Writings
Zongmi's writings were extensive and influential. There is no certainty about the quantity of Zongmi’s writings. Zongmi’s epitaph, written by P’ei Hsiu, (787?-860) listed over ninety fascicles. Tsan-ning’s (919-1001) biography claimed over two hundred.
For modern scholars, Zongmi provides the "most valuable sources on Tang dynasty Zen. There is no other extant source even remotely as informative".
Unfortunately, many of Zongmi’s works are lost, including his Collected Writings on the Source of Ch’an (Ch’an-yüan chu-ch’üan-chi) which would provide modern scholars with an invaluable source to reconstruct Tang Dynasty Chan.
Read more about this topic: Guifeng Zongmi
Famous quotes containing the word writings:
“In this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man’s writings admit of more than one interpretation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)