PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Willams: Seeing through Images 57
Visuddhimagga. There the meditation used to instruct the practitioner in the
development of the four dhyānas (Pāli jhāna) of form is the visualization of
the earth disk, the earth kasiṇa meditation. As the meditator prepares to enter
the first, second, third, and finally, the fourth jhāna he is enjoined prior to
each stage to fix his attention not only on the image of the earth disk but
also on a word for “earth” to provide support for his visualization. 92 While
this hardly proves that visualization and recitation are always to be connected
in this fashion, I think it suggests in a natural way a possible, even
probable, wide-ranging correlation between the visualization of an image
and the use of the name of the thing visualized as a linguistic support. In
the case of the visualization of the bodily image of a buddha together with
the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks, his name would function as
the natural support for this visualization.
Despite the extreme paucity of studies of religious recitation, not only
in Buddhism but also in religions generally, our brief remarks here can
only point to the relevance and importance of recitation in certain forms
of meditative practice. Unfortunately, we must leave this topic here, since
the broader uses of recitation in religious and meditative practice would
take us well beyond the scope of this study.
6. THE SOTERIOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF MEDITATIVE
VISUALIZATION AND VISIONARY REPENTANCE
Buddhānusmṛti (nianfo) initially appears in texts as a series of meditations
on the epithets and qualities of the Buddha. From there it expanded
into meditations on the acts of the Buddha and into visualizations of the
bodily form of the Buddha, complete with his thirty-two major and eighty
minor marks. Finally it expanded into the visualization of the buddhas of
the ten directions filling all of space. In the earliest extant visualization text,
the Pratyutpannasamādhi-sūtra translated into Chinese in 179 CE, the visualization
of the Buddha(s) was primarily for the purpose of going into the presence
of these buddhas, obtaining teachings appropriate to the practitioner
(and the age in which s/he lived), and bringing these back into the human
world in order to enlighten all beings. Such visualizations could also be
used to obtain rebirth in the various buddha realms. Finally, although this
was not as clearly articulated in the early visualization texts, by the early
fifth century the visualization of the Buddha’s bodily form could also be
used to attain a direct realization of the reality of the Buddha’s nature. The
usual doctrinal justification in visualization texts in the early fifth century,
including the Ocean Sutra, was to pay homage to the Prajñāpāramitā and
to realize the ultimate emptiness of the Buddha’s form and marks. To see
these as empty was to perceive directly the nature of the Buddha and thus
to see all dharmas as empty.