. esoteric buddhism under the chosn 645
Of immediate interest here is that the author invokes the authority of
an important Esoteric Buddhist scripture, the Jin’gangding jing yujia
xiuxi pilushena sanmodi fa
(Vajraśekhara Sūtra’s Methods of Yoga Practice [for the Achievement
of] Vairocana Samādhi; T. 876.18:328b), as well as Amoghavajra and
the classical Zhenyan tradition of Tang China. This shows that the
traditional Zhenyan texts were still in vogue in Korea at this time,
and that it was being actively propagated within a Sŏn context. The
meditation on the letter a is of course one of the most common forms
of contemplation within the Esoteric Buddhist tradition of East Asia.^59
In his recommendation of the contemplation of the letter a the author
endeavors to show its identity and compatibility with the hwadu/kon-
gan practice common in Korean Sŏn. His rationale for this is that the
kongan is fundamentally identical with the character a, or as he stated
“the essence of the prajñāpāramitā.”
Further on in his discussion of the value of the contemplation of
the letter a we read:
It is like the [method] of chegwan (Ch. zhiguan) [in the Ch’ŏnt’ae
school], which teaches people [by] saying that when they are in deep
absorption, they should visualize the letter a in front of their nose. The
beginning of the visualization of the round disk with [the character] a
is just like the way the Sŏn school instructs people to contemplate the
white-colored a character in the center of the disk, and then to enter
samādhi.^60 This is also called to visualize in the mind a moon-disk with
the letter a. [Then] with the thought visualize the letter kwa, intone the
mantra, whereupon you will obtain the three mysteries (samhyŏn ).^61
They mutually correspond like the out- and in-breath, and the matching
halves of a talisman. All the seventeen hundred-odd kongans of the Sŏn
school, moreover, do not go beyond the one letter a, and hence they
[i.e., these two kinds of practices] are unified as the shortcut method.
(Chinŏn chip, 6ab)In this passage we find Chŭngsuk including the zhiguan (chegwan)
practice of Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism in his apologetic for the Esoteric
Buddhist practices of the Chinŏn chip. As will be remembered, the
(^59) For a description of this practice as carried out in Japanese Shingon Buddhism,
cf. Goepper et al. 1988, 47–48. 60
Probably the “Sŏn school” mentioned here indicates meditation as practiced in
the Ch’ŏnt’ae tradition. In any case I have never come across this practice in any mate-
rial related to the school of Korean Sŏn.
(^61) I have been unable to identify the source of this interesting quotation.