PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

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Pacific World
components in the bestowal and maintenance of the bodhisattva vows, or
precepts. 77 In brief, before you can receive the bodhisattva precepts, you
must purify yourself through the performance of repentance rituals and
receive signs (hao xiang, ) from the buddhas, in a vision or a dream, that
this purification has been accomplished. When the buddhas appear to you
they may even bestow the precepts upon you in this vision or dream. Your
human master then either bestows upon you the bodhisattva precepts or
simply testifies to your experience before a statue of the Buddha. 78
In the “Buddha Names in Seven Registers” and in the visualization
practices we have been surveying here precepts, repentance, and
visualization also form a unit, but the emphasis is on maintaining
moral and mental purity in order to accomplish the goal of meditative
visualization. We should not forget, however, that many of the monks in
the Ten Stages lineages about whom we have information were deeply
involved in the study of the vinaya. Also, in Lingyu’s biography, when
Lingyu announced that he would soon pass away, people flocked to him
to receive the precepts. 79
The Ocean Sutra then proceeds at length to describe how the
visualization of the buddhas is to be expanded and made larger. Beginning
with a room full of buddhas, for example, the practitioner should expand
the visualization to the size of a monastery, then by stages to an area
covering one yojana, 80 one hundred yojanas, one Jambudvīpa (8,000 yojanas
wide), the other continents of the world system—first Pūrvavideha in the
east (8,060 yojanas wide), then Aparagodāniya in the west (8,900 yojanas),
and finally Uttarakuru in the north (16,000 yojanas)—one hundred
Jambudvīpas, one hundred koṭis of the four continents, and finally all of
space in the ten directions. There should be no cracks or spaces anywhere
in these visualizations and each and every Buddha image in all of these
visualizations should clearly and distinctly display his thirty-two major
and eighty minor marks.
The visualization of the buddhas of the ten directions is outlined in
chapter 11, “Calling to Mind the Buddhas of the Ten Directions” (“Nian
shifang fo,” ). 81 This visualization provides us with the basic pattern
for visualizing an array of buddhas. The basic pattern is laid out in
the visualization of Bhadraśrī Buddha and his buddha land “Aśoka” in
the east. This visualization illustrates the meditative visualization that corresponds
to the fourth roster of buddhas in the “Buddha Names in Seven
Registers.” 82
The Buddha announced to Ānanda: “How does the practitioner
visualize the buddhas of the ten directions? One who visualizes the
buddhas of the ten directions begins with the eastern direction. In
the east there is a world; the country is called ‘Jeweled Security and