15

Part 5 · The Great Mahāyāna Sūtras

Recollection · 8 papers

Through the first four parts, buddha-recollection grew from its Indian root all the way into China, and at last, in the Three Pure Land Sūtras, settled into a warm home: recollect [ from the book's part intro ]

Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts
12Gathering in the Six Sense-RootsThis paper opens Part V, the Mahāyāna-Eight-Sūtras cluster, by taking up its first member: the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Dà Fódǐng Shǒuléngyán Jīng 大佛頂首楞嚴經, T0945), Fascicle Five, the "Chapter on the Perfect Penetration of Buddha-Recollection by the Dharma-Prince Mahāsthāmaprāpta" (Dàshìzhì niànfó yuántōng zhāng 大勢至念佛圓通章) — "gathering in the six sense-roots, with pure recollection uninterrupted, attaining samādhi — this is foremost." It argues three things. First, T0945's "gathering in the six sense-roots, with pure recollection uninterrupted" (dōushè liù-gēn, jìngniàn xiāngjì 都攝六根、淨念相繼) is the dual-axis deepening of T0366's "holding the name, one mind undistracted" (zhíchí míng-hào, yī-xīn bú-luàn 執持名號、一心不亂) argued in P11 — the spatial axis extends from "the mind" to "the six sense-roots" (deepening from a single-organ or hierarchical model into a fully integrated model), and the temporal axis extends from "one-mind" non-distraction to "pure-recollection" continuation (deepening from a present-moment criterion into a diachronic continuity). Second, Mahāsthāmaprāpta's perfect-penetration chapter holds position 24 among the twenty-five chapters of perfect penetration (under the seven great elements, the "faculty-element" gēn-dà 根大), just one step below Avalokiteśvara's ear-faculty (position 25, selected by Mañjuśrī as "the true teaching-body of this realm," cǐfāng zhēn-jiāotǐ 此方真教體); but late-Ming Jiaoguang Zhenjian's Commentary on the Straight Vein of the Śūraṅgama (Léngyán Zhèngmài Shū 楞嚴正脈疏, X0275) judges openly that the seven-element sequence in Fascicle Five "ends with the faculty-element and not with the consciousness-element" — that this is the sūtra's own structural affirmation of the buddha-recollection dharma-gate: "that the seven elements conventionally terminate in the consciousness-element, and yet here terminate in the faculty-element — is because Mahāsthāmaprāpta's perfect-penetration of buddha-recollection stands just one step below Avalokiteśvara's great root"; "for those who cannot cultivate the nirvāṇa of their own mind, nothing is better than buddha-recollection and seeking rebirth" (translation mine). Thereby, on the axis of "response-to-capacity in this realm, at this time," buddha-recollection in fact serves as the first alternate — establishing the multi-axis reading in which sequential position is not qualitative rank (wèi-cì fēi děng-dì 位次非等第). Third, the late-Ming trio of Śūraṅgama commentators stand in parallel — Lianchi's Commentary and Notes (X0424) weights the technique of "holding"; Zhixu's Essential Explanation (T1762) weights the provisions of faith, vow, and practice; and Jiaoguang originates a distinctive verbal distinction between "faculty-gathering recollection" (shè-gēn niàn 攝根念) and "recollection by the discriminative mind-consciousness" (fēnbié shíxīn suǒ niàn 分別識心所念). Three irreducible verdicts — on the structural partition of the verb recollection, on the Śūraṅgama's positional hierarchy, and on the ontology of recollection itself — meet in Jiaoguang as the middle figure, whose "straight-vein" classification threads the perfect-penetration of buddha-recollection through the entire twenty-five-chapter structure. §V treats the T0945 authenticity debate under a functional stance: it does not enter the philological controversy between Lü Cheng, Ouyang Jingwu, Robert Sharf, James Benn and others, but grounds its reading on Jiaoguang's "straight-vein" internal evidence — the perfect-penetration of buddha-recollection is not externally added to the Śūraṅgama, but is the straight-vein manifestation of the faculty-element's perfect penetration from within.13Universal-Gate Name-InvocationThis paper takes up the second member of Part V's Mahāyāna-Eight-Sūtras cluster — the Lotus Sūtra (Miàofǎ liánhuā jīng 妙法蓮華經, T0262) — with the Universal Gate Chapter (Pǔmén pǐn 普門品, Chapter 25, Fascicle 7) as the main axis, the Expedient Means Chapter (Fāngbiàn pǐn 方便品, Chapter 2, Fascicle 1) as supporting ground, and the Bodhisattva Never Disparaging Chapter (Chángbùqīng púsà pǐn 常不輕菩薩品, Chapter 20, Fascicle 6) as the distant axis. It argues three things. First, within T0262 itself, Lotus name-invocation (chēngmíng 稱名) is a three-karmic integrated practice — not a single, repetitive vocal act, but the simultaneous activation of vocal-karma (invocation of the name, centered in the Universal Gate), bodily-karma (reverence, centered in Never Disparaging), and mental-karma (deep respect, crystallized in Never Disparaging's "I deeply revere you all," wǒ shēn jìng rǔděng 我深敬汝等) — dismantling the Western flattened readings of Buddhist chanting as either intercessory prayer (Christian framework) or mantra (Indian sonic-ritual framework). Second, internal to the Universal Gate Chapter itself, the prose-section operates around the verb chēng 稱 ("to invoke by name") while the verse-section systematically shifts to the verb niàn 念 ("to recollect the power"), splitting the name-practice into outward vocal activation and inward return-to-merit-body across two literary registers. This split is the sūtra's own internal self-limitation on the verb chēng — the Lotus will not be reduced to sonic repetition, because the Lotus itself routes invocation back through the recollection of Avalokiteśvara's power (niàn bǐ guānyīn lì 念彼觀音力), twelve times in the closing verses. Third, T0262 internally unfolds a single-sūtra dual-pole structure — the Expedient Means Chapter's "a person with a scattered mind, stepping into a stūpa or shrine, invokes once 'Homage to the Buddha,' and has already completed the Buddha-path" (ruò rén sànluàn xīn, rù yú tǎ-miào zhōng, yī chēng nāmó-fó, jiē yǐ chéng fódào 若人散亂心、入於塔廟中、一稱南無佛、皆已成佛道) sets the lowest threshold with the highest fruition (already-completed Buddhahood), while the Universal Gate's "single-minded name-invocation" (yīxīn chēngmíng 一心稱名) sets the highest threshold with present-life liberation from suffering — the threshold-fruition cross-configuration reveals the Lotus's structural judgment that name-invocation is not a tool for worldly efficacy but rather the embodied acknowledgment that all beings have already completed the Buddha-path. Zhiyi's Commentary on the Words of the Lotus Sūtra (Fǎhuá Wénjù 法華文句, T1718) reads Fascicle 10's Universal Gate exposition through a perfect-one-is-singular, partial-ones-are-many (yuán rén wéi yī, piān rén zé duō 圓人唯一、偏人則多) qualitative ranking — a late-Tang precursor to late-Ming Zhixu's "a single utterance contains faith, vow, and practice simultaneously" doctrine, forming a Tiantai twin-axis across P10 (the contemplation axis of the Great Calming and Contemplation) and P13 (the invocation axis of the Commentary on the Words of the Lotus Sūtra). §V corrects three popular misreadings (name-invocation as Christian intercessory prayer; as sonic mantra; as a sectarian token in the Lotus-vs-Pure-Land comparison game) plus one philological correction (the phenomenal-principial (shì-chí / lǐ-chí 事持/理持) partition of name-invocation is Ming-Qing Pure Land commentarial vocabulary, not Zhiyi's).14Binding the Three PeriodsThis paper takes up the third member of Part V's Mahāyāna-Eight-Sūtras cluster — the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment (Yuánjué jīng 圓覺經, T0842) — arguing three things. First, the three final-age chapters (Maitreya / Universal-Awakening / Perfect-Enlightenment) progressively stage the verb-structure of final-age buddha-recollection: Maitreya's severing (duàn 斷) the root of cyclic craving as inward origin, Universal-Awakening's leaving (lí 離) the four meditative diseases (fabrication / passivity / cessation / annihilation) as outward safeguarding, and Perfect-Enlightenment's binding (jié 結) the three periods (120 / 100 / 80 days) as temporal structuring — three axes operating simultaneously in every utterance of the Buddha's name, not as sequential stages. Second, Guifeng Zongmi's Subcommentary on the Abridged Commentary to the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment (X09n0248) establishes a dual-layer verb grammar through the tension between "thinking of the Buddha is also a samsaric mind" (sīfó yì lúnhuí xīn 思佛亦輪迴心) and "bowing to the names of the ten-direction Buddhas" (jīshǒu shífāng fómíng 稽首十方佛名) — phenomenal recollection (shìniàn 事念) is admissible for final-age entry, while noumenal recollection (lǐniàn 理念) must dissolve the subject-object structure; the four diseases mapped onto four misfires of buddha-recollection form the metronome of the verb. This parallels Jiaoguang's distinction in P12 between faculty-gathering recollection and recollection by the discriminative mind-consciousness, forming Part V's second commentarial axis. Third, the Bhadrasvara chapter's Twenty-Five Pure Cultivation Wheels — the apex of chán meditation theory as a permutational exhaustion of śamatha / samāpatti / dhyāna — conclude with the Buddha's own self-limitation: "excepting those of sudden awakening and those whom the dharma does not accord with" (wéichú dùnjué-rén, bìng fǎ bù suíshùn 唯除頓覺人,并法不隨順). This self-limitation, rarely foregrounded in the Chinese commentarial tradition, is the sūtra's own textual warrant for the gate of final-age buddha-recollection — a gate not externally imported, but opened by the Buddha himself in the verse's final line.15Seeing the Sign, Obtaining the PreceptThis paper takes up the fourth member of Part V's Mahāyāna-Eight-Sūtras cluster — the Brahma Net Sūtra (Fànwǎng jīng 梵網經, T1484) — arguing three things. First, T1484 weaves precept-keeping and buddha-recollection as equal-weight dual axes through a five-layer structure of sustained contact with all buddhas: the sixth minor precept's thrice-daily reverence (the micro-rhythmic foundation), the twenty-third minor precept's self-vowed precept-reception verified by the seeing of auspicious signs (jiàn hǎoxiàng 見好相, the initiating event), the thirty-seventh minor precept's bimonthly poṣadha recitation before buddha-and-bodhisattva images (the collective synchronization), the forty-first minor precept's offense-atonement through night-and-day six-hour precept recitation and exhausting prostrations before the buddhas of the three times to attain a sign (the restoration mechanism), and the five benefits verse's seeing the thousand buddhas hand-conferring at the moment of death (the terminal recovery). Five layers on distinct temporal scales converge on one ground-action — the precept-body activated before buddha-images, cultivated through accumulative action, completed or redeemed through the appearance of auspicious signs. Second, against the Yogācāra Indian counterpart (Bodhisattva-prātimokṣa, T1501, Xuanzang trans.) with its four pārājayika and forty-three minor precepts — where only the first minor precept's "at the very least, with a single mind of pure faith, recollect the true qualities of the three jewels" (xià zhì yǐ xīn yī qīngjìng xìn suíniàn sānbǎo zhēnshí gōngdé 下至以心一清淨信隨念三寶真實功德) articulates the inward minimum threshold of daily recollection — T1484's structural expansion arises from two pressures: accommodating lay precept-receivers lacking the foundational śrāvaka prātimokṣa, and addressing the absence of the Buddha in the degenerate age. The precept-body is thereby recast from intention-pacification to continuous contact with the Buddha's presence through embodied form. Third, Fazang's Commentary on the Bodhisattva Precept Section of the Brahma Net Sūtra (Fànwǎng-jīng púsà jièběn shū 梵網經菩薩戒本疏, T1813) treats this precept-body through ontological-structural processing: the source-ontology of Rocana as the original body with thousand-hundred-million emanation-Śākyamunis; the three-fold negation of precept-essence (lí sè-xīn, lí yǒu-wú, lí yīn-guǒ 離色心、離有無、離因果 — apart from form-and-mind, apart from being-and-non-being, apart from cause-and-effect); and the self-vowed precept-reception's auspicious-sign correspondence as the sole event-description of "contact-with-the-Buddha" in the entire commentary. Against Guifeng Zongmi's mind-dialectical processing in P14 (thinking-of-the-Buddha is also a samsaric mind versus bowing to the names of the ten-direction buddhas; the four-disease metronome), Fazang represents the ontological-structural wing of the Huayan commentarial legacy — addressing the container of recollection rather than the subject of recollection. Jiāoguāng (P12) – Zongmi (P14) – Fazang (P15) together form the first three nodes of Part V's cross-commentator axis. Grounding-in-precepts (yī-jiè 依戒) constitutes the sixth layer of the NIAN verb-axis — extending buddha-recollection from session-bounded action to whole-life-world sustained posture; precept-keeping is continuous buddha-recollection, precept-body is the container of the primordial buddha. §VI closes with a forward link to P16's Golden Light Sūtra — the dual axis of precept (P15) and repentance (P16) structures the center of Part V.16Confession as Buddha-RecollectionThis paper takes up the fifth member of Part V's Mahāyāna-Eight-Sūtras cluster — the Golden Light Sūtra (Jīn guāngmíng jīng 金光明經) in its three Chinese recensions (T0663 Dharmakṣema; T0664 Baogui's combined recension with Paramārtha's supplementary translation; T0665 Yijing) — arguing three things. First, the Chapter of the Dream-Golden-Drum Repentance (Mèng jiàn jīngǔ chànhuǐ pǐn 夢見金鼓懺悔品), progressively extracted from a diffuse multi-thread narrative context in T0663 into a self-contained chapter in T0665, articulates a three-segment dynamic mechanism for confession: (i) reception-in-dream — Bodhisattva Ruciraketu (信相 in T0663 / 妙幢 in T0665) sees in a dream a brahmin striking a golden drum, the drum emitting a subtle voice that speaks confession verses; (ii) waking recitation — upon awakening, the bodhisattva recites before the Buddha what was heard; (iii) collective ratification — the buddhas of the ten directions collectively confirm the verses as their own, and karmic obstruction is thereby extinguished. Under this mechanism, confession is not a voluntarist act initiated by the practitioner's resolve but a distributed-agency event-chain whose agency is dispersed across seven nodes — golden drum, dream, brahmin, radiance, ten-direction buddhas, practitioner's recitation, and collective ratification — in which the practitioner occupies only the sixth node (the re-telling), never the first. Second, this mechanism was systematized in two successive commentarial phases: Zhiyi (Zhìyǐ 智顗, 538–597), in his Profound Meaning of the Golden Light Sūtra (T1783) and Text-Lines of the Golden Light Sūtra (T1785), reconfigured the dream-drum event-chain into the Five Repentances (wǔ huǐ 五悔: confession, requesting-the-teaching, sympathetic-joy, dedication, aspiration) — a repeatable liturgical sequence that temporalizes the single revelation into cyclically re-performable units; Jizang (Jízàng 吉藏, 549–623) in his Commentary on the Golden Light Sūtra (T1787) offered an alternative Sanlun reading (Five Repentances as counter-inversions of the Five Evil Roots; the three obstructions analyzed through cause, time, and place) that represents a philosophical-deconstructive branch not absorbed into the later Tiantai liturgy; Zhili (Zhīlǐ 知禮, 960–1028) in his Record of the Text-Lines (T1786) and Record of Gleanings on the Profound Meaning (T1784) carried Zhiyi's liturgy to a new philosophical depth, distinguishing phenomenal repentance (shì chàn 事懺 — bodily, vocal, time-structured ritual performance) from noumenal repentance (lǐ chàn 理懺 — the contemplation that confessor, confessed offense, and act of confession are all empty of inherent existence), and specifying that the two must run in parallel — phenomenal alone degenerates into ritual formalism; noumenal alone degenerates into empty talk. Third, in the distinctive geometry of Part V, the Golden Light occupies the ritual-mechanism axis complementary to P15's (the Brahma Net's) ontological-structure axis — P15 processed Fazang's ontology of the precept-body as "the container of the primordial buddha"; P16 processes Zhiyi's and Zhili's ritualization of the confession event-chain as the repeating machinery by which that container is restored when damaged. Together P15 and P16 constitute the precept-and-repentance twin-axis at the center of Part V. §V's Middle-Way Corrections distinguishes the dream-drum mechanism from Augustinian confession on three structural grounds (double-subject vs distributed-agency; soteriological guilt vs conditioned obstruction; single God's absolution vs ten-direction buddhas' collective ratification), refuses the reduction of Golden Light to pure ritualism (phenomenal and noumenal must co-operate), and resists the misreading that the three Chinese recensions are three attempts at one and the same text (they correspond to three distinct Indic recensions attested by Nobel's 1937 Sanskrit edition and the three Derge Tibetan witnesses D556 / D557 / D558). §VI concludes with the forecast that the Golden Light solves the question how to confess, while the next paper (P17) on the Laṅkāvatāra will solve the deeper question that the Golden Light deliberately brackets — what, ontologically, is the buddha who is being recollected?17Hearts of All Buddhas FirstThis paper takes as its point of departure a philological fact: Guṇabhadra's four-fascicle recension of the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra (T0670) contains not a single instance of niàn-fó 念佛, niàn-rúlái 念如來, or guān-fó 觀佛. The absence is not a coverage gap but a structural invitation. The paper argues in three movements. First, the ontological reconstruction of "the hearts of all buddhas first" (zhū-fó xīn dì-yī 諸佛心第一, T0670, p.481c01-03): the original interlinear gloss "like the solid heartwood of a tree, not a deliberating mind" (shùmù jiānshí xīn, fēi niànlǜ xīn 樹木堅實心,非念慮心) locks the term xīn here as hṛdaya — the essential heart-substance — rather than as citta — deliberating consciousness. The object of buddha-recollection thereby shifts from external name to internal heart-essence. Second, the absence of niàn-fó language is itself the structural invitation. T0672's Kṣaṇika-parivarta welds tathāgatagarbha and ālaya-vijñāna into the compound tathāgatagarbhālayavijñāna, collecting the object of recollection into "one mind that is the common ground of the defiled and the pure." The Laṅkāvatāra's silence on niàn-fó invites its radical interiorization rather than symptomizing a textual omission. Third, Daoxin's Entry into the Path of Pacifying-the-Mind (Rù-dào ānxīn yào fāngbiàn fǎmén 入道安心要方便法門, preserved at T2837, T85, 1286c–1287a) encodes this interiorization in a seventh-century Chan formula: "Relying on the Laṅkā's 'hearts of all buddhas first,' and relying further on the Mañjuśrī Prajñā Sūtra's 'single-practice samādhi' — thus the mind that recollects the Buddha is the Buddha" (jí niàn-fó xīn shì fó 即念佛心是佛). This shows that the turn from buddha-recollection to mind-recollection was complete within early Chan before the rise of the Southern School under Huineng. §V's Middle-Way Corrections grounds the warning against collapsing tathāgatagarbha and ālaya-vijñāna not in editorial voice but in the Dharmapāla-Xuanzang Cheng Weishi Lun (T1585) itself, which explicitly reframes "intrinsically pure mind" as "the suchness disclosed by the emptiness-principle of mind" (xīn kōng lǐ suǒ xiǎn zhēnrú 心空理所顯真如); the false-friend warning concerning T0671's "Buddha-Mind Chapter Four" (whose content is actually the manomaya-kāya doctrine, not hṛdaya) is likewise articulated from within the translation-divergence register. The seventh verb-layer — seeing-the-mind — completed, P18 (the Ghanavyūha) carries it into the eighth layer: buddha-recollection as ālaya-parāvṛtti, the transmutation of the storehouse consciousness.18Buddha-Recollection as Ālaya-ParāvṛttiThe Ghanavyūha-sūtra (Dàshèng mìyán jīng 大乘密嚴經; T0681, trans. Divākara; T0682, trans. Amoghavajra) deposits, respectively in its third and second fascicles, two key ontological statements — "The Buddha declares the tathāgatagarbha and thereby sets it forth as the ālaya; as gold and its ring, they unfold without difference" (T0682, fascicle 3, Chapter 8: The Ālaya is Ghanavyūha 阿賴耶即密嚴品第八), and "The subtly-wrought realm of Ghanavyūha — its very substance is the consciousness-that-has-been-transmuted" (T0682, fascicle 2, Chapter 4: The Self-Wrought Objective Field 自作境界品第四). The first anchor, through its simile of gold and gold ring, locks in the ontological identity of tathāgatagarbha and ālaya-vijñāna; the second defines the very substance of the Ghanavyūha buddha-field as the consciousness that has already undergone āśraya-parāvṛtti (the transmutation of the base). Each anchor, however, has its limit. The first is a static statement of identity — it says what a thing is, not how it transforms. The second presupposes a transmutation-event but does not unfold its internal mechanism. Taking as its textual foothold a third scriptural line from the same sūtra — "This is the field of the contemplative practice of buddha-recollection, and it is called the tathāgatagarbha" (T0682, fascicle 1, Chapter 1: The Bodhimaṇḍa of Ghanavyūha 密嚴道場品第一) — this paper argues that buddha-recollection (niàn-fó 念佛, buddhānusmṛti) can function as the constructive bridge that carries the two anchors from static ontological identity into dynamic soteriological mechanism: buddha-recollection as the contemplative entry-point to the pure-reliance face of the storehouse-consciousness, propelled along twin axes of the Buddhas' adhiṣṭhāna (sustaining power) and the practitioner's śraddhā (faith), continuously rotating the functional weight from defiled-reliance toward pure-reliance — the gradual unfolding of parāvṛtti. This bridge is explicitly declared as constructive interpretation, not exegetical assertion. The Yogācāra śāstras (Cheng Weishi Lun 成唯識論, T1585; Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra 瑜伽師地論, T1579; Āryaśāsana-prakaraṇa 顯揚聖教論, T1602) are entirely silent on "buddha-recollection as a trigger of the transmutation-of-the-base," and the Ghanavyūha itself does not textually weld the two together either. §IV stages Waldron's The Buddhist Unconscious as primary interlocutor, Lusthaus's Buddhist Phenomenology as phenomenological guardrail, and Schmithausen's Ālayavijñāna as conceptual-historical backing, to prevent the constructive thesis from sliding into Western frameworks of the unconscious. §V handles four typical Western misreadings — the transmutation-of-the-base is not neural plasticity, buddha-recollection is not a mantra-conditioned response, the Ghanavyūha buddha-field is not a collective-unconscious projection, and ālaya is not the Freudian unconscious — using Waldron's rigorous discipline as anchoring corrective. The eighth verb-axis layer, the transmutation-of-the-base, follows upon the seventh (seeing-the-mind) established in P17 on the Laṅkāvatāra; P19 on the Mañjuśrī-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra's single-practice samādhi (eka-vyūha-samādhi) will carry the argument further into the precise methodological form of buddha-recollection.19The Mañjuśrī Prajñā Sūtra and One-Practice SamādhiThis paper challenges a textbook narrative widely circulated in Western introductions to Chinese Buddhism: that the eka-vyūha-samādhi (yī-xíng sānmèi 一行三昧, one-practice samādhi) passage in the second fascicle of Mandrasena's Mañjuśrī-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Wénshū shīlì suǒ shuō móhē bōrěbōluómì jīng 文殊師利所說摩訶般若波羅蜜經; T0232) is the shared scriptural root of Chinese buddha-recollection practice, uniting the six most influential Chinese masters — Daoxin (Dàoxìn 道信), Zhiyi (Zhìyǐ 智顗), Huineng (Huìnéng 慧能), Shandao (Shàndǎo 善導), Daochuo (Dàochuò 道綽), and Yongming Yanshou (Yǒngmíng Yánshòu 永明延壽) — as co-heirs of one and the same passage. Close textual examination reveals this narrative as untenable. The six masters' commitment-weights toward T0232 are fundamentally asymmetric. Daoxin transplants the passage verbatim into his Entry into the Path of Pacifying-the-Mind (Rù-dào ānxīn yào fāngbiàn fǎmén 入道安心要方便法門; preserved at T2837) as one of two co-foundations of the East Mountain Teaching (Dōngshān fǎmén 東山法門) — foundation. Huineng's Platform Sūtra (Liùzǔ dàshī fǎbǎo tánjīng 六祖大師法寶壇經; T2008) preserves the compound "yī-xíng sānmèi" verbatim at two distinct sites but overturns its content and openly criticizes the literal reading as an "obstacle to the Way" — polemical inversion. Zhiyi's Mohe Zhiguan (Móhē zhǐguān 摩訶止觀; T1911), fascicle two, performs a philologically creative conflation of T0232 with T0233 to install the passage as the first of Tiantai's Four Kinds of Samādhi — systemic absorption. Shandao's canonical four-fascicle Guan-jing Commentary (Guānjīng Sìtiè Shū 觀經四帖疏; T1753) cites the passage zero times, while his smaller practice manual Guannian Famen (Guānniàn Ēmítuófó Xiānghǎi Sānmèi Gōngdé Fǎmén 觀念阿彌陀佛相海三昧功德法門; T1959) cites it once but re-keys it as adhipati-pratyaya (sustaining contributory condition) under other-power Pure Land logic — genre-sensitive selection. Daochuo's Anle Ji (Ānlè Jí 安樂集; T1958), fascicle two, lists it as the second of eight scriptural pillars for buddhānusmṛti-samādhi — parity pillar. Yongming's three-fascicle Wanshan Tonggui Ji (Wànshàn Tóngguī Jí 萬善同歸集; T2017) contains exactly one citation, placed as a rhetorical closure to a polemical exchange — peripheral endorsement. These six stances are non-reducible; together they constitute the scriptural starting point of Chinese Chan–Pure Land–Tiantai divergence. Divergence flows not from a common source but from differential stances on a single lodestone. Part V closes here; Part VI (P20–P24) paves forward.

Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.