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into Chinese, and these texts were dealing with both a multi-stage
meditation technique leading towards “unifying the mind” and akin
to the Daoist “inner cultivation” as well as with the visualisation of
the Buddha. Obviously, Buddhism was offering a technique for which
a demand existed in China. Accordingly, two of the texts translated by
Lokakema are, as Harrison says, “explicitly devoted to samdhi practice:
the Pratyutpanna[buddhasa mukhvasthita]samdhistra and the
ra gama-
samdhistra (Lokakema’s version of this is now lost). Further, many
other texts in this corpus and elsewhere contain long lists of samdhis
[.. .]”^131 This makes it quite probable that Daoist visualisation was a
consequence of the introduction of the Buddhist buddhnusmti tech-
nique into China. However, the Daoists used this form of meditation
to their own ends: to visualise their own gods. In the Maoshan-
or Shangqing- tradition of Daoism—which became the leading
Daoist denomina tion during the Tang dynasty—, visualisation was to
play an eminent role.^132
- Book Cult
In a Daoist text of around 320 AD, Ge Hong’s Baopuzi neipian
(Inner Chapters of the Master who Embraces Simplicity), the
following interesting passage is found:
In response to those who have received the dao and entered the mountain
to give sincere thought to it, the god of the mountain will automatically
open the mountain and let such persons see the scriptures, just as Bo
He got his in a mountain, and immediately set up an altar, made
a present of silk, drew one ordinary copy, and then left with them. A
puri ed place is always prepared for such texts, and whenever anything
is done about them one must rst announce it to them, as though one
were serving a sovereign or a father.^133Bo He (alias Bo Zhongli ) did not dare take away the
original scripture, assuming that it is of divine origin and ought to
be kept at this place for others to see it. That Bo He set up an altar
is unambiguous evidence that he was convinced to see some divine
presence there. The gods who in his view must have been if not the
(^131) Harrison 1995, p. 65.
(^132) Robinet 1993.
(^133) Baopuzi neipian 19, p. 336, cf. Ware 1966, p. 314.