The Sixteen Contemplations: Seeing That Land into View

4.2 The Sixteen Contemplations: Seeing That Land into View

A Mother's Request

This sūtra, the Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus, opens out of a human tragedy.

At that time the Buddha was on Vulture Peak near Rājagṛha. The sūtra records:

At that time, in the great city of Rājagṛha there was a prince named Ajātaśatru, who, following the counsel of his evil friend Devadatta, seized his father King Bimbisāra, shut him within a chamber of seven walls, and forbade all the ministers to go to him.

Prince Ajātaśatru, incited by his evil friend Devadatta, shut his father King Bimbisāra inside a seven-walled chamber, cut off from all, meaning to starve him to death. His mother, Queen Vaidehī, bathed and purified herself, smeared honey kneaded with parched flour upon her body, filled her ornaments with grape juice, and secretly went in to feed the old king. Having taken the food and rinsed his mouth, the old king bowed from afar toward Vulture Peak, asking the Buddha for the precepts; the Buddha sent Maudgalyāyana and Pūrṇa, who came each day through the air to give the king the precepts and teach him the Dharma. After three weeks, Ajātaśatru asked the gatekeeper: is the king still alive? The gatekeeper told him the truth. Ajātaśatru flew into a rage:

My mother is a thief, the companion of a thief; and those śramaṇas are evil men, who by illusion and spells have kept this wicked king from dying all these many days.

He took up a sword to kill his own mother. The ministers Candraprabha and Jīvaka laid their hands to their swords and remonstrated: since the beginning of the kalpa, evil kings coveting the throne have slain their fathers, eighteen thousand of them; "but a matricide, lawless—of that we have never heard." If the king does this deed, he defiles the warrior caste, "and we ought not to remain here." Ajātaśatru took fright, gave up the sword, and shut his mother away in the inner palace.

In her cell, Vaidehī was worn with grief; she gazed from afar toward Vulture Peak and wept, bowing toward the Buddha. The Buddha, knowing her thought, appeared in the palace with Maudgalyāyana and Ānanda. The moment Vaidehī saw the World-Honored One, she tore off her ornaments, threw her whole body to the ground, and cried out the heart-rending question: "World-Honored One! What sin did I commit in the past, to bear so evil a son?" And then she pleaded:

I beg you, World-Honored One: expound for me in full a place without sorrow or affliction, that I may be reborn there. I take no joy in this defiled and evil world of Jambudvīpa.

I want nothing more of this defiled, evil world. Teach me a place free of sorrow, and let me be reborn there. So the Buddha emitted light from between His brows, and the pure and wondrous lands of the Buddhas of the ten directions all appeared within that light, for Vaidehī to look through. She chose one—the Western Land of Bliss, the dwelling of Amitābha. And then she spoke these words:

I beg you, World-Honored One: teach me to think upon it, teach me to receive it rightly.

Teach me how to think this land out—how to see it into view.

Hold on to this opening. The sixteen contemplations did not grow out of some eminent monk's meditation. They were called forth by a mother at the end of her road, crying out from a prison cell. The Buddha said as much Himself—He told Vaidehī that He would set out many similes for her, and "also cause all the ordinary beings of the future who wish to cultivate pure deeds to be reborn in the Western Land of Bliss." From the very first, the contemplations were prepared for the people who suffer most.

Not Sixteen Techniques, but One Ladder

What the Buddha taught Vaidehī was sixteen contemplations.

Many people read these as sixteen visualization techniques set side by side—first contemplate the sun, second the water, third the ground—like a checklist. But it is not a checklist. It is a designed ladder: rung after rung, with a beginning and an end, every rung set in place so that you can step onto the next.

The ladder runs in three segments: first look at the "outside" (the environment of that land), then at the "inside" (the Buddha's body), and finally come down to the "person" (the nine grades of rebirth).

Beginning from a Setting Sun

The first is the sun-contemplation. The Buddha sets His foot on the lowest place first:

All beings, unless born blind, all who have eyes have seen the sun set. You should rouse the thought: sitting upright, facing west, contemplate the sun closely, making the mind dwell firmly, the thought fixed and unmoving. See the sun about to set, shaped like a suspended drum.

Why begin from the setting sun? The sūtra says it itself: anyone not born blind, anyone with eyes, has seen the sun go down. The Buddha set the ladder's first rung where every person can step onto it. Facing west, fix the gaze on that setting sun until it is shaped like a hanging red drum—on this most ordinary of objects, first train one thing until it is familiar: fixing the gaze, holding the mind, keeping it from scattering.

The second, the water-contemplation, shows even finer craftsmanship. The ground of the Land of Bliss is beryl, transparent and reflecting through and through—but we have never seen a beryl ground, and we cannot imagine one. What to do? The sūtra teaches: "Think that the West is all one great water; see the water clear and pure… Having seen the water, then rouse the thought of ice. See the ice translucent, and form the thought of beryl." Clear water you have seen; then think the water into ice, ice you have also seen; then through that crystalline ice, imagine the translucent beryl ground. Take something you have seen, something similar, as a stepping-stone, and step by step walk toward the real scene you have never seen.

That is how this ladder is built: every rung borrows what you already have, to reach what you do not yet have.

First the Image, Then the True Buddha

When the outer scene is complete—the ground, the jewel-trees, the jewel-ponds, the whole land at once (the sixth, the comprehensive contemplation)—the ladder turns inward: the Buddha's body.

But here the Buddha does not tell you to contemplate His true body straightaway. The seventh contemplates a lotus-throne; and at the eighth, the sūtra says: "To contemplate that Buddha, you should first contemplate an image"—to contemplate the Buddha, first contemplate an "image": eyes closed or open, see a jewel-image, the color of Jambū-river gold, seated on that flower-throne. The image first, not the true Buddha.

Why contemplate a "false" image first? This is the ladder's own mechanism, the same as the water-contemplation borrowing ice: the Buddha's true body, its eighty-four thousand marks, you cannot reach in a single glance; first borrow an image you can hold, settle the mind on it and train it, then cross over from that image to the true Buddha. The image is not a second-rate substitute; it is a necessary rung on the way to the true Buddha.

And right within this eighth, the image-contemplation, the Buddha speaks the deepest passage of the whole sūtra:

The Buddhas, the Tathāgatas, are the Dharma-realm body, entering into the thought of all beings. Therefore, when your minds think the Buddha, this mind itself is the thirty-two marks and the eighty minor characteristics. This mind makes the Buddha; this mind is the Buddha. The ocean of the Buddhas' true and universal knowledge is born from the thinking mind. Therefore you should single-mindedly fix your thought and closely contemplate that Buddha.

When you contemplate the Buddha, this mind of yours is, at that very moment, the thirty-two marks and the eighty characteristics. This mind makes the Buddha; and this mind that can make the Buddha is itself the Buddha. The Buddha you see has never been outside the mind. This passage and the line from Part Three's pratyutpanna-samādhi—the mind makes the Buddha, the mind itself sees—are one bloodline.

When the image-contemplation has grown fluent, the ninth contemplates the true body—the true body of Amitāyus Buddha: eighty-four thousand marks, each mark holding eighty-four thousand minor characteristics, each characteristic emitting eighty-four thousand rays of light. And of that light the sūtra speaks the eight characters that are the heart of the whole Pure Land teaching of reception:

Each ray of light shines everywhere upon the worlds of the ten directions, gathering in and never abandoning the beings who recollect the Buddha.

So long as you recollect the Buddha, this light gathers you in and holds you, and it never lets go.

The Nine Grades: Not Three Ranks in Three Levels, but Nine Kinds of Conditions

The ladder's final three contemplations (the fourteenth through the sixteenth) teach the nine grades of rebirth—upper, middle, and lower classes, each class divided again into upper, middle, and lower, making nine grades in all.

Many people assume the nine grades sort human beings into three ranks with three levels apiece, like marks on an examination. Not so. What differs across the nine grades is four things, each varying on its own: what provisions of practice you bring, what ceremony the Buddha comes to receive you with, how long the lotus takes to open, and what fruit you finally attain. The nine kinds of person are nine different combinations of these four, each with its own shape—not nine notches on a single ruler.

Master Shandao, in his commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra, saw deeper still:

Taken altogether, these are ordinary beings of the five defilements after the Buddha's passing; it is only because the conditions they meet differ that the nine grades come to differ. How so? The three of the upper class are ordinary beings who met the Great Vehicle. The three of the middle class are ordinary beings who met the lesser vehicle. The three of the lower class are ordinary beings who met evil.

These nine grades are all ordinary beings of the five defilements, living after the Buddha's passing—not one of them a born sage. The difference lies not in their "rank" but in the conditions they met: those who met Mahāyāna conditions are the upper three; those who met the lesser vehicle's conditions, the middle three; those who met evil conditions—yet at the last moment met a good friend—are the lower three. The nine grades are not nine steps of a staircase. They are nine paths along which ordinary beings fan out, each according to the conditions they happened to meet.

The Lowest Grade of All: The One Who Cannot Even Recollect

The lowest of the nine—lower-grade lower-birth—lays bare the design floor of that land. That passage Part Three has already read word for word: a person who has done the five heinous and ten evil deeds, at death pressed so hard by suffering that he can no longer even recollect the Buddha in his mind; the good friend tells him to make the sound—"call out in refuge to Amitāyus Buddha"; and he, with sincere mind, letting the voice not be broken, completes ten recollections, and "in thought after thought, the sins of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed," and is reborn in the Land of Bliss—only born inside a lotus, which takes twelve great kalpas to open.

Do you see it? The gate of that land stands open all the way down to here—open to a person who has done every evil and who, at death, cannot even recollect the Buddha. Even he can enter.

This is the same "lowest threshold" we met in the last chapter, in the eighteenth vow—appearing once more in this sūtra. A land lays its rescue all the way down to the feet of the most unbearable person. It is the one signature the Three Pure Land Sūtras sign over and over: the threshold set at its lowest; the hand reached out to its farthest.

Ten Thousand Words, Gathered into One Name

The sixteen contemplations run from a single setting sun, to the true Buddha of eighty-four thousand rays of light, to the nine grades of rebirth—an immense edifice of contemplation.

Yet at the very end of this sūtra, the Buddha gathers all those ten thousand words, gently, into one sentence. He says to Ānanda:

Hold well to these words. To hold these words is to hold the name of Amitāyus Buddha.

After the whole long circuit of the sixteen contemplations, the Buddha says at the last: what holds all of this is, in truth, holding that one name. And the sūtra leaves one warm line for those who recollect the Buddha: "if there be one who recollects the Buddha, know that this person is a white lotus among men"—the puṇḍarīka flower among human beings.

Then, if in the end one name can gather all of it in, could it be that one need not even climb the sixteen rungs—that this one name alone is enough?

The third sūtra, the Amitābha Sūtra, does exactly that.