Transition ② · From the Earliest Chinese Translations to Early Mahāyāna

Transition ② · From the Earliest Chinese Translations to Early Mahāyāna

Part Two was short — one little scripture. But it set down a starting point.

Before the page turns, look at that starting point clearly. When recollection arrived in China, its first foothold was niàndào — recollecting the path. It was honest, close-woven, "not neglecting it for even a kṣaṇa"; what it recollected was the real path itself. It spoke of no deep concentration, no visions; it spoke only of tuning a mind, day by day, even and steady, walking toward the path without stopping.

Is that enough?

For a Chinese reader just meeting the Dharma — yes. With the thread of niàndào in hand, one can already practice on solid ground.

But there is one thing the language of niàndào cannot give.

It is a hotter, more urgent longing — not merely to set the Buddha's qualities and the path's truth on the mind and hold them there, but to see the Buddha, face to face.

In niàndào, the Buddha is a teacher who has gone on far ahead. He has entered nirvāṇa; He left the teaching, left the path; you recollect His qualities, recollect His path — but He Himself is not before your eyes. Within the language of Part Two, this "not before your eyes" goes without saying — the Buddha has passed into extinction; that is simply common knowledge.

But then a new current surged out of the Western Regions into China — later generations call it the "Mahāyāna" — and it brought news that made the heart jump: the Buddha is not only that Śākyamuni who has entered nirvāṇa. At this very moment, in the worlds of the ten directions, measureless Buddhas are teaching the Dharma. They are not past tense. They are present continuous.

That news made buddha-recollection over from the ground up.

If the Buddha is not only in the past but in the present, then what buddha-recollection has to do is no longer just "hold in memory the qualities of a Buddha gone far ahead." It can be this instead — to recollect that presently-teaching Buddha into presence, into sight, until you stand, truly and actually, before Him.

This is the world Part Three walks into. It brings a strange and wonderful scripture, the Pratyutpanna-Samādhi Sūtra. The practice it teaches came to be called the pratyutpanna-samādhi — meaning, roughly, "the Buddhas standing before one." The method is hard: for seven days and seven nights together, no sitting, no lying down, no sleep — only single-minded recollection of the Buddha of the West, standing, recollecting, until the Buddhas of the ten directions appear one by one before your eyes, distinct as stars when a man looks up into the night sky.

From recollecting the path to seeing the Buddha; from one teacher gone far ahead to the Buddhas of the present standing before you — this is the first great leap of buddha-recollection in China.

We turn the page, and watch the Buddha step to the front of the stage for the first time.