聖嚴法師在臺灣法鼓教團 推動天台教觀的努力 ──以《天台心鑰》一書為中心=Venerable Sheng Yen’s Effort to Promote Tiantai Teaching and Meditation in the Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Groups in Taiwan With Special Focus on His Book: A Key to the Central Ideas of Tiantai Buddhism
Venerable Sheng Yen was an eminent Buddhist master in history of modern Chinese Buddhism. He had a profound and thorough understanding of Buddhist texts, as well as deep meditation experiences. His efforts to transform the world into a “pure land” can be witnessed through his lifetime effort to spread Chinese Buddhist doctrine and methods of practice to both Chinese communities and the western worlds. He felt that Chinese Buddhism has not been properly valued. As a Buddhist monk following the Chinese Chan tradition and as a scholar who has studied Indian and Chinese Buddhist theories, he actively promoted the study and practice of Chinese Buddhism especially during the last phase of his life. He focused on the main ideas and tenets of Chinese Buddhism in order to help modern Buddhists appreciate the profundity of Chinese Buddhist theory and the wisdom of ancient Chinese masters. He wrote commentaries to several classic Chinese Buddhist texts written by famous masters from various Chinese Buddhist traditions. Among them, A Key to the Central Ideas of Tiantai Buddhism: A Commentary on Jiao-guan-gang- zong(天台心鑰─ 教觀綱宗貫註)is perhaps the book that Venerable devoted most of his efforts. The Jiao-guan-gang-zong was written by Ouyi Zhixu of the Ming Dynasty. The Venerable taught his work personally to a select group of Dharma Drum Mountain reading club facilitators with the hope of making his commentary the guide to disseminating Chinese Buddhism. The significance of writing this book, the methods through which the book is designed to be promoted, and the difficulties confronted in the process of disseminating this book in reading clubs are summed up as follow: 1. Many Buddhists assert that Theravāda Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism articulate a more defined Buddhist practice than that of Chinese Buddhism, which is criticized as being without any stages of practice. Venerable Sheng Yen challenged this assertion by introducing a work by Zhixu. The Venerable’s work expounds Tiantai Buddhism’s central ideas and stages of practice in the structure of its fourfold model of the Buddhist path (i.e., the Tripi aka Teachings; the Common Teachings; the Distinct Teachings; and the Perfect Teachings). As the teaching of Tiantai School emphasizes the integration of calming (śamatha) and contemplation (vipaśyanā), a close examination of this book by the Venerable would provide modern Buddhists with a wealth of resources for furthering their practice and avoid mistaking shallow meditational experiences as profound insights. 2. In the introductory chapter of this book, the Venerable introduces the background of Tiantai Buddhism and some information about Zhixu’s work, Jiao-guan-gang-zong. In the subsequent chapters, he interprets the text sentence by sentence, providing modern readers with commentarie
