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12059

Buddhist Visual Worlds II: Practices of Visualization

and Vision
Chris Hatchell*
Coe College

Abstract
This article discusses Buddhist meditative practices that make use of visual worlds. First among these
are practices of visualization, which involve visual scenes created in the minds eye. Buddhist
traditions contain a variety of these techniques, and use them for a diverse set of purposes: devotion,
cultivating mental focus, generating mindsets and motivations, and transforming personal identity.
Though less common, Buddhists also have traditions that involve practices of vision, where
meditators seek spontaneous experiences of luminosity that are seen with the eyes rather than simply
created in imagination. The article examines several of these visionary practices, with particular
emphasis on meditative techniques found in the Klacakra and Great Perfection traditions.

Introduction: A Place for the Eyes

In one of the major narratives of the Buddhist tradition, the young Buddha-to-be renounces his life
of luxury and turns to the spiritual life after seeing a series of four sights: an old man, a sick man, a
dead man, and a renunciate. Siddharthas act of seeing is representative of a chief type of Buddhist
visual practice, where the eyes are used to lead ones thoughts away from the world. One of
Buddhists chief concerns with the eyes is that, if uncontrolled, they tend to become sources of
desire, illusion, or error. It is thus common to nd Buddhists working to tame the eyes, or to
use the eyes to tame the person: restraining the eyes wandering by casting them downward away
from the social world, or xing their gaze on repulsive sights with the goal of creating a spirit of
renunciation.
But this is not by any means the only way that Buddhist traditions have treated the eyes.
Buddhist literature commonly speaks about seeing in positive and even transcendent ways,
discussing gods eyes that allow you to see across universes, or Buddha eyes that are
attained upon enlightenment, or meditative practices of higher seeing (vipayan) that lead
to perceiving things as they really are. In such instances, it can seem that these eyes are really
types of knowing rather than organs of vision and that the light they encounter is something
that dispels the darkness of ignorance rather than something that lights up a dark room.
Taken together, all of this can create the impression that Buddhist discourses of seeing are
primarily metaphorical, or alternatively, that they advocate turning away from seeing and
placing little value on the contents of the visual world. But many Buddhist traditions have in
fact created a place for the eyes, and advocate meditative techniques that make extensive use
of visual worlds, or that involve actual (rather than metaphorical) eyes. This article will discuss
two types of these practices. The rst is visualization, referring to contemplative practices
where visual scenes are deliberately created in the minds eye. The second is visionary
practice, referring to the cultivation of visual experiences that are encountered with the actual eyes
rather than with the imagination. There is a great variety of each of these, so without pretending
to cover them all, what follows will discuss some of their main types and functions, and suggest
ways that they both develop from and contribute to broader visual discussions in Buddhism.

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350 Chris Hatchell

Practices of Visualization: Seeing with the Minds Eye

SOME COMMON VISUALIZATION PRACTICES: DEVOTION, MENTAL FOCUS, AND MOTIVATION

Buddhist visualization practices are generally based on the idea that imagining something in
the mind can potentially have real effects in the world. These effects might be internal (such
as transformation of the meditators mind) or external (such as bringing about desired events
in ones life). Buddhist traditions contain such a wide variety of these visualization practices
that they can be difcult to categorize, but to start, we might think of them in three different
categories, though these categories frequently overlap. The rst type is devotional
visualizations, where a visualized deity is used as the object of offerings, praises, and
reection, or where the practitioner aims to draw closer to the ideal state of that deity.
One major example of this type of practice is called recollection of the Buddha,1 an
exercise that involves scripted recollections of the Buddhas moral qualities and accomplish-
ments, and is practiced for the purposes of purifying the mind, creating merit, or even
preventing obstacles and dangers.2 The practice has liturgical, contemplative, and ritual
elements, and also incorporates visualization techniques, where the physical form of the Buddha
(and not just his qualities) is an object of recollection. Here, for instance, is a short description of
the practice from the Ekottargama:

A bhiks: u correct in body and correct in mind sits cross-legged and focuses his thought in front of
him. Without entertaining any other thought he earnestly calls to mind the Buddha. He contem-
plates the image of the Tathgata without taking his eyes off it. Not taking his eyes off it he then
calls to mind the qualities of the Tathgatathe Tathgatas body made of vajra, endowed with
the ten powers. . .the Tathgatas countenance, upright and peerless, so that one never tires of be-
holding it....3

The visualization practice here is said to allow one to evoke and ultimately take on the char-
acteristics of the Buddha, letting the practitioner achieve the great fruit, attain all
good. . .and arrive at nirvn. a.4 Thus, while devotional visualizations might be for simpler
purposes like gathering merit, they can also be connected to Buddhists highest aims. Indeed,
in Pure Land Buddhist traditions, recollection of the Buddha remains one of the hallmark
practices,5 and is said to result in encounters with Amitbha, profound levels of concentration,
or progress toward a rebirth in the pure land Sukhvat.6
A second type of visualization practice is used to cultivate mental focus, or calm
abiding,7 a state where the mind can remain pointedly focused on an object, without
wandering or effort.8 These meditations can be performed as an end in themselves but are
typically part of larger meditative programs, where the focus they cultivate is put into the service
of another project, such as analytical or insight-related meditations, or tantric practices. In calm
abiding meditation, practitioners may focus attention on the breath or on a physical object, but
visualized objects are also common. Some of these visualized objects have little overt Buddhist
content, as in an exercise called kasin. a practice,9 where a meditator gazes intently at a series of
discs made of different physical substances, and then closes the eyes and visualizes the discs, or
focuses on the retinal afterimage that they produce. More typically, visualized objects have
sacred content. Practitioners imagine simple images such as a Buddha or sacred syllable, or
complex scenes like arrays of deities in divine realms. In either case, the practitioner aims to
see the object in vivid realistic detail, without wavering or losing the object.
A third type of visualization aims to transform the meditators basic thought patterns,
habits, or motivations. Some of these are designed to produce a sense of detachment or

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renunciation, such as visualizations that depict corpses, graveyards, or the disintegration of

ones own body.10 Other visualizations are designed to cultivate motivations like compas-
sion. A collection of Tibetan practices called mind training,11 for instance, is used to give
rise to the compassionate motivation called bodhicitta and involves several visualization
practices. Perhaps the most famous of these is giving and taking,12 which combines
visualization and simple focus on the breath. Here, a practitioner visualizes an array of other
beingsfriends, enemies, and strangersand while inhaling imagines taking in their
suffering in the form of black smoke. On exhalation, the practitioner visualizes sending
benet to them in the form of light, which pacies their suffering.

ESOTERIC VISUALIZATIONS: BUDDHAS, BODIES, AND DIVINE WORLDS IN TANTRIC BUDDHISM

Buddhist esoteric traditions, known collectively under the labels tantra or vajrayna, contain
some of the most richly visual material in Buddhism. Tantra presents itself as a quick path
to enlightenment, and one of its hallmarks is a rhetorical commitment to meditative experi-
ence over intellectual endeavors or ritual (though in fact tantra overows with all of these).
One of its primary ways of generating experiences then is through meditative visualizations:
contemplations performed while imagining scenes such as retinues of Buddhas, divine
worlds, graveyard scenes, sexual encounters, or the interior spaces of the body.
Before undertaking tantric meditations, practitioners typically undergo a ritual initiation,13
and then perform a lengthy series of preliminary practices14 that are designed to teach
doctrine, ritual, and meditative techniques that will act as foundations for the main practice.
These preliminaries involve extensive visualizations: scenes of deities and past masters to
whom one goes for refuge and makes offerings, visualized offering practices, envisioning
ones own teacher as a Buddha, and so forth. For the most part, these preliminary visualiza-
tions are similar to the common techniques discussed above, but performed within a tantric
ritual context.
The distinctively tantric visualizations are then found in the two phases that typically
constitute the main body of tantric practice. The rst of these, the generation phase,15
contains methods said to allow practitioners to generate or recreate themselves as a
Buddha. The key practice here is a visualization technique called deity yoga, where
practitioners visualize themselves in the form of Buddhas. For some Buddhist tantric traditions,
this type of visualization is the dening characteristic of tantra itself.16 In essence, deity yoga is an
attempt to gain a new self imageto replace ones negative self-image as a deluded,
unenlightened being with the conception of oneself as a perfect Buddha. Two factors are said
to be critical for this process. The rst is cultivating divine pride, which is the felt sense that
one is actually a Buddha. This is supported by clear appearance, which is the visual perception
of oneself and ones environment as pure or divine. This is accomplished through visualization
practices. Following a written script (sdhana),17 practitioners visualize themselves as Buddhas,
attempting to construct a realistic image of themselves as an enlightened being, wearing divine
ornaments, dwelling in a richly decorated multistoried palace, and surrounded by a retinue of
other Buddhas.
Tantric traditions profess rather high standards for mastering the visualizations of the
generation phase. These may be rhetorical, but it is common to hear that one should be able
to hold a visualization for several hours in which one can see a complex man.d: ala full of
hundreds of deities, and be able to see the whites of each of their eyes.18 Despite the accom-
plishments one makes here, the visualizations of the generation phase are still understood as
being imaginative. The next project is thus to make the imagined Buddha a reality, a task that
is taken up on the second phase of practice, called the perfection phase.

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352 Chris Hatchell

There appears to have been some debate about the value of visual images in this process.
Some presentations of tantra describe a perfection phase where all imagery is dissolved, and
the meditator becomes immersed in nonconceptuality. Called the perfection phase without
signs,19 these are something like tantric meditations on emptiness, envisioned as an attempt
to take on the Buddhas subtle and imperceptible Reality Body.20 Yet the perfection phase
can also be practiced with signs, that is, with the continued use of visualized images. A
distinctive feature of these visualizations is that they turn to the interior of the body.
In such practices, the bodys subtle physiology of channels and winds is manipulated to
create profound mental states, with the ultimate intent of transforming the ordinary body
and mind. One of the main methods here uses sexual physiology. Such techniques (which
texts describe from the male perspective) are performed with a visualized or an actual consort,
while imagining oneself and ones consort as divinities. In these practices, the meditator
envisions activities occurring on the inside of the body: A re blazes up at the navel region
and melts a reservoir of psychophysical potencies called seminal nuclei,21 which are
located at the crown of the head. The melting nuclei then drip down the bodys central
channel, are held at the tip of the sexual organ, and then reversed up the central channel,
causing a series of blissful sensations as they pass through energy wheels located on the chan-
nel. The powerful experience of bliss is said to withdraw the mind from its ordinary objects,
and thus provide a super-concentrated awareness that can then be focused on emptiness, such
that the ultimate realization in these traditions is cast as a union of bliss and emptiness.
While both the generation and perfection phase practices make use of visualization,22
these visualized worlds are generally not ends in themselves. Rather, they lead to or support
other states of mind, such as concentration, self-image, bodily sensations, or experiences of
nonconceptuality. Tantric traditions express this by saying that their visualizations are simply
methods, which are designed to lead to a goal of realizing the ultimate truth of emptiness.
Their practices of visualization thus tend to dissolve those visual scenes for a nal focus on
emptiness, suggesting how even these highly visual traditions do not look for ultimate signif-
icance in the visual world.
Practices of Vision: Seeing with the Eyes
In addition to visualization techniques, Buddhists also have a number of practices that can
properly be called visionary. These involve images that arise spontaneously to the eyes
rather than being deliberately constructed in the mind. Though not as prominent as
visualization, visionary practices are found in a number of Buddhist traditions, and serve a
variety of purposes: textual revelation,23 prognostication,24 devotional encounters,25 the
seeking of blessings or protection,26 signs of accomplishment in yogic practice,27 indications
of or practices related to dying,28 and of course soteriology.29 Several different models of
visionary practices can be found. Some visions occur with no intentional cultivation, while
others are evoked through meditative practice; some result in immediate appearances, while
others develop over days or weeks; some occur to untrained laypeople, and others to
religious specialists; some are thought of as transcendent or otherworldly, while others are
simply functions of human physiology. There are thus no paradigmatic Buddhist visionary
practices, but a brief introduction to a few key examples should serve to bring out some of
the major themes that are found in Buddhist accounts of vision.

SAMDHIS OF DIRECT ENCOUNTER: FROM VISUALIZATION TO VISION

One of the key scriptures for understanding Buddhist practices of vision is a Mahyna text
called the Stra of the Samdhi of Direct Encounter with the Buddhas of the Present.30 The samdhi

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 Visual Worlds II: Buddhist Visualization and Vision 353

(or meditative concentration) mentioned in the stras title grew out of the recollection of
the Buddha practices discussed above, in which a practitioner recalls and visualizes the physical
and mental qualities of the Buddha. The samdhi of direct encounter takes the process one step
further, as it combines the recollection with lengthy retreat meditation, philosophical speculation
on the nature of the Buddha, and long periods of wakefulness possibly leading to exhaustion.31
These are said to result in a visionary encounter with an actual Buddha. The stra explains:

Bhadrapla, it is like this: If a man who has eyes turns his face upwards to look in the space of the clear,
cloudless, midnight sky, he will see the forms of many stars there. It is the same, Bhadrapla, for
bodhisattva-mahsattvas who are supported by the buddhas and abide in this samdhi: because they are
immersed in this cognition of space and are blessed with a cognition of the buddhas, due to the power
of the buddhas and the cultivation of this samdhi, if they gaze to the east, to another world system, then
many buddhas will appear to their eye sense-power, with little effort.32

Several features of this practice are useful for understanding Buddhist practices of vision. First,
though the visions are preceded by meditative practices, they ultimately are said to arise
with little effort. This theme of spontaneity is seen quite often in Buddhist visionary tradi-
tions, where the path of vision is presented as a quick path, or an accessible path, or a path
that gets past the problems of deliberate thought and conceptuality.
Second, though these visions appear without deliberate thought, they are still not
experienced uncritically but rather become the subjects of philosophical speculation. As
the stra details:

When those bodhisattvas have thoroughly cultivated this samdhi, those bodhisattvas see those
Tathgatas with little effort. Having seen them, they pose questions [to the Tathgatas], and are
delighted when their questions are answered. They think: Did these Tathgatas come from
anywhere? Or did I go anywhere? Through this, they realize: Those Tathgatas did not come
from anywhere. And my body also has not gone anywhere either! Perceiving this, they think:
These three worlds are nothing but mind! Why is that? It is because however I conceptualize
things, that is how they appear!33

This sort of inquiry into the nature of appearancesas eeting, immaterial, projections of the
mind, and ultimately emptyis of course one of the most characteristic features of Buddhist
thought. What is interesting in the samdhi of direct encounter (and this occurs in other
Buddhist practices of vision) is that the practice in some ways calls for engaging equally with
both appearances and emptiness. That is, visions are sought after for their transformative
effects, but they are at the same time deconstructed and viewed as empty. If we accept that this
tension between appearance and emptiness is unresolvable, then visionary appearances might be
seen as objects that can move across the registers of the appearing and the empty, and thus bring
the two close enough together to render their relationship sensible.
Third, it might be expected that spontaneously arising visions would be treated as other-
worldly occurrences or as evidence of superpowers. However, experiences like the samdhi of
direct encounter are often discussed in quite ordinary terms. The stra states:

Those bodhisattvas do not see the Tathgatas through obtaining the divine eye, and do not hear the
profound teaching through obtaining the faculty of the divine ear. They do not travel instantly to
those [Tathgatas] world systems through obtaining supernatural powers. Bhadrapla! Those
bodhisattvas, while staying right here in this world system, see the transcendent victor, the Tathgata
Amityus, perceive themselves as residing in his world system, and also hear the teachings.34

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354 Chris Hatchell

Vision here is not presented as accessible only to advanced beings like those who possess the
divine eye. Rather, there is an egalitarian tone here suggesting that visions can be
experienced by any practitioner with an ordinary set of eyes.
Finally, the stra characteristically points out that vision results in new teachings.
Indeed, visionary revelation is common across Buddhist traditions, and many of the
major works of Buddhist literature can be counted as having been received in vision.
Thus, while visionary experience is often associated with spontaneous experience
over textual study, it has remained an important way for Buddhists to expand and
authenticate their literature.

SEEING IN THE DARK: VISIONARY EXPERIENCE IN KLACAKRA AND THE GREAT PERFECTION

Though it does not seem that the samdhi of direct encounter had any real inuence on
esoteric Buddhism, many of its basic characteristics are nonetheless reected in tantric
practices of vision. Among the most compelling of the tantric visionary practices are those
found in Klacakra (an 11th century Indian tradition that had major inuence in Tibet)
and the Great Perfection (a distinctively Tibetan tradition whose visionary practices arose
to popularity in the 11th century). These groups use sensory deprivation to induce visions:
a meditator will spend weeks in a completely dark room or spend long periods gazing at
the empty sky.35 Their practicescalled night yoga and day yoga, or dark-retreat
and sky-gazingappear to have little precedent in other Buddhist traditions.36 They do,
however, contain many of the themes and ideas found in other Buddhist practices of vision,
from Indian samdhis of direct encounter to Pure Land traditions in China. Reecting on
them can thus help bring into focus some general features of Buddhist visionary practice.
In the Klacakra tradition, vision is part of its series of perfection phase practices, called the
six yogas.37 These begin with the yogi constructing a dark room or a shelter outside that
provides an unobstructed view of the sky. In these settings, the body is placed in prescribed
postures, and eventually, visionary appearances begin to arise. At rst, the visions are
unstructured spots and cascades of light, resembling sparks and reies. As the practice
progresses, a goddess called the Great Seal or Great Consort arises, appearing both
within the meditators body and externally, in the sky.38 At once empty and in visible form,
this Great Seal is said to be composed of empty form.39 With this Great Consort present,
the practice begins to resemble the more typical perfection phase yoga described above
(involving the blazing of a re at the navel, the dripping of seminal nuclei, the experience
of bliss, and so forth). A critical difference here is that this is carried out with a visionary
context rather than a visualized one or physical one. A bliss results from the embrace of
the Great Seal (and this is no simple embrace of an ordinary consort but has overtones of
being embraced by emptiness itself); this bliss is said to burn away the bodys physical, atomic
structure, leaving the practitioner in a puried body of empty form, much like the visionary
body of the Great Seal.
The Great Perfection uses similar visionary techniques in its advanced set of practices
known as direct transcendence.40 Much like Klacakra, these involve dark rooms or sky
gazing, and visions that start as unstructured spots of light that gradually transform into
appearances of Buddhas and man. d: alas. However, rather than using the bodys sexual
physiology, direct transcendence practices are organized around a set of light channels that
the tradition locates within the body. The key idea here is that the body contains a pure
luminous awareness41 locked away at the heart region, like a lamp concealed in a vase.
A special set of channels connects the heart to the eyes, so that when the appropriate physical
postures and yogic practices are performed, the light of awareness is projected out of the eyes

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 Visual Worlds II: Buddhist Visualization and Vision 355

and seen in vision. These visions provide an opportunity for a key moment of recognition: The
external visions over there are recognized as simply being the lighting up or presencing of
ones own awareness, a realization that can end the illusion of duality and lead to enlightenment.
Much like the direct encounter stra, the literature of Klacakra and the Great
Perfection contains a kind of egalitarian rhetoric that presents the products of visionfrom
blessings, to revelations, to transcendenceas available to anyone with ordinary eyes. As a
Klacakra treatise puts it:

The eyes of beginnersthe very eyes that see pots, pillars, and so forthsee universal form in the
sky, endowed with all aspects.42

The visionary Great Seal (composed of universal form) is thus accessible not only to
advanced practitioners but is also in fact all-pervasive, and can become present to anyone
who learns to open up their ordinary, or beginners, eyes. This rhetoric often exists right
alongside speculations that transcendent eyes or psychophysical structures are also instru-
mental in vision. But it does suggest how visionary traditions do not treat their unusual acts
of seeing as otherworldly occurrences or as markers of transcendence in themselves.
One of the major hallmarksand polemicsin these traditions is their emphasis on
spontaneity, where visionary objects are presented as arising naturally, without deliberate
effort or evocation.43 For instance, describing the visionary radiation of ones own
awareness, a Great Perfection treatise says:

Your own natural radiationjust as it is, without being increased or diminished, without the causes
and conditions of mental effort, without any intention to do soshines forth vividly and directly in
the [gateway of the eye] sense-power.44

This issue of spontaneity is often used to contrast vision with practices of visualization, where
images are constructed with deliberate effort.45 This creates a polemic where visionary tech-
niques are presented as more subtle or rened meditative techniques, particularly as they are
not bound up with conceptual or dualistic thought. Indeed, one of the most common refrains
in writings on Klacakras six yogas urges yogis to stay away from practices of visualization:

Abandon the Action Seal, whose mind has impurities, as well as the Gnostic Seal, who is imputed.
To bring about complete enlightenment, meditate [with] the Supreme Seal, the supreme mother
who gives birth to the victors!46

Here, the meditator is urged not to perform tantric practices with a esh-and-blood consort
(the Action Seal) or with a visualized partner (the Gnostic Seal). This is, at least rhetor-
ically, a rejection of tantras hallmark practices of sexuality and of visualization (though
Klacakra itself employs these liberally outside of the context of the perfection phase), which
are impugned for their impurities and their associations with conceptuality. The alternative
to these practices of conceptuality, and the only path to enlightenment, is vision: union with
the spontaneously appearing Great Seal.
One nal remarkable feature of these traditions is how they repeatedly turn the experience
of vision into opportunities for philosophical speculation on the nature of appearances. The
overriding theme is that visions appear and are experienced but at the same time are empty of
any inherent or absolute existence, and thus provide opportunities for working out the
central Buddhist question of the relationship between emptiness and appearances. The

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literature of these traditions delights in suggesting that their practices are alternative methods
of inquiring into emptiness. Klacakras visionary Great Seal, for instance, is identied with
Prajpramit (the Buddhist goddess classically associated with emptiness), and is often
described in terms of emptiness, such that meetings with her become as encounters with
the ultimate itself:

The Great Seal possesses the dening characteristic of all phenomena, their lack of inherent nature,
is endowed with all supreme aspects, and is [the goddess] Prajpramit, the mother who gives
birth to the buddhas.47

Similarly, Great Perfection traditions often refer to its visionary practices using words from
normative Buddhist philosophy: as higher seeing48 (the very same term typically used
for meditations on emptiness) or the path of seeing49 (the term widely used to refer to
the point when emptiness is rst experienced directly).
Though they treat visionary objects as empty, these traditions suggest that visionary objects
are not simply there to be deconstructed. Rather, visions are objects where emptiness reveals
itself in terms of a luminous fullness that is nonetheless insubstantial and devoid of any solid
nature. This results in the rather bold idea that the ultimate might not simply be the purview
of an internal insight, but that it might be best encountered in the external world, realized
through the gateway of the eyes.
The problem with this is that one of the most normative Mahyna claims about the
ultimate is that it cannot be experienced by consciousness or the senses. This line of thought
culminated perhaps most famously in Chandrakrtis statement that the ultimate cannot be
taught directly, as it is inexpressible and just not an object of consciousness.50 But contrast
this with the passage below from a Great Perfection treatise describing the direct transcen-
dence practices,51 and its suggestion that a suchness factor52 of the eyes is responsible for
perceiving emptiness, much as if the eyes are constituted of a dynamic, knowing emptiness
whose duty is to perceive itself:

. . .[The world consists of] sam.sric form, which refers to different shapes, but there is also the
form of reality, which refers to the different [visionary appearances] like latticework, pendants,
and so forth. As for the colors of these two: white, red, yellow, green, and blue, as well as the colors
of crystal, dust, and so forth, are the different colors pertaining to the side of cyclic existence. The
colors of reality are its distinct dynamic energies, enlightened qualities, and so forth. Relative to
these, the factor of the sam.sric eye-consciousness collects in aspects of existence and coarse quali-
ties. But the suchness factor of the eyes collects in emptiness, naturelessness, the expanse, awareness,
and primordial gnosis.

Passages like this demonstrate that advocates of tantric visionary practices are not just making
minor alterations or adding formal qualications to existing theories of emptiness, but are
using vision to make new claims about what emptiness is, and experimenting with ways to
encounter it in the visual world.

Conclusion: Seeing Literature

What is the relationship between writing and seeing? If seeing is about experience,
nonconceptuality, spontaneity, and luminous imagery, why write about it and transform
the visual into its own antithesis, conceptual abstractions, and language? Many Buddhist
authorsparticularly those associated with tantric practices of visionare rhetorically

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 Visual Worlds II: Buddhist Visualization and Vision 357

hostile to the broad categories of words, language, dry scholarship, and conceptual
thought. However, the fact is that these very same authors (by denition) write at great
length about vision. One conclusion we can draw from this is that vision and literature
are somehow inextricably linked. To help understand why, take the example of a very
common sequence of visionary experiences mentioned in the Klacakra Tantra:

With the mind xed in space and unclosed eyes, the vajra path is entered.
And thus from the emptiness (1) smoke, (2) a mirage, (3) lights in the clear sky,
(4) a butter-lamp ame,
(5) Blazing, (6) the moon, (7) the sun, (8) vajras, (9) the supreme form, and (10)
a thig-le come to be seen.53

With slight variations, this list of visionary appearances is found throughout a variety of Buddhist
sources, from Indian tantric materials to Tibetan-authored works on the experience of death. The
list is so common that it is often referred to in shorthand, simply by saying smoke and so forth.
The list raises questions about the cultural dimensions of vision. Namely, how is it that
Klacakra practitioners of different places and times report having similar, spontaneous,
visionary experiences? How is it that spontaneous visionary experiences correspond to
literary accounts at all? The most obvious answer (and I do not want to reduce the issue to only
this) is to point to the critical role of literature in inuencing visionary experience. For visions to
have any meaning at all, they need to be interpreted, and reading (in addition to oral tradition
and artistic representations) has been one of the main ways Buddhists have created and stabilized
those interpretations. Vision and literature thus have a symbiotic relationship in which each
informs the other. If we keep this in mind, it is possible to regard writings on visualization and
vision not just as antiquities, instruction manuals, or records of experience, but as inextricable
elements of the process of vision itself, which provide the words and concepts necessary to allow
for particular kinds of seeing.

Abbreviations
D: The Derg edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Kangyur and Tengyur
DN: Dgha Nikya (Long Discourses of the Buddha)
KG: The Lhasa edition of the bKa ma (bKa ma rgyas pa shin tu rgyas pa)
KCT: The Klacakra Tantra (mChog gi dang poi sangs rgyas las phyung ba rgyud kyi rgyal po dpal dus
kyi khor lo zhes bya ba, Paramdibuddhoddhr.ta-rklacakra-nma-tantrarj), D0362, D1346
MN: Majjhima Nikya (Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha)
ZZNG: Zhang zhung snyan rgyud, referring to the collection titled bKa rgyud skor bzhi, published
as History and Doctrine of Bon-Po Nis: panna Yoga (New Delhi: International Academy of Indian
Culture, 1968)

Short Biography

Chris Hatchell is an assistant professor of religion at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His
research interests are in Tibetan religion, particularly the Bn tradition and the Great Perfec-
tion. His current research focuses on visionary practices in the Klacakra and Great Perfection
traditions. Hatchell has had fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and
Fulbright IIE. He holds a BA in English from Columbia University and a PhD in religion
from the University of Virginia.

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358 Chris Hatchell

Notes
? Correspondence address: Chris Hatchell, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Coe College, 1220 First Avenue
NE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402, USA. E-mail: chatchell@coe.edu.

1
Buddhnusmr. ti. See Harrison (1978, 1990, 1992).
2
Harrison (1994, p. 217).
3
This is Harrisons translation of Ekottargama III, Taish vol. 2, p. 554a7. See Harrison (1978, p. 38).
4
Harrison (1978, p. 37).
5
Recollection of the Buddha here is Ch. nianfo, Jp. nenbutsu. See Stevenson (1995).
6
One of the traditions major scriptures, the Contemplation Stra (Kuan Wu-Liang-Shou Ching), outlines a series of
visualizations on the features of Amitbha and his pure land, Sukhvat. For this stra, see Tanaka (1990) and Fujita (1990).
7
Skt. amatha.
8
For Tibetan presentations of calm abiding, see Geshe Gedn Lodr (1998) and Lati Rinbochay and Denma Loch
Rinboche (1997).
9
For Buddhaghosas presentation, see Bhikku namoli (trans.) (1991, p. 122ff). See also mentions in MN 77,
translated in Bhikku namoli and Bhikku Bodhi (1995, p. 640), and in DN 33, translated in Walshe (1995, p. 508).
10
See, for instance, Vasubandhus presentation, translated in La Vale Poussin (1988, 918ff).
11
blo sbyong. See Sweet (1996).
12
gtong len.
13
For a study of one tantric initiation, see Hopkins (1989).
14
For a survey of tantric preliminary practices (sngon gro), see Rinpoche (1994)
15
For a detailed survey of the generation phase (bskyed rim), see Cozort (1986).
16
See Hopkins (1977, p. 60).
17
See Gomez (1995) and Cozort (1996).
18
Jackson (1985, pp. 29, 32).
19
For yoga without signs (mtshan med), see Beyer (1973, p. 132), Hopkins (1977, p. 133), Hopkins (1987, p. 197),
and Hopkins (2005, p. 57, 152).
20
dharmakya.
21
bindu, thig le. For a discussion of various meanings of this term, see Hatchell (2009, p. 231).
22
As noted above, in some tantric traditions, the perfection phase is explicitly said to be free from visualization. One
example of this is the Klacakra tradition, where the perfection phase is presented as a nonconceptual meditation that
does not involve imagination or visualization.
23
For discussions of visionary revelation and the Mahyna corpus, see McMahan (2002, ch. 3). For the Tibetan
revelation of literary treasures (gter), see Gyatso (1986), Gyatso (1993), and Terrone (2010); for the related pure vi-
sion (dag snang) tradition, see Thondup (1986, p. 90) and Gyatso (1992).
24
See, for instance, the mirror divination discussed in Orono (1994). Note also the Tibetan divination practices used
for discovering reincarnate teachers; see Dalai Lama (1990, p. 11).
25
See Beyer (1977) and McMahan (2002, ch. 4); for accounts of spirit mediums, see Bellezza (2005).
26
Pure Land traditions provide good examples of this; see Stevenson (1995). For examples of protection, see Beyer
(1973, p. 227) and Harrison (1992, p. 224).
27
Cozort (1986, p. 73) and Beyer (1973, p. 135).
28
See Hopkins (1985), Thurman (1994), and Dorje (2006).
29
For discussions and translations related to vision in the Great Perfection and Klacakra traditions, see Hatchell (2009).
30
rya-pratyutpanna-buddha-sam . mukhvasthita-samdhi-nma-mahyna-stra, Phags pa da ltar gyi sangs rgyas mngon sum du
bzhugs pai ting nge dzin ces bya ba theg pa chen poi mdo (D0133). For studies and a translation of the stra, see Harrison
(1978, 1990, and 1992).
31
The stra mentions giving up sleep, and not sitting for a period of three months; see Harrison (trans.) (1990, p. 45).
For related practices, see Stevenson (1986, p. 58ff), which gives a description of the strenuous Tien-Tai practice of
samdhi through constant walking, which is performed in conjunction with the pratyutpanna samdhi.
32
Authors translation from D0133, ch. 5, 17a.3. See also Harrison (trans.) (1990, p. 49).
33
Authors translation from D0133, ch. 3, p. 15a.2. See also Harrison (trans.) (1990, p. 42).
34
Authors translation from D0133, ch. 3, p. 12a.1. See also Harrison (trans.) (1990, p. 32).
35
Readers interested in the perception of visual appearances in the dark and in the sky could start with Elkins
(2000, pp. 232, 238). See also Pascual-Leone (2004), Sinclair (1989), and White and Levatin (1962).
36
Note that Klacakra authors are fond of citing a short passage from the Perfection of Wisdom Stra in 8,000 Lines
(D12, p. 111a.2), which mentions practicing yoga in space and in a place without cover. For the tradition, these

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 Visual Worlds II: Buddhist Visualization and Vision 359

brief lines refer to night yoga (practiced in darkness or space) and day yoga (practiced in a shelter without cover that
provides a view of the sky), and so provide evidence of these practices in an Indian Buddhist tradition. See mention of
this passage in Wallace (2012, pp. 208, 214).
37
See Wallace (2001, p. 203) and Orono (1996).
38
KCT 4.117.
39
nyat-bimba, stong gzugs.
40
thod rgal. For discussion and context, see Germano (1992, 1994).
41
rig pa.
42
Authors translation from Klacakrapdas Padma can zhes bya bai dka grel (Padmin-nma-pajik), D1350, p. 102b.1.
43
In the Klacakra tradition, the most common metaphor compares visionary objects to images that appear on a mirror
during a pratisen divination. See Orono (1994).
44
Authors translation from Drugyalwas Commentary on the Intended Meaning of the Six Lamps (sGron ma drug gi dgongs
don grel pa), ZZNG p. 389.
45
Yet note that visionary practices do often follow, arise from, or become combined with visualization techniques.
46
Authors translation from the Klacakra Tantra, mChog gi dang poi sangs rgyas las phyung ba rgyud kyi rgyal po dpal dus kyi
khor lo zhes bya ba (Paramdibuddhoddhr. ta-rklacakra-nma-tantrarj), verse 4.199, D.362, p. 98a.1.
47
Authors translation from Stainless Light, Dri ma med pai od (Vimalaprabh), D0845, p. 409a.2.
48
lhag mthong. The term in this context has the sense of superior sights or higher sights, as it refers to the three basic
ways that awareness is encountered in direct transcendence practice, which are sound, light, and rays.
49
mthong lam, darana-mrga. See The Twenty-One Nails (gZer bu nyi shu rtsa gcig gi gzhung) ZZNG, p. 511, and
Gyerpungpas commentary (gZer bu nyer gcig gi grel pa) ZZNG, p. 554ff.
50
From Commentary on the Supplement to [Ngrjunas] Treatise on the Middle Way, dBu ma la jug pai bshad pa
(Madhyamakvatrabhs . ya), D3862, p. 255a.6. For a discussion of this passage, see Vose (2008, p. 88ff ).
51
Authors translation from Stringing a Garland of Pearls (Mu tig phreng ba brgyus pa), a commentary on The Tantra of the
Blazing Lamps (sGron ma bar bai rgyud). Located in KG, vol. Be (105), pp. 129-130.
52
de kho na nyid kyi cha.
53
Authors translation from the Klacakra Tantra, verse 5.115, D.362, p. 113a.2. For a discussion of these visions at the time of
death, see Hopkins (1985). Kilty (2004, p. 430ff) provides a good anthology of these appearances from various tantric sources.

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