DESCRIPTION
Zhiyi 智顗 (Zhìyǐ 538–597 CE) was a Chinese Buddhist monk know for being the first to elaborate a complete, critical and systematic classification of the Buddhist teachings in Chinese. He is also regarded as the first major figure to make a significant break from the Indian tradition, to form an indigenous Chinese system. His standard title was Śramaṇa Zhiyi (沙門智顗), linking him to the broad tradition of Indian asceticism, and he is the fourth patriarch of the Tiantai tradition of Buddhism in China. According to David W. Chappell, Zhiyi "has been ranked with Thomas Aquinas and al-Ghazali as one of the great systematizers of religious thought and practice in world history."
Born with the surname Chen (陳) in Huarong District, Jing Prefecture (now Hubei), Zhiyi left home to become a monk at eighteen, after the loss of his parents and his hometown Jiangling that fell to the Western Wei army when Zhiyi was seventeen. At 23, he received his most important influences from his first teacher, Nanyue Huisi (515–577 CE), a meditation master who would later be listed as Zhiyi's predecessor in the Tiantai lineage. In 575 he went to Tiantai mountain for intensive study and practice with a group of disciples. Here he worked on adapting the Indian meditation principles of śamatha and vipaśyanā into a complex system of self-cultivation practice that also incorporated devotional rituals and confession/repentance rites. Then in 585 he completed his monumental commentarial works on the Lotus Sutra, the Fahua wenzhu (587 CE), and the Fahua xuanyi (593 CE).