Part Four · The Three Pure Land Sūtras · That Land, Seen Clearly

The first three parts pushed buddha-recollection, step by step, up to a doorway: the Buddha has stepped to the front of the stage, the buddha-field has taken its first shape, and recollecting and calling have been clasped into one. But that land called "Bliss" — what it is actually like, and how one gets there — was still a distant haze.

What painted that haze into a clear, exact picture was three scriptures — known together to later generations as the Three Pure Land Sūtras. Each opens in its own way: one from the World-Honored One's unwonted radiance and a question from His attendant Ānanda; one from a tragedy of patricide in the palace at Rājagṛha; and one with no one petitioning at all, the Buddha opening His own mouth to speak.

Chapter one tells of the Sūtra of Immeasurable Life: the forty-eight great vows that Amitābha made while he was still the bodhisattva Dharmākara — the blueprint of the land. Chapter two tells of the Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus: sixteen contemplations, layer by layer, by which that land is seen within the mind. Chapter three tells of the Amitābha Sūtra: the adornments of the Land of Bliss, and the phrase that finally gathers everything in — "holding the name."

This part is the liveliest stretch of the whole book. From here, buddha-recollection in China truly entered every household.

We look first at the blueprint — the forty-eight vows.