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Pacific World
of the two truths, the ultimate and the conventional, from the mid-fifth
through the sixth centuries, influenced in complex ways by Chengshi
() scholasticism and debates. 100 Zhiyi wedded these to a Sanlun (
), or Chinese Madhyamaka, formulation of emptiness and the practice
of the meditative visualizations of buddhas and bodhisattvas inherited
from his teacher Huisi. These are expressed most succinctly in Zhiyi’s
formulations of the three truths (san di, ) and the three contemplations
(san guan, ). 101 Both are organized around the structure: conventional
existence (jia, , or jiaming, ), the emptiness (or ultimate reality; kong,
) of conventional existence, and the middle way (zhongdao, ), which
is the complete integration and interfusion of the first two. The three
contemplations proceed from conventional existence to the realization
of its emptiness, to a reexamination of conventional existence from the
standpoint of emptiness, and finally to the realization of their total fusion,
interpenetration, and mutual inclusion. The realization of the middle way
is the perfect realization of buddha-nature. 102
The similarities here with the meditative model that we have outlined
for Tanluan and, by extension, the Ten Stages lineage of Lingyu are obvious.
It is usually regarded that Zhiyi made little explicit use of Yogācāra doctrine
and texts, yet the results of his synthesis are strikingly similar. Let us put his
formulations of the three truths and three contemplations into the context of
meditative visualization. We begin with the visualization of the Buddha’s
form together with the major and minor marks as we might perform it in
the context of the fourfold samādhi system. We then endeavor to perceive
this form as empty. To use another of Zhiyi’s formulations we move from
the realm of phenomenon (shi, ) to the realm of principle (li, ). To the
extent that our perception of emptiness negates the phenomenal form of
the Buddha, his form, and marks, indeed, all appearances, this realization
of the emptiness of the Buddha’s body is still biased. We need to perceive
emptiness in the form and marks of the Buddha (and in the appearance
of the conventional world) without abolishing them. When these two
aspects have been brought into balance and seen as mutually inclusive,
our perception of the truth is no longer biased and we see the highest truth
of the middle way. In other words we now have an unhindered perception
of the buddha-nature as it exists in itself.
We started with the text of a repentance ritual inscribed in 589 on the
wall outside of Lingyu’s cave temple on Mt. Bao. By linking this up with
other scriptural and ritual texts that would have been known to Lingyu,
and by looking at the context of short instructional texts related to this
specific ritual, we have argued that this ritual of repentance inscribed
at Mt. Bao most likely took place within the context, not only of ritual
recitation, but also of meditative visualization. We then explored what the
roots and the contours of such meditative visualizations may have looked