Zhixu

PersonType	Category:Classical Chinese Authors
MainNamePhon	Ouyi Zhixu
MainNameChi	蕅益智旭
YearBirth	1599
YearDeath	1655
IsInGyatsa	No
BnwShortPersonBio	Ouyi Zhixu. (J. Gōyaku/Gūyaku Chigyoku; K. Uik Chiuk 蕅益智旭) (1599–1655). One of the four eminent monks (si da gaoseng) of the late-Ming dynasty, along with Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615), H a n s h a n D e q i n g (1546-1623), and D a g u a n Z h e n k e (1543-1604); renowned for his mastery of a wide swath of Confucian and Buddhist teachings, particularly those associated with the T l a n t a i, p u r e l a n d , and C h a n traditions. In his youth, he studied Confiidanism and despised Buddhism, even writing anti-Buddhist tracts. He had a change of heart at the age of seventeen, after reading some of Zhuhong’s writings, and burned his previous screeds. According to his autobiography, Zhixu had his first “great awakening” at the age of nineteen while reading the line in the Lunyu (“Confucian Analects”) that “the whole world will submit to benevolence” if one restrains oneself and returns to ritual. After his father’s death that same year, he fully committed himself to Buddhism, reading sütras and performing recollection of the Buddha’s name (n ia n f o ) until he finally was ordained under the guidance of Xueling (d.u.), a disciple of Hanshan Deqing, at the age of twenty-four. At that time, he began to read extensively in Y o g ä c ä r a materials and had another great awakening through Chan meditation, in which he experienced body, mind, and the outer world suddenly disappearing. He next turned his attention to the bodhisattva precepts and the study of vinaya. Following his mother’s death when he was twenty-seven, Zhixu rededicated himself to Chan meditation, but after a serious illness he turned to pure land teachings. In his early thirties, he devoted himself to the study of Tiantai materials, through which he attempted to integrate his previous research in Buddhism and began to write commentaries and treaties on Buddhist scriptures and on such Confucian classics as the Zhouyi (“Book of Changes”). In the late-sixteenth Century, Jesuit missionaries such as Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) had reintroduced Christianity to China and sought “to complement Confucianism and to replace Buddhism.” This emerging religious challenge led Zhixu to publish his Bixie ji (“Collected Essays Refuting Heterodoxy”) as a critique of the teachings of Christianity, raising specifically the issue of theodicy (i.e., why a benevolent and omnipotent god would allow evil to appear in the world); Zhixu advocates instead that good and evil come from human beings and are developed and overcome respectively through personal cultivation. After another illness at the age of fifiy-six, his later years were focused mostly on pure land teachings and practice. In distinction to Japanese pure land teachers, such as H ö n e n (1133-1212) and S h in r a n (1173–1262), who emphasized exclusively Amitäbha’s “other-power (C. tali; J. t a r ik i), Zhixu, like most other Chinese pure land teachers, advocated the symbiosis between the other-power of Amitäbha and the “self-power” (C. jiri; J. jiRiK l) of the practitioner. This perspective is evident in his equal emphasis on the three trainings in meditation (Chan), doctrine (jiao), and precepts (lü) (cf. TRIŚik sã ). Ouyi’s oeuvre numbers some sixty-two works in 230 rolls, including treatises and commentaries on works ranging from Tiantai, to Chan, to Yogäcära, to pure land. His pure land writings have been especially influential, and his Amituojing yaojie (“Essential Explanations” on the A m it ä b h a s ü t r a ) and Jingtu shiyao (“Ten Essentials on the Pure Land”) are regarded as integral to the modern Chinese Pure Land tradition.
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Full Name

Chih-hsu Ou-i = Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655)

Writings

The complete works of Ouyi Zhixu online: http://www.baus-ebs.org/sutra/fan-read/010/index.htm Template:Footer