The following is an excerpt from Minding the Buddha’s Business: Essays in Honor of Gregory Schopen, edited by Daniel Boucher and Shayne Clarke.
The Visualization Stage (utpattikrama)and Its Workings
To Gregory, with endless gratitude from your very first PhD student
by Yael Bentor
Introduction
In the visualization stage (utpattikrama, bskyed rim) known also as the generation, development, or creation stage, aspirants visualize themselves as a buddha (iṣṭadevatā, deva; yi dam, lha) according to the specifications set forth in a sādhana manual. But what distinguishes yogis who meditate on themselves as a buddha from a beggar boasting to be a king? Why, according to Indian and Tibetan authors, can aspirants who visualize themselves as buddhas eventually become buddhas? What, if anything, makes tantric visualization capable of achieving a soteriological transformation? In numerous tantric texts this potential of the practice is taken for granted, as long as all necessary conditions are met. Other explanations hinge on the powers the guru transmits to the disciples during the initiation or the blessing bestowed by the enlightened being the yogis aspire to become. There are even certain techniques to “arouse the heart” of this devatā. However, more rationally inclined Indian and Tibetan scholars of tantra seek less miraculous and more philosophical explanations for the working of the visualization stage. It is the latter approach that will be the focus of my paper. As we will see, these scholars resort to some rather unexpected authorities.
Relinquishing Conceptual Thoughts and Achieving Nondual Profundity and Sublimity
A major goal suggested for the visualization stage is relinquishing conceptual thoughts that create the aspirant’s ordinary world and, instead, developing the special vision of the maṇḍala and the deities residing therein. Nāgārjuna, “the founder” of the Ārya school of the Guhyasamāja, opens his manual of the visualization stage, the Piṇḍīkramasādhana, by stating that the goal of the visualization stage is to purify the mind of conceptualizations (vikalpa, rnam rtog), as these are the source of delusion of all beings in the world.
Crucially, though, the visualization stage is essentially conceptualization. The usual question arises: how can a visualization of manifold details of an embellished celestial mansion, with dozens of different buddhas and bodhisattvas dwelling in it, bring the meditator to overcome conceptualizations and advance toward the goal of enlightenment? In addressing this difficulty, we will explore traditional explanations about the workings of maṇḍala visualization and about the role of visualization in advancing aspirants toward the soteriological goal of averting saṃsāric existence.
Jnānapāda (active ca. 770–820), “the founder” of the Guhyasamāja school named for him, explains the working of the visualization stage by drawing upon the notion of the pair “profound and sublime” vis-a-vis conceptualization. This pair, profound (gambhīra, zab) and sublime (udāra, rgya che ba), is found also in nontantric works, such as Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra and Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika. In these works, this pair stands as antithetical to conceptual thoughts. No doubt Jnānapāda was aware that his terminological choice alludes to the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, and to Dharmakīrti as well, as we will see.
Jnānapāda uses “profound and sublime” at the end of his Guhyasamāja sādhana, titled Samantabhadra, where he points out certain general observations about the visualization stage as a whole. Jnānapāda associates ordinary conceptual thoughts (prākṛtavikalpa, tha mal rnam rtog) with saṃsāric suffering (bhavaduḥkha, srid pa’i sdug bsngal) and states that the antidote to both is a mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature. Jnānapāda then continues: “Conceptual thoughts will not appear to [the mind] endowed with a profound and sublime nature.” Here too, conceptual thoughts stand in contrast to the profound and sublime. It is the mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature that dispels conceptual thoughts. In this context, the mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature is the mind that visualizes the maṇḍala with its celestial mansion and deities.
Then Jnānapāda discusses how such a mind is capable of overcoming conceptual thoughts. What Jnānapāda seems to be saying is that when an antidote occurs once, it will advance and increase through practice and finally totally block its opposite. In other words, when a mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature is cultivated to its fullest, it will be able to wholly eradicate ordinary conceptualizations. But why would it be that a mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature that visualizes the maṇḍala circle is guaranteed to transcend ordinary conceptualization and liberate practitioners from saṃsāric suffering? We will now turn to this question.
"What makes tantric visualization capable of achieving a soteriological transformation?"
The Jnānapāda School’s Reliance on the Thought of Dharmakīrti
All the Indian commentaries on Jnānapāda’s Samantabhadrasādhana turn to the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter in Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika (vv. 205–216) to explain these lines. In these works, ordinary conceptual thoughts that typify saṃsāric suffering are identified with grasping at I and mine, while the mind visualizing the maṇḍala circle is equated with the wisdom that realizes no-self. For Dharmakīrti, by engaging in selflessness, the mind prevents the opposite of selflessness, thus uprooting the basis for self-grasping. As Cristina Pecchia explains: “For the contrary of the view of selflessness can no longer maintain its grip on a mind whose epistemic condition is defined by selflessness.”
Likewise, the commentaries on Jnānapāda’s Samantabhadrasādhana explain that the mind engaged in the maṇḍala circle—endowed with inconceivable nature—is capable of bringing about the irreversible cessation of conceptual thoughts and saṃsāric suffering. The example Dharmakīrti uses to explain why grasping at the self will not recur is the false perception of a rope as a snake. Vaidyapāda or Vitapāda, one of the earlier commentators on the Samantabhadrasādhana, offers this very simile in order to illustrate how the mind visualizing the maṇḍala circle entirely blocks saṃsāric suffering.
These commentators also follow Dharmakīrti’s view of the unique nature of the antidote. In the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter, Dharmakīrti contrasts the antidote that can achieve an irreversible transformation with antidotes such as benevolent love (maitrī, byams pa), taken to be an antidote to aversion (dveṣa, zhe sdang). The latter type of antidotes cannot completely eliminate afflictions such as aversion, because they still have at their root the notion of an existing self. The mind endowed with the inconceivable nature of the maṇḍala circle, by contrast, is distinguished as capable of completely stopping conceptual thoughts and saṃsāric suffering thanks to its nondual profound and sublime essence.
Thus, in accordance with Dharmakīrti, Jnānapāda and his commentators hold that the mind visualizing the maṇḍala is capable of achieving a soteriological transformation, such as putting an end to saṃsāric suffering, because it is characterized by nondual profundity and sublimity.
The Importance of the Mind Endowed with a Profound and Sublime Nature in the Mantra Vehicle
The Jnānapāda school takes the mind endowed with the nondual profound and sublime nature as one of the features that makes the Mantra Vehicle superior to the Pāramitā Vehicle. In his Ātmasādhanāvatāra, Jnānapāda explains that a mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature can attain its fruit because it is granted the same nature as the fruit, or it cultivates causes that accord with the result. In fifteenth-century Tibet, Tsong kha pa considered this point to be of utmost importance, elaborating on it at the beginning of his Sngags rim chen mo. For Tsong kha pa, a profound and sublime nature accords with the fruit of the path, the two kāyas of the Buddha. The profound nature of the mind brings about the dharmakāya and wisdom, while the sublime brings about the rūpakāya, which is the method aspect that can act for the sake of others. In this way, aspirants on the Mantra Vehicle engage in causes that are compatible with the goal and are therefore efficacious. On the other hand, in the Pāramitā Vehicle meditations on emptiness accord with the dharmakāya; but since this vehicle offers no meditations that are similar to a rūpakāya, it lacks causes that accord with one of the goals of the path. In other words, both the Pāramitā and the Mantra vehicles specify that the path of wisdom is meditation on emptiness. However, the path of method described in the Pāramitā Vehicle—the other five pāramitās—lacks a feature that can lead directly to the rūpakāya. Therefore, only in the Mantra Vehicle the methods—meditation on the deity during the visualization stage and the practice of the illusory body during the completion stage—accord in their nature with the fruit and are thus effective. Tsong kha pa sees this very characteristic of the mantric path as its advantage over the path of the pāramitās.
The Efficacy of a Mind Endowed with a Profound and Sublime Nature According to Ratnākaraśānti
Ratnākaraśānti (ca. 970–1045) disagrees with some of the earlier commentators on Jnānapāda’s Samantabhadrasādhana with regard to the term “once.” As we saw, Jnānapāda speaks about a contradictory event or an antidote that occurs once, after which, through gradual practice, aspirants intensify their experience of the mind endowed with the profound and sublime until they are finally able to totally block its opposite: conceptual thoughts. This is not the only case where the sudden and gradual are thus taken together, but certain commentators understood lan cig as lhan cig, that is, “simultaneously.” According to Samantabhadra, the Sanskrit here is sakṛt: sa + kṛt which is equally ambiguous; it means either “once” or “simultaneously.”
Ratnākaraśānti, by contrast, emphasizes that it is not the case that ordinary appearances do not arise in the aspirant’s mind simply because this mind is submerged in maṇḍala visualization. He says: “Conceptual thoughts do not appear since the mind endowed with the aspect of the maṇḍala engages in dispelling all false conceptualizations, and not because they do not appear simultaneously.” “They” here refers to conceptual thoughts and the visualization of the maṇḍala. In other words, it is not that when the maṇḍala appears, false conceptualizations cannot appear. Rather, Ratnākaraśānti emphasizes, a mind absorbed in maṇḍala visualization cannot but dispel false conceptualizations, because it is “endowed with a profound and sublime nature” that is capable of eliminating conceptual thoughts that bring about saṃsāric suffering.
Ratnākaraśānti supports his argument by comparing the mind endowed with the form of the maṇḍala to the meditative absorption on infinite space (ākāśānantyāyatana, nam mkha’ mtha’ yas skye mched). He concludes that while the latter meditation cannot avert saṃsāric suffering, the visualization stage can do so because there the mind is endowed with “a profound and sublime nature.”
"Mental overload is more effective than mental deprivation."
This brings us to a fundamental difference between the visualization stage and the meditative absorption on infinite space. While the latter meditation reduces the mental content to a bare minimum, the visualization stage inflates it with incredible elaborations. This very difference pertains also to the closely related kṛtsna (zad par, Pāli kasiṇa) meditation, the single-pointed concentration of śamatha practice, and absorptions (samāpatti, snyoms par ’ jug pa) on the formless realm (ārūpya). For our author, then, mental overload is more effective than mental deprivation. Hence, in comparison with a mind emptied of any mental content, the mind meditating on an embellished maṇḍala—where numerous ornamented deities holding varied emblems reside—can better achieve a transformation of soteriological significance. In a famous verse of the Hevajra-tantra, the role of the elaborate mental contents is stressed as well. We will return to this point below, but first let us briefly revisit Dharmakīrti.
For Dharmakīrti, meditations on kṛtsna and the loathsome (aśubha, mi gtsang) are nonconceptual because they are created through the power of meditation. This is despite the fact that, in these meditations, the objects are unreal (abhūta). At the same time, in his Pramāṇaviniścaya, Dharmakīrti defines direct perception (pratyakṣa, mngon sum) as nonconceptual and nonerroneous (abhrānta, ma ’ khrul pa). As Vincent Eltschinger notes, cognitions meditating on the kasiṇa and the loathsome meet the first defining condition of a direct perception but not the second. Although nonconceptual, these cognitions are erroneous because their objects are imaginary and not real; hence, they are not reliable or valid (pramāṇa, tshad ma).
As we saw above, the mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature that visualizes the maṇḍala circle is free of conceptualization. Can this mind, however, be taken as nonerroneous or valid and therefore qualify for Dharmakīrti’s definition of direct perception? Dharmakīrti’s concern in the aforementioned discussions of the meditations on kasiṇa and direct perception is the nonconceptual and direct perception of the four noble truths. Yet Samantabhadra, in his commentary on Jnānapāda’s Samantabhadrasādhana, writes about a nonconceptual and valid mind in relation to the mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature that visualizes the maṇḍala circle. Samantabhadra concludes his explanation of Jnānapāda’s verse cited above—“conceptual thoughts will not appear to [the mind] endowed with a profound and sublime nature”—by saying: “That experience itself is valid (pramāṇa).” The context of this statement is unclear, if not outright obscure. Can we entertain the possibility that what Samantabhadra has in mind is Dharmakīrti’s definition of direct perception as nonconceptual and valid? In other words, does Samantabhadra explain that the mind endowed with a profound and sublime nature that visualizes the maṇḍala circle is a direct perception as defined by Dharmakīrti?
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This volume honors the profoundly transformative influence of Gregory Schopen’s many contributions to Buddhist studies. Eighteen articles by former students and colleagues focus on the areas of Schopen’s most noteworthy influence: the study of the Mahayana, particularly of its early sutra literature; the study of Vinaya, especially the narratives accompanying the rules for monks and nuns; and the study of Buddhist epigraphy and art history. Contributors demonstrate the ongoing significance of Schopen’s scholarship, including his very first article, on the cult of the book in the early Mahayana, published fifty years ago. Schopen has, in essence, brought the Buddha down to earth, revealing that this is precisely where most Indian Buddhists encountered him. The contributions in this celebratory volume reflect this legacy and Schopen’s considerable impact on our understanding of Buddhists in India.
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