宋代天台山家山外第二次論諍─以智者大師的原始思想決疑=The second debate between the "Mountain School" and the "Non-Mountain School" of Tiantai tradition in Sung dynasty: Resolving doubts from Master Zhiyi's thought
智者大師=Zhiyi; 天台宗=Tiantai tradition; 大乘起信論=The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna; 真妄心觀=the contemplation of true or fallacious mind; 別理隨緣=specific teachings are also conditions of the development of ignorance; 色心雙具三千=both the mind and matter contain three thousand worlds; 無情有性=non-sentient beings have buddhahood; 知禮大師=Zhili
This dissertation explores the issue of the second debate between two schools of Tiantai tradition in Sung dynasty, the "Mountain School" (Shanjia) and the "Non-Mountain School" (Shanwaijia), and attempts to apply master Zhiyi’s thought to resolve the controversies of that debate. There are remote and immediate causes of the debate which continues for nearly forty years. The remote cause arose from wars and calamities of dharma over the years, which caused the disappearance of Tiantai main texts. The immediate cause came from the employment of the thoughts of the Huayen School in the interpretation of The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, especially by master Zhanran in Tang dynasty; It resulted in confusions of the interpretations of the orthodox doctrine of Tiantai School among later Tiantai Buddhists, henceforth the ignition of the debate between the "Mountain School" and the "Non-Mountain School". In order to resolve the controversies, one needs to sort out doctrinal analysis and literature reviews from huge amounts of complicated Tiantai texts. This thesis tries to work it out by the use of an analytical approach to deal with the doctrinal and literature exegesis. Among four debates in Tiantai tradition, the second debate is the most important one in terms of the profundity and significance of the issues involved. There are four main issues: “the contemplation of true or fallacious mind ”, “specific teachings are also conditions of the development of ignorance”, “both the mind and matter contain three thousand worlds”, and “non-sentient beings have buddhahood”. On the issue of “contemplation of true or fallacious”, master Zhili follows master Zhiyi’s conception, and supports the assertion of “contemplation of fallacious mind ”, while other masters in the "Non-Mountain School" opt for “contemplation of true mind ”. On “specific teachings are also conditions of the development of ignorance”, Zhili made a differentiation regarding Huayen Teaching: he judged that The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna and Huayen School both belongs to the Final stage of Mahāyāna, and the Consciousness-only school belongs to the Initial stage of Mahāyāna, but both of them still belong to specific teaching rather than Perfect or Round teaching. Besides, Zhili criticizes Huayen’s rejection of “specific teachings are also conditions of the development of ignorance” and maintains that Tiantai’s original teaching reveals that “ specific teaching” , being specific, contains the conditions of ignorance, hence of everything. On the debate of “both the mind and matter contain three thousand worlds”, Zhili bases his view on “the non-duality of mind and matter”, and successfully interprets “both the mind and matter contain three thousand worlds”, while masters in the "Non-Mountain School" cling to the subjectivity of mind and hold that only mind contains three thousand worlds, not the matter. On the discussion of “non-sentient beings have buddhahood”, Zhili furthers his view that on the basis of “both the mind and matter contain three thousand worlds”, non-sentient beings do have buddhahood, in contrast to other masters in the "Non-Mountain School" who claim that n
