144 paul copp
traditions arrived. The use of props—such as the “painted image” from
the Mahāvairocana sūtra visualization—were important parts of such
rituals, a fact that demonstrates, among other things, the deep conti-
nuities carried forward in the newer esoteric practices. We can note,
for example, the ways that later dhāraṇī and tantric forms of eidetic
contemplation centering on visualized disks were updated versions of
the ancient use of “earth disks” as props for the development of a form
of eidetic memory necessary for certain kinds of meditation.^8
Similarly, the use of written syllables as objects of contemplation has
a long history in dhāraṇī practice—including, in later tantric forms of
these practices, their imagined inscription and transformation upon
visualized disks. In the earliest examples, in texts such as the early
third-century Chinese translation of the Anantamukha-dhāraṇī sūtra,
the late third-century Chinese version of the Bhadrakalpika sūtra, and
the early fifth-century Chinese rendering of the Bodhisattvabhūmi,
such practices seem mainly to have been directed at the attainment of
subtle understanding, typically of the “emptiness” or “ungraspability”
of phenemona.^9
We often find precisely the same goals in the later tantric versions.
For example, the Japanese Shingon sub-rite called the “contemplation
of the syllable-wheel” ( jirinkan ) is a version of a widespread
and very old practice in which one visualizes a “full moon disk” above
an eight-petaled white lotus blossom. “On top of the disk are the syl-
lables on ha ra da han domei un, along with each syllable’s meaning.”
The practitioner is to “contemplate [the disk] rotating once clock-
wise and once counter-clockwise.” Contemplations of the visualized
movement of the syllables in these two directions produce different
liberative insights into the ungraspable nature of the syllables and, by
extension, of the nature of all things.^10
To end on a note of caution, the scholar of premodern East Asian
esoteric Buddhist writings should keep in mind Sharf ’s ethnographic
observations that, at least in contemporary Japanese Shingon ritual
(^8) Sharf 2001, 154–55.
(^9) Foshuo wuliangmen weimichi jing , T. 1011.19:681b; Xian-
jie jing , T. 425.14:4c-5a; Pusa dichi lun , T. 1581.30:934a. For brief
discussions of these early practices, see also Copp, “Dhāraṇī Scriptures,” in this vol-
ume, as well as Copp 2008, 499ff. For a more extended discussion, see my forthcoming
book on Chinese Buddhist incantation practice, Incantatory Bodies: Spells and Mate-
rial Efficacy in Chinese Buddhist Practice, 600–1000. See also Bogel 2009, 204–205;
Sharf 2001, 184.
(^10) Sharf 2001, 184.