Tiantai curriculum

(1) tripitaka

goal: i think having a solid base in "hinayāna" is extremely important, and people shouldn't jump to dismissing all that severance of passions when they haven't really grappled with it. the Buddha taught it for a reason!

• a selection of āgamas/nikayas. of course you start with the first ones the Buddha taught; setting in motion the wheel of dharma, non-self characteristic, fire sermon.
• some kind of secondary introduction in contemporary language. tripitaka teaching does NOT mean theravāda as a contemporary school, and it doesn't even mean "hinayāna"; it's more like Zhiyi's philosophical reconstruction of early buddhism as a system. of course he's working from the chinese āgamas, and even mahāyāna texts in which hinayāna appears as a counterpart to mahāyana; he's not working from the southern/pali tradition. but i'm kind of thinking one could take neo-early buddhist theravāda guys like Bhikkhu Anālayo as representatives of the tripitaka teaching(?). Analāyo has a couple collections of thematic essays on topics in the pali suttas which might be good to draw from. maybe intersperse sutta readings and thematic essays.

(2) shared

goal: learn to "do emptiness" really well, and not just talk vaguely about lack of self-nature.

• wouldn't it be worth reading the "analytic madhyamaka" philosophy people? maybe the chapter on madhyamaka from Westerhoff's The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy
• some perfection of wisdom sūtra(s): maybe one of the long ones or selections from it? the goal here is to read from a madhyamaka perspective, and not to get caught up in the scriptural intricacies of early mahāyāna, but the diamond sūtra alone might still not be enough.
• Nāgārjuna's middle treatise. i want to avoid muddying with any tibetan commentaries, so Bocking translation from chinese should work.

(3) separate

this is kinda the most hodgepodge of the four teachings. i think the important things to grasp are the length of the bodhisattva path, the rejection of the śrāvaka path, a little bit of mind-only, buddha-nature thought, and attempts to move beyond the two truths.

• some selection of jātakas. technically Zhiyi would probably consider these tripitaka teaching, but i think they're good here as a base for thinking about a bodhisattva's development of the perfections.
• bodhisattvabhūmi, as a representation of yogācāra and bodhisattva gradualism?
• the vimalakīrti sūtra is beloved, represents the opposition of śrāvaka and bodhisattva vehicles well, and maybe makes a good scriptural accompaniment to the bodhisattvabhūmi.
• i suppose it's probably necessary to confront yogācāra idealism directly, though it's important not to become too caught on it and end up doing chan/huayan "pure mind" stuff once you add in buddha-nature. maybe there's a good introduction to Vasubandhu and the twenty/thirty verses? maybe the chapter on yogācāra from Westerhoff's The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy chan/huayan is actually the biggest danger out there, so it might be necessary to tackle the dispute outright by reading Evil and/or/as the Good at some point (not sure when).
• something tathāgatagarbha, probably selections of the nirvana sūtra?
• returning to madhyamaka issue on Jizang vs Zhiyi, as a segue: Yasuo Debuchi, "Non-dualism of the Two Truths: Sanlun and Tiantai on Contradictions" in What Can't be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought

(4) perfect

• Ziporyn, Being and Ambiguity. i think at this point it would be good to fully cash out the perfect teaching in contemporary terms, which is what this book tries to do.
• then one can return to the scriptural basis and read the lotus sūtra
• maybe it would be good to do some kind of pre-Zhiyi reading on medieval meditation, like Chan Before Chan and/or relevant primary source(s)
• Zhiyi: finally, one should be able to tackle the mohezhiguan without losing one's bearings