Although there are innumerable samādhis in Mahāyāna Buddhism, in the Da zhidu lun, the śūraṃgama-samādhi and the pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi are regarded as important in the bodhisattva path to enlightenment. First, the śūraṃgama-samādhi, which means “the samādhi of heroic valor”, enables a tenth-stage bodhisattva or a buddha to overcome every obstacle and bring about the salvation of sentient beings. Although the śūraṃgama-samādhi is based on the contemplation of emptiness, it makes possible the edification of sentient beings by the dharma-kāya. Second, the primary purpose of the pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi, to which great importance is attached by the Pure Land schools in China and Japan, is to see buddhas. In this paper, I discuss the relationship between the two samādhis from the point of view of the bodhisattva’s stages of practice for attaining enlightenment or avinivartanīya (nonretrogression).
In conclusion, there is a linear relationship between the pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthita-samādhi and the śūraṃgama-samādhi: the former is maintained from the first step of the bodhisattva path through the attainment of nonretrogression, while the latter is attained at the tenth bhūmi. Also, for nonretrogressing bodhisattvas, seeing the dharma-kāya is the starting point and bringing about the salvation of all sentient beings is the goal. Moreover, I show that the reason that the Da zhidu lun treats these two samādhis as the most representative Mahāyāna samādhi is because both have buddha-kāya as a common factor.
