Great Teacher T'ien-t'ai
(538-597)

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Chih-i, also known as the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai, was the founder of the Chinese T’ien-t’ai sect of Buddhism. As China’s foremost champion of the Lotus Sutra during both the Chen and the Sui Dynasties, T’ien-t’ai also enormously impacted people’s faith in the Lotus Sutra in later generations.

Born in Ching-chou in 538, the fourth year of the reign of the Liang Dynasty Emperor Wu, T’ien-t’ai took the tonsure at the age of eighteen at Kuo-yuan-ssu Temple, under a priest named Fa-hsu. After completing a course of study that included the Threefold Lotus Sutra, T’ien-t’ai went to Mt. Ta-su at the age of twenty-three, where he began Lotus Sutra meditation training under the Great Teacher Nan-yueh. It is said that he attained enlightenment through the following passage from the Medicine King (Yakuo, twenty-third) chapter of the Lotus Sutra: “This is true commitment. This must be called a true offering of the Law to the Thus Come One.” (Hokekyo, p. 526)

That event, called “Enlightenment on Mt. Ta-su,” led people to believe that T’ien-t’ai was the reincarnation of Bodhisattva Medicine King (Yakuo).

At the age of thirty-two, T’ien-t’ai went to Chin-ling (Nanjing), where he lectured on the Lotus Sutra at Wa-kuan-ssu Temple. Six years later, he retired to Mt. T’ien-t’ai in Che-chiang, where he practiced dhuta austerities and perfected his meditation. After receiving repeated requests from the Chen ruler, T’ien-t’ai left Mt. T’ien-t’ai at the age of forty-seven, and gave a series of lectures at Kuang-che-ssu in Chin-ling that served as the basis for his work, Words and Phrases of the Lotus Sutra (Hokke mongu).

When the Chen dynasty fell and the Sui unified China, T’ien-t’ai answered an invitation from the last Sui emperor, Yang Guang, upon whom T’ien-t’ai bestowed the bodhisattva precepts in 591. At the same time, the emperor gave T’ien-t’ai the title, Sage and Great Teacher.

The following year, T’ien-t’ai returned to his home in Ching-chou and built Yu-ch’uan-ssu Temple, where he gave lectures that formed the basis for his Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra (Hokke gengi). Then in 594, T’ien-t’ai began a lecture series that became the Great Concentration and Insight (Maka shikan), clarifying the doctrine of ichinen sanzen and proving that the Lotus Sutra is Shakyamuni’s ultimate teaching. During this same period, through his formulation of a schematic on the Five Periods and Eight Teachings, T’ien-t’ai refuted the fallacious doctrines espoused by the ten teachers of the Three Southern and Seven Northern schools.

The Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai died peacefully at Mt. T’ien-t’ai at the age of sixty. The T’ien-t’ai Lotus Sect

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