and concluded he was wrong. I'll have to find the details.
2. I don't think evil is the problem the author proposes in Buddhism. Evil a way to characterize the actions that flow from a deluded mind. A deeply deluded mind will be prone to commit great acts of evil. In our ordinary, daily lives, most of us commit small evils incessantly. Evil is just what mires us more deeply in samsara. Relative good, on the other hand, might lead to higher states of being in the three higher realms, but it doesn't help us transcend samsara.
3. My opinion - Zhili was an eccentric. I don't know how he got to his conclusion. I read Ziporyn a while ago, and frankly I couldn't follow him when he got to Zhili, and I wasn't particularly interested. Maybe I'll try to revisit in light of this discussion. I have not read this article, but the questions posed in the intro don't suggest that it will be good.
My understanding of the mutual identity of Buddha and the Nine Realms is something like this - Beings in the nine realms can relate to Buddha because they have Buddhanature. No Buddhanature, they would not be able to see the Buddha. The Buddha, on the other hand, can relate to beings in the Nine Worlds because the Buddha tread those paths and they were the cause of Buddhahood. This does not mean the Buddha has some latent evil, but rather the Buddha is not separate from these worlds. This is also described in terms of Buddhanature being unaquired.
I don't know if Zhili offers much help in illuminating.
Gotta take the kids trick or treating. I'll try to come back to this later.
Zhili reestablished the Tiantai school during China's Northern Song dynasty period and in doing so he also combined Tiandai and Pure Land thought together as well as focusing on giving a theological justification against the idea of sudden enlightenment. Thus Zhili cannot be considered a source of Orthodox Tiandai philosophy three reasons:
1.For there was no proper Tiandai organization during his studies to protect a line of philosophical tradition and understanding, he is the one that went to revive a shattered organization.
2.He clearly mixed Tiandai thought with other streams like Pure Land which would have altered the way doctrines would have been interpreted before hand
3.Part of his philosophy was in part reactionary against the idea of Sudden enlightenment which would have given reason for him to reinterpret and present certain Tiandai philosophical points to help support his view on the subject.
Caoimhghín wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 2:40 am
Ven Zhiyi is actually arguing what looks to be orthodox Sarvastivada here, interestingly enough, though Sarvastivada would have none of his Lotus Sutra or Mahayana in general, being a Sravaka school. I will explain how. In orthodox Sarvastivada, they are defined as you know by the persistence of the existence of the dharmas through the three times. Specifically, there is 本法, the "dharma itself," or the root dharma, which is the intrinsic essence of the dharma marked by its svabhava that, when it is not active, exists in a modality of latency. Basically, the Sarvastivadins believed that things which are not manifest exist as latencies that "persist through the three times." What Ven Zhiyi argues of fire in the bamboo here is actually identical to the Sarvastivadin presentation of how fire exists in the future as a latency, is brought into activity/manifestation and exists in the present, and then ceases and becomes latent once more, waiting for the proper causes and conditions to cause it to manifest in the future present. This is incredibly close to how Ven Zhiyi treats the fire and the bamboo, and it is interesting to hear him compare good and evil similarly.
That is likely due to the influence of certain Sarvastivada sutras and Abidharma that were popular in Chinese Buddhism at the time, like the Dhyāna sutras and the Mahāvibhāṣā. Zhiyi would mostly likely be familiar with such materials and as such It would have been an influence in his philosophy.