PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Yamabe: Practice of Visualization and Visualization S¥tra 139Table 1Painting No.II.5II.4II.3II.2II.1Content of thePaintinga burningtree(inscrip-tion)checkeredgroundtwoburningtrees froma pondtwoflowersfrom aponda tower,musicalinstrumentsCorrespondingItem in theVisualizationS¥tra4. jeweltrees2. water4. jeweltrees(?)orOcean S¥tra,SecretEssentials(?)5. water ofeightsuperiorqualities(?)3. groundor6. anoverallviewPainting No.(lost)III.4III.3III.2III.1Content of thePaintingCorrespondingItem in theVisualizationS¥tra----4. jeweltreea baby in alotus(inscrip-tion)12. generalvisualizationa flowertree, twoflowers(inscrip-tion)flowerswithstrips(inscrip-tion)7. flowerseattrees withwaterstreams5. water ofeightsuperiorIf one looks at the numbers attached to the items of the VisualizationS¥tra, which signify the position in the sequence of visualization, andwhich are given by the Visualization S¥tra itself, it will be evident howdisorderly the arrangement of these paintings is. It is particularly noteworthythat paintings corresponding to the same item in the VisualizationS¥tra appear more than once on this wall (painting Nos. II.5 and III.3corresponding to item 4; painting Nos. II.2 and III.1 corresponding to item5). 73 Such a chaotic arrangement is in clear contrast to the “transformationtableaux based on the Visualization S¥tra” (Kuan-ching pien-hsiang ) widely seen from Tun-huang to Japan, in which the pictorial representationsgenerally follow the structure of the Visualization S¥tra. 74 Weshould further recall here that at Toyok even the individual paintings haveelements that are difficult to be explained by reference to the VisualizationS¥tra, but can be easily explained by consulting other meditation texts.