PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Seeing through Images: Reconstructing Buddhist
Meditative Visualization Practice in
Sixth-Century Northeastern China
Bruce C. Williams
University of California, Berkeley
INVESTIGATION INTO MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist meditative visualization
practices has focused almost exclusively on the tantric and Pure Land traditions.
Since these are what survive today, such an emphasis may appear
reasonable. To read this situation back into earlier periods of Buddhist
history, however, may be problematic. My own research indicates that, in
medieval China, for example, Pure Land and tantric forms of meditative
visualization practice formed but two sub-traditions within a larger, persistent
mainstream Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition of meditative visualization.
A hint of the diversity of meditative practices, visual and non-visual, within
this mainstream tradition may also be glimpsed by examining the range of
meditative practices, including visualization practices, within the medieval
Tiantai () lineage(s) centered largely within the southeastern China of
that time. 1 In this article we will examine the meditative visualization practices,
in particular the visualization of the Buddha’s body and its marks, of
another lineage system, the Ten Stages (shidi, ) lineages of northeastern
China centered around the ancient city of Ye () in the late sixth and early
seventh century CE. Many of the Tiantai visualization practices systematized
by Zhiyi (, 538–597) in the late sixth century in the southeast were, in
fact, brought south from this northeastern area, largely conceived, by his
teacher Huisi (, 515–577), a native of that area. 2
Our examination of the meditative visualization practices of the Ten
Stages lineages will, in fact, involve a reconstruction of these practices.
Since no description of these practices is extant, our reconstruction of these
practices will focus on six main areas: (1) the repentance, or confessional,
ritual (chanfa, ) known as “The Buddha Names in Seven Registers,” a
practice that most probably originated within the Ten Stages lineages; (2)
the brief set of directions for the implementation of this ritual, the “Great
Outline of the Method for Venerating and Paying Obeisance to the Buddhas
at the Six Times of the Day” (“Liushi libaifofa dagang,”
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