Shandao: Settling the Name into a Rope

6.3 Shandao: Settling the Name into a Rope

The Chan of the last chapter took the buddha-name and drew it inward — back into self-nature, back toward the markless, back to "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"

The Shandao of this chapter walks in the opposite direction. He takes the name outward, toward the solid and the real, and settles it firm and steady — settles it into a rope, so steady that even an ordinary being heavy with evil karma, unable to still his mind, with his very life running out, can still seize it in one grip.

Shandao was a man of Tang-dynasty Chang'an, the great consummator of the Pure Land school. The Pure Land river that Tanluan and Daochuo had dug deep was, in his hands, built into a system both steady and solid.

Even the Most Hopeless Can Enter

Begin with a bold doctrinal verdict: ordinary beings can enter the "recompense land."

What is a recompense land? The Land of Bliss is not some makeshift place that Amitābha Buddha conjured up offhand to humor people (that would be a "transformation land"). It is the true, the highest land — accomplished by the power of the forty-eight vows Amitābha made long ago and fulfilled in His becoming a Buddha. That is called a "recompense land."

But here the problem comes: the recompense land is so high, so subtle, that even the sages of the Lesser Vehicle can hardly climb to its gate. By what right does an ordinary being, covered in the grime of his offenses, get in?

Shandao's answer cuts clean as a blade: "It is precisely by reliance upon the Buddha's vow as a strong condition that the five vehicles equally enter." Because Amitābha's original vow stands there as a "strong condition" — a powerful dominant condition — all five kinds of beings, from sages down to ordinary beings, enter together.

You see, this is still the reasoning of that boat from the earlier chapter: the highest recompense land is a place no ordinary being could climb to on his own; but the Buddha's vow-power is strong enough to bear ordinary beings up into it, all together. The highest gate has been thrown open to the lowest person — and what opens it is the vow-power on the other side.

Shandao did something bolder still. The Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus teaches the "nine grades" of rebirth — upper, middle, lower. The earlier masters had mostly read the upper grades as bodhisattvas already advanced in cultivation, with only the lowest grades barely counting as ordinary beings. Shandao would have none of it. These nine grades, he said, are "all ordinary beings of the five turbidities, after the Buddha's departure from the world, differing only in the conditions they encounter" — every one of them an ordinary being, not one a born sage; the difference lies only in what conditions they met. Those who met the good conditions of the Great Vehicle stand in the upper grades; those who met the good conditions of the Lesser Vehicle, the middle; those who met evil conditions, yet at the very last met a good friend, the lower.

The ordinary being — until then the "exception" standing at the edge of the ladder of cultivation — was lifted by Shandao's own hand into the very center. He became the protagonist of this sūtra.

The Twofold Deep Faith: Despair and Entrustment, at Once

Shandao brought all of this down into the heart of a single practitioner, and spoke it as a passage of the utmost depth and the utmost warmth — the "twofold deep faith in capacity and in dharma."

What is deep faith? It is, Shandao says, "a mind of deep faith" — and it believes, deeply, and at the same time, two things.

The first: deep faith in the "capacity" — that is, deep faith about yourself: "I myself am now a sinful ordinary being within birth and death, who from distant eons past has ever sunk, ever circled in transmigration, without any condition of escape." I know with complete clarity: I am an evil-doing ordinary being rolling in birth and death; for measureless eons I have been sinking and circling; relying on myself, there is not one thread of hope of getting out.

The second: deep faith in the "dharma" — that is, deep faith in that vow-power: "Amitābha Buddha's forty-eight vows receive sentient beings; without doubt, without hesitation, riding upon that vow-power, one will assuredly attain rebirth." And I believe with equal clarity: those forty-eight vows exist precisely to receive a being like me; I do not doubt it for an instant — carried on that vow-power, I will certainly be born there.

Look closely: these two deep faiths are held "at the same time." On one side, a total despair of oneself — this person that I am is beyond saving. On the other, a total entrustment to the Buddha's vow — and yet that other side can save me, without fail.

The two look contradictory, but they are two faces of a single thing. It is precisely because you have wholly given up on yourself that you are willing to hand your entire life over to the vow-power on the other side; and it is precisely because you trust that the vow-power will surely save you that you dare to admit you are an ordinary being without a shred of hope — and not be crushed by the admission. Despair and entrustment, standing in the same heart at the same moment — this is the deepest breath the Pure Land draws.

Two Rivers, One White Path

Shandao painted this heart into a picture — "the two rivers and the white path." For more than a thousand years, this picture has been painted onto temple walls, played out on stages, printed into books of moral exhortation.

Imagine, he says, a man traveling west. Behind him, bandits and wild beasts give chase. Ahead, two rivers bar the way: to the south, a river of fire — that is hatred; to the north, a river of water — that is craving. Between the two rivers runs a small white path, narrow and thin, only four or five inches wide, leading to the western bank.

What is this narrow, thin white path? Shandao says: "It figures the pure mind vowing rebirth that sentient beings can still give rise to amid the afflictions of craving and hatred… because the wholesome mind is faint, it is figured as the white path." It is that small measure of pure mind — the wish to be born in the Pure Land — that you can still raise while your heart is full of craving and hatred. Why so narrow, so thin? Because an ordinary being's wholesome mind simply is that faint.

The man stands at the bank — water and fire before him, pursuers behind — too terrified to move. At that moment, a voice comes from behind him. It is Śākyamuni Buddha, urging him on: "Go! Just follow this white path and walk — there is no danger of death!" And from ahead comes another voice. It is Amitābha Buddha, calling him: "Come! I can protect you. Do not fear falling into the water or the fire!"

And so the man, though shaking with fear, steps onto that white path four or five inches wide, and walks across — one step, then another.

Look — what carries this man over is not any sturdiness in the white path itself (it is thin indeed); it is the two voices on the two banks: Śākyamuni's urging from behind, Amitābha's calling from ahead. Your one faint measure of wholesome mind could never have borne this crossing on its own; but with a Buddha behind you pressing you to set out, and a Buddha ahead calling you over — you cross.

Why "Calling the Name," Not Contemplation?

Then how, concretely, does one walk this white path? Shandao fixed it in the plainest act of all — calling the name.

What the Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus originally teaches is the "sixteen contemplations" — contemplating the Land of Bliss layer by layer. But Shandao noticed a problem, and he put the question to himself: why does the Buddha not direct people to contemplate properly, but instead, quite directly, tells them simply to "concentrate on reciting the name"? What is the intent?

His own answer: "It is because beings' obstructions are heavy, the objects are subtle, the mind is coarse, consciousness is scattered, and the spirit takes flight — contemplation is hard to bring to completion." Our karmic obstructions are too heavy; the realm of the Land of Bliss is too fine; this mind of ours is too coarse, its thoughts darting about everywhere like startled birds — those sixteen contemplations simply cannot be brought off.

So Shandao says: "Regarding the intent of the Buddha's vow, it solely urges right-mindful name-recitation." Seen from where the intent of Amitābha's original vow stands, what he is truly urging comes down to this one line: call that name, and call it well.

And so Shandao established this act of calling the name as the "primary settled act" of Pure Land practice — the principal practice: "Single-mindedly and intently to recollect the name of Amitābha — walking, standing, sitting, lying, without distinction of duration of time, recollection after recollection unabandoned — this is called the primary settled act, for it accords with that Buddha's vow." To recollect that one name single-mindedly — walking, standing, sitting, lying down, however long or short the time, never letting it go from one recollection to the next — this is the primary settled act, because it "accords with that Buddha's vow": it runs with the grain of Amitābha's original vow.

One thing should be made clear: in settling calling the name as the principal practice, Shandao did not abolish the other practices — prostration, sūtra-recitation. Those he called "assisting acts," and they remain proper supports. What he did was move the whole center of gravity of Pure Land practice, steadily, onto "one name."

Why did it have to move onto the name? Because contemplation requires stillness, requires fineness, requires skill; but the name — anyone can say it. The one who cannot read a single character, the one whose mind will not settle, the one drawing his last breath at the end of life — he cannot contemplate that subtle Pure Land, but he can cry out that one phrase, "Namo Amitābha Buddha." This is where Shandao settled the rope: at the place where even the most hopeless can still take hold.

This is what Shandao did for the river of the Pure Land: he took the name — until then a gate that could be entered deep or shallow — and settled it into a rope that anyone can grasp, and that, once grasped, is certain to bear you across the river.

Between the Two Rivers, a Bridge

By this point, the shape of both rivers stands clear.

The Pure Land river: Shandao dug it outward, toward the solid — settling the name into a rope that even the most hopeless ordinary being can grasp. The Chan river: Huineng dug it inward, toward the mind — drawing the name back into self-nature, asking "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"

One seeks rebirth outward; the other sees the nature inward. On the surface, they move further and further apart.

Yet between these two rivers stands one more man. He takes no side. He arranged buddha-recollection into a series of tiers, high and low, so that the outward and the inward, the deep and the shallow, each finds its proper place — his bridge reaches both banks.

The man who built this bridge is Zhiyi of the Tiantai school.

In the next chapter, we step onto that bridge.