地藏菩薩本願經 心要連讀

The opening of a sūtra usually does nothing but set the scene. This chapter sets it: the Buddha is in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, the buddhas of the ten directions have all come, the devas and nāgas and ghosts and spirits have all come.

But it writes four characters more: he taught the Dharma for his mother.

The One Who Speaks and the One Spoken Of

The bodhisattva who is to be spoken of below made his vow twice on the ground of the cause, and one of those two times was for his mother’s sake. And the buddha who is speaking at this moment is teaching the Dharma for his mother.

The one who speaks and the one spoken of are doing the same thing.

An introduction sets the scene. What those four characters set down is why this sūtra had to be spoken in this scene.

The Buddha Says: I Cannot Finish the Count

When everyone had gathered, the Buddha asked Mañjuśrī: do you know how many there are.

Mañjuśrī said: with my own spiritual power, taking the measure of it for a thousand kalpas, I still could not know.

Then the Buddha said something most unusual — because I look with the buddha-eye, the count of them is still not exhausted.

And then the Buddha explained what that number is: all these are ones whom Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, over kalpas long past, has already delivered, is now delivering, and has yet to deliver; whom he has already brought to accomplishment, is now bringing to accomplishment, and has yet to bring to accomplishment.

What cannot be counted to the end is not the audience; it is the people one bodhisattva has delivered. The question was about a head-count. The answer was a workload.

One Mote of Dust, Counted as One Kalpa

The grasses and trees and thickets and groves of the great trichiliocosm, the rice, hemp, bamboo, and reeds, the mountains, stones, and fine motes of dust: each item counted as one number; each such number counted as one Ganges; each grain of sand in one Ganges counted as one world; each mote of dust in one world counted as one kalpa; and then the number of motes accumulated within one kalpa taken over again, all of it, as so many kalpas.

Since Kṣitigarbha realized the tenth ground, it has been a thousand times more than that.

Having said it, the Buddha added one line more: how much longer still when he was on the grounds of the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha.

That uncountable number above counts only the stretch after the way was accomplished. The sūtra gives no total. What it gives is a way of counting that cannot be finished.

She Saw It, and She Was Not Afraid

Of the two accounts of the causal ground, the second is the brahmin woman. Her mother believed in wrong teachings and slighted the Three Jewels; she could not be moved by exhortation, and her life ended, and her spirit fell into the Avīci Hell.

The daughter sold her house and lands, turned them into incense and flowers and offering-implements, and made a great offering at the stūpa-monastery; then she gazed up at the buddha’s image, and a thought arose in her that would arise in us as well: a buddha is complete in all wisdom — if he were still in the world, perhaps one could ask him where my mother is.

The thought had barely arisen when the air answered it.

She sat upright and recollected the Buddha for one day and one night, and suddenly she was at the shore of a sea. The sūtra writes that sea without any mercy: the waters surge and boil, the evil beasts are all of them iron-bodied, men and women in the hundreds of thousands of myriads rise and sink in the sea and are seized and devoured in the scramble, the yakṣas have many hands and many eyes, and their teeth grow outward like sword-blades.

And then the sūtra writes one line: at that time the brahmin woman, by the power of her recollection of the Buddha, was naturally without fear.

No one moved her away, and the sight did not grow any fainter. Not one part of it was taken off. Only, she was not afraid.

Three Slots

When she asked after her mother, the answer was this: that guilty woman had been born into the heavens three days ago, because her child had made offerings and cultivated blessings for her mother. And not she alone — on that day the guilty ones of the Avīci Hell all received bliss at the same time.

An offering made by one person who sold her house saved more than her own mother.

At the last the Buddha discloses it: that ghost king Poisonless is the present Bodhisattva Foremost in Riches; that brahmin woman is Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva.

And in that number the Buddha could not finish counting there are three slots: already delivered, now being delivered, not yet delivered. The first two have closed. The third is still open.

The chapter before this told what vow a bodhisattva made in the past. This chapter tells what that vow has grown into by now.

One Hell, One Divided Body

The sūtra hands over the number in its very first sentence: from every place where there is a hell, the divided bodies of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva all came and gathered in the palace of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.

Wherever there is a hell, there is a divided body.

So the number of the divided bodies is not fixed by the bodhisattva himself. It is counted from the other end, by the hells. However many places have hells, that is how many bodies he must divide himself into.

The Buddha First Says That He Has Not Finished

After the stroking of the crowns, the Buddha speaks. His first sentence is not an instruction; it is an account of himself.

He says that in the evil world of the five turbidities he teaches and transforms beings hard and stubborn, and that the greater part of them have been tamed — but in one or two out of ten, the evil habits are still there.

Then he counts four kinds of people: some believe as soon as they hear; some are brought to accomplishment by earnest exhortation; some turn back only after long transforming; and there is a fourth — some are heavy with karma and give rise to no reverence.

The fourth kind is not struck off. The sūtra sets the four side by side and hands them all over together to the next sentence: each of them different, and the body divided to deliver them.

To entrust a thing to someone, first make plain how hard the thing is — that is how the entrustment of this chapter opens.

A Well Counts Too

What follows is a long string: man, woman, deva and nāga, spirit and ghost; mountain, forest, stream, plain, river, pool, spring, well; lord of the devas, Brahmā king, wheel-turning king, householder, king of a country, chief minister, official; bhikṣu, bhikṣuṇī, upāsaka, upāsikā; and on to śrāvaka, arhat, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva.

The eight in the middle are not people; they are mountains and waters. The reason the sūtra gives runs to six characters only: whatever brings benefit to people, all of it is used to deliver them.

A well counts too.

And the whole string is gathered up in one sentence: it is not that the buddha-body alone appears before them.

There is not only one countenance that can save people.

A Threshold as Low as a Hair’s Breadth

When he gives his own account, the figures are large at first: bodies filling a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of worlds numerous as the sands of the Ganges; in every world, a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of bodies; every body delivering a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of people.

Then the sūtra itself turns the figure down to the smallest: one hair, one drop, one grain of sand, one mote of dust, or so much as a hair’s breadth — a good deed of that size too is delivered by degrees, and the doer is made to gain great benefit.

That string of astronomical figures comes down here. How many people are delivered is a matter of capacity; one hair and one drop is the standard of measure — and only with the standard set as low as that can the astronomical figure stand.

The Sentence Said Three Times

I pray only that the World-Honored One will not be anxious over the beings of later ages who do evil karma.

The same sentence, and thus three times he said it to the Buddha.

That is taking a thing upon oneself, not offering comfort. Beings of evil karma are exactly where he is going, and so there is no need to be anxious on their account — that is what the sentence says.

The Buddha answers with two cries of Excellent, and says further: the wide deliverance nearly done, he will straightway realize bodhi.

The wide deliverance nearly done. This chapter begins from the divided bodies out of the hells of the ten directions and writes on to the divided bodies joining again into one form and weeping tears in grief and longing, and at the last it comes to rest upon a word not yet finished.

That done has not arrived even today.

The one who asks in this chapter is the Buddha’s mother. What she asks about is requital, and Kṣitigarbha’s first sentence in answer does not fall on requital at all.

The Worlds First, and Only Then the Hells

He says: in a thousand myriad worlds, and on to the lands, some have hells and some have no hells; some have women and some have no women; some have the Buddha’s Dharma and some have no Buddha’s Dharma. And he gathers it up at the end in one line: it is not the hells alone; the requital of guilt too is not of one grade.

The question was about this one place; the answer was that not every place is like this.

So the mother narrows her question: I pray only to hear of the requital of guilt in Jambudvīpa, and of the evil destinies it calls forth. That word only is a step she gives up of her own accord.

Five Kinds of Guilt

Five passages follow, and the closing line of every one of them is the same: through a thousand myriad koṭis of kalpas they shall seek to come out with no term of coming out.

First in the order stands being unfilial toward father and mother; next, drawing blood from the Buddha’s body and slandering the Three Jewels. The remaining three passages speak of one and the same thing — the Permanent Property, which is what the saṃgha of the ten directions holds in common: encroaching on it, breaking it up and using it, stealing it. And the last passage lets not even one thing go: any who take one single thing that is not given.

Killing father and mother, and carrying off a single object, stand side by side on the same list. The sūtra gives no reason for setting them side by side; it only writes the five passages in one and the same sentence-form.

One Person Fills It, and Many People Fill It

What the mother asks next is not about the suffering but about the name: why is it named the Uninterrupted Hell?

The answer gives the city first: the city is of solid iron and ten thousand li in height; upon the walls the fires gather in heaps, and there is little in the way of empty gap. Then it gives the bed: when one person undergoes his guilt there, he sees his own body lying stretched out and filling the whole bed; and when a thousand myriad people undergo their guilt, each of them likewise sees his own body filling the bed.

One person lies down and the bed is exactly full; a thousand myriad lie down, and what each of them sees is still his own single body filling the bed.

For this the sūtra gives eight characters only: what the manifold karma calls forth — such is the requital obtained. It does not say why it is so; it says only where it comes from.

The World Is Destroyed, and the Karma Moves House

When this world is destroyed, they are lodged in another world; when that other world is destroyed in its turn, they are shifted and lodged in another quarter; and when that other quarter is destroyed, they are passed on and lodged from one to the next. And after this world is formed again, they come back once more.

That worlds are destroyed is granted on all sides. What this passage says is that the world is destroyed and the karma is still there, and the karma changes its place and goes on being undergone.

Five Kinds of Uninterruptedness

Only at the end does he answer that name head-on: there are five matters that karma calls forth, and therefore it is called Uninterrupted.

Day and night they undergo their guilt, and there is no time at which it is severed — no seam in time.

One person also fills it, and many people also fill it — no seam between body and body.

A long string of implements of guilt, and the torments follow one upon another — no seam between suffering and suffering.

Without asking whether man or woman, whether Qiang, Hu, Yi, or Di, whether old or young, noble or base, whether nāga or spirit, god or ghost — no seam between one who undergoes and another.

Ten thousand deaths and ten thousand births, and though one seek to stay the space of a single thought one cannot — no seam between dying and being born.

Five items, and five times over: and therefore it is called Uninterrupted. There is only one name, and five reasons are given for it.

She Joined Her Palms and Withdrew

Having finished, the sūtra admits for itself that the passage has been abridged: if one were to speak at length of the names of the implements of guilt and of the manifold matters of suffering, then in the space of a whole kalpa one would seek to tell it and not come to the end.

And then the last line: when Lady Māyā had heard this, she joined her palms in sorrow and care, bowed her head to the ground, and withdrew.

She does not ask again, and she does not praise. The two chapters before this wrote how many people one bodhisattva had delivered and into how many bodies he had divided himself; this chapter writes for the first time the place where those people are. And when the writing is done, the last gesture the sūtra leaves is a mother joining her palms and withdrawing from her seat.

What this chapter speaks of is karmic impulsion — the differences that karma calls forth. And it opens by speaking of two men.

The Fork

The two kings were friends to begin with; they practised the ten good acts together and benefited beings. The people of the neighboring country were doing much evil, and the two took counsel together and set out every kind of skillful means. Up to here they are still walking one road.

Then the sūtra writes down the fork.

One of them vowed: to accomplish the way of a buddha early, and then to deliver that whole company and leave none of them over — to stand in that position first, and then turn back to save.

The other vowed: if I do not first deliver those who are guilty and suffering, and bring them to peace and to awakening, I will to the end not vow to become a buddha.

The sūtra passes no judgment on which of the two stands higher; it says only what came of them. The one who vowed to become a buddha early became a buddha long ago, and his name is the Tathāgata Accomplishment of All Wisdom. The other is still here.

A Thing That Was Never Counted as Evil

In the second account from the past there is a woman named Bright Eyes, whose mother had already died and had fallen into an evil destiny, undergoing the utmost suffering.

What had her mother done? The sūtra writes it as a household thing: she liked nothing so much as eating fish and turtles — and mostly she ate their young, now fried, now boiled, eating as her appetite pleased.

Then the sūtra reckons up the account itself: count the number of those lives, and it is a thousand myriads and doubled again.

Not one great evil, but one thing eaten for a lifetime that was never once counted as a thing at all. The word the sūtra uses is what she was habituated to — a habit, not a deed.

And the remedy is small as well: recollect the Buddha with utmost sincerity, and sculpt and paint his image. What is hard is not the painting; it is the four characters the sūtra writes next: she gave up at once what she loved.

What She Asked for Was Not Her Mother Alone

The mother was reborn in the house of a bondmaid, and before three days were out the child spoke. Its first words were not a cry of injustice; they were the karmic conditions of birth and death — their fruit is borne by oneself. Only the second words say: I am your mother.

She had come out of the hells already — it is by the power of your blessings that I have been able to take birth — and yet she must be a person of low station, must be short-lived, thirteen years, and must fall into the evil destinies again.

And so Bright Eyes made her vow. The first half of it is still for her mother; the second half opens wide all at once: from this day forth, throughout a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of kalpas to come, for the beings who are guilty and suffering in all the hells and the three evil destinies of every world there is, I vow to rescue and draw them out — and only when all such people of karmic requital have finished becoming buddhas will I myself then accomplish right awakening.

To put out one spark, what she called for was a river.

The Answer Is a List

The four heavenly kings ask: he made a vow that great — how is it that to this day he has still not finished delivering?

The Buddha does not answer it head-on; he turns instead to enumerating. If he meets one who kills, he speaks of the requital of calamity from former lives and of a short life; if he meets one who steals, he speaks of the requital of poverty and bitter hardship — twenty-three in a row, opening at killing and closing at wrong views.

When the list is done, the sūtra adds a line of its own: this is told coarsely and in brief.

Twenty-three items, and still only coarse.

A Vine with Neither Head nor Tail in Sight

The Buddha says that to this day Kṣitigarbha has still not finished his vow, and the reason is four characters: the causes spread like vines and are not cut off.

A vine is a creeper: it winds as it grows forward, and one can see neither head nor tail of it. Delusion gives birth to karma, karma draws on birth, and birth makes karma again.

The four heavenly kings, having heard it, wept and sighed in grief, joined their palms, and withdrew. They asked nothing further.

What the Buddha charges them with at the last is not to go and save anyone. It is four characters: protect the people, protect the country — do not let these karmas delude beings.

And of that king who chose at the fork to walk behind, this chapter says nothing at all, from beginning to end, about when he will become a buddha.

This chapter has no story in it, and almost no reasoning. It calls out names.

Samantabhadra asks Kṣitigarbha to speak the names of the hells. Kṣitigarbha consents, and then, beginning from that mountain in the east of Jambudvīpa that is black and deep, with no light of sun or moon, he calls them out one after another.

The Name That Was Called Twice

First two great hells: Utmost Uninterrupted, and Great Avīci. Then twenty-two of the form there is a further hell called — Four-Cornered, Flying Blades, Fire Arrows, Crushing Mountains, Piercing Spears, Iron Carts, Iron Bed, Iron Ox, Iron Garments, A Thousand Blades, Iron Donkey, Molten Copper, Embracing the Pillar, Flowing Fire, Ploughing the Tongue, Chopping the Head, Burning Feet, Devouring the Eyes, Iron Pellets, Contention, Iron Axe, Much Anger.

The calling done, one line is said: within the Iron Ring there are hells such as these, and their number is without limit.

Then the form of the sentence changes, and twenty-two more are called: Wailing, Tongue-Pulling, Dung and Urine, Copper Locks, Fire Elephants, Fire Dogs, Fire Horses, Fire Oxen, Fire Mountains, Fire Stones, Fire Beds, Fire Beams, Fire Hawks, Sawing the Teeth, Flaying the Skin, Drinking Blood, Burning Hands, Burning Feet, Inverted Thorns, Fire Houses, Iron Houses, Fire Wolves.

The calling done, it is said: the names within them are each and all different.

Burning Feet occurs once in each of the two strings. The sūtra does not say why it should be called twice.

The Power of Karma Is Very Great

The names all called, the sūtra takes only three clauses to say where this whole stretch of country comes from: the power of karma is very great — it can match Sumeru, it can outgo the vast sea in depth, it can obstruct the holy path.

A comparison in height, a comparison in depth, and then a third thing. The first two are still things that can be measured. The third is not.

Then comes a line of exhortation: therefore let beings not make light of small evil, thinking it carries no guilt; after death there is requital, and it is undergone down to the finest hair.

And then a line that is the coldest in the chapter: father and son are the closest of kin, yet at the parting of the ways each goes his own; and though they should meet, not one is willing to undergo it in the other's stead.

Four Things

At the last the sūtra gathers the whole stretch of hells into four things: there is nothing that is not copper, iron, stone, or fire. These four things are called forth by the karmic acts of beings.

The blades, wheels, crossbows, saws, cauldrons, pillars, garments, beds, pellets, and axes of the several hundred characters before this come to four materials only; and not one of them has been issued by anyone else. The sūtra says: called forth by the karmic acts of beings.

The One Who Knew Already

Samantabhadra, who listens to this whole passage, had said at the outset: I have long known the requital of the three evil destinies.

What he wants is not to know. He wants Kṣitigarbha to say it aloud before the assembly, so that the beings of ages to come, in the last age of the Dharma, who do every kind of evil, may hear you speak and be turned toward the Buddha.

The one who asks knows already, and the one who answers knows that he knows already. This question and this answer are spoken for a third kind of person.

And when Kṣitigarbha has called out forty-six names and told fourteen kinds of thing, he says that even this is only a brief telling: were it explained at large, kalpas would run out before it was done.

In the first five chapters it is mostly not the Buddha who speaks — Mañjuśrī asks, Samantabhadra requests, the Four Heavenly Kings ask, and the Buddha answers.

This chapter opens with no one asking. The Buddha raises his whole body and sends forth light, gives forth a great sound, and then says: listen to me today as I extol and praise Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva-mahāsattva.

In a sūtra, the Buddha praises someone of his own accord.

The Starting Point Is Set Very Low

The first thing the Buddha says in answer to Universally Broad sets the threshold astonishingly low: of those who hear that name, whoever joins the palms, or praises, or bows, or yearns in longing passes beyond thirty kalpas of offences.

Join the palms once, say one word of praise, make one bow, hold him in mind for a moment. Four things, and not one of them is hard.

The passage on sculpting and painting the image is lower still. Earth, stone, glue, lacquer, gold, silver, copper, iron — all eight materials count; and all that is asked is one gaze and one bow — look at him once, bow to him once.

In the passage on being weary of a woman’s body, what the sūtra promises is not a change of body but a change of birthplace. And immediately after it leaves one sentence of exception: unless it be by the power of a compassionate vow, that she must take a woman’s body in order to deliver beings.

There is a road for those who are weary of it, and a road for those who are not, and one who deliberately takes it on is counted a third kind again.

A Sick Person’s Bed

The longest passage in this chapter is about someone long sick: he lies long upon bed and pillow, seeking to live and seeking to die and getting neither; at night he dreams of evil ghosts and of his own household’s kin; as the days and months and years go deep, he cries out in pain in his sleep.

The sūtra says that this is a confrontation upon the paths of karma whose heavier and lighter have not yet been settled, and then adds one line: the worldly eyes of men and women cannot tell such a matter apart.

Not being able to tell is the ordinary condition. The sūtra does not require anyone to see clearly first before he is permitted to act.

What it gives is three things that can simply be done: read the sūtra aloud once before the images; take what the sick person holds dear and call out aloud, in his presence, that it is given away; and then declare it thus three times to the sick person, and let him hear it and know it.

The same words said three times, and he must hear them with his own ears. And even when the consciousnesses are already scattered and the breath already spent, within seven days one still only declares it aloud and reads the sūtra aloud.

If the sickness lifts, that is one road; if it does not, that is a road as well. The sūtra does not give only the first.

A Calendar

What it gives at the last is a calendar.

The first day of the month, the eighth, the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the eighteenth, the twenty-third, the twenty-fourth, the twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth, and on to the thirtieth. Ten days.

The sūtra says that on these days the several offences are gathered together and their heaviness and lightness settled, and that the beings of Jambudvīpa, in every stirring of movement and every rising of a thought, have nothing that is not karma and nothing that is not offence.

On these ten days: read this sūtra once through.

A calendar that promises a great fruit, and the one act it asks for is this.

The Buddha Did Not Choose

At the last Universally Broad asks the name of the sūtra, and the Buddha gives three: one name is the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha, another the Original Practice of Kṣitigarbha, another the Sūtra of the Power of Kṣitigarbha’s Original Pledge.

The Buddha did not choose. Those who gathered the sūtra chose the first.

And of the benefits this chapter promises, the smallest slot is written at the very end: even those who hear three characters or five characters of this sūtra, or a single verse or a single line.

Three characters count too.

This chapter opens the second fascicle of the sūtra. The first fascicle was all vast scenes: the divided bodies, the sea of karma, the names of the hells. Turn the fascicle, and the first sentence comes down in the smallest place of all — in every stirring of the mind and every rising of a thought there is nothing that is not offence.

Then comes a very exact observation: if by chance they get some benefit from the good, for the most part they lose again the mind they began with; and if they meet with an evil condition, then thought upon thought it grows and increases. The good side is easily lost, the evil side easily grows. The two run at different speeds, and this line is the premise of everything that follows.

Carrying It for Him, Not Walking for Him

The sūtra sets up a simile: like one walking upon a muddy road with a heavy stone upon his back, the wearier the further, the heavier the longer, his steps sinking ever deeper.

Then it writes the turn: if he is able to meet a good friend who takes off part of the burden for him, or who takes the whole burden upon himself — someone shares half of it, or takes the whole of it over.

But the sūtra does not write that anyone walks for him. The stone is off; the road is still walked to the end by himself.

Five That May Be Done, and One That May Not

Of what can be done at the end of life the sūtra lists five: hanging up pennants and canopies, lighting oil lamps, reading through the honored scriptures, making offerings to images of the buddhas and of the sages, calling the names of buddhas and bodhisattvas and pratyekabuddhas. Not one of the five requires anything of the person concerned.

Then the sūtra turns the matter around: on the day when life comes to its end, take the greatest care not to kill any living thing, and not to make an evil condition — sacrificing to ghosts and spirits, and begging of the sprites.

The reason the sūtra gives itself: it has not a hair’s breadth of power to benefit the one who has died; it only knots up the conditions of offence, and makes them deeper and heavier instead.

What the sūtra forbids is not sacrifice as such. It is taking a life to make the sacrifice.

Six Parts Belong to the Living

Someone asks: when the kin cultivate merit for him, how much does he actually get?

The answer is a ratio with nothing polite about it: of seven parts he gains but one, and the merit of six parts is the benefit of the living themselves.

Of seven parts he gets only one; six belong to the people who did the work for him.

The sūtra then turns to the living: cultivate for yourselves while your hearing is still sound and strong, and part by part it is all your own.

Cultivating blessings for another is not useless. It is only that the one who does it gets the larger share.

Forty-Nine Days

The great ghost of impermanence arrives without appointing a day; the spirit roaming in the dark does not yet know its own offences or blessings, and within the seven times seven days it is as if dull-witted, as if deaf.

He does not yet know his own offences and blessings; he cannot hear, and he cannot make it out. Through that stretch of days he has only one thing: he looks to his own flesh and blood among the kin to make a power of blessing for him and rescue him.

The word the sūtra uses is look to. What is written is not a verdict but a waiting.

A Basin of Rice-Washing Water

Having spoken through the whole chapter, at the last it walks into the kitchen: the water in which the rice is washed and the leaves of the vegetables are not to be thrown away upon the ground. Food not yet offered to the Buddha and the saṃgha may not be eaten first.

Two outcomes, and the drop between them is enormous: for what is not according to the Dharma, he gets no strength from it at all; for what is according to the Dharma, he gains one part out of seven.

The same rice and the same vegetables, the same one feast. The sūtra puts the difference in four characters — wholehearted in mind, earnest without slackening — and not in how large a thing was put on.

The last sentence is that the living and the dead both gain benefit. The dead half gains one part, the living half gains six — from beginning to end this one sentence is speaking of two people.

This chapter opens with a roster. The ghost kings within the Iron Ring Mountains come up to the Heaven of the Thirty-Three in the train of Yama, Son of Heaven, and the sūtra calls them out one at a time, thirty-four of them.

The first twenty-eight are each called ghost king so-and-so: Evil and Poison, Many Evils, Great Contention, White Tiger, Blood Tiger, Red Tiger, Scatterer of Calamity, Flying Body, Lightning Flash, Wolf-Fang, Thousand Eyes, Devourer of Beasts, Bearer of Stones, Master-of-Wasting, Master-of-Calamity, Master-of-Food, Master-of-Wealth, Master-of-Livestock, Master-of-Birds, Master-of-Beasts, Master-of-Sprites, Master-of-Birthing, Master-of-Life, Master-of-Sickness, Master-of-Perils, Three Eyes, Four Eyes, Five Eyes.

The last six are called king so-and-so only, and not ghost king: the king Qilishi, the king Great Qilishi, the king Qilicha, the king Great Qilicha, the king Anazha, the king Great Anazha. These six are a Sanskrit sound, and the Chinese lands never did render their meaning; and so only the sound is kept.

A Question

The roster called out, Yama, Son of Heaven, asks one thing.

He praises Kṣitigarbha first — within the six destinies he delivers the guilty and suffering beings with a hundred thousand skillful means, and never excuses himself for weariness — and then he turns: and yet those beings, once free of the retribution for their guilt, fall into the evil destinies again before long.

And then comes the question: since this Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva has spiritual power so inconceivable as this, why is it that beings do not rest upon the good destinies and take liberation once and for all?

The Buddha’s answer does not fall on spiritual power: the beings of southern Jambudvīpa are hard and stubborn in their nature, difficult to tame and difficult to subdue.

The Sentence Spoken at Parting

The Buddha spoke a simile. A man loses his own home and strays into a road of peril, and on that road there are yakṣas, and tigers and wolves and lions, vipers and snakes and adders and scorpions. A good friend calls him back with a shout, leads him out, and brings him to a good road.

The story could have ended there. But at the time of parting the friend charges him with one more thing:

If you see those you know and are close to, and travelers upon the road, whether men or women, tell them that on this road there are many poisons and evils, and that they will lose their lives. Do not let these people take their own death upon themselves.

The one who has been saved is to go and save others. And the way of saving is a simple one — it is only to say out loud what is on that road.

One Banner, One Canopy

The simile finished, the ghost king Evil and Poison speaks up. He reports the plain truth about his own kind first: some of them benefit people and some of them harm people, each differing from the other, and his kindred roam through the world with much of evil in them and little of good.

And then he says something one would hardly expect a ghost king to say. The one he reveres is the person who cultivates a good deed as small as a hair or a strand of down — who hangs up one banner or one canopy, a little incense or a little flower, or who reads a single line or a single verse. He reveres that person as he reveres the buddhas of the past, the present, and the future.

The Only One Who Says the Original Vow Is His Own

Another ghost king comes forward in the assembly, named Master-of-Life. He says: because of my own original karmic conditions I am master over the lifespans of the people of Jambudvīpa; at the time of birth and at the time of death, I am master of both.

And then come six words that are the easiest in this chapter to read straight past: in my original vow I greatly desire to benefit them.

Original vow is the title of this sūtra. And in the whole of it, the only one who says with his own mouth that he has an original vow is this ghost king.

The two things he asks for are both quite concrete. One belongs to the time of birth: when the child has been born, take the greatest care not to kill and harm living things, taking their fresh flavors to set before the mother who has given birth. One belongs to the time of death: when a person comes to the end of life, those beside him are to read the venerable sūtras aloud and recite the names of the buddhas and the bodhisattvas. For at that hour the spirit-consciousness is dimmed and clouded and cannot tell good from evil, and even with eye and ear there is no more seeing or hearing — the one whom it concerns can no longer do anything to help himself.

In Truth No Ghost at All

At the last the Buddha discloses it for him: this great being, by reason of his vow of compassion, manifests the body of a great ghost, and is in truth no ghost at all.

He shall attain buddhahood, and his name shall be the Tathāgata Signless; the kalpa shall be named Peace and Ease, and the world Pure Abiding.

A fierce roster of names opens the chapter, and a ghost king who is to become a buddha closes it. And the last thing the Buddha says of him is this: the devas and humans he has delivered are likewise beyond all reckoning.

There is no story in this chapter. No hells, no ghost kings, no daughter saving her mother.

There is only a roster: the names of nineteen buddhas.

The Buddha Says: I Am About to Go

Kṣitigarbha asks leave to speak of matters of benefit, and the Buddha grants it very quickly, and then adds one line: I am about to enter nirvāṇa, so that you may finish this vow of yours the sooner; and then I shall have no anxiety for any being of the present or of ages to come.

I am about to enter nirvāṇa — so speak quickly.

The chapters before this one all told how beings fall, how the hells are undergone, how great the power of karma is. In this chapter, with his time nearly used up, the Buddha hands over a thing that could not be smaller: a name.

Nineteen Names, and Thresholds of Unequal Height

Ten buddhas have a passage each, and the last nine are crowded into a single sentence with nothing left but their names.

What each passage asks for is not the same. Some ask that reverence should arise for a moment; some ask only for taking refuge in a single thought; some ask only that one hear the name of this buddha, so that it passes through the faculty of hearing — a name going in at the ear, and no more than that.

And what is gained is not the same either: passing beyond the grave sins of forty kalpas; never falling back; being born a thousand times over among the six heavens of desire; meeting measureless buddhas who lay their hands upon one’s head and give the prediction; gaining before long the fruit of an arhat; certainly accomplishing awakening.

The few gates that ask least do not give least.

The sixth of them is the strangest. The sūtra writes three characters only: named Vipaśyin. No Tathāgata attached, and no Buddha either — of the nineteen names, this one alone has no suffix. And what it gives is this: hearing the name of this buddha, one shall never fall into the evil destinies, but shall always be born among humans and gods and there enjoy supreme and wondrous bliss.

No reverence, no taking refuge, no gazing and bowing and praising. Only hearing.

One, and Many

The roster called out, the sūtra gathers it up in a line of its own: if one can but recite the name of a single buddha, the merit of it is measureless — how much more the reciting of many names?

And then it marks the hour: such beings as these, at the time of birth and at the time of death, gain great benefit of themselves, and in the end do not fall into the evil destinies.

At the time of birth, at the time of death. This is the first mention of death in the chapter.

The One Who Recites Is Not the One Who Is Dying

From here the sūtra begins to take away.

The number of people comes down to even one. What is recited comes down to reciting aloud the name of a single buddha — one buddha, one name. And the one who recites it is not even oneself.

The one for whom it is recited is the sort of person with the least room left of any in the whole sūtra: he is at the end of life. He has no time to practice, no time to repent, no time to sell his house and lands and raise offerings at a stūpa-monastery. The people in the chapters before had some time at least; here there is nothing left but one family member beside him willing to speak aloud.

And the fruit given him is this: the sins of the five Uninterrupted deeds are taken away, and the remaining karmic retributions and the rest of them are all extinguished.

Even the Five Uninterrupted Are Being Extinguished

How heavy the sins of the five Uninterrupted deeds are, the sūtra says for itself: heavy in the utmost degree, and though a koṭi of kalpas may pass one still cannot get out of them at all.

And the sentence that follows is this: by the strength of another’s calling and reciting a buddha’s name for him at the end of life, even within these sins there is a gradual extinguishing.

It is not that they are set aside; it is that they are taken away. Only one word has been added — gradual: the heavy are not the unextinguished, they are the slowly extinguished.

The Last Sentence Is a Question Turned Back

The whole chapter closes upon a question turned back on itself: how much more when beings call and recite for themselves? The blessings gained are measureless, and the sins extinguished are measureless.

All the way down to this point the sūtra has been coming down, down to another reciting on his behalf; and at this sentence it turns the whole thing back up.

If another reciting on his behalf does this much, how much more his reciting for himself.

The chapter ends here. It does not turn back to speak of the hells again, nor does it name any pure land to go to. It only sets nineteen names down where they are, and says one thing: recite a single one of them, and the merit of it is already measureless.

This chapter begins with a question. What Kṣitigarbha asks is not whether one ought to give, but why, when the giving is the same, the recompense is not — there are those who receive blessings for one life, those who receive blessings for ten lives, and those who receive great blessing and benefit for a hundred lives and a thousand lives.

The answer the sūtra gives does not lie in the quantity of what is given away.

The Highest Person, the Lowest Person

The first example pulls the two ends as far apart as they will go.

The one who gives is a king of southern Jambudvīpa, a chief minister of the court, a great elder, a great kṣatriya, a great brahmin; the one who receives is the lowest and the poorest, and even the infirm, the maimed, the mute, the deaf, the witless, the eyeless.

The sūtra does not write how much he gave. It writes how he gave — complete in great kindness and compassion, lowering the mind and with a smile upon the face, giving with his own hands to all alike, or else sending someone to give, comforting and instructing with gentle words.

The head lowered, the smile kept, the thing handed over by his own hand, the words spoken gently.

And the fruit is this: as the benefit of the merit of giving to buddhas as many as the sands of a hundred Ganges.

A hundred Ganges’ sands of buddhas. And what stands opposite is one man at the roadside who cannot see.

One Turn, and the Fruit of a Whole Passage Changes

From the second passage onward, one more word appears in the sūtra.

Meet with a stūpa or monastery or image of the Buddha and make offerings and give: the fruit is three kalpas as Śakra. That very same deed — if one can take the blessing and benefit of this giving and dedicate it to the dharma-realm — and the fruit becomes ten kalpas as the Great Brahmā Heavenly King.

Repair the stūpas and shrines, the scriptures and images, that have fallen into ruin: the fruit is a hundred thousand lives as a wheel-turning king. Be further able, before the stūpa and shrine, to arouse the mind of dedication, and the fruit becomes: they all accomplish the way of a buddha.

The thing given has not changed, and the one who gives has not changed. All that has been added is where the single thought goes once the giving is done.

Within a Single Thought

The fourth example is the lightest: seeing the aged, the sick, and women in the very act of giving birth, and within the space of a single thought being complete in the mind of great kindness, giving medicine, food and drink, and bedding.

A single thought is the shortest notch there is in time.

And here the sūtra sets down the weightiest judgment in the whole chapter: blessing and benefit such as this is of all things the most inconceivable. What it then gives out is a hundred kalpas as lord of the Pure Abodes heavens, two hundred kalpas as lord of the six heavens of desire, becoming a buddha in the end, never falling into the evil destinies, and ears that through a hundred thousand lives do not hear the sound of suffering.

The most inconceivable thing of all falls upon the shortest notch of all.

The Balance Is Left to the One Who Looks

At the last, the sūtra lowers the quantity as far as quantity will go: down to a single hair, a single mote, a single grain of sand, a single drop.

Then it sets two roads side by side.

The one runs: if only it can be dedicated to the dharma-realm, this person’s merit shall through a hundred thousand lives receive the highest and most wondrous bliss.

The other runs: if it is dedicated only to one’s own household and kin, or to the benefit of one’s own person, then the fruit of this is bliss received for three lives — one part given away, ten thousand parts of recompense obtained.

The sūtra does not say the second road is bad. One given and ten thousand obtained is, after all, still ten thousand.

It merely sets the two numbers side by side, and lets whoever looks read the balance for himself.

The main exposition has been spoken through. One thing is left: on whom this sūtra now rests.

And the first to rise is not a great bodhisattva but a spirit who has charge of the ground.

A Day When It Is Finished, and No Such Day

When the earth spirit Firm-and-Stable opens her mouth, the whole of her first passage is given to others: from times long past she has gazed up at and bowed her head to measureless bodhisattva-mahāsattvas. And then she raises one alone — among all the bodhisattvas, Kṣitigarbha’s vow is the deepest and the weightiest.

The ones she sets beside him are Mañjuśrī, Samantabhadra, Avalokiteśvara, and Maitreya. These four likewise manifest a hundred thousand kinds of body and form, likewise deliver beings in the six destinies; and yet a day comes when their vows are done.

To be done is to have a day when it ends. Those four have that day; this one does not.

A Heap of Earth, a Few Stalks of Bamboo

The manner of offering she describes is very concrete: upon clean ground to the south, with earth and stone, bamboo and wood, one makes a niche-chamber; within it one sculpts and paints, and even with gold, silver, bronze, and iron makes an image of Kṣitigarbha.

Two sets of materials are written side by side. Earth, stone, bamboo, and wood can be picked up underfoot; gold, silver, bronze, and iron must be bought. The sūtra makes no ranking between them.

So whoever wants to do it is not kept out by the materials.

Ten Household Matters

The dwelling place of such a person then obtains ten kinds of benefit — ten matters, set out one after another:

the soil rich and abundant; house and home at peace forever; those who died before born into the heavens; those now living with their lifespan increased; what is sought fulfilled according to one’s wish; no calamity of water or fire; waste and loss warded off; bad dreams cut off; going out and coming in, the guard of spirits; often meeting with holy causes.

Crops, house, forebears, length of days, livelihood, flood and fire, wastage, sleep, going out and coming in. The first nine are all within the human world, and they run in the order in which a household worries its way through a year.

Only the last of them turns aside. And what does a holy cause mean? Hearing the Dharma, keeping the fast, giving, sculpting an image, and the like — which is precisely the matter named in her first sentence.

So the ten matters close into a ring: whoever has done this thing will meet more often with the chance to do it once again. The fruit that was asked for turns out to be the next cause.

Why a Hundred Thousand Times

The Buddha answers her at once with praise: your great spiritual power is such as few among the spirits can match. Then he sets out what she has charge of: on down to grass and trees, sand and stones, rice, hemp, bamboo, and reeds, grain and rice, treasures and shells — whatever comes to be from the earth, all of it is by her power.

Grass and trees, sand and stones, rice and hemp, bamboo and reeds, grain and treasures — all of this was already hers to keep.

And then the sentence that turns it: and you constantly praise and proclaim Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva’s deeds of benefit; your merit, and your spiritual penetration too, are a hundred thousand times those of an ordinary earth spirit.

The hundred thousand times does not come from the end where she bears things up; it comes from the one sentence in which she spoke another’s good aloud.

What Is Asked Is One Sūtra Only

Whom is he to protect? The Buddha draws the range narrowly: one who practices by relying on this single matter, the Sūtra of the Original Vows of Kṣitigarbha, alone.

One word: only. Nothing is added above; something is taken away below.

The Outermost of Three Tiers

And the manner of the guarding draws its boundary in a singular place: do not let any calamity, nor any matter that goes against his wish, so much as reach his ear — how much less let him undergo it?

The line is drawn not at the body but at the ear. Hearing, seeing, and undergoing in the body are three tiers, and the line falls upon the outermost of them.

The Shortest Chapter Goes the Farthest

The whole chapter closes in one sentence: such a person of himself, and without fail, comes out of the sea of suffering and realizes the bliss of nirvāṇa.

The sea of suffering is that same sea reached in the introductory section by the daughter who recollected the Buddha for one day and one night.

And this chapter began from the earth. It opens with a heap of soil and closes with coming out of the sea of suffering.

One end lies underfoot and the other at the farthest remove, with a single chapter standing between them.

The light of this chapter is not sent from between the brows, and it is not sent from the whole body. The sūtra writes it plainly: the World-Honored One sends it from the gate at the crown of his head.

From the highest place of the body, thirty-two lights are sent forth.

Thirty-Two Lights, and the Last of Them Is Named Sea Cloud

The first twenty are named by color and by auspicious sign: white, auspicious sign, jade, purple, blue, azure, red, green, gold, felicitous cloud — and each of them is doubled by a great one of the same name. The last twelve change their designation and speak instead of shape and of what a thing rests upon: thousand wheel, jeweled wheel, sun wheel, moon wheel, palace, sea cloud — and these too are each doubled by a great one.

From color to wheel, from wheel to palace, and at the last it closes upon a sea cloud. Set out one after another they grow larger as they go, and the last of them has no edge.

Eight Matters

When the light has been sent forth, the Buddha says that what he will speak of today is a matter beyond conceiving. The one who rises to ask is Avalokiteśvara.

The Buddha's answer in prose has eight matters in it. The first is in the heavens: a deva has the five marks of decline appear. The second is at the end of a life: at the moment of death the name is heard, one sound passing through the ear-faculty. The third is a grief of the human world: to lose father and mother and brothers and sisters in childhood, and to want, once grown, to know where they have gone. The fourth is arousing the resolve, the fifth is seeking what one wishes for. The sixth is wanting to read a sūtra and getting it only to forget it again. The seventh is clothing and food that do not suffice, a house that is not at peace, and in sleep and dream much fright and fear. The eighth is going out of doors — into the mountain forests, across the rivers and the sea, along the dangerous roads.

It runs from the heavens all the way down to the door. The sūtra does not put the greatest thing last; on the contrary, the further it goes the nearer it comes. The last matter is fearing to meet a tiger or a wolf on the road.

Four of Them Happen in Dreams

Of the eight matters, four turn upon what happens while one is asleep.

The bodhisattva manifests a boundless body and tells a person where his family have been born — that is within a dream; the crown of the head is touched and the prediction given — that is within a dream; the water of consecration is conferred and one wakes with a quick understanding — that too is within a dream. And the seventh matter is itself a dream: in sleep and dream much fright and fear. Its resolution the sūtra writes as: and even within sleep and dream, all is peace and ease.

A dream of fright exchanged for a dream of ease. The sūtra does not say one must wake up.

One Sentence with No Number Given to It

This chapter is willing to give numbers: one day to seven days, three times seven days, ten thousand recitations, a thousand a day up to a thousand days, one seven-day period or three.

After the number, the sūtra writes four characters more: do not fall back from the first mind.

All eight matters come to rest in the pleasures of the human and heavenly realms. Only at the end of the verse does the sūtra turn the whole of it in another direction — if one can dedicate this to the dharma-realm, one will at the last become a buddha and pass beyond birth and death.

What was counted before is all of it something asked for. This sentence has no number.

When a sūtra reaches its last chapter it usually hands over two things: what this sūtra is to be called, and that those who have heard it rejoice and receive it in faith and put it into practice.

This chapter does neither.

The Crown of the Head Touched a Second Time

At the opening there is only one gesture: at that time the World-Honored One raised his golden arm and again touched the crown of the head of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva-mahāsattva.

What matters is that word “again.” The whole sūtra writes the Buddha touching a crown only twice: the first time he stretched out his golden arm, and what he touched was the crowns of all the divided bodies of Kṣitigarbha in measureless worlds; this time what he touches is the one standing before him.

A thing already done, done once more. What has been entrusted, entrusted once more.

Called Twice Over: Once in Joy, Once in Haste

After the touch upon the crown, the Buddha calls the name twice over. Such a doubled calling occurs twice within the one chapter.

The first is followed by praise, four things beyond conceiving — spiritual power, kindness and compassion, wisdom, eloquence; and further, even were the buddhas of the ten directions to praise and proclaim these inconceivable matters of yours, through a thousand myriad kalpas they could not exhaust it.

The second is followed by the entrusting. The same two characters: the first time gladness, the second time urgency.

Those Who Have Not Yet Come Out

Who they are that are entrusted is set down plainly: once again I entrust to you the beings of the human and heavenly realms who have not yet gone forth from the three realms and are inside the burning house.

Not those who have already come out — those who have not yet come out.

And what is asked is not that they be delivered to accomplishment, but: do not let these beings fall into an evil destiny for so much as one day and one night. Not even one day and one night is allowed.

Further down the threshold is pressed lower still: those entrusted are the ones who within the Buddha’s Dharma have planted a small root of goodness, one hair, one mote, one grain of sand, one drop. All four figures are as small as small can be. And the thing to be done is only to guard them, so that they do not fall back.

That One Sound at the Door

The most urgent passage is here.

A person has already fallen according to his deeds; he is on the point of falling into a destiny, or has come as far as the door. He is at the door. All that can be done now is to be able to recite the name of one buddha, the name of one bodhisattva, one line or one verse of a sūtra of the Great Vehicle.

And what Kṣitigarbha is to do is: manifest a boundless body, break the hells to pieces for him, and send him to be born in the heavens and receive surpassing and wondrous pleasure.

When Kṣitigarbha’s turn to speak comes, he says only one thing: I pray that the World-Honored One will not make this his care. And then he reports his own threshold, one notch lower still than what the Buddha entrusted — within the Buddha’s Dharma, one thought of reverence, and he will deliver.

Two Lists, and the Same Last Item on Both

The last to ask is the Bodhisattva Ākāśagarbha. What he asks is a thoroughly practical question: how many kinds of blessed benefit can be gained.

The Buddha answers with two lists. The first has twenty-eight items, and among them are clothing and food in plenty, sickness and plague that do not come near, no calamity from thieves, ease in the dreams of the night, and the dead who have gone before parted from suffering — very nearly a list of everything a person will fear in a lifetime. The second has seven items, and there is not one worldly matter among them; every one of them is on the path.

The last item of both lists is exactly the same: at the last, becoming a buddha.

The twenty-seven before it and the six before it are all of them matters on the road.

This Sūtra Does Not Say That All Rejoiced Greatly

The last sentence of the sūtra is: the whole assembly gazed upon him and bowed once again, joined their palms, and withdrew.

No rejoicing, no receiving in faith and practice, no making obeisance and departing.

From that one sentence in the palace of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, that he taught the Dharma for his mother, to the breaking up of the assembly, all that is left is one gesture: palms joined, and then they withdraw.

The burning house is still burning. That one sound at the door has not yet been called out by anyone.