The Jiaoguan Gangzong.
"The essential matter of buddhas and patriarchs is nothing but teaching and contemplation. Contemplation without teaching is not correct; teaching without contemplation cannot be transmitted." Ouyi Zhixu opens his short outline of Tiantai doctrine with that single claim, then spends the rest of the treatise making good on it — compressing the Five Periods, the Eight Teachings, and all Four Teachings of Content, each worked out with its own Four Noble Truths, its own six identities, and its own ten modes of contemplation, into one continuous structure meant to be memorized as the doctrinal key to the rest of the Tiantai corpus. This collection translates the whole treatise across five pages, with reading notes drawn throughout from Zhixu's own commentary, the Jiaoguan Gangzong Shiyi (X0974).
How to read this collection
This is a short treatise — 479 lines in its CBETA source, with no fascicle divisions of its own — read here across five pages, split at the treatise's own major doctrinal joints rather than any division CBETA imposed: the opening framework and the Five Periods, then one page each for the Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, and perfect teachings. Zhixu wrote this outline by expanding an earlier wall-chart of his own into a bound book, adding each of the Four Teachings' own ten modes of contemplation — and it is often read as the standard key to the far longer Tiantai treatises already translated on this site, the Mo-ho Chih-kuan and the Shi Chan Boluomi Cidi Famen, both of which this treatise names directly by title.
Each page carries a continuous run of the base text, matched paragraph by paragraph against Ru-Yi's English translation, with reading notes drawn from Zhixu's own line-by-line commentary wherever it addresses the passage directly — which, across a commentary running well over the length of the root text itself, is nearly everywhere. Terminology is matched throughout to this site's three earlier Tiantai meditation projects, and recorded in the translation notes below wherever this treatise required a fresh rendering.
What each page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation, verified character-for-character against the base text for full coverage.
- Reading notes — "after Ouyi Zhixu" wherever his commentary directly addresses the passage, which is nearly always.
- Cross-references tying this treatise's classification schemes back to the site's three earlier Tiantai meditation projects.
- Terminology matched to this site's existing Tiantai vocabulary wherever an established rendering already exists.
The Treatise's Own Structure
One continuous outline, no chapter titles of its own — but a clear internal architecture: the Eightfold classification given first, then each of the Four Teachings of Content worked out in identical order (its Four Noble Truths, its twelve links, its own contemplation, its six identities, its ten modes of contemplation), so that once the pattern is set on page 2, the parallels across pages 3, 4, and 5 do most of the teaching themselves.
Read by Part
All five parts are translated. Each links to the full bilingual text with reading notes after Ouyi Zhixu.
Translation Notes
Recurring terms, kept consistent across all five parts — and, for the doctrinal core of the Four Teachings, with the site's three earlier Tiantai meditation projects. Where a term already had an established rendering there, we reuse it here without modification; where this treatise's own classification vocabulary needed a fresh rendering, we coined one here for later Tiantai texts to inherit. See the full translation notes for the complete glossary, and also this site's note on translation method.