佛說阿彌陀經 心要連讀

The first ten lines of the Amitābha Sūtra set out, one by one, everything a Dharma assembly requires: a transmission heard with one’s own ears, the moment when speaker and hearer met, the Buddha who spoke, the Jeta Grove and Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, and a grove filled with people.

Then the Buddha spoke. No one had asked.

Five Things

These ten lines may be read as five things: so that trust may arise, “Thus have I heard”; speaker and hearer meeting, “at one time”; a teaching must have a teacher, “the Buddha”; a teaching must have a place, “in the Jeta Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, in the country of Śrāvastī”; and last, those to whom it is addressed — the ones who came to hear.

The five answer a single question: on what grounds may a stretch of speech be received as Dharma?

Sixteen Names, Eight Pairings

Of the twelve hundred and fifty great bhikṣus, the sūtra names sixteen. These sixteen names stand two by two: inner wisdom with outer powers, ascetic discipline with eloquence, realizing emptiness with knowing illusion, abandoning folly with departing from desire, wide learning with hidden practice, flowing springs with worthy offerings, converting greed with removing arrogance, giving medicine with feasting the saṅgha.

Not like doubled with like — two courses set side by side. The roster holds Śāriputra, whose wisdom stood out, and also Cūḍapanthaka, born beside a road; Ānanda of wide learning, and Rāhula of hidden practice. A single phrase of the sūtra — “such were the many great disciples” — gathers them all.

Then four bodhisattvas: Mañjuśrī, Ajita, Qiantuohedi, Nityodyukta. What “Qiantuohedi” means, a Tang commentator declared undetermined — what is not known is said to be not known, and nothing is supplied in its stead.

One Word: “Together”

Last come Śakra, lord of the gods, and an immeasurable multitude. With the three classes complete, the introduction closes on the single word “together.”

Those who had exhausted the afflictions and those still in training, those first in the list and those last, the human and the divine — all seated in one grove, awaiting one utterance.

And that utterance begins in the west: “From here, westward, past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands.”

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.

The preceding passage framed the land of Ultimate Bliss with three “sevenfold” rows. This passage suddenly draws close: a pool, the water in it, the sand on its floor, the steps at its edge, the pavilions above the steps, the flowers on the water.

The line of sight runs from below upward, then falls back to the surface of the water.

Eight Qualities

“Water of the eight excellent qualities fills them.”

The eight are: clear and pure, cool and clean, sweet, light and soft, moistening, calm and mild, removing hunger and thirst when drunk, nourishing the faculties once drunk.

The first six speak of the water itself — clear, cool, sweet, soft, moistening, mild; the last two speak of what the water does for the one who drinks it. The water of the Pure Land is not merely good water. It does something.

There is also a description handed down from of old: the water in these pools is shallow or deep according to one’s thought, rising or falling as the mind directs. The environment goes with the mind.

The Words Are Borrowed; the Things Are Not

The stairs and walks on the four sides use four precious substances; the pavilions use seven — gold, silver, beryl, crystal, giant-clam shell, red pearl, agate.

Of crystal, an ancient treatise says that it is ice of a thousand years in a mountain cave, turned into crystal. But the Pure Land has neither cold nor heat and no ice on its ground — where would the ice come from that could turn? So it is only stone of the same kind, not truly formed out of ice.

To speak of the matters of that land in the words of this one — the words are borrowed, the matters are not.

The Only Comparison

“The lotus flowers in the pools are as large as chariot wheels” — the only comparison in the whole passage, taking something visible in this world as a measure.

Then the four colours: “blue in colour with blue radiance, yellow with yellow radiance, red with red radiance, white with white radiance,” and at the end four words: “subtle and wondrous, fragrant and pure.”

Each of the four colours gives its own light. It is not one colour overriding the rest; it is four colours each standing on its own.

A Beat

“Śāriputra! The land of Ultimate Bliss is accomplished in adornments of such excellent qualities.”

This sentence begins here, and will recur again and again in what follows. One scene is told, and it gathers; another scene is told, and it gathers again.

The sūtra beats time with repetition, so that whoever reads knows where he has come to.

The two passages before this wrote of things: railings, nets, rows of trees, the pool, the lotuses. This passage begins to write of doings — how the people there pass a day.

Celestial music sounds in the air, and “gold forms the ground”; through the six periods of day and night flowers drift down; at clear dawn the beings gather flowers in the folds of their robes and set out, flying past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands to make offering to the buddhas; when the time for the meal comes they return, and when they have eaten, they walk.

Why There Is Still Day and Night There

The Pure Land has no ignorance and no dusk or dawn. On what ground, then, is “the six periods of day and night” spoken of?

The old answer does not argue from time but from the scene: flowers have opened at the golden waterside, and that is taken for daybreak; birds have gone back to roost in the jade grove, and that is taken for nightfall. The day and night there is not a brightness and darkness produced by sun and moon; it is a borrowed name for a rhythm.

It does not deny the sūtra’s wording, and it does not carry the mechanism of the human world across.

Mandārava Flowers

Sanskrit; rendered in Chinese as flowers that gladden the mind — lustrous, strangely fragrant, and whoever sees or smells them is eased in body and mind.

When the wind has blown the flowers withered, the ground opens to receive them, and then fresh flowers fall. The old is taken away, the new comes down — even the adornment is alive.

Those in the Perfect Place Leave It First Each Day

“The beings of that land, constantly at clear dawn, each gather many wondrous flowers in the fold of their robes and make offering to a hundred thousand koṭis of buddhas in other quarters.”

The fold of the robe is the front fold of a garment. Not a jewelled vessel, not a flower basket — they set out with the flowers gathered in the clothes on their own bodies.

There is a line here easily read past: the land of Ultimate Bliss has just been written as so complete, and the first thing those who live within it do each day is to leave it — to go to other buddha-lands, to make offering to other buddhas.

The Pure Land is not a terminus. It is a place one can set out from every day and return to every day.

A Meal No One Actually Eats

After coming back they do two things: eat, and walk.

Walking meditation is walking to and fro around the jewelled halls or the jade groves, like the warp threads on a loom passing back and forth. The feet tread the jewelled ground, the mouth recites the golden sūtra.

As for the meal — it is transmitted that if the people of that land wish to eat, vessels of the seven precious substances appear of themselves, filled with a hundred flavours; but in truth there is no one who eats: seeing the colour and smelling the fragrance is already the eating.

A meal that no one actually eats. The sūtra writes it like daily life, yet it reads as the state of meditative absorption.

Up to this passage, everything in the land of Ultimate Bliss has still been a thing: railings, nets, rows of trees, pool water, lotuses, the golden ground, the flowers from the heavens. All of it can be pictured, and none of it makes a sound.

In this passage that changes. The land begins to sound.

And what sounds is not the Buddha but a flock of birds; no one strikes an instrument — the wind passes through the trees and the nets.

The Seen and the Unseen, Ranged Together

The white swan, the peacock, the parrot, and the śāri are to be seen among humans; the kalaviṅka is the bird of wondrous sound, and the life-sharing bird has one body with two heads — these two are not to be seen.

The sūtra ranges them together and sets no high above low, just as the introduction ranged Śāriputra and Cūḍapanthaka on one and the same roster.

There is only one thing they all do in common: “in the six periods of day and night they send forth harmonious and refined sounds.” “Harmonious” is gentle; “refined” is wondrous and fine.

What They Sing

“Their sound sets forth and makes plain the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the eight limbs of the noble path, and such dharmas as these.”

This is no special gate of practice belonging to the Pure Land alone; it is the skeleton of the path held in common by the Buddha's Dharma — trust, exertion, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom; discernment of dharmas, exertion, joy, ease, mindfulness, concentration, equanimity; right view through to right concentration.

If one has supposed that birth in that land is a change to an easier road, on which these need no longer be cultivated, this line is waiting here.

What the birds there sing, in the six periods of day and night, is precisely what here, thought after thought, one cannot get up to.

The Buddha Blocks It Before Anyone Asks

Hearing that there are birds in the Pure Land, the mind gives a jolt: are animals not one of the three bad paths? Are there evil conditions there after all?

The Buddha does not wait to be asked, but wards it off first, and then tightens step by step: do not think in that way → why is this so → there are no three bad destinies there → not even the name “the three bad paths” is there, how much less the thing itself.

Then what are they? “All are made by the transformation of the Buddha Amitābha, who would have the sound of Dharma spread abroad.”

Why Birds and Not Buddhas

This is the deepest question in the passage.

The answer: to take a buddha's body would be nothing rare, and what is often seen no longer startles; it is by manifesting as numinous birds, seldom seen and hard to encounter, that the excellent thought this is hard to come upon can arise at all. Moreover, that land sets forth the Dharma everywhere in any case — the jade groves and jewelled nets all set forth the sound of Dharma, the flowing streams and the clear breeze all speak the true teaching.

In that place it is not only the Buddha who sets forth the Dharma. The trees speak, the nets speak, the water speaks, the wind speaks, the birds speak. One who practises, walking there, is not for a moment away from the Dharma — because there is not one thing that is not the Dharma.

The Two Words That Are Added

Within one passage the same landing-point appears twice: hearing the sound of the birds, “all of them recollect the Buddha, recollect the Dharma, recollect the saṅgha”; hearing the sound of the wind, “in all of them there naturally arises the mind that recollects the Buddha, recollects the Dharma, recollects the saṅgha.”

The second time has the word “naturally” added.

It is not deciding to recollect after hearing, nor reminding oneself that one ought to recollect — it arises of itself.

At this point it becomes plain that all those earlier words on the jewelled trees, the pool water, the golden ground, and the drifting flowers were not boasting of how beautiful a place is. They were describing what surroundings look like in which a thought is not dragged away.

We recollect the Buddha here, and after three phrases it scatters; the surroundings do not help, the surroundings pull. There it is otherwise: what the eye sees is jewelled trees, what the ear hears is the sound of Dharma, what the nose smells is heavenly flowers, what the foot treads is a golden ground — of everything the six sense-faculties touch, there is nothing that does not lead toward the Buddha, the Dharma, and the saṅgha.

What makes a Pure Land a Pure Land is not the worth of precious things, but its being a place where a thought is not dragged away.

So There; Of Here the Sūtra Says Nothing

This passage leaves two expressions behind: the look of the sound of Dharma is “harmonious and refined,” and the fruit of the sound of Dharma is that “in all of them there naturally arises the mind that recollects the Buddha, recollects the Dharma, recollects the saṅgha.”

The one is that the sound itself is gentle and wondrously fine; the other is that it arises of itself in the hearer's mind, with nothing forced.

So it is in that land. What the sounds of this land are like, and where the mind goes after hearing them, the sūtra does not say; and nothing is said here in its place.

For five passages the sūtra has been writing about that place. At this passage the lens turns for the first time to the lord of that place.

The way it turns is that the Buddha asks the question himself: “Why is that buddha called Amitābha?”

One name, two reasons.

Brightness Can Be Compared; Unobstructedness Cannot

“That buddha’s light is measureless; it shines upon the lands of the ten directions with nothing to obstruct it; he is therefore called Amitābha.”

The sūtra does not say that the light is very bright, very great, very far-reaching. What it says is that nothing can block it.

Brightness admits of comparison; unobstructedness does not.

Then Why Is It Not Seen?

If the light shines throughout the ten directions, why do the people of this world not see it?

The answer handed down from of old uses two similes: one with a film over the eye cannot see the sunlight — is the sunlight then at fault? One whose ears are deaf cannot hear the thunderclap — is the thunderclap then to blame?

It makes no excuse for the light, and it does not say that the light in fact fails to reach here. It turns the whole question over to the side of the one who receives.

Sunlight is not brighter for one and dimmer for another; the thunderclap is not louder for one than for another. The difference lies not in what is illuminated but in what can see.

Lifespan Is Not a Span but an Act of Continuing

“The lifespan of that buddha, and of the people of his land, is measureless and boundless asaṃkhyeya kalpas; he is therefore named Amitābha.”

Asaṃkhyeya is Sanskrit; rendered into Chinese it means “beyond all counting” — a number that cannot be counted to its end.

And lifespan: the definition handed down from of old is remarkably concrete. It is not a stretch of time fitted onto a body, but a kind of “sustaining” upon consciousness — the function that carries life on, portion after portion.

Just as “bliss” was earlier reduced to a kind of feeling, so “lifespan” is here reduced to a kind of quality. A word that looks like an adjective is reduced to a mental factor that can be pointed at.

Measureless Does Not Mean Beginningless

“Since Amitābha Buddha became a buddha, ten kalpas have now passed.”

The sentence before has only just said that the lifespan is measureless, boundless asaṃkhyeya kalpas, and immediately a definite figure is given. Measureless and ten kalpas stand side by side in the same passage, and the sūtra finds no difficulty in it at all.

The one is said of the lifespan, which has no end; the other is said of his becoming a buddha, which has a beginning.

Measureless does not mean without a beginning; it means without an end.

Neither Assembly Can Be Counted

“That buddha has measureless, boundless śrāvaka disciples, all of them arhats, beyond what the counting of numbers can know; and the bodhisattvas are likewise.”

The śrāvakas cannot be counted, and neither can the bodhisattvas; the sūtra passes over it with four characters, “and likewise,” drawing no ranking of higher and lower.

In the introduction, when names were listed, the śrāvakas came first and the bodhisattvas after. Here the two assemblies are alike measureless.

Light and Lifespan Catch Two Things

Light speaks of everywhere — there is no place it fails to reach; lifespan speaks of always — there is no moment at which it breaks off. Unobstructed in space, unending in time.

A name that is to be held and recited would leak if it held only one half of this: with light and no lifespan, it could reach one but could not wait for one; with lifespan and no light, it could wait for one but could not reach one.

And this name is the very name that the later text has one hold fast to. Before teaching anyone to hold the name, the sūtra first makes plain what is contained in it.

For five passages the sūtra has been speaking of that place: what is there, what the Buddha there is called, why he is so called. The hearer has stood outside all the while, looking on.

This passage turns the words around for the first time: “Beings who hear this should make the aspiration, wishing to be born in that land.”

Non-Retrogression Is a Property of the Place

“Those beings born in the land of Ultimate Bliss are all Abibazhi.” — Abibazhi is a Sanskrit word; its sense in Chinese is non-retrogression.

Retrogression is the most real situation of one who practises: the resolve made today has thinned by tomorrow; what was clear while reading the scripture is forgotten as soon as something happens.

Of old, non-retrogression was divided into five: trust does not retrogress, station does not retrogress, realization does not retrogress, practice does not retrogress, the afflictions do not cause retrogression.

And why does one dwelling there not retrogress? The answer is not “because that place is superb”; it is a list of five absences: no entanglement of sickness and pain, nothing that runs counter to practice, the scriptures and the Dharma constantly recited, good works constantly carried on, lasting concord with no contention.

Then one line is added: in this world people often retrogress, and turning those five around one will know why. And another: they are also drawn by objects of desire, and so have many retreats and setbacks.

Non-retrogression is not some marvellous blessing conferred; it is the sum of a set of conditions. The sūtra wrote five passages of that setting, and only here says what the setting is for.

Where Desire Remains, Turning Back Remains

In the Tang this was a real question: the palace of Maitreya in Tuṣita is also delightful and its companions are also many; why must it be the west?

The old answer is set out in ten comparisons. The most telling of them is this: in the west practice does not retrogress, in the heavenly palace practice may. For Tuṣita is still within the three realms and still has objects of desire; while objects of desire remain, retrogression remains.

The conclusion comes in eight characters: birth in the west is urged, forsaking the inferior and seeking the superior. Nor is it said that Tuṣita is bad — taken by itself Tuṣita surpasses the human world; only beside the western land does it appear slightly inferior.

The Real Reason Is the Company

The whole passage comes to rest in its last line: “For what reason? Because one can be gathered together in one place with such persons of superior goodness as these.”

So much has been said — non-retrogression, the final birth, the ten superiorities — and yet what is raised as the “for what reason” is the people.

The old gloss on this line used several pieces of this land’s own lore: to study together and bring one’s work to completion, one must rely on good conditions; Mencius’s mother moved house three times for her son’s sake, to a good place, and Confucius, thirsty, would not drink from the Robber’s Spring. To draw near the good is to stand beside orchids and take on their fragrance; to befriend the evil is to walk into a fishmonger’s stall and come away reeking.

So birth in the west is urged in order to draw near to excellent companions.

Where the Making of the Aspiration Is Placed

The order of this passage is worth seeing clearly: first what becomes of one who goes (non-retrogression, the final birth), then in the middle the one line “one should make the aspiration,” and then at once why it is worth going.

The making of the aspiration does not stand at the very front — people are not told to make it and then given the explanation; nor at the very end — it is not mentioned in passing once the reasoning is done.

The aspiration grows out of seeing clearly. It is not demanded; it is explained.

Only in the next passage does the sūtra begin to speak of how to go.

The Amitābha Sūtra runs to something over eighteen hundred characters. The part that actually says how one goes there is this passage alone — some hundred and fifty characters.

The Negation That Comes Before the Practice

“Śāriputra! One cannot, with meagre roots of goodness, merit, and causal conditions, attain birth in that land.”

Before the practice is stated, a negation is stated. What it blocks is a very natural thought: that land being so good, surely a little good done here and there, a few recitations uttered as they come, must leave one some chance.

One cannot.

But this line at once draws out a contradiction: since ten moments of mindfulness also bring birth there, why is it said that meagre roots of goodness do not?

The answer handed down is thoroughly plain: to say that ten moments attain birth is to draw in those who are indolent; to say that abundant good and causal conditions are required is to address those who are diligent. Whether stated at length or in brief, the principle is not contradicted.

One and the same matter must be spoken of differently to different people.

What Is Held Is Not a String of Syllables

“If there be a good man or a good woman who hears others speak of the Buddha Amitābha and holds fast to the name.”

And how is it heard? Two routes are handed down: hearing it from a good friend, or searching out and reading the scriptures oneself.

Then comes the holding of the name. Not visualization, not the cultivation of concentration, not the recitation of a long sūtra — it is holding on to a name.

And this name the preceding passage explained only a moment ago: light measureless, life measureless. What is held is not a string of syllables but those two things: illumination that pervades without obstruction, and that which never comes to an end.

Four Words You Can Check for Yourself

These four characters are the centre of gravity of the whole sūtra.

The explanation handed down is plain beyond expectation, and does not raise the phrase to the height of samādhi: single-minded means there is no interval at all in between; undisturbed means focused and unscattered.

That is all. Single-minded equals unbroken; undisturbed equals unscattered.

The merit of this explanation is that it can be checked. The depth or shallowness of samādhi cannot be measured by oneself, but whether there has been a break, and whether there has been scattering, is known at once. It reduces a requirement that sounds very high to something that can be taken in hand.

“Whether one day, or two days, or three days, or four days, or five days, or six days, or seven days” — seven occurrences of “whether” running on in succession, the only such parallelism in the whole sūtra. The sūtra does not prescribe seven days; it sets out one through seven, omitting none.

Standing on One's Own, or Being Held Up

“When that person draws near the end of life, the Buddha Amitābha, together with the whole holy multitude, appears before him.” “At the time of this person’s death, the mind is not inverted, and he straightway attains birth in the land of Ultimate Bliss of the Buddha Amitābha.”

What does “not inverted” mean? — right mindfulness is not moved.

Not the absence of pain, not a body at ease, not a graceful departure. It is that in that moment the right mindfulness within has not been moved away.

One thing must be said honestly: Xuanzang’s translation reads, at the very same position, “compassion adds its protection, causing the mind not to be disturbed” — saying that the mind’s freedom from disturbance comes about through the Buddha’s compassion adding its protection.

The one is as though he stood firm of himself; the other as though he were held up. This divergence touches the adjudication of self-power and other-power. Both recensions are recorded, and no judgement is made as to which is the right meaning.

How Could Mindfulness of the Buddha Match So Much Evil Karma?

The weightiest difficulty: evil karma is measureless and boundless; how could a few days’ mindfulness of the Buddha wipe it out?

The answer handed down is in three reasons with three similes — the mind that commits offences is a false and deluded mind, the mind mindful of the Buddha is a true and real mind, and to remove the false by means of the real is as a thousand years of darkness cannot withstand the first light of morning; committing offences is a defiled intent, mindfulness of the Buddha a pure mind, and the pure being superior to the defiled inferior is as a child wielding a blade can cut through a rope a thousand fathoms long, and a single spark of fire can burn ten thousand bundles of firewood.

The three similes say one thing: great quantity is not the same as great strength.

The quantity of evil karma and the quality of mindfulness of the Buddha are not weighed on the same scale.

The previous passage finished setting out the practice: hold fast to the name, single-minded and undisturbed, and at the end of life take birth in that land. With that much said, the teaching was in fact already complete.

But the sūtra does not stop. It draws the view out to the very farthest reach — east, south, west, north, below, above, six directions; in every one of them there are buddhas as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, each in his own land putting forth the mark of his tongue to cover over the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, and all of them saying one and the same sentence.

After It Became Too Simple to Believe

The passage of practice before it was said with extreme brevity: hold one name, seven days, and one can take birth in that land.

Brevity carried that far, and a person does not dare to believe it.

And so this passage appears. It states no further principle and gives no further method — it does one thing: it bears witness.

The sūtra’s own order is clear: first “Just as I now praise the inconceivable qualities of the Buddha Amitābha” — Śākyamuni speaking first, himself; only then do the buddhas of the six directions come forth.

One person speaking is the word of a single house; buddhas as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, speaking one and the same sentence in six directions at once, is not.

A Simile Must Use What Everyone Knows

The figure is used so familiarly that it becomes worth asking after all.

From of old, five reasons were given: that river’s sands are many; the people of the world hold it in common to be water of blessing; though aeons pass and are ruined, its name abides always; the Buddha often taught beside it; and — everyone knows it.

The last is the most solid. A simile has to be made of something everyone knows, or it does not carry.

The Evidence of Never Having Lied, Laid Open

“Each in his own land puts forth the mark of a broad, long tongue, covering over the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system.”

A broad and long tongue is the mark that is the fruit of never speaking falsely. To put forth the tongue in witness is to lay out, in plain sight, the evidence of a life in which no lie was told.

And how great is the three-thousandfold great-thousand? A thousand Mount Sumerus, a thousand suns and moons, a thousand sets of four continents, a thousand Brahmā kings make a small thousand; the small thousand multiplied to a thousand, and that again to a thousand — hence the three-thousandfold great-thousand.

One tongue covering a compass as great as that — this is not to have one picture a physiological scene; it is to have one weigh how much that sentence weighs.

Six Times, the Same Sentence

What the buddhas of the six directions speak is one sentence only: “You beings should trust this Sūtra Praising Inconceivable Qualities, Guarded and Kept in Mind by All Buddhas.”

Not one word more. None of them adds anything of his own, none elaborates anything of his own; it is the same sentence spoken six times.

And the content is very plain: you should trust.

Not you should cultivate, not you should realize, but you should trust. Up to this point the sūtra asks only two things of its hearer: to make the vow, and to believe.

The Repetition Is Itself the Meaning

Six sections identical in construction word for word, with only the direction and the buddha-names changed.

Taken as a piece of writing, this is redundancy; taken as a text for chanting, this is exactly its force.

A sentence said once is an assertion; said six times it becomes an echo. The east finishes and the south speaks; the south finishes and the west speaks — the hearer is encircled by one and the same sentence from six directions.

The previous passage spoke of being single-minded and undisturbed: the gathering of concentration. This passage, in its sixfold recitation, is the encircling of confidence. One inward and one outward, one gathered and one pervading.

The sūtra offers no explanation of why it repeats. It simply repeats.

The buddhas of the six directions have just pronounced a name six times over: The Sūtra of Praise for Inconceivable Merit, Guarded and Kept in Mind by All Buddhas. Six times pronounced, and no one explained it.

In this passage the Buddha explains it himself.

And this is the third time in the sūtra that the Buddha raises a question and answers it himself — the first asked why that land is named Ultimate Bliss, the second asked why that buddha is called Amitābha, and this one asks after the name of the sūtra.

The name of the land, the name of the buddha, the name of the sūtra: all three are asked by the Buddha himself and answered by himself. On the matter of names this sūtra never once consents to be vague.

Three Parties, One Act

“If there are good men and good women who hear this sūtra and uphold it, and who hear the names of the buddhas, these good men and good women are all together guarded and kept in mind by all the buddhas.”

Of old, three layers were distinguished within this one sentence. The good men and good women are those who are guarded. Those whose buddha-names are heard are the ones who guard and keep in mind. And “all together guarded and kept in mind by all the buddhas” is the guarding actually received.

Guarding does not happen from one side only. Someone is guarding, and someone must also enter the position of being guarded — and the way of entering is hearing and upholding.

As for why it is called the sūtra guarded and kept in mind, the answer given is plain: this sūtra is what the buddhas uphold and protect, clearly record, and keep in mind.

Not that reading it brings one protection, but that this sūtra is itself something the buddhas have never stopped keeping in mind.

“Not Turning Back From” Is Not “Already Arrived”

“All attain non-retrogression from unsurpassed perfect awakening.”

Of old the term was taken apart word by word: “a” is “without,” “nuttara” is “above,” “saṃ” is “right,” “myak” is “equal,” “saṃ” is “right,” “bodhi” is “awakening” — unsurpassed, right and universal, right awakening.

And what the sūtra says is “non-retrogression from” that awakening. Not obtained at once, but no turning back on the road toward it.

This and the line in unit six — “those beings born in the land of Ultimate Bliss are all of non-retrogression” — are two faces of one thing: there it is those born in that land who do not turn back; here it is those who hear this sūtra and hear these names.

Non-retrogression does not begin only after birth in that land.

The Name Is Primary, Not the Whole

Of old the question was itself raised: does one attain non-retrogression merely by recollecting Amitābha Buddha, or are there yet other skilful means?

The answer given: it is not only reciting and recollecting the name and paying homage; one should also, with utmost sincerity, before all the buddhas practise repentance, requesting, rejoicing, dedication, and making vows.

Holding the name is the principal thing, but that is not to say nothing else need be done.

(The relation between holding the name and the remaining practices is accounted for differently by later masters. Only the writing of one Tang house is recorded here.)

Three Things

“Therefore, Śāriputra, you should all receive in faith my words and what all the buddhas have spoken.”

By this point the sūtra has made three requests of those who hear: making the vow, believing, and receiving in faith.

The three are three sides of one thing — the vow is the direction of the mind, believing is the mind’s acceptance, receiving in faith is turning acceptance into a hold that keeps.

And in the whole sūtra only one passage says ‘what to do.’ What the rest set out is the grounds for believing that this is worth doing.

By this passage everything that had to be said has been said. What remains is the closing.

And the closing does three things: it opens the gate of aspiration as wide as it will go, it turns the direction of the testimony around, and at the end it says one very heavy sentence.

Where the Aspiration Is, the Birth Is

“If there are people who have already made the aspiration, who now make the aspiration, or who will make the aspiration, wishing to be born in the land of the Buddha Amitābha” … “and in that land they are either already born, or are now born, or will be born.”

Two triads of the three times, answering one another before and after. From of old they have been matched one to one: those who aspired already were born in the past, those who aspire now are born now, those who will aspire will be born in the future.

The symmetry is so exact that it is almost mathematical. But what it means to say is very plain: with aspiration there is no such thing as having missed it.

Whoever did not aspire in the past may aspire now; whoever does not aspire now may still aspire later. The sūtra sets no closing date, and does not say that one of the three times is better than another.

As for why making the aspiration is itself the attainment of non-retrogression, the answer given of old is a twofold support: first, that Buddha adds his unseen aid; second, this Buddha guards in silence — Amitābha lending hidden support from that side, Śākyamuni standing quiet watch on this side.

Two buddhas, one far and one near, holding up one and the same aspiration.

The Testimony Runs Both Ways

“Just as I now praise the inconceivable merits of the buddhas, so those buddhas also praise my inconceivable merits.”

In the eighth passage the buddhas of the six directions bore witness for Śākyamuni. Here that is turned around: Śākyamuni praises the buddhas, and the buddhas praise Śākyamuni.

The testimony runs both ways. It is not one party endorsing another; each bears witness for the other.

What Is Praised Is Awakening Amid the Dregs

And what the buddhas praise is not Śākyamuni’s wisdom, his powers, or his lifespan, but one very concrete thing: that in the evil age of five turbidities he attained awakening, and proclaimed for beings this Dharma hard to believe.

What is “turbidity”? The explanation given of old is plain: turbidity has the sense of dregs and filth — like the dregs and filth in food, low and foul and able to defile what it touches.

The turbidity of the aeon, of views, of afflictions, of beings, of lifespan — these are not five disasters but five aspects of one and the same age: the age has gone bad, views have gone bad, afflictions have grown heavy, the quality of beings has declined, and lifespans have shortened.

And one further word was added of old, from the reverse side: where beings have no suffering, the transformation-body buddha does not appear in the world.

A buddha appears in the world precisely because the age is bad enough.

And what is that “exceedingly difficult and rare deed”? — it is the deed of bearing suffering while teaching and converting beings. Not that awakening is difficult, but that awakening in such a place, and then speaking to such beings, is difficult.

The Last Word Is: Hard

“Know that in the evil age of five turbidities I carry out this difficult deed, attain unsurpassed perfect awakening, and proclaim for all the world this Dharma hard to believe — this is exceedingly difficult!”

Within one passage the word “difficult” stands five times.

The nine passages before it were all saying how good that land is and how simple that gate of practice is — and in the last sentence the Buddha says: in fact this is very hard.

Hard where? Not in the doing, but in the believing. What the sūtra says is “a Dharma hard to believe.”

Holding fast to the name, single-minded for seven days, is not hard to carry out; what is hard is believing that this is enough, believing that such a place really exists, believing that one utterance of a name outweighs the karma of measureless aeons.

So at the end the Buddha does not exhort once more; he admits: I know this is hard to believe, and I have said it all the same.

The practice is easy and the believing is hard — that is just how this sūtra stands.

And Departed

“When the Buddha had finished speaking this sūtra, Śāriputra and the bhikṣus, together with the gods, humans, asuras, and others of all the world, having heard what the Buddha had spoken, rejoiced and received it in faith, made obeisance, and departed.”

The last word of the introduction is “together” — everyone in one place. The last words of the transmission part are “and departed” — each going his own way.

A Dharma assembly ends here. The sūtra gives no account of what they did after they dispersed.

That part is not in the sūtra.

The last sentence of the preceding passage is “paid homage and departed.” The assembly dispersed; the Dharma gathering was over. Then comes the end-of-fascicle sūtra title.

A sūtra is finished at that point.

But the fascicle is not finished. After the title come seventeen more lines of text: a dhāraṇī, a passage on the merit of reciting it, a record of Nāgārjuna’s dream, an account of transmission and of the method of practice.

This passage is not the scriptural text translated by Kumārajīva.

Four Proofs, All on the Table

Four pieces of evidence, all of them there to be seen.

The structure of the Taishō itself divides it from the scriptural text into two regions; the Tang line-by-line commentary in three fascicles explains the sūtra sentence by sentence and at this passage explains not one word; the Tang hymn-text that sets the whole sūtra into a rite and recites it likewise stops at the scriptural text; and Xuanzang’s translation does not have this dhāraṇī at all.

For those of the seventh century who read this sūtra, who annotated this sūtra, and who recited this sūtra, the sūtra in their hands ended at the transmission part.

Then Why Is It Still Copied Out

Because it is on the fascicle.

The first rule of a translated and annotated edition is to set down what is there, not one character added, not one taken away — and so it is received; but to set it down and say nothing will not do either, for once the boundary blurs a reader will suppose that the Buddha spoke one more dhāraṇī at the end of the sūtra — and so it is marked for what it is.

To receive it is not to grant that it is scripture; and not to receive it would not make it cease to exist.

And in fact the passage makes no pretence of being scripture. One sentence in it is perfectly candid: “No scriptural text for it has come from abroad.” — this dhāraṇī has no scriptural text come from abroad; it was handed down by word of mouth.

The Blanks Are Syllables, Not Layout

The dhāraṇī runs like this: 南無阿彌多婆夜　哆他伽哆夜　哆地夜他……

Those blank spaces between the characters are not the blank space of the page layout; they are the separation of the syllables — telling the one who recites where to break, and which characters are to be carried in one breath.

Levelled away, it becomes a long stretch of sound with no way of knowing where to draw breath. What a dhāraṇī hangs upon is precisely its sound, and what its sound hangs upon is where it breaks; so here these blank spaces are content, and not one of them may be lost.

In the same line there is also a small note, 「〔上聲〕」, marking the tone of the last character of 「阿彌唎」 — someone copying a sūtra more than a thousand years ago left a reminder about pronunciation for those who would recite it later.

The Expounding of Dharma, and a Daily Office

Also worth looking at is the literary form of this appended text.

Six periods of day and night, twenty-one recitations at each. Morning and evening rinse the mouth and chew a willow twig, light incense, kneel before the image, join the palms, recite twenty-one times. Every day the same.

There is no sequence of visualization here, no work upon the ground of the mind — only times, counts, postures, and implements.

This is altogether unlike the ten passages before it. The scriptural text speaks of how adorned that land is, how weighty that name is, how hard that matter is to believe; this passage speaks of what hour to do it at, how many times to do it, and brushing the teeth before doing it.

Both kinds of writing remain on one and the same fascicle. At the one end, the expounding of Dharma; at the other, a daily office.

And what they point to is one and the same thing.