Zhiyi · Tiantai · 摩訶止觀

No Earlier Age Had Heard Its Like.

The Mohe Zhiguan ("The Great Calming and Contemplation") is the Tiantai founder Zhiyi's longest and most difficult treatise — delivered as oral lectures at Yuquan Monastery in 594 CE, recorded directly by his disciple Guanding, and left unfinished when the lecture series itself was cut short. Ru-Yi's own translation of the treatise, as it survives, is now complete — this page is the entrance for reading it fascicle by fascicle.

Browse all 10 fascicles → Translation notes →

How to read this collection

Zhiyi delivered this treatise as oral lectures, recorded directly by his disciple Guanding as the Master spoke — unlike Zhiyi's other two meditation treatises, this one was never revised into a second, polished pass. It opens with a long account of the teaching's own lineage, back through Zhiyi's teachers to Nāgārjuna and the twenty-four Indian patriarchs, before naming ten framing sections for the whole treatise and working through the first of them, the great intent, at very great length.

This translation is now complete. Fascicles 1 through 9 cover the treatise's origin, its three kinds of calming-and-contemplation, the whole of topic one (the great intent, including the celebrated Four Kinds of Samādhi), topics two through five — explaining the name, the essence and its marks, the scope of the teachings, and partial versus complete teachings — where the treatise's governing Four Teachings scheme (Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, and perfect) is laid out in full, topic six, the preliminary expedients, given in full as the celebrated twenty-five preliminary conditions, and topic seven's treatment of the first six of the ten objects of contemplation: the five aggregates, worked through all ten modes of contemplation in full, including the celebrated "three thousand in a single thought" passage, comprehensively breaking through every dharma, and the Lotus Sūtra's own parable of the great cart; four further objects — affliction, illness, the marks of karma, and demonic affairs — each treated under its own outline; and meditative states, treated at very great length across all ten kinds of dhyāna. Fascicle 10 completes the treatise as it survives — treating the seventh object, views — and there the CBETA source text itself ends, mid-topic, at the exact point where Zhiyi's own lecture series broke off. The remaining three objects of contemplation and the treatise's final three topics were never delivered and do not exist to be translated.

What each fascicle page includes

The Chinese source text beside our English translation.
Reading notes explaining Zhiyi's own ten-section outline and key terms as they first appear.
A running glossary so terminology stays consistent from fascicle 1 onward.

10 fascicles in the Chinese treatise

10 fascicles complete — translation finished

Read by Fascicle

All 10 fascicles are complete, linking to Ru-Yi's own translation. Use this as the table of contents for the whole treatise, as it survives.

Fascicle 1 · Topic 1's first brief point complete

The Origin of the Teaching, and Giving Rise to the Great Mind

The transmission lineage from Mahākāśyapa through Zhiyi's own teachers, the three kinds of calming-and-contemplation with their scriptural proof, the three written versions, and — from topic one, the great intent — giving rise to the bodhi-mind in full: the ten deviant minds to reject, and four ways of revealing what is right, through the Four Noble Truths, beholding the Buddha, the four universal vows, and the six identities.

Fascicle 2 · Topic 1 complete

The Four Kinds of Samādhi, and the Close of the Great Intent

The celebrated Four Kinds of Samādhi in full — constantly sitting, constantly walking, half walking and half sitting, and neither walking nor sitting, the last worked through wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate states, including the treatise's famous and carefully hedged teaching that "craving is itself the path." Closes with the three virtues and the whole of topic one, the great intent.

Fascicle 3 · Topics 2–5 complete

The Four Teachings, Laid Out in Full

Explaining the name (mutual opposition, the absolute, reconciling different names, pervading the three virtues — including the famous letter i), the essence and its marks (the Two and Three Truths across the Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, and perfect teachings), the scope of the teachings gathered in (the Five Flavors and the giant sūtra hidden in a mote of dust), and partial versus complete teachings (gradual and sudden, the provisional and the real).

Fascicle 4 · Topic 6 complete

The Twenty-Five Preliminary Conditions

The whole of topic six, the preliminary expedients, in exhaustive practical detail — fulfilling the five conditions (purity in upholding the precepts, with its rākṣasa parable and four-part confession rite; sufficiency of robes and food; a quiet place; freedom from entanglements; a good friend), rebuking the five desires, abandoning the five hindrances (including the eighty-four thousand afflictions and "all dharmas converge in the matter of desire"), regulating the five things, and practicing the five methods, closing with the story of Sadāprarudita.

Fascicle 5 · Topic 7 opens

Three Thousand in a Single Thought

The opening of topic seven, the actual practice — the ten objects of contemplation named, and the first four of the ten modes of contemplation worked through the first object, the five aggregates, in full: the celebrated "three thousand in a single thought" passage, giving rise to the true bodhi-mind, skillfully settling the mind (up to one hundred and twenty-eight methods), and comprehensively breaking through the affliction of views by entering emptiness from the provisional.

Fascicle 6 · Mode 4 complete

Comprehensively Breaking Through Every Dharma

Completes the fourth of the ten modes of contemplation for the first object: entering emptiness from the provisional by way of habituated thought (desire, anger, delusion, and pride across all eighty-one categories, and the four teachings' own four gates), entering the provisional from emptiness (the exhaustive combinatorics of knowing illness and medicine, and administering it by capacity), and the direct contemplation of the middle way, including the "intellectual obstruction" that even wisdom itself becomes relative to it — then the same method run through every other gate and unified in a single mind.

Fascicle 7 · All ten modes complete

The Great Cart

Completes the remaining six modes of contemplation for the first object: distinguishing blockage from passage, cultivating the thirty-seven branches of the path (including the four foundations of mindfulness defeating the eight inversions), auxiliary remedies (the six pāramitās as antidote to six coverings of the mind, shown to gather in the ten powers, the fearlessnesses, and every mark of buddhahood), knowing one's own stage (the five kinds of repentance and the five grades of disciple), bearing with adversity, and freedom from attachment to the Dharma — then the Lotus Sūtra's own parable of the great cart, and the whole method extended into daily activity.

Fascicle 8 · Four further objects

Beyond the Aggregates

Moves past the first object of contemplation to four more: affliction (desire itself as the path, the cautionary tale of Priyaṅkara and Sthiramati, and an extended thirty-six-proposition analysis of severing and entering nirvāṇa run again for prajñā and the four bodies), illness (extensive medical material on the five organs and six methods of treatment, closing with Vimalakīrti's "my illness comes from great compassion"), the marks of karma (the six pāramitās' own wholesome and unwholesome signs, and debt owed to the Triple Gem), and demonic affairs (the three kinds of demon and their treatment, closing with the Buddha's own past-life sacrifice of skin for a single verse of the Dharma).

Fascicle 9 · One object, ten kinds of dhyāna

The Object of Meditative States

Devoted entirely to the sixth object of contemplation: ten kinds of dhyāna classified and their manifestation-marks described in exhaustive detail — the eight bodily sensations and their hundred and sixty deviant counterparts, the nine stages of a corpse's decay, the eight liberations and the skeleton's four-colored light, loving-kindness, and buddha-recollection — plus a complete embedded application of all ten modes of contemplation to dependent origination alone, tracing the twelve links from the discursible through the inconceivable to a single thought-moment.

Fascicle 10 · Where the treatise itself ends

The Object of Views

Treats the seventh object of contemplation, views: the varieties of heterodox person and doctrine (outsiders, those attached to the Buddha's teaching, and those who cling their way out of it from within), how a view manifests through dhyāna or through hearing across the six Indian teachers and the Four Teachings' own gates, the faults views produce (opening with a critique of Zhuangzi and Laozi's "three profundities"), and the ten modes of contemplation applied to nihilistic emptiness-view as the exemplary case. The CBETA source text ends here, mid-topic — the actual point at which Zhiyi's own lecture series was cut short, completing Ru-Yi's translation of the Mohe Zhiguan as it survives.

Translation Notes

Recurring terms, kept consistent as the fascicles grow. See also this site's note on translation method.

止觀 — calming-and-contemplationŚamatha-vipaśyanā, this treatise's central subject, treated as the single teaching underlying every buddha's path.

三種止觀 — the three kinds of calming-and-contemplationThe gradual, the indeterminate, and the perfect-and-sudden — three routes through the same one teaching, named early in fascicle 1.

十章 — the ten sectionsZhiyi's own framing outline for the entire treatise; fascicle 1 covers only the first, the great intent.

四種四諦 — the four kinds of Four Noble TruthsGeneration-and-extinction, no generation, the immeasurable, and the unconditioned — one of the treatise's most consequential passages.

即空即假即中 — empty, provisional, and the middle, at onceThe perfect teaching's reading of Nāgārjuna's Three Truths verse: three yet one, one yet three, none obstructing the others.

六即 — the six identitiesIdentity in principle, name, contemplative practice, resemblance, a portion of the truth, and the ultimate — the treatise's best-known teaching device, closing fascicle 1.

三種文 — the three written versionsThe gradual is the Shi Chan Boluomi Cidi Famen, the indeterminate is the Six Wondrous Gates, and the perfect-and-sudden is this very treatise.

四教：藏 / 通 / 別 / 圓 — the Four Teachings: Tripiṭaka, shared, distinct, perfectThe treatise's governing classification scheme, laid out systematically for the first time in fascicle 3, organizing the rest of the treatise.

析法 / 體法 — analysis / embodyingTwo routes to emptiness: breaking a real thing down until nothing remains, versus recognizing it was never solid to begin with — the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna methods respectively.

伊字三點 — the letter iThe Nirvāṇa Sūtra's own image for the three virtues: three points in triangular arrangement, neither vertically sequential nor horizontally separate.

五味 — the Five FlavorsMilk, cream, curdled butter, clarified butter, ghee — mapping five ways of contemplating mind onto five bodies of scripture, the seed of the later Five Periods doctrine.

二十五法 — the twenty-five preliminary conditionsFive groups of five — conditions, desires rebuked, hindrances abandoned, things regulated, methods practiced — laid out in full in fascicle 4 as the treatise's own bridge from doctrine to daily conduct.

一念三千 — three thousand in a single thoughtThe treatise's single most influential passage: every dharma-realm, every world, already fully present in the most ordinary passing moment of mind — "neither vertical nor horizontal, neither one nor different," laid out in fascicle 5.

破法遍 — comprehensively breaking through every dharmaThe fourth of the ten modes of contemplation, completed in fascicle 6 for the first object across three movements — entering emptiness from the provisional, entering the provisional from emptiness, and the middle way — then run through every other teaching-gate and unified in a single mind.

智障 — the intellectual obstructionFascicle 6's most demanding turn: the very wisdom that broke through views and habituated thought becomes, itself, an obstruction relative to the middle way's own wisdom, requiring a third contemplation to break through in turn.

十乘觀法 — the ten modes of contemplationApplied in full to the first object of contemplation across fascicles 5 through 7: contemplating the inconceivable object, giving rise to the bodhi-mind, skillfully settling the mind, comprehensively breaking through every dharma, distinguishing blockage from passage, cultivating the branches of the path, auxiliary remedies, knowing one's own stage, bearing with adversity, and freedom from attachment to the Dharma.

大車喻 — the parable of the great cartThe Lotus Sūtra's own image for the one vehicle, mapped in fascicle 7 point by point onto all ten modes of contemplation — the ox is the four foundations of mindfulness, the jeweled cords are the four universal vows, and so on.

十境 — the ten objects of contemplationNamed in fascicle 5: the aggregates, affliction, illness, the marks of karma, demonic affairs, meditative states, views, overweening pride, the two lesser vehicles, and the bodhisattva. Fascicle 8 moves from the first object to the second through fifth.

貪欲即是道 — desire itself is the pathFascicle 8's governing citation for the inconceivable object of affliction, developed into "neither abiding in the tamed nor the untamed" and hedged with cautionary tales against literalizing it into license.

十門禪 — the ten gates of dhyānaFascicle 9's classification of the sixth object, meditative states: the root dhyānas, the special excellences, the penetrating-and-clear dhyāna, impurity, the liberations, loving-kindness, dependent origination, buddha-recollection, and spiritual powers.

八觸十功德 — the eight sensations and ten meritsThe physical marks accompanying the first dhyāna's arising, tested against one hundred and sixty deviant counterparts — fascicle 9's most extended practical, embodied material.

諸見境 — the object of viewsThe seventh of the ten objects of contemplation, treated in fascicle 10 — and the last object Zhiyi ever reached. The treatise's own text ends partway through the ten modes of contemplation applied to it.

空見 — nihilistic emptiness-viewFascicle 10's chosen exemplary view for the closing ten-mode contemplation, "since emptiness alone is capable of destroying every other view, while no other view is capable of destroying emptiness in turn."