Meaning of Tʻien-tʻai | Babel Free

Definitions

Noun. [B2]

Examples

“From the standpoint of the Buddhist historian, it would be futile to attempt to distinguish, on the basis of doctrine, between the T’ien-t’ai Buddhism of the Sui and the various T’ang schools, since they share common ideals. Yet despite the “T’ang” character of the T’ien-t’ai school, it entered an almost total eclipse during the first half of the T’ang dynasty.”

“THE T’IEN-T’AI SCHOOL Many of Su’s closest Buddhist friends belonged to the T’ien-t’ai school of Buddhism. The man who completed the systematizing of the doctrines of the T’ien-t’ai school and is thus regarded as its founder was Chih-i (538-597), who spent most of his teaching life on Mt. T’ien-t’ai in what is today Chekiang province.”

“This wide variety of genuinely contradictory holy sutras generated a serious problem in later Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. In the early period the Chinese and Japanese did not know that there were so many schools of Buddhism which disagreed with one another. Chinese and Japanese Buddhists assumed that every single Buddhist sutra was the actual words of the Buddha himself. As a result, Chinese Buddhists had to come up with some kind of explanation for the contradictory claims and assertions apparently made by the same holy person. The Chinese T’ien-t’ai school decided that the texts were spoken by the Buddha but tailored to different audiences of vastly different capabilities and insight.”

CEFR level