PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Willams: Seeing through Images 49
perhaps written by Xinxing himself. Consequently, I would suggest that by
Zhisheng’s time in the early eighth century this particular set of instructions,
originally a text or pericope of the Ten Stages school, had become added
to a set of vows redacted in the Three Stages school and was perhaps even
regarded as original to it.
Outside of the “Buddha Names in Seven Registers” ritual complex,
early on associated with the Ten Stages school and only later associated
with the Three Stages school by bibliographers, and the evidence of certain
later Dunhuang manuscripts, the writings of the Three Stages school shows
almost no connection with the “Thirty-Five Buddha Repentance Ritual.” In
fact, among the Dunhuang manuscripts of the “Buddha Names in Seven
Registers,” the only evidence linking these texts to the Three Stages school
is this “Text for Taking Vows at the Six Periods of the Day and Night” and
“The Method for Receiving the Eight Precepts” attributed to Xinxing, the
latter found only in a single manuscript, P. 2849.
4. THE VISUALIZATION II: THE TEN STAGES SUTRA AND THE
TECHNIQUES ELABORATED IN THE SUTRA ON THE
OCEAN SAMĀDHI OF VISUALIZING THE BUDDHAS
We have already referred to the cluster of six visualization sutras
translated in the early fifth century. We have also noted that the “Buddha
Names in Seven Registers” has a close liturgical relationship one of these,
the Scripture on the Visualization of the Two Bodhisattvas, King of Healing
and Supreme Healer. The visualization practices are detailed, however, in
another of these visualization texts, the Ocean Sutra. We mentioned above
that Tanluan’s practice focused on the visualization of a single buddha,
Amitābha, his two attendants Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and
his Pure Land. The Tiantai meditative practices systematized by Zhiyi in
the fourfold samādhis (sizhong sanmei, ) also organize its meditative
visualizations around single buddhas. Zhiyi received these practices from
his teacher Huisi, a northerner from the northeastern area dominated by
the capital cultures of Luoyang and Ye. 56
The Ocean Sutra describes a different set of practices. After outlining
specific preliminaries such as how to visualize the thirty-two major marks
(xiang, ) it describes how to visualize multiple buddhas, whether in set
arrays, such as the seven buddhas of the past or the buddhas of the ten
directions, or filling all of space. 57 Both sets of practices are relevant for our
discussion. 58
It is useful to begin with the visualization of the buddhas filling all of
space. The instructions for this set of visualizations give us the basic directions
for visualizing a buddha and how to extend this visualization to larger
and larger areas. This visualization is also helpful in order to understand