Constructing the Buddha-Field: How a Buddha's Land Is Built

3.2 Constructing the Buddha-Field: How a Buddha's Land Is Built

The last chapter ended on a question. The Amitābha you recollect lives in a place called Sumati—the place everyone would later call the Land of Bliss. So what, exactly, is this "buddha-field"? And how was it built up, stroke by stroke?

In truth, the Pratyutpanna-Samādhi Sūtra had already pushed the door open. There, having seen Amitābha within the samādhi, the practitioner asks Him to His face: "What Dharma must I hold in order to be born in Amitābha's buddha-field?" And Amitābha answers in His own words:

Those who wish to come and be born in my land: let them constantly recollect me, again and again hold the recollection without rest—thus they gain birth in my land.

You see—in that sūtra, "being born into a buddha-field" is already something one can ask about face to face, can aim for. Only, that sūtra never goes on to paint what the buddha-field looks like, or how it came to be.

The painting was taken up by two other sūtras. And here is the interesting part: these two were translated by the same hand—still that same Lokakṣema—within a few years of each other. In them he carried across two very different ways of building a buddha-field.

The First: An "Unshakable" Buddha, and His Land

The first is the Sūtra of Akṣobhya's Buddha-Field.

It opens on Vulture Peak. The Buddha is together with a company of twelve hundred and fifty great bhikṣus, and the worthy Śāriputra rises from his seat, kneels with palms joined, and asks: the bodhisattvas of the past who sought the unsurpassed true path—how did they vow, how did they practice? May those who later seek the bodhisattva-path learn from it. The Buddha praises the question and tells a thing of long ago: far to the east there was a world named Abhirati, where a Buddha named Mahābāhu Tathāgata was teaching the bodhisattvas the Dharma and the practice of the six perfections.

At that time a bhikṣu rose from his seat, straightened his robe, knelt with his right knee to the ground, and said to Mahābāhu Tathāgata: I wish to vow as the bodhisattvas vow, and to learn what I ought to learn. Mahābāhu Tathāgata first threw cold water on him:

To bind oneself by vow and learn the bodhisattva-path is exceedingly hard. Why? A bodhisattva must give rise to no anger toward any being—not toward any of the people, nor toward the flying and crawling things, the wriggling kinds.

To walk this road is hard—hard where? Hard in this: toward all people, and down to the flying insect and the crawling ant, one must not raise a single thought of anger.

The bhikṣu took up that "hard" on the spot. He vowed: from this day I give rise to the unsurpassed true awakening-mind; and there followed a long string of vows, nearly all of them "what I will not do"—should I give rise to anger, to lust, to drowsiness, to doubt, or so much as conceive a thought of killing, stealing, or false speech, then "I shall have deceived the Buddhas, the World-Honored Ones," the present Buddhas of the ten directions teaching the Dharma. Clause by clause, he made himself into a man whom no storm, however great, could move. The sūtra says:

Because that bodhisattva-mahāsattva was without anger, he was named Akṣobhya; because he was without anger, he dwelt in the ground of Akṣobhya.

Because of this non-anger he received a name: Akṣobhya—"Unshakable," he who cannot be moved. In time he became a Buddha, and his land was that Abhirati—"Marvelous Joy."

Look at the axis of this path: the buddha-field is the result of this bodhisattva's own standing firm. He first made himself into an unshakable man, and the land he gained on becoming a Buddha is simply what that unshakableness looks like, grown naturally outward. The center of gravity of the vows is "what I will not do."

The Second: A Buddha Who "Chose and Chose Again," and His Land

The second is the Sūtra of Purity, Equality, and Awakening—the earliest Chinese translation on the "Amitābha" line.

The protagonist here is, at first, not a bhikṣu but a king. He heard a Buddha teach the scriptures, and "in gladness and open understanding, he cast off the throne and the kingship, and went forth to become a bhikṣu, named Dharmākara"—the throne abandoned, gone forth into the homeless life; this monk, the sūtra later calls the bodhisattva Dharma-Treasury. He comes before his teacher, the Buddha Lokeśvararāja, kneels with palms joined, first offers a long hymn of praise, and then asks for something quite unlike what Akṣobhya's bhikṣu asked. He begs the Buddha:

May the Buddha expound for me the merits of the buddha-lands; I will uphold them, and dwell therein, and take what I vow to make my own buddha-land just so.

Recount to me, one by one, the excellences of the buddha-lands; I will follow what I hear, choose what I want, and build it into a land of my own.

Lokeśvararāja first gave him a fine answer: "It is like the water of the great sea: were one person to bail it out by the pint, not ceasing for a whole kalpa, even so the sea could be drained dry, down to the mud of its bed. If a person seeks the path with all his heart, how should it not be attained?" The water of the great sea, dipped out pint by pint for a whole kalpa, can yet be emptied to the bed; how then should a wholehearted seeker fail? Then "that Buddha selected out, from among two hundred and ten billion buddha-lands, the good and evil of their gods and people, the fair and foul of their lands," and showed them one by one; and Dharma-Treasury "made his mind one, and gained the divine eye that sees through all, beholding for himself the good and evil of the gods and people, the fair and foul of the lands, among those two hundred and ten billion buddha-fields."

Two hundred and ten billion—the number is not exaggeration. It is saying: the buddha-fields are beyond counting, each with its own face, laid out for him to see through with his own eyes. The sūtra is explicit: he did not hear them recounted at second hand; he gained the divine eye and looked through them one by one.

So Dharma-Treasury "chose what his mind vowed, and bound it into these twenty-four vows"—out of this vast catalogue he picked the excellences he wanted, fitted them together, and bound them into twenty-four vows: the blueprint of the land he meant to build.

This is an entirely new thought. With Akṣobhya, the buddha-field is the byproduct of cultivation; here, the buddha-field has become something that can be chosen with the eyes, matched, and designed.

And what did he choose—what did he vow? The first vow makes it plain:

The first vow: when I become a Buddha, let there be in my land no hells, no beasts, no hungry ghosts, none of the flying and crawling, wriggling kinds. Gaining this vow, I become a Buddha; not gaining this vow, I shall in the end not become a Buddha.

The vows then run on, one after another: those born into the land take birth by transformation within lotus flowers in ponds of the seven treasures; the land is of the seven treasures, vast beyond bound. And one promise runs through the whole set—that beings born into this land "shall no more pass through hells, beasts, or hungry-ghost realms": never again to fall into the three evil destinies.

Have you noticed?—the center of gravity of the vows has turned clean over. Akṣobhya's vows are "what I will not do"; Dharma-Treasury's vows are "what I will give to those who come to be born in my land." One faces inward and establishes the self; one faces outward and receives others. One is self-steadying; the other is the saving of others.

Even the names carry this difference. "Akṣobhya"—Unshakable—speaks of the bodhisattva's own hardness. "Amitābha"—Immeasurable—speaks of the land's light and the land's life, which are there to be given. And "Sumati," the "Land of Bliss"—bliss, quite directly, prepared in advance for the ones who will come to live there.

Two Paths, Arriving Together

Hold on to one fact: these two paths—Akṣobhya's self-steadying, Amitābha's saving of others—were carried into the Chinese world together, by the same translator, at very nearly the same time.

So from the very beginning, the "buddha-field" in the Chinese mind was never a single road. It was two roads running side by side. That the Land of Bliss later stood out alone, that everyone came to recollect Amitābha—that is the outcome of a thousand years and more of slow development; it does not mean Akṣobhya's road was a grade lower. At the starting line, they were two answers standing on equal footing.

A word, in passing, about format. Each of Dharma-Treasury's twenty-four vows closes with the same shape: "gaining this vow, I become a Buddha; not gaining this vow, I shall in the end not become a Buddha." Buddhahood itself, the greatest matter there is, staked on the keeping of every single vow. This formula is the skeleton of the famous "forty-eight vows" to come. The forty-eight do not start from scratch; they take these twenty-four and refine them, multiply them—and among the additions is one supremely weighty clause: "even ten recollections."

That clause gave the whole direction of buddha-recollection another push.

From "Recollecting" to "Calling the Name"

Come back, now, to this newly built buddha-field. Among Dharma-Treasury's twenty-four vows there is one that runs:

When I become a Buddha, let my name be heard throughout the numberless buddha-lands of the eight directions, above and below; let all the Buddhas, each in the midst of his disciples, praise my merits and the goodness of my land; and let the gods, the people, and the wriggling kinds, hearing my name, all of them in gladness of heart come to be born in my land. Gaining this vow, I become a Buddha; not gaining this vow, I shall in the end not become a Buddha.

Let my name be heard throughout the numberless buddha-lands of the eight directions; let the Buddhas praise it with their own mouths before their disciples; and let beings, all who "hear my name," in gladness come to be born in my land.

Notice the verb here—no longer simply "recollect," but "hear the name."

The ticket of entry into the buddha-field has quietly shifted: from holding the Buddha's qualities and the Buddha's form in the mind, recollecting them over and over—toward hearing, and crying out, that one name.

From recollecting, to calling the name; from remembrance held in the mind, to a name called with the mouth. A small step, easy to overlook—yet it is the key step by which buddha-recollection in China would later walk into every home and household.

In the next chapter, we watch how that step was taken.