Becoming the Buddha You Will Have Been: Siming Zhili and the Future Perfection of Original Awakening

Abstract

Does awakening wait on some future accomplishment, or must it have been in effect from the outset? The tension between “initiated” and “original” envisionings of enlightenment has come into fresh focus with the modern Critical Buddhist critique of “original enlightenment thought.” While Paul Swanson carefully shields Zhiyi (538–597) from the Critical Buddhist critique, he deflects it onto later Tiantai/Tendai exegetes such as Siming Zhili (960–1028). The present article broadly challenges Swanson’s assessment. Availing of the grammar of the future perfect tense as a heuristic, it clarifies Zhili’s understanding of the paradoxical relation between original and initiated awakening. Zhili’s theory of original awakening is not exposed to the Critical Buddhist critique. It becomes intelligible rather only through the prism of its self-avowed continuity with Zhiyi’s orthodox Tiantai thought.