PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

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Pacific World
), which also probably originated within the Ten Stages lineages
and which indicates that this ritual is one of visionary repentance; (3) the
Ten Stages Sutra (Skt. Daśabhūmika-sūtra; Ch. Shidi jing, ) and certain
visualization sutras, especially the Sutra on the Ocean Samādhi of Visualizing
the Buddhas (Guanfo hai sanmei jing, ), that detail the practice of
the meditative visualization of the buddhas; (4) recitation; (5) the development
of a soteriological dimension for meditative visualization practice;
and (6) summaries of the “Method for Venerating the Buddhas” (“Lifo fa,”
) ascribed to Ratnamati, an Indian Buddhist monk who arrived in
Luoyang () in the early sixth century and whose disciple Huiguang (
, 468–537) was one of the founders of the Ten Stages lineages.
There are several things this article will not do. It will not provide a
detailed examination of all of the varieties of meditative practice used in the
Ten Stages lineages nor will it provide a detailed investigation of the “Buddha
Names in Seven Registers” genre of visionary repentance, its subgenres, and
which lineages or schools may have practiced these rituals. 3 These topics are
beyond the scope of this study and deserve separate treatments. Rather, we
will focus our attention on the meditative visualization practice suggested
by the “Buddha Names in Seven Registers” ritual inscribed on the cliff face
outside of the cave carved for the Ten Stages monk Lingyu (, 518–605)
in 589 CE. We will conclude our reconstruction of this practice with a brief
discussion of its relationship to Tiantai meditative visualization practice and
what this comparison might tell us about meditative visualization practice
in general in northeastern China in the late sixth century.
Equally importantly we need to remind ourselves that our reconstruction
proceeds from texts, most of which, if not all, depict normative situations.
How any individual practitioner may have implemented these meditations
is unknown, and perhaps unknowable. For any individual the best we may
hope for is to glimpse the structure of their meditation(s) and what their
meditation(s) focused on, not the details of how they actually practiced these
meditations. We also need to remind ourselves that our reconstruction is
from our perspective, although we base it on texts from the period under
discussion. It may seem a reasonable reconstruction when we look at current
meditative visualization practices in Chinese Buddhism, but it may be better
to regard the system of meditation arrived at more as an “implied system,”
one that describes an implied performance rather than the actual details of
an individual practice. Finally, the reconstruction presented in outline here
does not, of course, preclude other plausible reconstructions.
Before we begin our reconstruction, however, we need to provide a few
introductory remarks about the significance of the meditative visualization
of the Buddha’s form as well some background on the nature and impact
of the Ten Stages lineages in northeastern China in the sixth century.