Zhiyi (538–97)

The Chinese Buddhist monk Zhiyi is revered as the chief architect of the Tiantai school of Buddhism, one of the most distinctive and influential systems of Mahāyāna Buddhist thought and practice to take shape on East Asian soil. His systematization of the Tientai teachings marked the emergence of the first major indigenous articulation of Buddhist thought and practice in China. This is considered an important watershed in the development of the East Asian Buddhist tradition, for it effectively brought to a close some five centuries of Chinese dependence on Indian Buddhist traditions of exegesis and opened the way to creation of the distinctive forms of scriptural hermeneutics and motifs of religious life that we regard as representative of East Asian Buddhism today.