佛說阿彌陀經 極樂國土

The first thing the Buddha said when he opened his mouth was a direction: from here westward, past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands, there is a world called Ultimate Bliss.

First a direction, then a distance, and only at the last a name. The guiding tenet of the whole sūtra rests upon that place-name.

The Buddha There Is Teaching at This Moment

“In that land there is a buddha, called Amitābha, who at this moment is teaching the Dharma.”

The words “at present” sort this off from past and future: not that a buddha was once there, not that a buddha will be there, but that at this moment he is speaking. And the Dharma that buddha speaks at this moment is precisely what this sūtra will teach only later — holding fast to the name.

That practice has not come to an end.

Why It Is Spoken to the Śrāvakas

Here is something worth stopping to ask: why does the Buddha not address the bodhisattvas, but only Śāriputra?

The answer: the bodhisattvas have no seed of the defiled land remaining, and pure or defiled is all one to them; the śrāvakas still have discrimination, and this quarter and that seem to them each different — so that longing and admiration may be made to arise.

It is those who still recoil and still long who have need of this sūtra.

What the Bliss Is

The Buddha asks himself, “Why is that land named Ultimate Bliss?” and answers himself, “The beings of that country have none of the many sufferings but receive only the many pleasures.”

Earlier only the name was set out, and the reality was not yet made manifest; where nothing surpassing and wondrous is seen, the mind can hardly be set upon it — so the Buddha questions the name of the land himself, in order to display next what the pure land is like.

As for what the bliss is, the answer can be given very concretely: it is the pleasant feeling associated with the sixth consciousness.

Setting and Feeling, Gathered into One Name

Railings, nets, and rows of trees, sevenfold each, encircled round about by the four precious substances. The horizontal is called a rail, the upright a baluster; the nets are knotted of golden thread, set with every kind of jewel, and canopy over the groves.

Within a single passage Ultimate Bliss is concluded twice — once upon the absence of suffering and the presence of pleasure, once upon the adornment of the four precious substances. Feeling within and the object before the eyes are gathered into one name.

Kumārajīva’s translation, T12n0366, the head of the main body, from “At that time the Buddha said to the elder Śāriputra” to “therefore that country is named Ultimate Bliss.” The bracketed figures at the head of each segment give the Taishō page, register, and line.

〔1 · Pointing out the direction · Stating the measure · Revealing the name of the land · Making known the converting master · Setting forth his teaching〕（0346c10）At that time the Buddha said to the elder Śāriputra:

“From here, going westward, past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands, there is a world named Ultimate Bliss. In that land there is a buddha, called Amitābha, who at this moment is teaching the Dharma.

〔2 · Questioning the name of the land · Concluding as Ultimate Bliss〕（0346c12）Śāriputra! Why is that land named Ultimate Bliss? Because the beings of that country have none of the many sufferings but receive only the many pleasures — therefore it is named Ultimate Bliss.

〔3 · The four precious substances all around · Concluding again as Ultimate Bliss〕（0346c14）Again, Śāriputra! The land of Ultimate Bliss has sevenfold railings (the horizontal member is called a rail, the upright a baluster — that is, a balustrade), sevenfold nets (nets that canopy the groves, knotted of golden thread and hung with every kind of jewel), and sevenfold rows of trees, all of them formed of the four precious substances — gold, silver, beryl, and crystal — encircling the land round about, layer upon layer; therefore that country is named Ultimate Bliss.

The first thing the Buddha said when he opened his mouth was not a principle but a direction: “From here, westward, past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands.”

First a direction, then a distance, and only then a name. The sequence is worth a pause — a sūtra that teaches holding fast to the name opens by giving not a name but a coordinate.

Pointing Out the Direction

These few lines may be taken apart into seven items: pointing out the direction, stating the measure, revealing the name of the land, making known the converting master, setting forth his teaching, questioning the name of the land, and concluding as Ultimate Bliss. The first three all say one and the same thing — where that place is, how far it is, what it is called.

“From” points out the direction, this land pointing far off to the west; “past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddhas” states the measure; “there is a world named Ultimate Bliss” reveals the name of the land.

The guiding tenet of a sūtra usually rests upon a doctrine. Here it rests upon a place-name — a land whose direction can be pointed out, whose distance can be counted, which has a name of its own. It does not begin with a principle; it gives a place first.

There Is a Buddha There, Teaching at This Moment

The fourth and fifth items: “In that land there is a buddha, called Amitābha, who at this moment is teaching the Dharma.”

The words “at present” sort this off from past and future: not that a buddha was once there, not that a buddha will be there, but that at this moment he is speaking. And the Dharma that buddha speaks at this moment is precisely what this sūtra will teach only later — holding fast to the name.

This line is therefore not merely a description of the setting. It says that the practice is still being proclaimed at this moment; it is not an episode already concluded.

Why Only Śāriputra Is Told

Here is something worth asking about: why does the Buddha not address the bodhisattvas, but only the śrāvakas?

The answer runs: the bodhisattvas have no seed of the defiled land remaining, and to dwell in a pure land or a defiled one is all one to them; the śrāvakas have not yet removed discrimination, and the defiled quarters seem to them each different — so that longing and admiration may be made to arise in them, only the śrāvakas are addressed.

That answer turns the question of whom the teaching is spoken to into something that carries meaning. The teaching of the pure land is not spoken to those for whom pure and defiled have already ceased to matter; it is spoken to those who still recoil and still long. Recoiling and longing are not, here, afflictions to be pressed down, but momentum to be put to use.

None of the Many Sufferings, Only the Many Pleasures

The Buddha then asks himself: “Why is that land named Ultimate Bliss?” And he answers himself: “The beings of that country have none of the many sufferings but receive only the many pleasures; therefore it is named Ultimate Bliss.”

The purpose of asking and answering in one mouth is not hard to see. Earlier only the name Ultimate Bliss was set out, and the reality of Ultimate Bliss was not yet made manifest; where nothing surpassing and wondrous is seen, the mind can hardly be set upon it. So the Buddha questions the name of the land once more himself, in order to display next what the pure land is like.

The name is given first, the content supplied afterwards. This is a sequence of teaching — a name is remembered first, and then what the name holds is understood.

Three Sevenfolds

Last come the railings, the nets, and the rows of trees, sevenfold each, all encircled round about by the four precious substances.

“The horizontal is called a rail, the upright a baluster” — the rail runs across, the baluster stands upright; the nets are “knotted of golden thread and set with every kind of jewel,” canopying over the groves. Which four the four precious substances are the sūtra does not list here: the names gold, silver, beryl, and crystal appear only in the next passage, at the stairways on the four sides of the pools of seven precious substances.

Within a single passage the name Ultimate Bliss is concluded twice: “therefore it is named Ultimate Bliss,” and “therefore that country is named Ultimate Bliss.” The first conclusion rests upon the absence of suffering and the presence of pleasure, the second upon the adornment of the four precious substances. Feeling within and object without are both gathered into one name.

How Can a Place-Name Serve as a Sūtra’s Guiding Tenet?

The guiding tenet of most Mahāyāna sūtras is a doctrine that can be stated. This one is otherwise: its tenet rests upon a place that has a direction, a distance, and a name.

This is often misread as shallowness — as though speaking of principles were the deep thing, and speaking of a place were meant for those of lesser capacity.

But look at the order in which the sūtra sets things down: first the direction, then the distance, then the name; then that there is a buddha there and that he is teaching; and only at the last does it turn back to explain what the name means. The words “Ultimate Bliss” are remembered first, and the content is supplied afterwards.

This is a sequence of teaching. One may not be able to understand “none of the many sufferings, receiving only the many pleasures” at the outset, and yet a name and a direction can be remembered first. The name enters first and the doctrine follows after — rather than the name being withheld until the doctrine is understood entire.

Only at the later line about holding fast to the name does the purpose of this sequence come fully into view. The introduction gave a personal name first, Śāriputra; this passage gives a place-name, Ultimate Bliss, and a buddha’s name, Amitābha; and the whole sūtra comes to rest at the last upon holding the name. From beginning to end this sūtra teaches that a name is to be taken hold of first.

Where Suffering and Pleasure Fall

“The beings of that country have none of the many sufferings but receive only the many pleasures.”

This line is easily read as a promise: no pain there, only happiness. But the Cien line explains the bliss very concretely — the bliss is the pleasant feeling associated with the sixth consciousness. That is, the pleasure the sūtra speaks of is not an abstract adjective but a mental fact that can be identified: feeling.

Suffering and pleasure are, in the Buddha’s Dharma, the two ends of feeling. To say of a land that it has “none of the many sufferings but receives only the many pleasures” is to say that feeling there does not run in the direction of suffering.

And where does feeling come from? From the meeting of faculty, object, and consciousness. The passage above has already given the object: sevenfold railings, sevenfold nets, sevenfold rows of trees. The passages that follow will give it in still finer detail. The objects are written out in such detail precisely because feeling is bound to objects.

As for why the Buddha addresses only the śrāvakas and not the bodhisattvas, the answer lies along the same line: for the bodhisattvas pure and defiled are no longer discriminated, while for the śrāvakas they still are — they still recoil, and they still long. And recoiling and longing are not, here, afflictions to be pressed down, but momentum to be put to use.

Where This Passage Stands in the Whole Sūtra

The main body of the Amitābha Sūtra falls into six great divisions: setting out the pure land as guiding tenet and fruit; making clear the excellence of the causes of Ultimate Bliss; the buddhas bearing witness; the three who will be born making their vow; those honoured ones giving praise; and our Buddha setting forth and alone declaring the difficult matter.

This passage is the opening of the first division. And the first division runs on as far as the later words “to be gathered together in one place with such persons of superior goodness” — that is, from here onward the pools of water, the heavenly music, the golden ground, the drifting flowers, the many birds, and the Buddha’s light and lifespan, told over several passages, all belong to one and the same business: laying the fruit open first.

Fruit before cause is this sūtra’s order. Only at the second division, “Śāriputra! One cannot be born in that land by few roots of goodness or few blessings and merits as one’s cause,” does it begin to say how one goes there; and the most famous line of the whole sūtra, holding fast to the name, single-minded and undisturbed, comes later still.

The arrangement deserves notice. The sūtra does not give the method first and the benefit after; it describes that place plainly and fully, and only then says how one crosses over. The name first, then the scene, and the method last.

So the verdict that “the land of Ultimate Bliss is precisely the guiding tenet of this sūtra” is not merely a label within an outline: the whole sūtra does indeed unfold around that land, and the method is only the road that leads there.

The Weight of Three Words: “Now, at This Moment”

Return to the line “at this moment he is teaching the Dharma.”

If a sūtra says that some buddha once taught, that is history; if it says that one will teach, that is aspiration. What this sūtra says is that he is speaking now.

And what is spoken has already been pointed out above: it is the holding fast to the name that this sūtra will teach later. That is, the practice the text points to is neither an episode already concluded nor a promise not yet begun — it is being proclaimed, and has been spoken from ten kalpas ago down to the present.

If the name is held here, what is held is not a memory.

Carrying Forward — One Asks After Its Substance, One Answers with a Vow

Above is the meaning of this passage itself. Below, two Tang eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra; only the same passage, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line reads Ultimate Bliss as a name and a substance that can be analysed. At this passage Kuiji marks directly that “the land of Ultimate Bliss is precisely the guiding tenet of this sūtra,” and sets up seven gates to explain it: explaining the name, setting out the substance, distinguishing the nominal from the real, sorting out what is with outflow and what is without outflow, discriminating the five positions, gathering them under the three categories, and resolving objections raised against it. Explaining the name he says, “‘World’ carries the sense of what can be broken and destroyed; ‘realm’ is the demarcation of a region.” As to the bliss, his answer is exceedingly concrete: “the bliss belongs to the one who dwells there; it is the pleasant feeling associated with the sixth consciousness.” To explain the name of a land by a feeling associated with the sixth consciousness is to read the pure land within the framework of the marks of dharmas — and that is precisely the grain this mirror brings to light.

On what the four precious substances are, he first raises one account, that “they may be gold, silver, coral, and amber,” adducing in evidence the scene described in the Sūtra of Auspicious Marks, where trees of the seven precious substances serve one another as branch and leaf, flower and fruit; and at the last he returns to the present sūtra to settle it — “precisely on the basis of the present sūtra” — as gold, silver, beryl, and crystal. Two accounts stand together in one commentary; the later states the ground it rests upon, and the later is followed here, while the earlier is recorded and not discarded.

He also cites the Contemplation Sūtra — another sūtra on the same axis, brought in to supply the detail of the nets upon the trees. The sūtras of this axis have always explained one another; the Tang commentators were already reading them so. And his citation carries four characters more, “all of them pearl,” which the received Contemplation Sūtra lacks: recorded without adjudication.

The Shandao line, in the Liturgical Hymns, having recited this passage through, follows it with “Aspire to be born there, aspire to be born there. The great compassion of all buddhas is not two.” No analysis of name and substance; the vow is made directly.

The same passage: on one side it is asked what the bliss is, on the other it is answered with an aspiration to be born there. What the two do with it differs; both are recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.