Watching Experience: Early Buddhism and Theravāda
Ānāpānasati · Satipaṭṭhāna · vipassanā · jhāna · maraṇasati
Huayan wants infinite recursion, mirrors and mutual containment. The early texts and Theravāda meditation run nearly the other way: take an apparently continuous experience and resolve it, step by step, into breath, sensation, feeling, mind-states, conditions, arising and ceasing. Twenty-five visualizations follow, grouped by practice, from the sixteen steps of breathing to the ten kasiṇas and the contemplation of death. Several are deliberately abstract, and the ones about jhāna, nimitta and moments of insight are marked as illustrations, since accounts of those vary between teachers.
The Empty World: Heart Sūtra and Nāgārjuna
rūpaṃ śūnyatā, śūnyataiva rūpam · svabhāva-śūnyatā · pratītyasamutpāda
Emptiness does not mean nothing exists. It means nothing exists by its own independent nature (svabhāva). For Nāgārjuna, dependent arising, emptiness, dependent designation and the Middle Way are one insight seen from four sides. He also warns that emptiness itself must not become a new view or a hidden substance. So none of the experiments below end in blackness. Each one attacks a different intuition about inherent existence, and in each one the appearance carries on.
Perfect Interpenetration: Avataṃsaka
Indrajāla · Fazang's hall of mirrors · dharmadhātu
Madhyamaka asks whether an independently existing thing can be found. Huayan turns the question around and looks at what the world is like once nothing stands alone: everything contains and reflects everything else, without obstruction. Its master image is 事事無礙, "phenomena do not obstruct phenomena", the fourth of the four dharmadhātus. Fazang is said to have shown this to Empress Wu by surrounding a Buddha image and a lamp with mirrors, and by counting ten coins. Indra's net, a web of jewels that each reflect all the others, is the classic image.
Twenty-one visualizations follow, sorted by what they show. Each one is tagged so you can tell where it comes from.
Pure Land: Sukhāvatī
Amitābha · Amitāyurdhyāna Sūtra · the sixteen contemplations
The Contemplation Sūtra trains the mind in stages: the setting sun, still water, ground of crystal and lapis, jeweled trees, ponds, lotus thrones, and finally the Buddha of infinite light. Where the earlier sections are abstract, this one is luminous, ordered and full of texture. Move the slider slowly and let each layer settle before the next one arrives.
One Reality, Three Visions
śūnyatā · interpenetration · pure land
The same field of conditions can be seen as empty of essence, as infinitely mutual, or as a purified and radiant realm. Drag through the three views and watch one set of nodes change character while its relations stay the same.
Combinations: Heart Sūtra, Avataṃsaka and Death
śūnyatā · Indra's net · maraṇa
Two traditions read together, and death seen through both. These are modern combinations. Each source text says its own thing, and the pairings here are interpretive, so every card says so.
Further Schools: Yogācāra, Tiantai, Tathāgatagarbha and Chan
aṣṭa-vijñāna · sāntián sānzhān · tathāgatagarbha · shíniú tú
Four more lenses from the Mahāyāna and East Asian traditions. Yogācāra maps how a mind constructs a world and how that structure turns over at its root. Tiantai insists that emptiness, provisional appearance and the Middle are one truth seen three ways. The Tathāgatagarbha texts say an awakened nature is present but covered. Chan's ten oxherding pictures follow one practitioner from searching to walking back into the marketplace.
Nāgārjuna's Analogies
svapna · marīci · pratibimba · māyā
Nāgārjuna and the Prajñāpāramitā literature use a small set of images to show how something can appear, function and matter while lacking any core. Several are built into the experiments above.
In Nāgārjuna's own words, paraphrased: whatever arises dependently is what we call empty, this is a designation that depends on something else, and this is the middle path.