Religious Meaning of Zhiyi’s Interpretation of ‘Invocation and Marvelous Response(感應妙)’:Focusing on Fahua xuanyi(法華玄義)

o all religious people, ‘invocation and response (感應)’ is the driving force behind faith. In Buddhism, it is the communion of the Buddha’s mind with the mind of the practitioner. To be more specific, it is the mindset of faith and/or the inherent good within sentient beings that interacts and communicates with the minds of buddhas and bodhisattvas; this causes the buddhas and bodhisattvas to respond. Thus, it is a recognition of our mindset of faith by the Buddha and his response to it. The Lotus Sutra preaches most vividly the concept of ‘invocation and response’ between Buddha and practitioners. Furthermore, the Lotus Sutra was the basis for the Beophwa Yeongheom-jeon (法華靈驗傳, Miraculous Talks of the Lotus Sutra) which explains miraculous cases of ‘invocation and response’ in China and Korea. Tiantai Zhiyi (天台智顗, 538‑97), technically listed as the fourth patriarch but also the de facto founder of the Tiantai school in China, explained ‘invocation and response’ in the interpretation of ‘Invocation and Marvelous Response(感應妙)’ in his book Fahua xuanyi (法華玄義, Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra). He said ‘invocation and response’ is an interaction of the empathy or receptivity of sentient beings and the response (‘grace’) of a buddha or the Dharma.