Value of simple practice: A study on Tiantai Zhiyi's 'Liumiao famen'

This study focuses on the value of simple practice that is developed by the sixth-century Chinese Buddhist scholar-practitioner Zhiyi in his instructive text of meditation, the Liumiao famen. This text, like the Mohezhiguan, is one of three texts that represent Zhiyi's three-fold zhiguan system. The practices within the text center around the mindfulness of breathing; a simple practice that is traditionally considered to be the most rudimentary of Buddhist practices. Zhiyi situates these practices within the doctrinal framework of Mahayana Buddhism. In this study, I demonstrate that the core values that support simple practice is accessibility, the accessibility of this practice and its attainments by any kinds of practitioners regardless of their socio-religious status, either a monk or a lay person.; I examine these focal notions in three major discussions. The first discussion concerns the historical background of the value of simple practice. Here we investigate the currents of thought which sought out simple practices, and which gave rise to Buddhist reform movements that emphasized simplicity of practice. We also show that these reform movements were grounded in Mahayana Buddhist ideology that intended soteriological practices to be accessible to anyone.; The second discussion consists of a systematical analysis of doctrines in the Liumiao famen. This part clarifies how the practices and attainments of the Liumiao famen are designed by Zhiyi to be accessible to “ordinary beings.”; The third discussion involves an examination of rhetoric that appears in the Liumiao famen. I argue that Zhiyi utilized rhetoric in order to enable any practitioner to fully understand epistemological concept; one that was similar to certain Yogacara concepts, namely, transforming erroneous dichotomous cognition into the cognitive state of non-duality. This employment of rhetoric also reveals Zhiyi's soteriological value of accessibility.; Our study concludes that Zhiyi's contribution in the Liumiao famen is found not only in the doctrinal framework that he applies to the mindfulness of breathing, but also in the example he provides in his appreciation of the value of simple practice for the Chinese of assimilation of Buddhism.