---
title: "The Architecture of Chinese Repentance Liturgy: Structure First — A Repentance You Can Walk Into"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 3 — KṢAMĀ: Repentance, from the Vinaya's Disclosure to the Repentance of Non-Arising"
series_short: "KṢAMĀ"
volume: 3
paper_id: "KSAMA-P12"
paper_number: 12
part: "Part VI · Chinese Repentance Rites"
part_number: 6
date: "2026-06"
version: "1.0"
license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0"
---

# The Architecture of Chinese Repentance Liturgy

**Structure First — A Repentance You Can Walk Into**

*中文主題：漢傳懺法儀軌·結構先行——一堂可以走進去的懺*

---

**Author:** Shi Huijing
**Date:** June 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0

---

## Abstract

This paper opens Part VI by laying down the shape of "repentance liturgy" (*chanfa* 懺法) as a genre. The previous two parts followed repentance inward — from the individual's repeated act of disclosure (*facu* 發露) to the threefold ladder of repentance and the way sign-taking repentance (*quxiang chan* 取相懺) "arises through a sign and extinguishes wrongdoing through a sign." This paper asks a different question: how did those modes of practice settle into rites one can walk through again and again, perform communally, and follow in a fixed sequence — the Chinese repentance liturgy? The series reads this body of texts as an *institutional genre*: it grew repentance into a rite with a space (the ritual arena, *daochang* 道場), a time (three-times-seven days, the six periods of day and night), and a sequence of body and speech (the ten stages). It is, in effect, the high-water mark that phenomenal repentance reached in the Chinese tradition. Its doctrinal engine sits in a single sentence from Zhiyi: the inner repentance of principle is deepest, yet "the mind-principle is subtle and hidden, hard to open all at once"; therefore one "mobilizes body and speech to aid the mental act," adding the fivefold repentance. The liturgy is not a degeneration of repentance into form — it is precisely the compassion of operability, a scaffold of flesh and blood by which an ordinary person can climb toward a transformation otherwise too subtle to reach. This standard template has two independent witnesses spanning four centuries: Zhiyi's ten stages of the Lotus Samādhi (Sui) and Zhili's ten stages of the Great Compassion Repentance (Song) are nearly identical in structure. The closing chapter reads the genre against three Western mirrors and sets down a few boundary-stones, keeping the deepest layer of contemplation outside the door of Part VII.

**Keywords:** repentance liturgy; Chinese repentance rite; fivefold repentance (*wuhui*); Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite; Zhiyi; Zhili; contemplative repentance rite; ceremonial repentance rite; body-and-speech aid; phenomenal repentance; ritual arena; ten stages

---

## I. Walking Into the Ritual Arena

The previous paper ended on a promissory note: how these modes of practice — which "arise through a sign and extinguish wrongdoing through a sign" — settled into the actual rites of the Chinese tradition is the business of Part VI. This paper walks through that door.

In the last two parts we stood at a distance. First we stood far back and took in the whole staircase of the three repentances; then we crouched down to the middle step and watched how sign-taking repentance leans on "seeing an auspicious sign" to certify that wrongdoing has been cleansed. What we are about to do is not to examine another step of the staircase but to push open a door and walk into the place where these rites actually happen — the ritual arena.

It helps to begin with an image. In the *Sūtra of Golden Light*, in its chapter on repentance, a bodhisattva named Ruci dreams one night of a golden drum:

> "Then the bodhisattva Ruci, that very night, dreamed of a golden drum — vast and beautiful, its radiance flooding everywhere like the light of the sun … and he saw a figure like a brahmin who, striking the drum with a beater, sent forth a great sound, and that sound proclaimed verses of repentance."[^1]

The image is worth pausing on. The words of repentance are not clauses someone sat down to draft. They are a sound struck from a drum that holds the light of the sun. First they are heard; only afterward are they written down, arranged, and finally — in China — grown into rites one can walk into and follow step by step. What this paper describes is exactly that process of taking shape: from a sound to a liturgy, and the shape that taking-shape established.

One honest caveat first. The terms "repentance liturgy," "repentance rite," and "rite of practice" were not, at the time, self-consciously raised as the name of a *genre*. Zhiyi called what he composed "repentance methods" and "rites of practice"; Zhili too spoke only of "rites of practice." To gather this body of texts under a single heading — "the genre of repentance liturgy" — is in part a category supplied by later and modern scholarship. So when the series says it "reads this body of texts as a genre," that is a reading-frame, an angle of approach, not a claim that sixth-century minds already carried this genre-consciousness. Let that stand at the outset.

What, then, is the shape of this thing we are reading as a genre?

## II. The Shape of a Rite: The Ten Stages

To see the shape, the clearest entrance is Zhiyi's *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite*. It breaks a complete repentance into ten steps, called the "ten methods" or "ten stages":

> "When the practitioner first enters the ritual arena, he should be furnished with ten methods: first, consecrating the arena; second, purifying the body; third, the threefold offering; fourth, inviting the Three Jewels; fifth, praising the Three Jewels; sixth, paying homage to the Buddhas; seventh, repentance; eighth, circumambulation; ninth, reciting the Lotus Sūtra; tenth, contemplating the one true reality. Over three-times-seven days, through the six periods of day and night … he should fully cultivate these ten methods."[^2]

Lay the ten out, and the skeleton of a rite becomes clear. First there is space: one must "consecrate the arena," ordering a room into a place of dignity. There is a settling of the body: "purifying the body." There is a welcoming and reverencing of the Three Jewels — offering, invitation, praise, homage. The middle is the core: repentance. Then comes the body's action: circumambulation. Then the speech's act: reciting the sūtra. And the tenth stage closes on "contemplating the one true reality" — that is, it converges on the deepest layer of contemplation.

There is a structural detail worth naming here. The sequence of this rite is itself a concrete landing of the spine that runs through the whole volume: from phenomenal repentance to contemplation of principle. The first nine stages are almost all visible, doable phenomena — ordering the space, cleansing the body, bowing, circling, chanting; only at the last stage does it turn into inner contemplation. In other words, this path from outer to inner, from phenomenon to principle, is not a summary the expositor drew up after the fact. It was written directly into the order of the rite's steps. A person who simply follows the sequence finds his body moving first, his mouth chanting first, and only at the end is he led toward that deepest, hardest single thought.

As for that last stage — "contemplating the one true reality," "seated contemplation of the real mark in correct vision" — what exactly it contemplates and how, this paper names only and does not unfold. That layer of contemplation is the business of Part VII. Here we need to know only this: the sequence of the whole rite is built to lead a person, step by step, up to that door.

A further word on whom this rite is *for*. In his exhortation Zhiyi casts the net wide:

> "Monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen who recite the Mahāyāna sūtras … who wish to behold the bodily form of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra … who wish to attain the purity of the six senses and enter the Buddha's domain without obstruction …"[^3]

That is to say, the rite is not reserved for the ordained; lay men and women may cultivate it equally. And the aim of cultivating it is, first, "to behold the bodily form of Samantabhadra" — which connects directly to the "seeing an auspicious sign" of the previous paper, except that here it has already been woven into the rite, becoming one juncture toward which the whole practice is oriented; and second, "purity of the six senses," which is precisely what the seventh stage addresses.

So what, exactly, is that seventh stage? It is the heart of the whole rite.

## III. The Heart of the Rite: The Fivefold Repentance (*wuhui*)

The seventh of the ten stages carries this heading:

> "Seventh: setting out the method of repenting the six senses, together with entreaty, rejoicing, dedication, and the making of vows."[^4]

Unpack the line: confession (of the six senses), entreaty, rejoicing, dedication, vow — these five things together form the most central structure of Chinese repentance liturgy, called the "fivefold repentance" (*wuhui* 五悔). The whole ten-stage rite gathers all five into this single seventh stage. The earlier consecrating, bowing, and offering are the groundwork; the later circumambulation, chanting, and contemplation are the extension; and the fivefold repentance is the rite's beating heart.

It is worth first making clear the distinction between the two characters *chan* 懺 and *hui* 悔 — which returns to the series' first paper and its parsing of three terms. Zhiyi says:

> "*Chan* means 'disclosing past evil'; *hui* means 'reforming the past and cultivating the future.'"[^5]

*Chan* is to lay one's past wrongdoing openly out, to disclose it; *hui* is to reform the past and turn toward the future. One looks backward, the other walks forward; only together do they make the complete turning-around.

The last four of the five — entreaty, rejoicing, dedication, vow — were not conjured out of nothing by Chinese repentance liturgy. The series has already treated the provenance and function of rejoicing, dedication, and entreaty in detail in its discussion of the sevenfold worship, and there is no need to retrace that ground here; we need only note that Chinese repentance liturgy gathered these items into the core of repentance, so that "repentance" is not merely the settling of old accounts but carries an outward orientation — rejoicing in others' good, dedicating merit outward, vowing forward. As for the last of the five, "the making of vows," its full unfolding into an independent discipline of practice belongs to the later part on the gate of vows; this paper sets down only a signpost — that repentance ends by opening onto vow — without cross-referencing a text not yet written.

Now the question arises. If the deepest, most ultimate face of repentance is the inner repentance of principle, that single thought of correct vision into the real mark — then why make it into so elaborate a rite, ten steps long, to be walked through again and again over three-times-seven days, six periods of day and night? Is this not winding a direct inner transformation into a heap of ceremonial fuss?

Zhiyi answered that question himself.

## IV. Why a Liturgy Is Needed

The answer is hidden in a passage from the *Great Calming and Contemplation* (*Mohe zhiguan*). This passage may be called the doctrinal engine of the whole repentance liturgy:

> "Only the *Lotus* specially appoints the six periods and the fivefold repentance, again devising expedients … To first know the ten minds in their adverse and favorable order and so bind one's attention to the real mark is the first repentance. But the mind-principle is subtle and hidden, the use of contemplation thin and faint, and the covering of dark evil is hard to open all at once; so one again mobilizes body and speech to aid the mental act, that it may quickly accord — and adds the fivefold repentance."[^6]

Trace the logic of the passage. Zhiyi concedes: the deepest repentance — the repentance of principle that "binds attention to the real mark" — is "the first repentance," the highest. On this he is in no way evasive. But he immediately points to a plain difficulty: this highest repentance is "subtle and hidden, the use of contemplation thin and faint," with "the covering of dark evil" blocking the way, so it is "hard to open all at once." An ordinary person cannot do it in a single stroke; that one thought is too fine, too hard, beyond reach.

And so: "one again mobilizes body and speech to aid the mental act, that it may quickly accord — and adds the fivefold repentance." Since that one thought alone is too hard, marshal the body and the speech as well — bowing, circling, calling the name, chanting the sūtra — using visible, doable acts of body and speech to "aid" that subtle, hard-to-arouse mental act, so that it may accord the sooner; and add the whole structure of the fivefold repentance on top.

This is the reason the liturgy exists. Repentance liturgy is not a degeneration of repentance into formalism; quite the opposite. It is built for that subtle, hard-to-open inner transformation — a scaffold of flesh and blood that a real person can actually set foot on and climb. A beginner may not yet be able to manage the single thought of "binding attention to the real mark," but he can first put the arena in order; he can first bow to the Buddhas, prostration by prostration; he can first chant the sūtra aloud. These phenomenal acts of body and speech are laying a walkable path for the person who cannot yet reach the contemplation of principle. The elaborateness of the liturgy is not display; it is the compassion of operability — it turns the highest Dharma into something an ordinary person can reach, step by step, over three-times-seven days.

Zhiyi's stance toward this two-layered relation of phenomenon and principle is itself candid. In editing the *Golden Light Repentance Rite* he wrote plainly:

> "The Golden Light Repentance Rite, fifth. The procedure is recorded directly; the contemplative wisdom is set out separately in another text. Adorn the arena … place the seat of the merit-deity Śrī to the left of the Buddha's seat … the seats of the four heavenly kings to the right … 'With all reverence, single-mindedly we bow to the Three Jewels, ever abiding in the ten directions' … then the summoning: single-mindedly we invite our root teacher, Śākyamuni Buddha …"[^7]

Note the eight characters: "the procedure is recorded directly; the contemplative wisdom is set out separately." Zhiyi records faithfully the *phenomena* — how the arena is adorned, how the seats are placed, how the order of invitation proceeds — all the operational layer; while the *contemplative wisdom*, that inner layer of contemplation, he handles separately, not mixed into the phenomena. This editorial self-awareness echoes the line the series has held from the start: phenomenal repentance and the repentance of principle are two faces. They can run in parallel, they can support each other, but they do not reduce to one another. The liturgy carries the *phenomenal* face to its utmost — yet it never pretends that this phenomenon is identical to that deepest principle.

A word in passing: this Golden Light rite seats a "merit-deity Śrī" and the "four heavenly kings," carrying a coloring of petition for worldly protection and benefit. This is a very real layer of Chinese repentance liturgy as it circulated among the populace, but it is not the spine of this paper; here we note only that it exists, and do not unfold it.

The shape of the genre is by now largely clear. But once the shape is set, a question follows at once: is this standard template really *standard*? Or is it merely the individual design of one man, one era — Zhiyi alone?

## V. Two Modes: Contemplative Rites and Ceremonial Rites

To show that the phrase "standard template" can stand, the most forceful evidence is that, more than four centuries after Zhiyi, someone used this same skeleton over again almost unchanged.

Zhili of the Song dynasty compiled a *Rite of the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī of the Thousand-Hand-Eye* — the rite later known simply as the "Great Compassion Repentance." Its ten stages run thus:

> "First, adorning the arena; second, purifying the three acts; third, binding the boundary; fourth, performing offerings; fifth, inviting the Three Jewels and the devas; sixth, praising and declaring sincerity; seventh, paying homage; eighth, making vows and holding the dhāraṇī; ninth, repentance; tenth, cultivating contemplation. And still it uses the Lotus Samādhi to aid the contemplation."[^8]

Set these ten beside Zhiyi's ten of the Lotus Samādhi, and the skeleton is nearly the same: both begin by consecrating the arena and purifying the acts of body; both have offering, invitation, praise, homage; the middle of both is repentance; both close on contemplation. More telling still is that closing line — "and still it uses the Lotus Samādhi to aid the contemplation" — in which Zhili plainly says that the contemplative portion of his rite is aided by Zhiyi's Lotus Samādhi. This is not merely "the structure happens to resemble." It is a later figure consciously, in writing, continuing the earlier figure's template. A shape applied repeatedly by different people across four centuries, with its source named by the very people who used it — this is the most solid evidence the word "genre" could have.

Zhili the man is himself worth noting: he both compiled with his own hand a communal rite like the Great Compassion Repentance and treated in theoretical depth the principle of sign-taking repentance (the business of the previous paper). The same person, with one hand making rites of practice and the other expounding doctrine, is in himself evidence that this liturgy is no empty shell of mere form.

Yet set the Lotus Samādhi, the Golden Light Repentance, and the Great Compassion Repentance side by side, and they share one feature: however many phenomena they involve, all in the end converge on contemplation. This sort of rite we may call a *contemplative repentance rite* — its phenomena serve the contemplation of principle, and the terminus of the whole rite is that single inner thought of contemplative regard.

But Chinese repentance liturgy has another countenance as well. The most famous example is the *Repentance Rite of the Sanctuary of Compassion*, popularly called the "Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance." Behind it stands a celebrated legend:

> "This repentance rite was compiled by Emperor Wu of Liang for his empress, Lady Chi … he saw a great serpent … 'The serpent is none other than the former Lady Chi … for this transgression I was condemned to a serpent's body … I beg some merit, that I may be raised up and delivered.'"[^9]

The legend has it that after the death of Emperor Wu's empress, Lady Chi, she fell into a serpent's body and appeared in a dream begging for deliverance, whereupon the emperor compiled this repentance rite. Here, again, an honest accounting is owed. The "Emperor Wu compiled it for Empress Chi" account is tradition and legend; the extant Taishō text bears the byline "compiled by the great masters of the Liang," not Emperor Wu's own authorship; and its preface itself admits, "from Liang to now, several centuries have passed … we obtained this scripture-text," which shows that the current ten-fascicle version was expanded and reworked in later (Tang–Song) redaction and is not the sixth-century original. All of this must be said plainly.

Setting textual criticism aside, the shape of the Liang Emperor's Repentance is quite unlike the Lotus Samādhi type. Its ten-fascicle structure runs through taking refuge, severing doubt, repentance, raising the bodhi-mind, making vows, dedication, and then on to manifesting karmic recompense, escaping the hells, and dissolving enmity and untying knots. Its center of gravity lies in homage, in calling the name, in drawing the suffering dead up and across to liberation; it has no terminus that converges on inner contemplation. This sort of rite may be called a *ceremonial repentance rite*. As for its content of delivering the dead, dissolving enmity, and escaping the hells — this is a very real face of the ceremonial rite, but this paper notes only that it exists and does not go in deep.

So we arrive at a contrast: on one side the contemplative rite that converges on contemplation of principle, on the other the ceremonial rite weighted toward phenomenal homage and toward drawing others up out of suffering.

But the moment this contrast is offered, a qualification must be added at once — it is a heuristic that aids understanding, not a sharp chasm, and still less a category Zhiyi or Zhili set up themselves. In fact most rites carry both faces: the Lotus Samādhi too has abundant phenomena of homage, name-calling, and chanting; and the best counter-example is precisely the Great Compassion Repentance — designed by Zhili in a contemplative spirit, yet among the populace it spread widely into a rite centered chiefly on reciting the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī. The Great Compassion Repentance sits exactly between the two poles; straddling the boundary, it reminds us that the contemplative rite and the ceremonial rite are two ends of a single spectrum, not two separate boxes.

One further word, to forestall misunderstanding. In each of these rites there is an object who is bowed to, invited, and called the lord — for instance the seventh stage of the Great Compassion Repentance, "paying homage," marked "because this is the lord of repentance." This "lord of repentance" is an object of reverence and of refuge, not an official who pronounces a pardon. In Chinese repentance liturgy, the extinguishing of wrongdoing rests on the mind's own truthful disclosure in accord with the Dharma, together with the sustaining power of the Buddhas; there is no juncture at which "someone, on your behalf, declares you absolved." This line the series has held from its treatment of the limits of grave offenses all the way to here: receiving repentance is not the same as being absolved.

## VI. Three Mirrors, and a Few Boundary-Stones

With the shape set down, let us finally hold up three Western mirrors to it, to see what likenesses and differences this Chinese repentance liturgy throws back.

The first mirror is the discussion in ritual studies of how ritual *embodies* belief. Scholars along this line have observed that ritual tends to generate and inscribe a set of beliefs through embodied, repeated action: a person does not first hold a belief and then act on it; rather, it is often in repeated bodily action that belief gets engraved, little by little. Held up to repentance liturgy, this mirror reflects well: the liturgy weaves an inner momentum into a sequence of body and speech, which dovetails precisely with Zhiyi's "mobilizing body and speech to aid the mental act." But the mirror also has its blind spot. This strand of ritual studies puts most of its weight on how ritual differentiates power and produces order within society; whereas the destination of Chinese repentance liturgy is the inner *sequence* of transformation — body and speech are the scaffold that "aids," not the end in themselves. And the liturgy carries its own anti-formalization alarm: Zhiyi repeatedly warns against grasping at the phenomena, against straying off course; Zhili too sets the contemplative wisdom "out separately." Here ritualization is a tightly supervised tool, not an end that swells to fill the whole.

The second mirror is the most important, and the easiest to angle wrong; it must be held steady. This is the history of the Christian institution of penance. In that tradition, repentance too traveled a clear road of institutionalization: from the early church's public, austere works of satisfaction, gradually toward the medieval private, auricular confession spoken to a priest; and at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, annual confession was made an obligation for the faithful. Held up to the Chinese tradition, the *shape* of the institution does indeed resemble: the Chinese tradition likewise has public, collective arena-rites (such as the Liang Emperor's Repentance, cultivated by many together) and private, individual contemplative rites (such as the Lotus Samādhi, cultivated alone over three-times-seven days), with a comparable tension running between them.

But here is exactly the place to hold the mirror steady: the *outward form* of the institution can be likened, but the *structure of absolution* differs at the root. The pivot of Christian confession is the priest pronouncing absolution in the person of Christ — an authorized figure declaring to the penitent, "your sins are absolved." Chinese repentance liturgy has no such juncture. As already said, the "lord of repentance" is an object of reverence and refuge, not an other who pronounces a pardon; the extinguishing of wrongdoing turns on the mind's own truthful disclosure in accord with the Dharma, plus the sustaining power of the Buddhas — not on someone declaring it on your behalf. So the conclusion this mirror returns is: the institution can be likened; the doctrine of absolution cannot be reduced one to the other. Receiving repentance is not being absolved — this boundary, held from the series' treatment of grave offenses, of the Samantabhadra repentance, of taking the precepts, all the way to here, has not shifted.

The third mirror can be held up only briefly. In Western liturgical theology there are such formulations as "the law of prayer is the law of belief," and "the rite takes effect by the very performance" — the latter meaning that the rite's efficacy comes from the rite being correctly performed, almost automatically. Held up to repentance liturgy, it reflects exactly a contrast: the efficacy of Chinese repentance liturgy is not this kind of mechanical efficacy that "kicks in automatically once you've recited it right." Zhiyi and Zhili alike anchor efficacy in "the utmost mind," "the mind set in motion," "contemplative wisdom" — it is the mind aroused within the phenomena, that bit of principle, that is the true lifeblood. Reciting the liturgy through once does not mean the repentance is accomplished; the principle within the phenomenon does.

The mirrors held up, let us as usual set down a few boundary-stones, to mark clearly what this paper can and cannot say:

❌ Repentance liturgy is not a degeneration that externalizes repentance. It makes repentance into a sequence of body and speech in order to aid that subtle, hard-to-arouse inner transformation — not to replace it with form.

❌ The liturgy does not replace individual contemplation. The last of the ten stages is always contemplation; however grand the phenomena, they lead a person up to that door — they do not push the door open for him.

⚠️ The ceremonial rite is not a rung below the contemplative rite. It does not converge on inner contemplation but is weighted toward drawing others up out of suffering, toward dissolving enmity for the living and the dead — this is another mode of the compassion of operability, not a demotion.

⚠️ Phrases like "institutionalization" and "the high-water mark of phenomenal repentance in the Chinese tradition" are a reading-frame of this series — reading this body of texts as a line of ascent from disclosure, to sevenfold worship, to sign-taking repentance, to the Chinese liturgy. Each segment has ample textual warrant, but the *line* itself is a synthesized framing after the fact, not something the texts marked out for themselves.

⚠️ The deepest layer of contemplation — that single thought of correct vision into the real mark, the content of "contemplating the one true reality" — this paper keeps throughout outside the door. It is the business of Part VII. This paper only leads a person to the arena, to the ten stages, to that door.

With this, the shape of the genre may be counted as set. The chapters that follow will walk into the individual rites within these arenas — the Lotus Samādhi, the Golden Light, the Liang Emperor's, the Great Compassion Repentance — to look at the particulars and the depths of each rite in turn. And the door that opens onto the deepest contemplation will not be pushed open until Part VII.

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## Notes

[^1]: *Sūtra of Golden Light*, Chapter on Repentance — tr. Dharmakṣema (Northern Liang), No. 663（T16n0663, 336b10）.
[^2]: *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite* (*Fahua sanmei chanyi*) — Sui · Zhiyi, No. 1941（T46n1941, 950a16–20, the ten stages）.
[^3]: ibid. (exhortation, T46n1941, 949b13).
[^4]: ibid. (seventh-stage heading, T46n1941, 952a27).
[^5]: *Great Calming and Contemplation* (*Mohe zhiguan*), fasc. 7b — Sui · Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding, No. 1911（T46n1911, 98a13）.
[^6]: ibid. (T46n1911, 98a13, the "mobilizing body and speech to aid the mental act … adding the fivefold repentance" passage).
[^7]: *Guoqing bailu*, Golden Light Repentance Rite §5 — Sui · Guanding, comp., No. 1934（T46n1934, 796a04）.
[^8]: *Rite of the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī of the Thousand-Hand-Eye* (Great Compassion Repentance) — Song · Siming Zhili, comp., No. 1950（T46n1950, 973a06）.
[^9]: *Repentance Rite of the Sanctuary of Compassion* (Liang Emperor's Jeweled Repentance), Preface, No. 1909（T45n1909, 922b19）. The Taishō ascribes it to "the great masters of the Liang"; the "Emperor Wu compiled it for Empress Chi" account is in the Preface, a traditional legend; the extant ten-fascicle text was expanded in later (Tang–Song) redaction.

## Index of Scriptures and Treatises

| Title | Dynasty · Author/Translator | Source |
|------|-----------|------|
| Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite | Sui · Zhiyi | Taishō vol. 46, No. 1941（T46n1941）|
| Great Calming and Contemplation (fasc. 7b) | Sui · Zhiyi, rec. Guanding | Taishō vol. 46, No. 1911（T46n1911）|
| Guoqing bailu (Golden Light Repentance Rite §5) | Sui · Guanding, comp. | Taishō vol. 46, No. 1934（T46n1934）|
| Sūtra of Golden Light (Chapter on Repentance) | N. Liang · Dharmakṣema, tr. | Taishō vol. 16, No. 663（T16n0663）|
| Rite of the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī (Great Compassion Repentance) | Song · Siming Zhili, comp. | Taishō vol. 46, No. 1950（T46n1950）|
| Repentance Rite of the Sanctuary of Compassion (Liang Emperor's Repentance) | Liang · great masters of the Liang, comp. | Taishō vol. 45, No. 1909（T45n1909）|

## Series Cross-References

- Paper I: the parsing of three terms (*chan* / *hui* / disclosure), continued here in the distinction "disclosing past evil / reforming toward the future."
- Part III: the repentance member of the sevenfold worship, continued here in the provenance of rejoicing, dedication, and entreaty within the fivefold repentance.
- Part V: the threefold ladder of repentance and sign-taking repentance, continued here in the institutional face of "seeing an auspicious sign" woven into the rite.
- Part VII (forthcoming): the deepest layer of correct vision into the real mark, and the repentance of non-arising — kept by this paper outside the door.
- The gate of vows (forthcoming): the vow-making of the fivefold repentance, marked here by a signpost only.

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*Paper:* KSAMA-P12 · *The Architecture of Chinese Repentance Liturgy* · **KṢAMĀ · Part VI · Chinese Repentance Liturgy · #1 · structure-first**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates (六行門) · KṢAMĀ · Part VI · #1
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Lotus Samādhi Repentance Rite* (T1941), the *Mohe zhiguan* (T1911), the *Guoqing bailu* (T1934), the *Sūtra of Golden Light* (T0663), Zhili's *Rite of the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī* (T1950), and the *Repentance Rite of the Sanctuary of Compassion* (Liang Emperor's Repentance, T1909) verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition.
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates