PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

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Pacific World
), which demonstrate clearly that the repentance rituals in which they
engaged had a soteriological trajectory. 20 This soteriological dimension
was properly a function of the meditative component of the paradigm.
That it had become a function of the repentance component at this time
may provide us with significant clues to how they viewed the dynamics of
liberation. By contextualizing the texts, rituals, and meditations as well as
the issues that they raised we can, I think, reconstruct an important aspect
of Ten Lineages practice at that time.
2. THE “BUDDHA NAMES IN SEVEN REGISTERS”
REPENTANCE RITUAL
Lingyu’s cave temple, now referred to as Dazhu sheng ku (),
or Cave of the Great Resident Sage, is located at the western end of a valley
formed by a ring of eight hills. 21 A cave dedicated to Lingyu’s teacher,
Daoping, is located near the crest of the hill at the eastern end of the valley.
Lingyu’s cave opens to the south. It is a square room about two meters on
a side. When one enters one faces Vairocana seated in a niche on the northern
wall who, together with his two attendants, faces south. In the niche
in the western wall are Amitābha and his two attendants facing east; the
eastern wall has Maitreya and two attendants facing west. To Vairocana’s
left is a vertical panel formed of seven squares, each containing one of the
seven buddhas of the past. To Vairocana’s right is a similar panel containing
the first seven of the thirty-five buddhas of repentance beginning with
Śākyamuni Buddha at the top. The remaining twenty-eight buddhas are
presented, in a counterclockwise direction, in panels to the left and right of
both Amitābha’s and Maitreya’s attendants. It appears that when the images
of the buddhas and bodhisattvas to be venerated are arranged along the
walls of a cave temple, the practitioner, by moving counterclockwise as the
ritual proceeds, can keep his right shoulder moving toward the images to
be venerated. 22 As one turns and looks out the entrance of the cave, there
are three inscriptions on the inside of the south wall, one each to the left
and right of the entrance and one above it. The inscription to the left of the
entrance displays the images of the twenty-four Indian patriarchs together
with short passages that identify them. It is perhaps our earliest extant such
list. 23 To the right is inscribed a passage from the Mahāsamnipāta-sūtra on
the decline of the Buddha’s Dharma. 24 On the outside wall of the cave, on
the right-hand side as one looks out, are a series of inscriptions in three
registers. 25
Among the inscribed passages taken from Buddhist sutras carved on
the outside of the cave temple there is one passage that presents an abridged
(lue, ) rite of visionary repentance, the “Buddha Names in Seven Registers”
(“Qijie foming,” ). 26 This is inscribed at the left end of the lower reg-