The Origins of Yoga and Tantra by Geoffrey Samuel

Author:Geoffrey Samuel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

The classic manual of the Theravda tradition, the Visuddhimagga (‘Path of Purification’) of the early fifth-century scholar Buddhaghosa, presents a masterly synthesis of meditation as understood in his day in relation to the Pali Canon (Ñamoli 1991). As for the Mahyna, there is a considerable amount of material on early Buddhist meditational procedures in the Mahyna stras, but it is often difficult to decipher; these texts were not necessarily meant as instructional manuals. They can be supplemented however by other material, such as the fragmentary Sarvstivda meditation manual found at Turfan (Schlingloff 1964; see also Karlsson 1999).

Theravda meditation in the fifth century, if the Visuddhimagga can be taken as representative, placed considerable emphasis on the development of samdhi (concentration or trance, perhaps better described as a focusing of the body-mind). Samdhi here is treated mainly as equivalent to the four jhnas25 and is developed through concentration on simple meditation subjects: a disk of clay (the earth-kasia) or representations of the other elements; the foulness of corpses; recollections of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; the brahmavihras, and so on (Ñamoli 1991: 85–368). The earth-kasia gets most extensive treatment (1991: 118–65); meditation on breathing, the most widespread technique among modern Theravdins along with its modern Burmese variation, awareness of abdominal movement, is also discussed though more briefly (1991: 259–85). The kasia is used as a device to stimulate an internal visual image or nimitta that becomes the actual object of concentration (cf. Karlsson 1999: 80). A simple and ascetic lifestyle and quiet and peaceful surroundings are an important basis for the practice.

Outside the Theravda, it seems that a wider range of visualisations developed, including visualisations of the presence of one or another of the Buddhas, with the intention of being in that Buddha's presence and listening to his teachings. These fall within the general category of buddhnusmti or ‘recollection of the Buddha’. This kind of procedure can be seen in one of the first few Mahyna stras to be translated into Chinese (in the first century CE, perhaps a century or so after it was written), the Pratyutpannabuddhasamukhvasthitasamdhi Stra or ‘Samdhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present’ (Harrison 1990, cf. also Karlsson 1999: 68–70), a text which is one of our earliest witnesses for the practice of meditation on the Buddha in front of images or paintings (Karlsson 1999: 69).26 Texts such as the Amityurdhyna Stra and Sukhvatvyha Stra, which build up elaborate visualisations of the presence of the Buddha in a heavenly realm, can also be seen as a witness to this kind of practice (cf. also Beyer 1977). Paul Williams and Robert Mayer have discussed how visionary procedures such as those found within the Pratyutpannabuddhasamukhvasthitasamdhi Stra may have provided the mechanism by which the Mahyna Stras in general were received and held to be the authentic word of the Buddhas (Williams 1989: 30; Mayer 1996: 74–5).

It is unclear how far there was an active meditation tradition in the urban monastic setting,27 but it seems evident that there

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