Questions and Answers on the Object of Devotion Chapter8-3

In the reign of the fiftieth sovereign, Emperor Kammu, in the seventh month of the twenty-third year of Enryaku [804] the Great Teacher Dengyō journeyed to China on imperial command. There he met with Tao-sui and Hsing-man, who were disciples of the Great Teacher Miao-lo, and received from them the teachings pertaining to the meditation and wisdom of the Lotus school.¹³ From the Discipline Master Tao-hsüan he received the bodhisattva precepts, and from a priest called the Reverend Shun-hsiao he received instruction in the secret teachings of True Word, after which he returned to Japan.

On the basis of the instruction he had received from his teachers in China, Dengyō felt that it was difficult to determine the relative superiority of the True Word and Lotus Sutra doctrines. He therefore undertook to compare the Mahāvairochana Sutra and the Lotus Sutra with each other, as well as the commentaries on the two sutras, in order to determine their relative worth. He not only came to the conclusion that the Mahāvairochana Sutra is inferior to the Lotus Sutra, but he also pointed out that [the author of] The Annotations on the Mahāvairochana Sutra had appropriated key concepts from the Great Teacher T’ien-t’ai and incorporated them in the teachings of his own school.

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