佛說阿彌陀經 義疏通講

Most sūtras open with a question. In the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, Ratnākara offers a canopy and asks about the pure land; in the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life, Vaidehī, imprisoned, begs for a place of peace. The Amitābha Sūtra has none of this. The introduction sets five things in place — the hearing, the time, the Buddha, the place, and the assembly — and then the Buddha simply begins to speak.

The introduction offers no explanation for this. It only assembles the conditions for a Dharma assembly, and then stops.

Five Things, None of Which May Be Missing

The introduction ends at “together with an immeasurable multitude of gods.” Within this passage five things may be read out clearly: “Thus have I heard,” spoken so that trust may arise; “at one time,” marking the meeting of speaker and hearer; “the Buddha,” since a teaching must have a teacher; “in the Jeta Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, in the country of Śrāvastī,” since a teaching must have a place; and last, those to whom it is addressed — the three classes of the assembly.

These five look like convention. Set side by side, however, they are found to answer a single question: on what grounds may a stretch of speech be received as Dharma?

I heard it myself — this is transmission. At that time — this is the moment when speaker and hearer actually met. The Buddha — this is who spoke. The Jeta Grove — this is where it was spoken. These people were present — these are the ones able to understand it and able to pass it on. Let any one of the five be missing, and everything that follows hangs in the air.

Why Śāriputra Stands First

Of the sixteen great disciples, Śāriputra is named first. This is worth pausing over: more than a thousand arhats had come to the Jeta Grove, all of them possessing the three knowledges and established in the fourth fruit. Why should the son of the śāri bird come first in the list?

The answer lies not in rank but in this particular assembly. Śāriputra’s eloquence surpassed that of ordinary śrāvaka sages and his wisdom stood out among his peers; on Vulture Peak he was the one who requested the teaching on the assembly’s behalf, and at Śrāvastī he was foremost among those who heard the sūtra. To place him first violates nothing.

What deserves notice is the shape of that answer. It does not say that Śāriputra is the greatest; it says what office he holds in this particular sūtra. Throughout the Amitābha Sūtra the Buddha calls only one person by name — Śāriputra. The three characters occur thirty-eight times. By placing that name at the very front, the introduction gives every later call its footing.

And Śāriputra is precisely the one placed under “inner wisdom” in the eight pairs. The Buddha speaks the practice that appears to require the least analytical wisdom — holding fast to the name — to the man of inner wisdom. The introduction does not remark on this. It only arranges the people.

Sixteen Names, Paired Two by Two

The sixteen disciples may be read as eight pairs: 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.

This reading turns a list of names into a figure. Śāriputra’s wisdom stands opposite Maudgalyāyana’s powers; Kāśyapa’s asceticism opposite Kātyāyana’s eloquence; Ānanda’s wide learning opposite Rāhula’s hidden practice. No pair is a doubling of like with like; each sets two different courses beside one another.

Nor is the roster made only of the illustrious. Cūḍapanthaka is “roadside-born,” placed under “abandoning folly” among the eight pairs; Gavāṃpati still bore the appearance of a chewing ox through former karma; Nanda was the Buddha’s own younger brother, and even the “beauty” in his name “delight in beauty” was taken from his wife’s. These men sat in the same assembly as Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. The introduction assigns them no grades — the single phrase “such were the many great disciples” gathers them all.

Then come four bodhisattvas. Mañjuśrī is called Prince of the Dharma; Ajita is Maitreya; Nityodyukta surpasses each moment the moment before. As for Qiantuohedi, a Tang commentator left four words in that place: the rendering is not determined. What is not known is said to be not known. That is followed here, and nothing is supplied in its stead.

From the Gods to the Word “Together”

Last come Śakra, lord of the gods, and an immeasurable multitude. With the three classes of the assembly — śrāvakas, bodhisattvas, and gods — now complete, the introduction draws to a close.

It closes on the single word “together.” That word gathers every difference into one place: those who have exhausted the afflictions and those still in training, those whose wisdom stood out and those of ordinary capacity, the renunciants and the gods — all seated in one grove, awaiting one utterance.

Then the Buddha spoke. He waited for no one to ask.

Why Read These Ten Lines to the End

The introduction is often treated as a preamble and skipped. The real content of a sūtra seems to begin only when the Buddha opens his mouth; what comes before is announcement.

Read to the end, however, these ten lines are seen to be doing something quite specific: they set out what conditions must hold together for an utterance to become a Dharma one can rely upon.

Someone heard it with his own ears, so there is transmission. Speaker and hearer did meet in that moment, so it is not imagined. The one who spoke was the Buddha, so there is authority. There was a definite place, so it is not out of nowhere. And those present were able both to understand and to transmit, so it will not be cut off. Let one of the five be missing, and what follows hangs in the air.

This structure is not peculiar to the Amitābha Sūtra. Every sūtra opens so; only here it is unusually bare — no requester, no prelude, no display of powers. The five are set out, and the Buddha speaks.

The way the sūtra arranges people says something too. The sixteen great disciples stand two by two, and no pair doubles like with like: wisdom with powers, asceticism with eloquence, wide learning with hidden practice. The roster holds the most renowned and also one born beside a road, of ordinary capacity; those who had exhausted the afflictions, and Ānanda who was still in training. Among the four bodhisattvas there is even one whose name the most exacting Tang analyst of terms declared undetermined.

Of these differences the sūtra offers not one word of comment. It gathers them with six characters — “such were the many great disciples” — and then joins the three classes with the single word “together.”

A Dharma assembly comes about not because those present are alike, but because they are present together.

That Utterance Begins in the West

The last word of the introduction is “together.” The next sentence is: “At that time the Buddha said to the elder Śāriputra.”

Twelve hundred and fifty were seated, the fourfold assembly had gathered, the gods were beyond number — and when the Buddha spoke, he called one name.

The one so called stands under “inner wisdom” among the eight pairs. Yet the practice about to be taught is the one later given as holding fast to the name — a practice requiring no analysis, no eloquence, only the holding of a name without letting go.

The sūtra does not explain this arrangement. It only arranges the people first, and then speaks.

Carrying Forward — Three Readings, Each in Its Own Place

Above is the meaning of these ten lines themselves. Below, two Tang eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra; only the same Dharma assembly, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary on the Amitābha Sūtra. He divides the whole sūtra into three parts, the introduction ending at “and Śakra, lord of the gods, together with an immeasurable multitude of gods”; within the introduction he sets aside the older sixfold division and follows the Buddhabhūmi treatise in dividing it into five. He reads the sixteen disciples as eight pairs and the four bodhisattvas as two, tracing every name to its Sanskrit form, to its karmic occasion in former lives, and to its position in the outline. “Elder,” he says, holds two senses: “first, advanced in years and seniority; second, broad in learning and deep in understanding.” Why Śāriputra stands first he sets as a question and then answers. This is the way of doctrinal analysis — reading the sūtra as a figure that can be opened out layer by layer.

Worth recording is his sense of measure. Explaining “Qiantuohedi,” he writes that the rendering is not determined, and in the same breath collates the name against Xuanzang’s new translation, The Sūtra on Praising the Pure Land and the Buddha’s Embrace, noting that in that recension the third bodhisattva is named “Never Resting.” That a member of Xuanzang’s own line should read Kumārajīva’s older version and check its names against the new one is internal evidence of the chain of transmission — and his count does not agree with the received text, which is recorded without adjudication.

The Shandao line is the reading of ritual practice. In the Liturgical Hymns for Turning the Sūtra and Walking the Path in Aspiration for Birth in the Pure Land, this introduction is recited without the alteration of a single character, and the recitation is followed by a hymn: “Aspire to be born there, aspire to be born there. The great compassion of all buddhas is not two.” No outline is imposed, no question set. Here the introduction is not an object of analysis but the content of chant.

The third reading is the manuscript speaking for itself. The text Shandao recited reads “a great assembly of bhikṣus” where the base text has “a great saṅgha of bhikṣus”; it also reads Maudgalyāyana, Kātyāyana, Cūḍapanthaka, and Vakkula in the graphic forms later found in the variant column of the Song, Yuan, and Ming printings. The Amitābha Sūtra on which seventh-century ritual depended and the base text printed today are not identical in fine detail. This is not enough to alter one character of the base text, but it lets one see that the sūtra was carried down alive.

Ten lines at the opening of a sūtra: read as structure by one, as sound by another, and leaving its own graphic forms in a reciter’s hands. The three do different work; recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.

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.

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 lotuses on the water.

The line of sight runs from below upward, then falls back to the surface of the water. These few lines may be divided into seven sections — the pools of seven precious substances are deep, the water of the eight qualities is full, golden sand forms the ground, jade courses form the steps, vermilion pavilions rise into the air, precious lotuses cover the water, the conclusion completes Ultimate Bliss — and that division follows just this line of sight.

The Water of Eight Qualities

“Water of the eight excellent qualities fills them” — Kumārajīva’s translation gives only the name, and does not list which eight the eight qualities are.

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. Xuanzang’s translation writes these eight names directly into the text of the sūtra; in Kumārajīva’s recension they are supplied by the commentators of former times, and the two correspond one by one.

Of the eight, the first six speak of the quality 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 — removing hunger and thirst, nourishing the faculties. The first six are the environment; the last two are what the environment does to a person. The water of the Pure Land is not merely good water. It does something.

A description handed down from of old adds that the water in these pools is “shallow or deep according to one’s thought, rising or falling as the mind directs.” The depth of the water changes with the movement of the mind — a sentence that joins environment to mind, and echoes the reading of the preceding passage: bliss is the pleasant sensation associated with the sixth consciousness.

Seven Kinds of Precious Substance

The stairs and walks on the four sides use four precious substances; the pavilions use seven. Each of the seven names has its own provenance: beryl is Feiliuli in the Indic language and has five kinds of colour; giant-clam shell is Mousuoluojielapo, blue and white intermingled; red pearl is a pearl whose body is red of itself; agate is Eshimojiepo, rendered in Chinese as “pestle-store.”

Of these, crystal is the most interesting. The Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom says that crystal comes out of caves in the mountain rock, being ice of more than a thousand years that has turned into crystal. But the Pure Land has neither cold nor heat, and there is no ice on its ground — where would the ice come from that could turn? So it is only of the stone kind, not truly formed out of ice — and here the commentators of former times refuted the very account of origins that they had themselves cited.

This is a small place, and yet the measure proper to reading a sūtra can be seen in it. The simile is taken from this world, and what causes a thing in this world need not carry over to that land; what is taken is the name and mark, not the origin. To speak of the matters of that land in the words of this one: the words are borrowed, the matters are not.

Four Colours, Four Radiances

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 come the four colours: blue in colour with blue radiance, yellow with yellow radiance, red with red radiance, white with white radiance.

Xuanzang’s recension spreads this out further: blue in form, blue in appearance, blue in radiance, blue in reflection — four layers to each of the four colours, sixteen members in all. Kumārajīva takes the briefer course.

Why four colours? The answer handed down is signification: the four colours are real and without falsity, signifying that those born in the Pure Land have no flattery or crookedness in mind and no empty words in speech; and signifying also the realization of the four nirvāṇas and the obtaining of the four wisdoms.

The Conclusion

“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. Commentators of former times, reaching this point, wrote no more than a single line: “Seventh, the conclusion completing Ultimate Bliss — this may be understood.”

A sentence that needs no further explanation, recurring at the close of every passage. It works like a beat: one scene is told, and it gathers; another scene is told, and it gathers again. The sūtra builds a rhythm out of repetition, so that whoever reads knows where he has come to.

Why a Sūtra Teaching Recollection of the Buddha Describes So Many Treasures

What the Amitābha Sūtra actually asks a person to do occupies only a short passage later on: to hear the name, to hold fast to it, to be single-minded and undisturbed. This great expanse before it — jewelled trees, jewelled pools, golden sand, pavilions, lotuses — looks like scene-setting.

But look closely at the order of this passage, and it is found to be not scene-setting but the construction of an environment.

The line of sight goes up from the floor of the pools to the pavilions, and then falls back to the flowers on the water — inch by inch that place is built up. The water is not merely good water; it has eight qualities, two of which do something specifically for the one who drinks: removing hunger and thirst, nourishing the faculties. Even the water is benefiting people.

This is how this passage stands to the recollection of the Buddha. Recollection of the Buddha does not happen out of nowhere; it happens in some place, surrounded by certain things. What this passage describes is a place in which not one thing is an obstacle.

Only when the next passage has the birds and the wind begin to speak the Dharma is that line fully joined: the environment not only fails to obstruct, the environment itself teaches. Here the ground is laid first — the environment is pure, it benefits people, and it can be relied upon.

Four Colours, Each Giving Its Own Light

“Blue in colour with blue radiance, yellow with yellow radiance, red with red radiance, white with white radiance.”

The four colours stand side by side in wholly equal syntax. No colour overrides another, and no colour is a foil to another — each gives the light of its own colour.

The reading handed down sees signification here: the four colours are real and without falsity, signifying that those born in the Pure Land have no flattery or crookedness in mind and no empty words in speech. What is real need not borrow another colour to adorn itself.

And this picture answers the introduction. There the roster set those whose wisdom stood out beside those of ordinary capacity, those already liberated beside those still in training, and drew no distinction among them. Here the four colours, each giving its own light, say the same thing: together in one pool, each is its own colour.

Borrowed Words

There is one more small place worth recording.

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 the commentators of former times refuted the account of origins they had themselves cited: it is only stone of the same kind, not truly formed out of ice.

This is the measure to be kept in reading this great expanse of treasures. To speak of the matters of that land in the words of this one: the words are borrowed, the matters are not. Gold, silver, beryl, giant-clam shell — these words are taken from the most costly things of this world, so that a person has somewhere to set his footing; but what is taken is the name and mark, not the cause, and not the price.

That the Pure Land is a pure land does not lie in the treasures being worth money.

“As Large as a Chariot Wheel”

The one comparison in the whole passage falls on the lotus: “the lotus flowers in the pools are as large as chariot wheels.”

The jewelled trees have no comparison, the water of the pools has none, the pavilions have none — only the flowers are measured, once, by a thing of this world.

A chariot wheel was something the people of that age saw every day; its dimensions are definite, and a person can take hold of it. The sūtra has written so much inconceivable adornment, and just here, at the flowers, it stops and gives a size that can be imagined.

The work of a comparison is not to describe more precisely; it is to let a person take hold. Of the seven precious substances and the water of eight qualities the hearer can only stand in awe; at the chariot wheel there is suddenly a scale to measure against, and only then does that flower really rise into view.

And the flower is where, later in the sūtra, those born in that land lodge their substance. Here the sūtra first lets one see how large it is.

A Sentence That Recurs

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

This is the first occurrence of the sentence. Thereafter, each time a scene has been described, it comes again: once in the passage on the heavenly music and the offerings, once in the passage on the birds and the sound of Dharma.

Commentators of former times, reaching this point, wrote no more than a single line: “Seventh, the conclusion completing Ultimate Bliss — this may be understood.” Nothing further need be explained — because it was never there to be explained. It is a beat.

What does a sūtra do with repetition? At least two things.

The first is gathering. The scenes of Ultimate Bliss could be written without end; each passage is gathered once, so that whoever reads does not get lost among the details. To gather on the same sentence is to return each time to the same place.

The second is that it can be chanted. This sūtra has been chanted since ancient times, and not only read. A recurring sentence has its own place in the mouth; Shandao set the whole sūtra into a liturgy to be recited there, and it is exactly this rhythm that such recitation rests upon.

A sentence needing no further explanation, recurring at the close of every passage — those who expound the meaning may pass over it, while those who chant depend on it to carry them the whole way.

Carrying Forward — One Way of Signification, One Way of Recitation

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

The Cien line exerts itself most deeply in this passage. Kuiji divides it into seven sections and glosses them one by one, giving in turn the Indic name and the substance of each of the seven precious substances, supplying the eight names of the eight qualities that Kumārajīva’s recension leaves out, and setting the four-coloured lotuses as a question which he answers by signification — “signifying that those born to dwell in the Pure Land have no flattery or crookedness in mind and no empty words in speech, and that they realize the four nirvāṇas and obtain the four wisdoms.” “The four wisdoms” is a term of the Dharma-characteristics school; to read a short sūtra, to read as far as a pool of lotuses, and to read out of it the turning of consciousness into wisdom — that is the character of this line.

The side-witnesses he cites are worth recording too: the Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom on the provenance of crystal, the Sūtra of Auspicious Response on the length, breadth, and depth of the pools and the sandalwood on their banks, the Sūtra of Pure Awakening on the water following the mind, and the Contemplation Sūtra adding one layer more. Four citations within a single passage — sūtra, treatise, and a sūtra of the same axis used together, which is just the manner of this line: it would rather say the thing plainly. And that he should cite a treatise and then himself refute its account of origins is the same kind of care.

The Shandao line continues its recitation in the Liturgical Hymns: “Again, Śāriputra. In the land of Ultimate Bliss. There are pools of seven precious substances. Water of the eight excellent qualities. Fills…” The phrasing is strung together with full stops; there is no division into sections and no signification — the pool of water is simply recited out.

The one would have its reader see what this pool of water signifies; the other would have its reader chant the pool of water out loud. What the two do differs; both are recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.

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 the ground is of gold; 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.

Within one passage, four matters — the sky filled with celestial music, the ground spread with gold, flowers raining from the vast sky, the people travelling to the many lands — are strung upon the order of a single day.

Why the Pure Land Still Has “Day and Night”

There is a sharp question here. In the western pure land the realm is excellent and the ground extraordinary; its people have no ignorance left and the land has neither dusk nor dawn. On what ground, then, is “day and night” spoken of?

The answer handed down does not argue from time itself but from the scene: flowers have opened at the golden waterside, and that is taken for the meaning of daybreak; birds have gone back to roost in the jade grove, and that is taken for the look of nightfall — unlike the day and night of this world, where light and dark are each of a different sort.

That is to say, the “day and night” there is not a brightness and darkness produced by sun and moon. It is a borrowed name for a rhythm. The sūtra says six periods of day and night so that the hearer may have a round of hours he can picture, not to say that the sun really sets in that land.

The measure of this answer is worth recording. It does not deny the sūtra’s wording, and it does not carry the mechanism of the human world across. It is the same way of reading as the previous passage’s “crystal is not really formed from ice.”

The Name of a Flower

“Mandārava” is Sanskrit; in Chinese it means flowers that gladden the mind. Lustrous, strangely fragrant; whoever sees them or smells them is eased in body and mind.

After the flowers have fallen there is a further stretch. The flowers that the wind has blown withered — the ground opens to receive them, and then fresh flowers fall again and adorn this golden ground anew. The Lotus Sūtra’s “a fragrant wind blows away the withered flowers, and fresh fine ones rain down anew” is precisely this scene.

A ground on which spent flowers never pile up. The old is taken away, the new comes down — even the adornment is alive, not an ornament set there unmoving.

Going Out, and Coming Back

“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. The two words “making offering” have their gloss as well: to bring forth goods and present them is called offering; that which takes in and sustains is nourishing.

Then the return: “at mealtime they return to their own land, eat, and practise walking meditation.”

There is a place here easily read past. The sūtra says that the people of that land go out. The land of Ultimate Bliss has just been written as so complete, and the first thing those who live within it do is to leave it — to go to other buddha-lands, to make offering to other buddhas, to hear other Dharma.

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

The Meal and the Walking

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, and so it is called walking the warp; the feet tread the jewelled ground, the mouth recites the golden sūtra.

As for “eating” — it is transmitted that if the people of that land wish to eat, vessels of the seven precious substances appear of themselves, filled with food of a hundred flavours; but “though there is such food, in truth there is no one who eats; merely seeing the colour and smelling the fragrance, they take that as their eating.” If so, does this not contradict the other sūtra that speaks of eating? The answer: that is spoken with reference to a manifested eating — what fault is there in it? And if one asks further what the food of the Pure Land actually is, the answer is that with reference to the pure land of true recompense, meditative delight is the savour.

A meal that no one actually eats. The sūtra writes it like daily life and glosses it like meditative absorption — neither side is struck out.

Within One Day, the Dharma Never Stops

Lay out the order of hours in this passage: the celestial music sounds at all times, the flowers fall through the six periods of day and night, the going out to make offering falls at clear dawn, the coming back to eat and to walk falls at mealtime.

Within one day there is not one empty stretch.

And among these doings, not one draws a line between “time for practice” and “time not for practice.” Going out is making offering, coming back is walking, and even the eating is written into the same round of hours — and that meal is still a meal no one actually eats.

The two passages before this wrote that the realm does not obstruct; this passage writes that time does not obstruct either. Here, one must make a stretch of time free from among one’s chores in order to practise; there, time itself is already that shape.

This too is why “six periods of day and night” need not mean that the sun really sets. That is not a description of astronomy but a description of rhythm — a day has its stretches, and every one of them faces the same direction.

One May Leave the Pure Land

What is most easily read past in this passage is the phrase “make offering to a hundred thousand koṭis of buddhas in other quarters.”

The land of Ultimate Bliss has been written as so complete: without the many sufferings, encircled by the four precious substances, the water of the eight excellent qualities, lotuses of four colours. By ordinary reckoning, to move into such a place should be an arrival — no further travelling needed.

But the sūtra says that the people there go out every morning.

And not out to sightsee: out to make offering to other buddhas and to hear other Dharma; the offering done, they come back, eat, walk, and the next day go again.

The Pure Land is not a terminus. It is a place one can set out from every day and return to every day; a base for practice, not the end of practice. Birth in that land is not graduation.

This is one meaning with the sūtra’s line “their sound sets forth the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the eightfold noble path,” only that here it is said first as an itinerary: having arrived there, the cultivation of the path has not stopped.

One Divergent Reading

This passage also conceals a matter of collation worth pointing out here.

The base text reads “through the six periods of day and night the heavens rain down mandārava flowers.” But the two Tang readers — one citing the sūtra in a commentary, one reciting it in a liturgy — both had in hand a text that read, in place of “the heavens rain down,” simply “there rain down”; the Song, Yuan and Ming printings invert the two characters, and the current-circulation text likewise reads “there rain down.”

That is to say: the Amitābha Sūtra recited in the seventh century and the printed base text current today are not identical in fine detail. This is not enough to shake one character of the base text — it is not altered here; but it lets one see that the sūtra was carried down alive.

Celestial Music, Constantly Played

The first sentence of this passage is a sound: “in that buddha-land celestial music is constantly played.”

The word “constantly” matters. Not played at times, not played only when there is a Dharma assembly — sounding without a break.

The reading handed down states the work of this sentence very directly: music is played in the air, its sound setting forth the tones of the Dharma, and the people of that land, hearing it, all give rise to wholesome thoughts. That is to say, it is not background music — it is Dharma, appearing in the form of music.

This sentence also foretells the two stretches that follow. The many birds put forth harmonious and refined notes; a light wind stirs the jewelled trees and the jewelled nets and they put forth subtle and wondrous sounds — the whole land has voice, and every kind of voice faces the same direction. The adornment of the Pure Land is not given to the eyes alone; it is given to the ears as well.

Here, one must first grow quiet before the Dharma can be heard; there, the sound itself is Dharma, and it never stops.

Flowers in the Fold of a Robe

The detail of the offering is very small, and should not be read past.

“Each gather many wondrous flowers in the fold of their robes” — the fold of the robe is the front fold of a garment. Not a jewelled vessel, not a flower basket, not any specially made implement of offering; the people there go out to make offering to the buddhas in the clothes on their own bodies.

And where do the flowers come from? They are the mandārava flowers that have just come down from the sky in the sentence before. The heavens send them down, the people pick them up, gather them in the fold of a robe, and carry them off to make offering to other buddhas.

The two words “making offering” have long been glossed thus: to bring forth goods and present them is called offering; that which takes in and sustains is nourishing. What is brought forth here is something they did not make themselves, but only received.

An utterly plain picture: what is offered was received, and the vessel used is on one’s own body. The whole passage is written so richly — gold forming the ground, a hundred thousand kinds of music — yet where it comes down to a person, it is only a garment holding a few flowers.

Carrying Forward — One Resolving Doubts, One Reciting Onward

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

The Cien line applies its force in this passage to the resolving of doubts. Kuiji sets a question at every place where a reader might be caught, and then answers it: why the Pure Land has day and night, whether the food of that land is really food, whether “gold forms the ground” is not too brief — the last of these he answers flatly: “that here only gold is named is likewise an abbreviation of the text.” He also cites the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life twice (musical instruments hanging in space and sounding of themselves without being struck; that ground soft, sinking when the foot goes down and rising when it lifts), the Lotus Sūtra once (a fragrant wind blowing away the withered flowers), and the Sūtra of Auspicious Marks twice — using sūtras of his own axis and of another to supply what this short sūtra passes over.

Worth noticing is that citation of the Lotus Sūtra: a sūtra of the Tiantai axis entering a Pure Land commentary. The Tang commentators did not shelve sūtras by school; whatever proof was wanted, they took it from wherever it lay.

The Shandao line is still recitation: “Again, Śāriputra. In that buddha-land celestial music is constantly played. Gold forms the ground.” The four phrases are recited and passed over, with no question raised as to whether dusk and dawn are there at all. And it is precisely this recitation that has left later readers the graphic form of a seventh-century reading text — “there rain down.”

One lays the doubts open, one recites the doubts past; one has left an explanation, the other has left a text. What the two do differs; both are recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.

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 speak.

And the manner of the speaking is strange — it is not the Buddha who sets forth the Dharma but a flock of birds; no one strikes an instrument, the wind passes through the trees and the nets. The whole environment is teaching the Dharma, and not one of the things that teach is a person.

This is the first place in the Amitābha Sūtra where the surroundings and practice are joined head-on. The judgment of the Cien line calls it “the birds intone the wondrous Dharma,” and divides it in two: first the numinous birds are set forth, then doubt is dispelled. That division matters — for the sūtra itself knows that the first response to hearing that birds set forth the Dharma is, more often than not, not to be moved but to doubt.

Six Kinds of Bird

First, who they are.

The white swan: a touch of crimson on the crown, the plumage of the whole body like frost and snow; when it calls, the sound carries far beyond the remotest marshes, and when it dances, its bearing keeps to the beat. The peacock is a numinous bird by birth, wearing a green crown upon its head, its body all over in colours. The parrot's feathers are like kingfisher jade, with a stroke of vermilion on the beak; its wings are light and swift, so that it can fly, and its tongue slender and long, so that it can learn human speech. “Śāri” is Sanskrit; it is the egret-heron — young in years and quick, quick and also clever, having only to stretch its neck to fly ten thousand miles, only to open its mouth for a thousand modulations to come.

Then two that are not to be seen among humans. The kalaviṅka, rendered in Chinese the bird of wondrous sound — “its voice beautiful and wondrous and its body unlike the ordinary”; those who hear it incline an ear and incline the mind along with it, and those who see it grow easy in expression and untroubled in thought. The life-sharing bird, also called the mingming bird: “a human face on a bird's form, one body with two heads” — one body, two heads, two faces.

This roster is worth pausing over. The first four are birds that truly exist among humans; the last two are not. The sūtra ranges them together and draws no distinction — just as the introduction ranged Śāriputra, whose wisdom stood out, together with Cūḍapanthaka, who was born beside a road. The rosters of Ultimate Bliss are never arranged by the grades of the human world.

And 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. Not a startling sound, not an overbearing sound — a sound gentle and wondrously fine.

Of what the sound of Dharma is like, the sūtra sets a measure here first.

What They Sing Is Half of the Thirty-Seven Factors of Awakening

“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 line is often read too quickly. The five faculties and the five powers are these five: trust, exertion, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom — spoken of as able to give rise to wholesome dharmas, they are called “faculties”; spoken of as able to crush the afflictions, they are called “powers.” The same five, viewed from another angle, take another name. The seven factors of awakening are the seven limbs on the road of awakening: discernment of dharmas, exertion, joy, ease, mindfulness, concentration, and equanimity. The eight limbs of the noble path are right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right exertion, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

None of these terms is peculiar to the Pure Land. They are the skeleton of the path held in common by the whole of the Buddha's Dharma — from the Āgamas to the Great Vehicle, whoever speaks of the stages of the path cannot get around them.

So this line discloses something: the birds of the land of Ultimate Bliss do not sing some special gate of practice that only the Pure Land has; they sing the Buddha's Dharma itself. If one has supposed that birth in the Pure Land is a change to an easier road, on which the five faculties and the five powers need no longer be cultivated, this line is waiting here.

The birds there, in the six periods of day and night, sing precisely those things that here, thought after thought, one cannot get up to.

“Do Not Suppose That These Birds Are in Truth Born of the Recompense of Transgression”

Then the Buddha turns suddenly to Śāriputra and says: do not suppose that these birds are in truth born of the recompense of karmic transgression.

Why should this be said at all?

Because in ordinary human sense, to be born an animal is one of the three bad paths, drawn on by evil karma. Hearing that there are birds in the land of Ultimate Bliss, a hearer's mind gives a jolt: are there animals there after all? Does that not mean that evil conditions are not yet exhausted? The reading handed down states this concern with precision — “hearing the numinous birds spoken of, one may come to be caught in perplexity, supposing that the evil conditions of the Pure Land are not yet stilled”; and by that single doubt the mind of a whole Dharma assembly can fail to rise.

So the Buddha does not wait to be asked, but wards it off first. This is the consistent manner of this sūtra: in the introduction no one asked, and the Buddha spoke of himself; here no one objects, and the Buddha resolves the doubt himself.

The resolution falls into four steps, each tighter than the one before: First, the warding off: do not think in that way. Second, the counter-question: why is this so? Third, the answer: that buddha-land has no three bad destinies. Fourth, the matter put beyond reopening: not even the name “the three bad paths” is there — how much less the thing itself? “Even the name is absent — how much less could there be in reality the substance of a bird-kind!”

Why can it be affirmed so absolutely? The answer handed down goes back to causes: those born in the Pure Land are deep in the causes and conditions of wholesome karma and have long since left the bodies of other kinds behind forever; all in that assembly are beings of one and the same kind. Even so excellent a place as the palaces of the gods must be summoned by wholesome karma; how much more Ultimate Bliss — what evil cause could ever reach there? And that Buddha, when he made his vow on the ground of causes, had already said: “If, when I attain buddhahood, there should be the three bad destinies in my land, may I not take up perfect awakening.”

That vow stands first among the forty-eight vows of the bhikṣu Fazang in the Sūtra of Measureless Life. For a flock of birds in a small sūtra, the evidence is to be sought in the first vow of the larger one — an instance of the sūtras of this axis explaining one another, and the reason that reading the Pure Land teaching cannot stop at a single sūtra.

Then What Are They?

“These many birds are all made by the transformation of the Buddha Amitābha, who would have the sound of Dharma spread abroad.”

Not born of the recompense of karma: transformed into being by that Buddha.

There is a deeper doubt still at this point, which commentators of old put on the reader's behalf: the divine power of the Buddha Amitābha being so great, would it not have been enough to conjure countless buddha-bodies? To see the marks and signs can rouse the aspiration; to hear a Brahmā voice can bring awakening — why become birds at all?

The answer given is excellent, and the whole of it is restated here:

To transform and take a buddha's body is nothing rare; instead he manifests as numinous birds, so that beings meet with what is seldom seen and hard to encounter, and thereby the excellent thought “this is hard to come upon” arises in them, and a faith of a particular kind. Moreover, transforming in accord with the kinds of beings is spoken of everywhere — 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; for such reasons he manifests as numinous birds.

That line is worth a second reading: “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.”

This is what the passage is really teaching. In the land of Ultimate Bliss 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 single moment away from the Dharma — because there is not one thing there that is not the Dharma.

And the reason that a bird's body rather than a buddha's body is manifested is no display of powers either, but a considerateness in teaching: a buddha's body comes to be seen often, and what is often seen no longer startles; a bird that can speak the seven limbs of awakening will make a person stop and listen.

The Word “Naturally”

The same landing-point appears twice in this passage.

The birds send forth harmonious and refined sounds: “the beings of that land, having heard these sounds, all of them recollect the Buddha, recollect the Dharma, recollect the saṅgha.” A light breeze stirs the jewelled trees and the jewelled nets, which send forth subtle and wondrous sounds like a hundred thousand instruments played at once: “in those who hear these sounds there naturally arises the mind that recollects the Buddha, recollects the Dharma, recollects the saṅgha.”

Once it is the birds, once the wind; once “all of them,” once “all of them naturally.”

Notice this “naturally.” It is not deciding to recollect after hearing, nor reminding oneself that one ought to recollect — it arises of itself. In those surroundings, recollecting the Buddha, the Dharma, and the saṅgha is not something that has to be held up by will; it is carried along by the surroundings as breathing is.

And this is exactly why this whole passage, and several before it, are written out in such detail. The sūtra spends so many words on railings, on the pool water, on the lotuses, on the golden ground, on the drifting flowers not to boast of how beautiful a place is, but to describe 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. In the place the sūtra describes, the surroundings are themselves the supporting condition: 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 does not turn on the worth of precious things, but on its being a place where a thought is not dragged away.

Harmonious and Refined, and Naturally

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.

Carrying Forward — One Line Dispels Doubt, One Recites It Onward, and One Manuscript Keeps Its Own Graphs

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

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji's Comprehensive Praise Commentary. He judges this passage to be “the seventh: the birds intone the wondrous Dharma,” dividing the setting forth of the numinous birds into five sections (the general setting forth, the several naming, the conveying of harmonious and refined tones, the setting out of the sound of Dharma, and wholesome recollection arising upon hearing), and the dispelling of doubt into five (warding off a real recompense, putting the question of the cause, answering that there is no name of the three destinies, carrying through that there is not the character for the bad paths, and directly setting out the circumstance of manifestation by transformation). The shape and plumage of the six birds, their Sanskrit names and Chinese senses, he accounts for one by one; the doubt “the Pure Land is surpassing and holds not even ordinary persons — why then are flying birds also born in that land?” he raises himself and then answers himself; and to the deeper question “why make the various bird-kinds the means of setting forth the gate of teaching?” he answers, “to transform and take a buddha's body would be nothing rare; instead he manifests as numinous birds.” The reasoning set out above has its frame from this.

Worth recording is the direction in which he cites. In explaining “there are no three bad destinies” he does not stop at the terms, but goes back to the original vow of the bhikṣu Fazang in the Sūtra of Measureless Life for his ground. To read the smaller sūtra and take the witness from the larger — the mutual attestation among the sūtras of this axis was already the practice of Tang commentators.

The Shandao line goes on reciting this passage in the Liturgical Hymns: “White swans, peacocks. Parrots, śāri birds. Kalaviṅkas. The life-sharing birds.” No doubt is raised and no attachment dispelled; the phrases are simply strung together with full stops and recited through.

The third reading is again the manuscript speaking for itself — and this time the two Tang readers part ways. The base text reads “white swan”; the Song, Yuan, and Ming read “crane”; Kuiji's citation of the sūtra reads “white crane,” agreeing with the Song, Yuan, and Ming; Shandao's recited text reads “white swan,” agreeing with the base text. In the introduction, and in the passage on the music of the heavens, the two mirrors once stood together on the side of the variant column; here they separate.

This shows that more than one manuscript of the Amitābha Sūtra circulated in the seventh century, and that the matter is not simply a “Tang text” against a “Song text.” Not one character of the base text is altered, and each item is recorded — to acknowledge honestly that the sūtra in one's hands has a history of transmission is itself a form of respect for it.

The three do different work; recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.

For five passages the sūtra has been writing about that place: railings, pool waters, heavenly music, the golden ground, drifting flowers, flocks of birds, the sound of the wind. At this passage the lens turns for the first time to the lord of that place.

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

This is the first time in the whole sūtra that the Buddha’s name is explained. The Cien line marks this place as “the distinguishing of the merits of the Buddha’s body” and says that it divides into three sections: first the question of the title is put, then the obtaining of the name is directly distinguished, and last the number of kalpas since he became a buddha is stated. The sense in which the name is obtained is twofold — one by reason of light, one by reason of lifespan.

One name, two reasons. That fact by itself is worth pausing over.

Light: Nothing Obstructs It

The first reason is light: “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 reading handed down divides light first into two kinds: inner light, which is wisdom illuminating the truth within, and outer light, which is the light of the body shining outward. What is spoken of here is the latter — the light of the body. And that body is described as “a substance of adamant that cannot be broken, a body of unobstructed liberation, like pure beryl, lustrous and clear through inside and out.”

Notice the words “with nothing to obstruct it.” 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. Unobstructedness says that on the side of the light there is no condition whatever able to limit it.

Then Why Do We Not See It?

This forces out the most pressing question of the passage, and the commentators of old asked it on the reader’s behalf: if the light shines throughout the measureless worlds of the ten directions, why do the people of this world not see it?

The answer is exceptionally fine, and raises two similes together:

Where the principle accords, response reaches across a thousand miles; where the ground of the mind is at odds, liver and gall, pressed close together though they are, seem as far apart as the edge of the sky. It is like one with a film over the eye who cannot see the sunlight — is the sunlight then at fault? Like one whose ears are deaf and cannot hear the thunderclap — is the thunderclap then to blame? The karmic burden of beings has grown too heavy: the Buddha has light, and people do not see it.

The direction of this answer is worth seeing clearly. 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.

A sūtra that has come this far turns suddenly from describing that place to speaking of this one — of why we stand in the light and find the sky dark.

What Is Inside the Light

The sūtra says only “light measureless,” and describes no further. But the Tang commentator cites here a long passage from The Contemplation Sūtra, spreading out what is to be seen within that light.

That buddha’s body is the colour of a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of Yāma-heaven Jambūnada gold; its measure is six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of Gaṅgā-sands of yojanas; the white tuft between his brows curls to the right like five Mount Sumerus; his eyes are like the waters of the four great oceans, clear white and distinct; every pore of his body sends forth light as great as Mount Sumeru; his halo is like a hundred koṭis of three-thousandfold great-thousand world-systems.

And within that halo are five hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of Gaṅgā-sands of transformation-buddhas, and each transformation-buddha has innumerable transformation-bodhisattvas in attendance. That buddha has eighty-four thousand marks; each mark has eighty-four thousand excellences; each excellence has eighty-four thousand rays of light, shining throughout the measureless worlds of the ten directions.

“Because he has this light he is called Amitābha.”

This passage is brought in not for the sake of extravagant figures. It says one thing: light is not an appendage outside the Buddha’s body. Within the light there are buddhas, bodhisattvas, marks and excellences, and light sent forth again. The light is itself doing the Buddha’s work.

Xuanzang’s version, at just this place, has four characters more — “performing the Buddha’s work.” Kumārajīva’s version does not have them, but The Contemplation Sūtra as cited by the commentator supplies that sense in full.

Lifespan: A Sustaining Quality

The second reason is lifespan: “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.

As for the word “lifespan,” the Cien line gives it a strictly technical definition: lifespan is the sustaining quality upon the eighth consciousness, gathered among the dharmas not concomitant with mind.

That sentence is worth reading slowly. Lifespan is not a substance, and not a stretch of time fitted onto a body; it is a kind of “sustaining” upon consciousness — the function that carries life on, portion after portion.

This is the same manner of handling as the earlier sentence, “the bliss that can be dwelt in is the feeling of pleasure concomitant with the sixth consciousness”: the “bliss” of Ultimate Bliss is reduced to a kind of feeling, and the “lifespan” of Amitābha to a kind of sustaining quality. Reading this sūtra, the Cien line always reduces a word that looks like an adjective to a mental factor that can be pointed at.

Three Further Questions

In the section on lifespan the commentator sets three questions in a row, each closer to home than the last.

The first: the bodies of that buddha and of those people alike belong to conditioned dharmas and cannot escape the drift of the four marks — arising, abiding, change, and perishing. How could they fail to wear away? Answer: the two levels of birth-and-death have been cast off and the constant body of the five aggregates gained; the vow of compassion is without limit — where should body and life come to an end? Still more, the karma of killing ceased long ago, and so the lifespan is naturally extended far.

The second: Amitābha stands in the position of the fruit, so measureless lifespan can be spoken of; but the people are still within the cause — why should they be the same as the Buddha? Answer: their karmic burden is light and their roots of good strong; since theirs is no longer a body of segmented birth and death and they have left forever the substance of coming and going, that they should be equal with the Buddha runs against nothing in principle.

The third: are the people of that land, then, segmented bodies or transformational ones? Answer: if one speaks of the recompense-land, the body is transformational; if one speaks of the transformation pure land, the segmented body has not yet been cast off.

The answer to the third question is the one most worth recording. Here the commentator sets down no settled conclusion, but speaks according to the distinction between recompense-land and transformation-land. That is followed here and both are recorded; no judgment is made in its place. Where the sūtra and the ancient masters have not settled a matter outright, to say plainly that it is unsettled is itself honesty.

Ten Kalpas

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

One sentence, with no description and no elaboration. Coming to it, the commentator too writes only six characters: “Third, setting forth the number of kalpas since he became a buddha.”

The passage has just finished saying that the lifespan is measureless, boundless asaṃkhyeya kalpas, and immediately gives a definite figure: ten kalpas. 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 that buddha’s 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.

Two Assemblies That Cannot Be Counted

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

Śrāvakas are so called because they awaken to the way through hearing the voice; and the word “disciple” too has its explanation — one whose years come after mine is a “younger brother,” one whose understanding is born from me is a “son.” The phrase “all of them arhats” is there to distinguish them from the prior three fruits: these have all reached the fourth.

What deserves notice is the parallel here. 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, sixteen śrāvakas came first and four bodhisattvas after. Here the two assemblies are alike measureless, alike beyond what counting can know.

The Name and This Passage

Back to the question at the opening: why one name and two reasons?

Because light and lifespan catch exactly 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.

Carrying Forward — One Way Analyses the Substance of the Name, the Other Sings a Hymn to Lifespan

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 buddha-name, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary, and this passage is a place where he works with unusual depth. The adjudication of the two senses of the name, the division of inner and outer light, the definition of lifespan as a sustaining quality upon the eighth consciousness, and the three questions and answers (how the conditioned can be without end · why the people equal the Buddha · segmented or transformational) — the whole framework comes from here. In explaining the sense of light he cites The Sūtra of the Buddha of Measureless Life, The Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, and The Contemplation Sūtra; in explaining the sense of lifespan he cites The Sūtra of Measureless Life and The Sūtra of Pure Awakening — five citations within one passage, of which the one from The Contemplation Sūtra runs ten lines, spreading out one by one the eighty-four thousand marks and excellences of that buddha’s bodily form.

And the question and answer on “the light shines everywhere yet is not seen in this land” is the core of the teaching in this passage. The two similes — the filmed eye that does not see the sunlight, the deaf ear that does not hear the thunderclap — are not in the sūtra itself but are set by the commentator; yet the principle of his answer, that the obstruction lies in the one who receives and not in what is illuminated, comes directly from the sūtra’s own words, “with nothing to obstruct it.”

The Shandao line, in the Liturgical Hymns, recites this whole passage word for word, and when the recitation is done a hymn follows: “Aspire to be born there, aspire to be born there. Gaining the fruit, one attains nirvāṇa and abides constantly in the world; the lifespan extended and long” — he does not take the two senses of light and lifespan apart, but catches the single side of “lifespan” in song: abiding constantly, extended, hard to measure. The way of doctrinal understanding defines “lifespan” as a sustaining quality upon the eighth consciousness; the way of ritual practice sings that same “lifespan” as the reason for aspiring to birth in that land.

One way takes the buddha-name apart into mental factors that can be pointed at; the other sings the buddha-name into a hymn of dedication. Both are recorded without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

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: “Śāriputra! Beings who hear this should make the aspiration, wishing to be born in that land.”

The Cien line marks this as “urging birth in that land,” with “the two groups, new and old, differing in the causes of their practice” before it and “the benefit of the urged birth” after. Read as three sections together, the intent of the text becomes clear — it means to say plainly first what becomes of one who goes, and only then to open its mouth and urge people to go.

Those Born There Do Not Turn Back

“Those beings born in the land of Ultimate Bliss are all Abibazhi.”

Abibazhi is a Sanskrit word, also transcribed Aweiyuezhi; 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; half an hour of quiet sitting ends, one stands up, and everything is as it was. The difficulty of practice is half in the starting and half in the keeping on.

The received reading divides non-retrogression into five: trust does not retrogress, station does not retrogress, realization does not retrogress, practice does not retrogress, and the afflictions do not cause retrogression — one is not made to turn back by the afflictions. Trust will not fade, station will not be lost, what has been realized will not slip away, practice will not break off, the afflictions cannot pull one aside.

Then someone asks: dwelling in the Pure Land, why does one not retrogress?

The answer is not “because that place is superb.” It is a list of five absences: first, no entanglement of sickness and pain; second, nothing that runs counter to practice; third, the scriptures and the Dharma constantly recited; fourth, good works constantly carried on; fifth, lasting concord, with none of the matters of contention and dispute. Therefore no retrogression.

And this line matters most: “In this world people often retrogress; the reverse of these should be understood accordingly.”

Turn those five around and they are the reasons for retrogression here — sickness and pain entangling one, things running counter to practice without cease, the scriptures long unread, good works long undone, contention on every side unending. One line is added: “Moreover, being drawn by objects of desire, they 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.

There Also Dwell Those Soon to Become Buddhas

“Among them there are many of the final birth, their number very great.”

What is the final birth? “To supply” means to supply what is lacking; “station” means the position. Bodhisattvas of this class have their causes complete through the ten grounds and the kalpas of three asaṃkhyeya periods fulfilled; at the end of this one life they will attain right awakening — the next position is buddhahood.

The received reading gives the instance easiest to grasp: Maitreya now dwells in the heavens and his fruit will be accomplished in the time to come; in one life he will supply the station of the Greatly Awakened One and in three assemblies deliver immeasurable multitudes. This is that class.

And of such persons there, “their number is very great, not such as counting can know; it can be spoken of only by the span of immeasurable, boundless asaṃkhyeya kalpas.”

They cannot be counted out; their multitude can be spoken of only by a length of time.

The vow of the larger Sūtra of Measureless Life takes up this very line: “Should I attain buddhahood, when the hosts of bodhisattvas of the lands of other quarters come to be born in my land, they shall each in the end reach the final birth” — by the power of the original vow, one born there enters at once the station of the final birth.

Why Not Tuṣita

Here a thoroughly practical question is raised: the palace of Maitreya in Tuṣita is also delightful and its companions are also many; why must people be urged toward the west?

In the Tang this was a real question and not a rhetorical one — ascent to Tuṣita and birth in the west were two paths running side by side.

The answer is set out in ten comparisons. The ten superiorities of the Pure Land: the dwelling of the converting master is superior, the length of life of those converted is superior, the land is not bound to the realms, the pure quarter is free of desire, no women dwell there, practice does not retrogress, the pure quarter is not defiled, the land is adorned, mindfulness of the Buddha gathers in the feelings, ten recollections bring birth in that land. The ten inferiorities of the heavenly palace answer them one by one: the land dwelt in is inferior, the lifespan of those converted is shortened, it is bound to and belongs to the realms, that heaven has desire, men and women dwell mixed together, practice may retrogress...

Of the ten, the pairing of “practice does not retrogress” against “practice may retrogress” is the most to the point. Tuṣita is still within the three realms and still has objects of desire; while objects of desire remain, retrogression remains. This is one line of reasoning with the five absent conditions above.

The conclusion comes in eight characters: “birth in the west is urged, forsaking the inferior and seeking the superior.” It is not said that Tuṣita is bad — “if one speaks of Tuṣita, it is indeed superior to the human world” — only that beside the western land it appears slightly inferior.

Why One Would Want to Go: Because of the People There

The last line is where the whole passage comes to rest: “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 before — non-retrogression, the final birth, the ten superiorities — and yet what is actually raised as the “for what reason” is the company.

Who are the persons of superior goodness? Just those spoken of before: śrāvakas immeasurable and boundless, those born there who have all become non-retrogressive, bodhisattvas of the final birth beyond counting. All are in the west, gathered in one place.

And here the received reading cites several pieces of this land’s own lore to say the thing, a usage rare in the whole commentary:

To study under the same teacher and bring one’s work to completion, one must rely on good conditions; and households that turn to enmity are always sustained by evil factions. Mencius’s mother moved house three times for her son’s sake, to a good place; Confucius, thirsty, would not drink from the Robber’s Spring — both because they were ashamed of evil and longed for good. 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.

The Newly Born and the Long Resident, in One Place

There is a structure hidden in this passage that is easy to slide past.

The received reading marks it as “the two groups, new and old, differing in the causes of their practice” — those newly born, and those long since there, differ in their causal practice. The newly born “are all Abibazhi,” non-retrogressive from the moment of arrival; among the long resident “there are many of the final birth,” whose next step is buddhahood.

At one end are those just through the door; at the other, those about to graduate. And the sūtra writes them into the front and the back of a single sentence, with nothing between but the words “among them.”

This is the same manner of writing as the roster of the introduction. There Śāriputra, whose wisdom stood out, was listed together with Cūḍapanthaka, born beside a road; the arhats who had cut off the afflictions were listed together with Ānanda, who was still in training. Here those newly born are set in one land with those about to become buddhas.

The distance is not wiped out — non-retrogression and the final birth are two different stations, and the sūtra says so plainly. But neither does the distance become a partition: they are “gathered together in one place.”

So that last line, “gathered together in one place with such persons of superior goodness as these,” is not saying “one day you will be in the company of formidable people.” It says that there, the difference of station does not constitute separation. Those who have just arrived and those about to become buddhas are within one assembly.

Study and practice here often mean that what is above is out of reach when one looks up, and there is no one to talk with when one looks down. There it is not so.

Two Things Within One Passage

Look back at the structure of this passage: first what becomes of one who goes (non-retrogression, the final birth), then why it is worth going (the ten superiorities and inferiorities, the persons of superior goodness), and between them the one line “one should make the aspiration.”

That the making of the aspiration is placed just here is deliberate. It does not stand at the very front — people are not told to make the aspiration and then given the explanation; nor at the very end — it is not mentioned in passing once the reasoning is done. It is set between “what the people there are like” and “who the people there are.”

The aspiration grows out of seeing clearly. The sūtra first writes that place plainly, then says the one line that one should make the aspiration, and then at once supplies a reason. The aspiration is not demanded; it is explained.

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

Carrying Forward — One Way Weighs Superior and Inferior, One Way Chants Non-Retrogression

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 urging of the aspiration, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary. The division of non-retrogression into five, the answer of the five absent conditions, the gloss on the final birth, the instance of Maitreya, the pairing of the ten superiorities against the ten inferiorities, the sense of “persons of superior goodness” — the whole frame of the present piece comes from there. And that in explaining the final birth he cites the vows of the larger sūtra as witness is one more instance of reading the shorter sūtra and taking witness from the larger (the first at the passage of the many birds, on “there are no three evil destinies”).

What shows his manner of reading most in this passage is that set of allusions from this land: Mencius’s mother, the Robber’s Spring, the fragrant orchid, the fishmonger’s stall. Throughout the Comprehensive Praise Commentary on this sūtra his figures are drawn mostly from within the Buddhist canon; at the line “gathered together in one place with persons of superior goodness” he suddenly takes up Confucian examples. The principle of choosing one’s friends and one’s dwelling was something readers of this land already knew — and he borrows that ready knowledge to say a matter of the Buddha’s Dharma.

The Shandao line recites this whole passage in the Liturgical Hymns, and in the hymn there is a line of his own: “The nine grades alike turn back and gain non-retrogression. Abibazhi is precisely non-arising.” Those born in the nine grades all turn back into non-retrogression, and Abibazhi is precisely non-arising. The way of doctrinal analysis divides non-retrogression into five kinds and lists the five absent conditions; the way of ritual practice finishes the chant in seven characters: Abibazhi is precisely non-arising.

One way sets the two paths of birth side by side and weighs them; the other chants non-retrogression into a hymn. Both are recorded without adjudication, each restored to its own place.

The Amitābha Sūtra runs to something over eighteen hundred characters. Six passages describe that land, one passage describes the Buddha’s name, one passage exhorts the setting forth of aspiration. The passage that actually says how one goes there is this one alone.

And this passage is only some hundred and fifty characters long.

The Cien line judges it to be the second major section of the main body, “the distinctiveness of the causes of Ultimate Bliss,” and divides it into five sections: barring the meagre good, declaring the abundant causes, the holy multitude coming to welcome, beings going and being born there, and the concluding exhortation to birth there. From the removal of one mistaken notion, to the pointing out of the right practice, to the marks of the end of life, to the fruit of birth in that land, to one more exhortation — within a single passage the whole course is run.

First a Door Is Closed

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

Before the sūtra states the practice, it states a negation.

This line is often read past quickly. What it in fact 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.

And this line immediately draws out a sharp contradiction. The commentators of old put the question themselves: since it is said that ten moments of mindfulness of Amitābha bring immediate birth in the Pure Land, so that the fruit is conspicuous while the cause is slight, why is it said here that meagre good and causal conditions do not bring birth there?

The answer given is thoroughly plain: that ten moments of mindfulness attain birth in the Pure Land is meant to draw in beings who are indolent; that abundant good and causal conditions are spoken of instead is meant for those who are diligent and studious. 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. To the indolent, “ten moments of mindfulness will also bring birth there” — so that they do not give up. To those already at work, “meagre roots of goodness will not bring birth there” — so that they do not take it lightly. Both sentences are true; each has its own hearer.

That answer is worth keeping. In the Pure Land teaching the dispute between easy practice and difficult practice arises for the most part from taking a sentence spoken to someone else as spoken to oneself.

Holding Fast to the Name

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

The Sanskrit for “good man” is upāsaka, which in Chinese means “a man who draws near and serves” — one able to keep the five precepts firmly and fit to draw near and serve the saṅgha of bhikṣus; “good woman” is upāsikā, who likewise keeps the five precepts and serves the bhikṣuṇīs. These two designations are not general terms for everyone; they carry weight.

And how is the Buddha Amitābha heard spoken of? The readings handed down give two routes: one is to hear of the matter of birth in that land, within this teaching of Amitābha, from a good friend; the other is to search out and read the scriptures oneself. Someone speaks of it in your hearing, or you come upon it in your own reading — both count.

Then comes the holding fast to 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 sūtra explained only a passage ago: light measureless, life measureless. What is held, then, is not a string of syllables but those two things — illumination that pervades without obstruction, and that which never comes to an end.

Single-Minded and Undisturbed

These four characters are the centre of gravity of the whole sūtra, and also the four over which there has been the most dispute.

The explanation of the Cien line is remarkably plain, and does not raise the phrase to the height of samādhi:

the meaning of “single-minded,” in holding fast to the Buddha’s name for one day up to seven days, is that there is no interval at all in between, and that is why it is called single-mindedness; the meaning of “undisturbed” is 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.

As for “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 that it must be seven days; it sets out one through seven, omitting none.

Xuanzang’s translation reads here “whether for one day and night, or two, or three, or four, or five, or six, or seven, the thought bound fast and undisturbed” — concise, but wanting that gravity of counting them off one by one.

Who May Be Mindful

Here is a difficulty real to a Tang reader, which a commentator raised: the Treatise on the Pure Land says that women, those deficient in faculties, and those of the two-vehicle seed are not born there. Would women, then, and those deficient in the six faculties, be unable to go? And how does that stand against the good man and good woman spoken of here?

The reply: simply, when a woman is mindful of the Buddha with utmost intent and concentration, and at the end of life wishes to be born there, she is turned into a man and thereupon born in the Pure Land — what is there in this that cannot be? So too for those deficient in faculties.

This reply uses the language and the world-picture of its own time; it is transmitted here without the alteration of a character, and no rewriting is done on its behalf. What is to be seen clearly is what it does: it reads a scriptural sentence that appears to exclude people as a sentence that excludes no one.

Several sūtras are further cited in succession on the practice of mindfulness of the Buddha: the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says that one who recites single-mindedly according to the name of the buddha of that land, and aspires to be born there, will certainly attain birth there; the Sūtra on the Samādhi of Contemplating the Buddha says that for the samādhi of mindfulness of the Buddha to be brought to completion there are five causal conditions — keeping the precepts without transgression, not giving rise to wrong views, not producing flattery or arrogance, neither hating nor envying, valiant and vigorous exertion; the Sūtra of the Drum Sound says: for seven days and seven nights make obeisance at the six periods; the Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish says that keeping the precepts and being intently mindful for seven days likewise attains birth there.

Seven works of sūtra and treatise cited within a single passage. This is no display of erudition; it says: holding the name is not the isolated claim of this one short sūtra.

When Drawing Near the End of Life

“When that person draws near the end of life, the Buddha Amitābha, together with the whole holy multitude, appears before him.”

Who is “that person”? Just the practitioner of the seven days’ mindfulness spoken of above. “When drawing near the end of life” is when the lifespan of this one recompense is about to come to its end. At that time, that Buddha, with the bodhisattvas and the śrāvakas of the land of Ultimate Bliss, appears before the one who has been practising mindfulness of the Buddha.

The commentators of old give an instance here: as the meditation master Zhen of the Liang dynasty saw a terrace of white silver, or saw transformation-buddhas coming to welcome him.

A definite name, a definite scene. What the sūtra speaks of, someone in the commentator’s own age had already said he met with.

The Mind Not Inverted

“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.

And here 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.”

Kumārajīva’s recension says “at the time of this person’s death, the mind is not inverted” — that is the state of the practitioner’s own mind; Xuanzang’s recension says that it is the Buddha’s compassion, adding its protection, that causes his mind not to be disturbed.

The one is as though he stood firm of himself; the other as though he were held up.

This divergence is not one of wording; it touches the adjudication of self-power and other-power. Both recensions are recorded, not one character altered, and no judgement is made as to which is the right meaning — this is not for a translation with notes to decide.

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

The last difficulty, and the weightiest: beings’ evil karma is measureless and boundless; how could a few days’ mindfulness of the Buddha ever wipe it out, so that one attains birth in the Pure Land?

The answer, drawn from the Treatise on Ten Doubts, is in three reasons, each reason paired with a simile:

The first lies in the mind: the mind that commits offences is a false and deluded mind, while the mind mindful of the Buddha is a true and real mind; to remove the false by means of the real — what is there in this that cannot be? It is as a thousand years of darkness cannot withstand the first light of morning.

The second lies in the object: what the committing of offences takes as its object is an inverted realm, while what mindfulness of the Buddha takes as its object is excellent and wondrous merit; to dispel the counterfeit by the true — what is there in this that cannot be?

The third lies in purity: committing offences is a defiled intent, mindfulness of the Buddha a pure mind; the pure being superior and the defiled inferior, how are they to be set against one another? It 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. However thick a thousand years of darkness has piled up, it cannot stand against a single line of light; however long a rope of a thousand fathoms is bound, one stroke severs it; however high ten thousand bundles of firewood are heaped, one spark sets them alight.

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

Carrying Forward — Two Mirrors, One Reading of “Single-Minded and Undisturbed”

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 practice, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary, and this passage is the most densely documented place in the whole edition: within one passage he cites the Treatise on the Pure Land, the Mañjuśrī Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Sūtra on the Samādhi of Contemplating the Buddha, the Sūtra of the Drum Sound, the Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish, the Sūtra of Equal Awakening, the Great Amitābha Sūtra, the Treatise on Ten Doubts, the Contemplation Sūtra, and the Flower Ornament — ten works in all.

He explains “single-minded and undisturbed” without raising it to the height of samādhi, fixing it by the two senses “no interval at all in between” and “focused and unscattered”; and he settles “the mind not inverted” with four characters only: right mindfulness is not moved. The four weightiest phrases in the whole passage he explains most briefly of all — quite unlike the elaboration with which he treats the plumage of the six birds, or the Sanskrit names of the seven precious substances.

Where the matter is weightiest he says least. That too is a measure in the reading of scripture.

The Shandao line recites this whole passage in the Liturgical Hymns — his recited text also reads “the mind is not inverted,” agreeing with Kumārajīva’s base text — and the recitation is followed by a lofty hymn, within which two lines expound this practice directly: “taught mindfulness of Amitābha, concentrated and concentrated again,” and “for seven days and seven nights the mind is without interval.”

Set the two mirrors side by side: the Cien line says that single-mindedness is “no interval at all in between” and that undisturbedness is “focused and unscattered”; the Shandao line sings “concentrated and concentrated again,” “the mind without interval.” One uses the language of doctrinal exposition, the other the language of hymn — and what they say turns out to be the same thing: unbroken, unscattered.

Two Tang ways of reading, utterly unlike in method, meet on the four most important characters in the whole sūtra. Recorded in parallel without adjudication; no argument is made as to source and derivation.

One takes the shape of the practice apart until it can be taken in hand; the other sings the shape of the practice into a hymn. Recorded in parallel without adjudication, each restored to its own place.

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 suddenly draws the view open, and open to the very farthest reach — east, south, west, north, below, above; in every one of these directions there are buddhas as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, each in his own land putting forth his tongue to cover over the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, all of them speaking one and the same sentence.

This is the longest passage in the sūtra, and the one whose construction is repeated most thoroughly. One section for each of the six directions; apart from the direction and the buddhas’ names, the rest is identical word for word.

Why This Passage Is Here

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 Cien line judges this to be “the buddhas’ attestation,” in three sections: first declaring the praise he himself has spoken, then adducing the other buddhas as witnesses, and last explaining the sūtra’s name. The sūtra’s own order runs the same way: “Just as I now praise the inconceivable qualities of the Buddha Amitābha” — this is Śākyamuni speaking first, himself; only then do the buddhas of the six directions come forth.

One person speaking may be 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 no longer that.

How the Six Directions Are Arranged

Each direction has the same five parts: first pointing out which direction it is, then citing the buddhas’ names, then saying how many there are, then the look of the attestation, and last adducing the words attested.

The east is placed first. Why? — because in the Western regions the east is taken as the superior quarter, and so it is cited first. A geographical custom, not a ranking in doctrine.

The number of buddha-names in each direction is not even: five in the east, five in the south, seven in the west, five in the north, six below, ten above — thirty-eight names in all. Above has the most. The sūtra offers no explanation of the unevenness, nor does it round the count off.

And after the roster of every direction there follows the same sentence: “such buddhas as these, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā.” What is listed is only a sample; the true number is the sand of the Gaṅgā.

Why the Sands of the Gaṅgā

The figure is used so familiarly that it becomes worth asking after all: why the Gaṅgā?

The commentators of former times gave five reasons: first, that river’s sands are many; second, the people of the world hold it in common to be water of blessing — entering the river to bathe, their offences are extinguished; casting themselves in to die, they are born in the heavens; third, though aeons pass and are ruined, the name of this river abides always; fourth, the Buddha often expounded the marvellous Dharma near this river; fifth, everyone knows it, and so it is often taken for a comparison.

Its geography was recorded as well: from the lake free of heat and torment four great rivers issue, and this is one of them; what is taken for the figure is the stretch just where the river issues from the lake’s mouth, its surface forty li square.

Of the five reasons the fifth is the most solid — “all people alike acknowledge it”: everyone knows it. A simile has to be made of something everyone knows, or it does not carry. The Gaṅgā is to the people of India what the Yellow River is to the people of the Middle Land. When the Buddha takes a figure in teaching, he takes what the hearer already knows.

The Matter of Putting Forth the Tongue

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

Read today, this gesture is unfamiliar, even a little strange. But within the Indian setting it has a settled sense: 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 whole life in which no lie was told.

The commentator glosses it very simply: “that is, each in his own land extends the mark of the tongue” — each in his own land, not coming flying over.

And how great is “covering over the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system”? The commentary cites the Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom: a thousand Mount Sumerus, a thousand suns and moons, a thousand sets of four continents, a thousand Brahmā kings — this is called a small thousand; taking the small thousand as one unit and multiplying it to a thousand is called the great thousand; and because the multiplying by a thousand is compounded three times over, it is called 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.

That One 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 of that sentence 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 (the sixth passage), and to believe (this one).

As for the name of this sūtra — the Sūtra Praising Inconceivable Qualities, Guarded and Kept in Mind by All Buddhas — the sūtra explains why it bears that name only in the passage that follows. Here it first lets the buddhas of the six directions pronounce the name aloud.

Xuanzang’s Version Cites Ten Directions

One further matter should be stated. Kumārajīva’s translation cites six directions; Xuanzang’s cites ten — the four quarters, the four intermediate quarters, above and below, all of them.

This is no comparison made by later hands; it was recorded by the Tang commentator himself. Glossing this passage he writes plainly: The Sūtra on Praising the Pure Land speaks of the buddhas of the ten directions; here six directions are cited in brief, and so the text divides into six sections.

The single word “in brief” makes the relation of the two recensions clear: they do not contradict one another; the one is full and the other abbreviated. Both are recorded; neither is judged the better, and neither is altered on the authority of the other.

And as for the river’s name, transliterated one way by Xuanzang and another by Kumārajīva — the commentator had long since stated it himself: “As for the number of the Gaṅgā’s sands: in Sanskrit Gaṅgā; through corruption and abbreviation it is called Henghe.” The Tang already knew these to be two transliterations of one and the same river.

Thirty-Eight Names

One more thing deserves looking at: those thirty-eight buddha-names are themselves teaching.

In the east, Akṣobhya — the Sanskrit is rendered “Unmoving,” not moved by the afflictions or by the four Māras, whether these run counter or comply; Sumeru-Mark says that his golden countenance is august in form like Mount Sumeru; Great Sumeru, that the greatness of his excellent marks is like the king of mountains; Sumeru-Light, that the light of his body is as great as the king of mountains; Wondrous Sound, that his voice is subtle and clear, heard from afar.

Read on: in the south, Sun-Moon-Lamp, Light of Renown, Great Blazing Shoulders, Sumeru-Lamp, Measureless Exertion; in the west, Measureless Life, Measureless Marks, Measureless Banners, Great Light, Great Brightness, Jewel-Mark, Pure Light; in the north, Blazing Shoulders, Most Excellent Sound, Hard to Thwart, Sun-Born, Net-Brightness; below, Lion, Renown, Name-Light, Dharma, Dharma-Banner, Upholder of the Dharma; above, Brahmā-Voice, King of Constellations, Supreme Fragrance, Fragrance-Light, Great Blazing Shoulders, the Body Adorned with Jewel-Flowers of Many Colours, King of Sāla Trees, Jewel-Flower Virtue, Seeing Every Meaning, Like Mount Sumeru.

Set these names side by side and they are found to hang, almost all of them, upon three things: light (Light of Renown, Great Light, Great Brightness, Pure Light, Sumeru-Light, Fragrance-Light), sound (Wondrous Sound, Most Excellent Sound, Brahmā-Voice, Renown — a name that is heard), and the unmoving and the unruinable (Akṣobhya, Sumeru-Mark, Great Sumeru, Like Mount Sumeru, Hard to Thwart, Dharma-Banner).

And these three are precisely what the earlier passages have already said: that buddha takes his name from light without measure; that land has for its adornment the Dharma-sound filling it everywhere; those who take birth there all attain non-retrogression.

The names of the buddhas of the six directions amount to saying the content of this sūtra over again in another manner.

In the western group there stands also the Buddha of Measureless Life — the same name as the one being praised. The sūtra does not note whether this is Amitābha, and that is not decided here in its stead.

The Repetition Is Itself the Meaning of This Passage

Last, back to the form of this passage.

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 where its force lies.

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,” which is the gathering of concentration; this passage, in its sixfold recitation, works 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.

Carrying Forward — One Way Examines Names and Terrain, the Other Recites All Six Directions

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 act of witness, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary. He takes each direction apart into five parts and glosses the names of the five buddhas of the east one by one (Akṣobhya, “here rendered ‘Unmoving,’ because he is not moved by the afflictions or by the four Māras, whether they run counter or comply”; Sumeru-Mark, “his golden countenance august in form like Mount Sumeru”; Wondrous Sound, “his voice subtle and clear, heard from afar”); he examines the five senses in which the Gaṅgā is taken as a figure, together with its geography; he cites the Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom to fix the measure of the three-thousandfold great-thousand; and he collates the ten directions of Xuanzang’s new translation against the six directions of the present sūtra.

His way of reading this passage is to take in earnest every element that looks like a set formula: the Gaṅgā’s sands are not an offhand way of saying “many,” the mark of a broad, long tongue is not a rhetorical flourish, the three-thousandfold great-thousand has a reckoning behind it. Not every reader needs to read in this way, but it holds one thing fast — that every character of the sūtra has a provenance.

The Shandao line, in the Liturgical Hymns, recites the whole of this six-direction passage — six sections identical word for word being exactly the sort of text most suited to liturgical recitation. It was said above that, taken as a text for chanting, this is exactly where its force lies; the Liturgical Hymns are that force come to ground, attested by a surviving text: in the Dharma assemblies of the Tang, these six sections were really recited through, one direction after another.

One way verifies the set formula character by character; the other chants the set formula out, one direction at a time. Both are recorded without adjudication, each in its own place.

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.

The Cien line marks this place as “explaining the name of the sūtra” and divides it into three sections: first the question raised, next the general explanation, last the concluding exhortation. 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 why it is named the sūtra guarded and kept in mind by all buddhas.

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

Who Guards Whom

“Śāriputra, 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.”

The reading handed down distinguishes three layers within this one sentence. The good men and good women are those who are guarded. Those whose names are heard — Amitābha, and the buddhas of the six directions as many as the Gaṅgā-sands — 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.

This division makes one thing clear: 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 this sūtra is called the sūtra guarded and kept in mind, the commentator answers plainly: this sūtra is what the buddhas uphold and protect, clearly record, and keep in mind.

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

A Very Long Term

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

This transliterated Sanskrit term is often read straight through in one lump. The commentator takes it apart word by word: “a” is “without,” “nuttara” is “above,” “saṃ” is “right,” “myak” is “equal,” “saṃ” is “right,” “bodhi” is “awakening” — taken together, unsurpassed, right and universal, right awakening.

Taken apart, it is in fact four qualifiers and one core. Awakening is the core; “right” is not partial; “equal” is universal; “right” again presses the point that it is not partial; “unsurpassed” is that there is nothing higher.

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

This line 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 who do not turn back.

In other words, non-retrogression does not begin only after birth in that land. One who has heard this sūtra, heard these buddha-names, and upheld them stands in the position of non-retrogression already, now.

The Word “Hear”

What is worth pausing over is how light the action required in this passage is.

Not “cultivate this sūtra,” not “realize this sūtra,” but “hear this sūtra and uphold it,” and “hear the names of the buddhas.”

One word, hear, and a person is placed in the position of being guarded.

The actions in the preceding passages are not heavy either. In unit six it is making the vow; in unit eight it is believing; here it is hearing and upholding. The heaviest action in the whole sūtra is holding the name — and holding the name is only taking hold of a name and not letting go.

This is consistent with the manner of the sūtra. It requires no visualization, no graded stages of concentration, no recitation of long passages. All the way through it sets the threshold as low as it will go — low enough that one who has heard is already inside.

But this is not to be read as “nothing at all need be done.” The passage just before said that one cannot be born in that land through few roots of goodness and few conditions of merit; this passage says “uphold.” Hearing is the entering; upholding is catching hold and not letting go.

A low threshold does not mean there is no road behind the door.

Is Recollecting the Buddha Alone Enough?

Here there is a very honest question, and the commentator raised it himself: does one attain non-retrogression merely by recollecting Amitābha Buddha, or are there yet other skilful means?

His answer is that 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. Because of repentance the fixed karmas are turned, and as the wish-fulfilling jewel yields according to the wish made, so non-retrogression is attained.

These five — repentance, requesting, rejoicing, dedication, making vows — are practices current throughout the Great Vehicle. The commentator joins them onto holding the name, which is to say: holding the name is the principal thing, but that is not to say nothing else need be done.

One thing should be stated plainly. The relation between holding the name and the remaining practices is among the most discussed questions in the Pure Land teaching, and later masters differ in their accounts of it. Only the writing of this one Tang house is recorded here; no later account is cited, and no conclusion is drawn on any house’s behalf.

The Name Is Itself a Summary

Look again at the full name the buddhas of the six directions pronounced: The Sūtra of Praise for Inconceivable Merit, Guarded and Kept in Mind by All Buddhas.

Taken apart, it turns out to compress the whole sūtra into a single phrase.

“Praise” — what this sūtra does from beginning to end is praise. Śākyamuni praises the merit of Amitābha Buddha, and the buddhas of the six directions praise Śākyamuni in turn. The sūtra says of itself: “as I now praise the inconceivable merit of Amitābha Buddha.”

“Inconceivable merit” — the content of that praise. The pools and waters, the jewelled trees, the sounds of Dharma, the light and the lifespan set out in the six preceding units are all the unfolding of those two words. And “inconceivable” says this: these things are not reachable by thought or discussion, and so they can only be described, not argued.

“Guarded and kept in mind by all buddhas” — the standing of this sūtra with the buddhas. Not an ordinary sūtra, but one the buddhas together keep in mind.

“Sūtra” — running through, and holding together.

One title, four layers: who is speaking, what is spoken, how much weight the speech carries, and that it is a sūtra.

And this name was pronounced seven times — once by the buddhas of each of the six directions, and once more when the Buddha himself raised the question. The sūtra uses repetition to drive a name into the hearer’s memory.

This is of a piece with the method of the sūtra: first a name is given, Ultimate Bliss; then a name, Amitābha; and last this name, the sūtra guarded and kept in mind. Three names, one sūtra.

“You Should All Receive in Faith”

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

“Therefore” is the wording that concludes what precedes; “you should all” is language of exhortation.

This line sets two sources side by side: what I say, and what all the buddhas say. In the previous passage the buddhas of the six directions bore witness; this passage places that testimony beside Śākyamuni’s own words, and asks that both be received in faith.

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

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.

The Word “Together”

There is one more word worth looking at: they are all together guarded and kept in mind by all the buddhas.

Not one buddha guarding, but all the buddhas guarding together.

In the previous passage the buddhas of the six directions spoke one and the same sentence; this passage says that these buddhas together guard those who hear this sūtra and uphold it. The witnesses are one company, and the guardians are the same company.

And this word “together” carries a variant reading between the base text and the Song, Yuan, and Ming printings — those read “by.” One character apart, and the weight shifts a little: “together guarded and kept in mind” rests on the togetherness of the buddhas, “guarded and kept in mind by them” on the passivity of the one guarded. The base text’s “together” is followed here; the variant is recorded without adjudication.

Carrying Forward — One Line Divides Guarding from Guarded, Another Recites It Straight Through

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 name of a sūtra, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary. In this passage he divides what guards from what is guarded, takes unsurpassed perfect awakening apart word by word, and sets the question whether recollecting the Buddha is already sufficient, answering that five further practices are to be cultivated as well. Worth noting is this: this is the one passage in the whole edition where the commentary cites no outside text at all. Before and after, he cites three sūtras and a treatise at a stroke, and sometimes as many as ten works; but at this section, explaining the name of the sūtra, he lets the sūtra’s own words do all the speaking.

To explain this sūtra’s name, no other sūtra is needed.

The Shandao line recites this whole passage in the Liturgical Hymns, setting no question and folding nothing open: the question raised, the general explanation, and the concluding exhortation are recited straight through.

And a third reading is the manuscript speaking for itself. This passage carries two collation notes, and the text Kuiji had before him agrees at one point with the circulation printing and at another with the base text. His citation reads “who hear the names spoken by these buddhas and the name of the sūtra,” agreeing with the circulation printing; and in the same passage he reads “all together guarded and kept in mind by all the buddhas,” agreeing with the base text. In the preceding units he ran consistently with the Song–Yuan–Ming stream; here, within one and the same passage, the streams divide.

Seventh-century manuscripts do not fall into tidy families. Not one character of the base text is altered; each point is recorded in turn.

One line explains the sūtra by the sūtra, one recites it straight through, and one manuscript keeps its own graphic forms. All three are recorded without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

By this passage everything that had to be said has been said: what that land looks like, the name of that buddha, how one gets there, the testimony of the buddhas of the six directions, why this sūtra bears the name it bears.

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.

The Cien line reads this place as great sections four, five, and six of the main body — aspiration made in the three times, those honoured ones praising him and all calling it a rarity, our own Buddha stating that his alone was the difficult deed — and adds to them the transmission part. The last four divisions of the whole sūtra all lie inside this one passage.

Three Tenses

“Śāriputra! 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: all these persons attain non-retrogression with respect to unsurpassed perfect awakening, 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: already aspired — now aspiring — will aspire; already born — now born — will be born.

The reading handed down matches them 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. And once the aspiration is made, birth in that land stands established at the answering moment. 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 commentators answer with 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. Thereby the mind that seeks the path does not retreat and the resolve to be born there does not turn away.

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

Testimony Turned the Other Way

“Śāriputra! 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, testifying that this sūtra could be trusted. Here that is turned around: Śākyamuni praises the buddhas, and the buddhas praise Śākyamuni.

The commentators put the point plainly: the Tathāgata Amitābha receives and draws beings in with compassion; from this side we single that Buddha out for praise, and those buddhas turn and praise the one who is speaking here.

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

And what the buddhas praise in Śākyamuni is not his wisdom, his powers, or his lifespan, but one very concrete thing:

The Evil Age of Five Turbidities

“The Buddha Śākyamuni is able to perform an exceedingly difficult and rare deed. In the land of Sahā, in the evil age of five turbidities — the turbidity of the aeon, the turbidity of views, the turbidity of afflictions, the turbidity of beings, and the turbidity of lifespan — he has attained unsurpassed perfect awakening, and for the sake of beings he proclaims this Dharma which all the world finds hard to believe.”

“Śākya” means in Chinese “able in benevolence,” and “Muni” means “still and silent.” “Sahā” means in Chinese “able to endure” — because the beings there can bear and endure every kind of suffering and distress, that land is called the Enduring.

And what is “turbidity”? The commentators explain it very plainly: 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; and so it is called turbidity.

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

The commentators add the reverse case as well: in a time of the aeon’s increase the three disasters gradually lighten, afflictions grow thin, beings turn toward the good, evil views grow faint, and the faculty of life lengthens; and where beings have no suffering, the transformation-body buddha does not appear in the world.

That sentence gives one a start on reading it. A buddha appears in the world precisely because the age is bad enough.

And what is that “exceedingly difficult and rare deed” which the buddhas praise? — the commentators answer: 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.

“This Is Exceedingly Hard”

“Śāriputra! 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!”

Before this the buddhas said that Śākyamuni’s deed was difficult; in this sentence Śākyamuni himself admits that it is difficult.

Within one passage the word “difficult” occurs five times: an exceedingly difficult and rare deed, carrying out this difficult deed, a Dharma hard to believe, this is exceedingly difficult.

This is the place of heaviest feeling in the whole sūtra. The nine passages before it were all saying how good that land is, how simple that gate of practice is, how easy birth in that land 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” — a Dharma that all the world finds hard to believe.

A gate of practice called 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. What is hard is believing that such a place really exists. What is hard is 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.

A sūtra that speaks of ease everywhere ends by speaking of difficulty. The two do not contradict each other — the practice is easy and the believing is hard, and that is just how this sūtra stands.

The Whole Sūtra, Walked Through Once

Standing at the last passage and looking back, the route of this sūtra is in fact perfectly clear.

First the place is given: from here westward, past a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands, there is a world named Ultimate Bliss. Then the setting: railings, pools of water, heavenly music, ground of gold, drifting flowers, flocks of birds, the sound of the wind — layer upon layer the place is built up, built up until “those who hear these sounds all naturally give rise to mindfulness of the Buddha, mindfulness of the Dharma, and mindfulness of the Saṅgha.” Then the buddha’s name: light without measure, life without measure — therefore he is called Amitābha. Then the assurance: those born in that land are all of non-retrogression, and there are final-birth bodhisattvas beyond counting. Only then the method: hold fast to the name, from one day up to seven, single-minded and undisturbed. Then the proof: buddhas of the six directions, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, all saying one and the same thing. Then the sūtra’s name: held in the guarded and kept in mind by all the buddhas. Last the tenses: already aspired, now aspiring, will aspire — any of them will do.

Of these eight steps only the fifth is something a person is asked to do. The other seven all say on what grounds one may believe that the fifth step is worth doing.

That proportion is itself a way of teaching. It grants one thing: people do not act because they are required to; they act because they believe.

So this sūtra spends seven parts of its strength on persuading and three on pointing the way. And its last sentence still admits that persuading was hard from the start.

They Rejoiced, Received It in Faith, Made Obeisance, 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 transmission part is a single sentence.

In the introduction those people came, sat down, and waited for a word; here they have heard it out, rejoice, receive it in faith, make obeisance, and leave.

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.

Many sūtras give much more in their transmission part: a certain bodhisattva vows to uphold it, a certain heavenly king swears to guard it, and whoever receives and keeps it in a later age will gain such and such a recompense. This sūtra has none of that.

It writes only four actions: hearing, rejoicing, receiving in faith, making obeisance and departing. No one stays behind to ask a question, no one asks for it to be spoken again, and no one is given a charge to carry.

And this answers exactly to the introduction. In the introduction no one asked, and the Buddha opened his mouth of himself; in the transmission part no one asks for a charge, and the assembly disperses of itself. From beginning to end, this sūtra is spoken by the Buddha on his own initiative.

A Dharma assembly ends here. And the sūtra gives no account of what those people did after they dispersed.

That part is not in the sūtra.

Carrying Forward — One Line Matches the Three Times, the Other Chants the Five Turbidities

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 closing passage, seen through two ways of reading.

The Cien line is the reading of Kuiji’s Comprehensive Praise Commentary. The four subdivisions of aspiration made in the three times; the matching of aspiration with birth one to one; the two forces of “that Buddha adds his unseen aid, this Buddha guards in silence”; the sense of the names Śākyamuni and Sahā; the explanation of the name “turbidity” together with the distinction between the aeon’s increase and its decrease — the frame of the present piece comes from there throughout.

His section explaining the five turbidities is extremely long, unfolding in five approaches: explaining the name, setting out the substance, the counteragents, what is set aside and what established, and mutual inclusion. Only the passage explaining the name is taken here; the remaining four approaches belong to a broad discussion of technical terms, and it is recorded that they were not taken.

The Shandao line, in the Liturgical Hymns, recites this passage down to “made obeisance, and departed” — the whole sūtra is recited through to that point; and the hymn of praise that follows sings the five turbidities out one by one: ignorance stubborn and hard like a high peak, the turbidity of beings in its evil like snakes and dragons, the turbidity of afflictions filling everywhere beyond the number of dust-motes, the thicket of the turbidity of views like thorns, and within the turbidity of lifespan dying young in an instant. The line of doctrinal explanation divides the five turbidities into five approaches and analyses them; the line of ritual practice gives each turbidity a figure. Read the commentary and then hear the hymn, and the five turbidities are no longer merely five terms.

As for Xuanzang’s recension, one divergence of sequence in this passage is worth recording: Kumārajīva has “already made the aspiration, now make the aspiration, will make the aspiration,” while Xuanzang has “whether they have already made the aspiration, whether they will make the aspiration, whether they now make the aspiration” — the second and third of the three times exchanged. Both recensions are recorded; neither is adjudicated.

One line matches the three times into an even figure; the other chants the five turbidities one by one into images. Both are recorded without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

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: The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Amitābha.

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, and only then “The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Amitābha, fascicle one.”

This passage is not the scriptural text translated by Kumārajīva.

On What Grounds Is That Said

Four pieces of evidence, all of them on the fascicle itself.

First, the division made in the canon. The Taishō sets up a separate region here, of a different class from the ten passages of scripture before it; the dhāraṇī section is further marked as a dhāraṇī. The editors have already used structure to set it apart from the scriptural text.

Second, the Tang line-by-line commentary does not explain it. That commentary in three fascicles explains this sūtra sentence by sentence, from the title all the way to “this is exceedingly difficult” and the transmission part. At this passage — not one word.

Third, the Tang liturgical hymns do not recite it either. That hymn-text, which sets the whole sūtra into the rite of turning the sūtra and walking the path and recites it word for word, likewise stops at the scriptural text.

Fourth, Xuanzang’s translation does not have this dhāraṇī. The Sūtra on Praising the Pure Land and the Buddha’s Embrace does not have it anywhere.

Put the four together and the sense is plain: 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 Copy It Out at All

Because it is on the fascicle.

The first rule of a translated and annotated edition is to set down what is there — whatever is on the fascicle is what gets recorded, not one character added, not one taken away. If a passage were cut because it had been judged not to be scripture, what the reader received would no longer be that fascicle, but someone’s idea of that fascicle.

Yet to set it down and say nothing about it will not do either. Seventeen lines follow immediately upon the scriptural text; let the boundary blur, and a reader will suppose that the Buddha spoke one more dhāraṇī at the end of the sūtra.

To set it down, and to mark what it is — the two can be done at once. Not one character of the scriptural layer is touched; what this is, and on what grounds it is said to be that, are accounted for elsewhere.

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.

A stretch of writing that admits it has no scriptural text of its own, honestly copied at the end of a sūtra fascicle and honestly marked for what it is. In all of this no one is deceiving anyone.

The Blank Spaces in the Dhāraṇī

The dhāraṇī runs like this:

南無阿彌多婆夜　哆他伽哆夜　哆地夜他　阿彌唎〔上聲〕都婆毘……

Those blank spaces between the characters are worth attention. They 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.

Level them away, and 「南無阿彌多婆夜　哆他伽哆夜」 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 layout; not one of them may be lost.

In the same line there is also a small note: 「〔上聲〕」. What it marks is 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.

Words of secret speech are kept character by character and are not smoothed out. These blank spaces and this small note fall within that rule as well.

A Dhāraṇī’s Daily Round

What most deserves looking at is how concrete the method of practice recorded in this appended text is.

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 literary form of 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 cleaning 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: birth in Amitābha’s land after the end of life.

Three Names

For this dhāraṇī the appended text leaves three names, and the three are of quite different kinds.

Nāgārjuna — “The bodhisattva Nāgārjuna vowed to be born in Anyang, and in a dream he received this dhāraṇī.” He vowed to be born there, and received it in a dream. This is the dhāraṇī’s provenance, and the provenance is a dream.

Tripiṭaka master Yeshe — the one who recited this dhāraṇī.

Dharma master Xiu of Tianping Monastery — the one who received it orally from Tripiṭaka master Yeshe.

A dream, one who upheld the recitation, one who received the teaching. The three names join into a line, and on that line there is no scriptural text at all — as the appended text says of itself: “No scriptural text for it has come from abroad.”

What deserves notice is that it does not cover this over. If one wished to make a dhāraṇī look reliable, the easiest course would be to furnish it with a Sanskrit original; the appended text does not do so. It writes plainly instead that there is no scriptural text, and then gives only the path of oral reception.

A stretch of writing that frankly says of itself that it has no scriptural text is far more trustworthy than one that invents a provenance for itself.

Why the Dhāraṇī Is Not Translated

That not one character of the dhāraṇī has been translated is itself a thing to account for.

It is not translated — not because it could not be, and not because it is too mysterious. It is because the convention for words of secret speech has always been not to translate them: the tradition of translating scripture leaves writing of the class of spells and dhāraṇīs upon its sound, and does not turn it into sense.

The reason is quite practical. The working of writing of this class hangs upon sound. Once it is turned into Chinese sense, what the reciter recites is no longer that same string of sounds. A name can be translated (Amitābha is Measureless Life, Measureless Light); a dhāraṇī cannot.

There is a further restraint here. Since this dhāraṇī states of itself that no scriptural text for it has come from abroad, there is no Sanskrit original to go upon; and since there is no transcription transmitted by the ancient masters either, no Chinese sense is devised for it in their stead, and no Sanskrit form is restored. What is not known is said to be not known — the same principle by which the name Qiantuohedi was handled earlier.

An Appended Text That Lights Up How a Sūtra Was Read

Looking back from these seventeen lines to the ten passages before them, something of interest comes into view.

The scriptural text itself teaches no daily office at all. It speaks of the look of that land, the weight of that buddha’s name, holding fast to the name for seven days single-minded and undisturbed, the buddhas of the six directions bearing witness, and at the last it says that this matter is hard to believe. From beginning to end it gives a direction and a gate of practice; it does not give a timetable.

And one who reads a sūtra needs a timetable.

So someone appended a dhāraṇī at the end of the fascicle and wrote down: at each of the six periods of day and night recite twenty-one times; morning and evening clean the teeth, light incense, kneel and recite. Of these details the scriptural text says not a word — yet they are exactly what someone who really means to keep it up daily is bound to ask.

The same need has left its traces elsewhere. That Tang hymn-text which sets the whole sūtra into the rite of turning the sūtra and walking the path is doing the very same thing — laying out an order for those who recite the sūtra, and giving them their places in the chant. The one appends a dhāraṇī at the end of a fascicle, the other arranges a rite for a Dharma gathering; neither is scripture, and both exist so that a sūtra may go on being used day after day.

So what these seventeen lines light up is not only their own provenance. They light up how many people, in the space between a sūtra’s being read and its being used, laid a road for those who came after.

The Weight of Seventeen Lines

A last word on where this passage stands within the fascicle as a whole.

It is very short, only seventeen lines; it is not scripture, and neither the Tang commentator nor the Tang reciter touched it; it admits of itself that it has no scriptural text.

But it has been copied there for more than a thousand years.

The fascicle of a sūtra often carries, besides the scriptural text, some other things as well: dhāraṇīs, hymns, dedications of merit, colophons, methods of practice. They are not scripture, yet they are the traces of a sūtra’s being used. Someone read this sūtra and felt that something to do every day was still wanted, and so this dhāraṇī was appended; someone else felt that its provenance ought to be explained, and so Nāgārjuna’s dream and the oral reception from Tripiṭaka master Yeshe were set down.

These traces are themselves a kind of evidence. They tell those who come after: this sūtra was not only read, it was used.

So it stays here, preserved word for word, its status marked — neither raised to the rank of scripture, nor wiped off the fascicle.

Carrying Forward — Neither of the Two Eyes Came to Rest Here

Above is the meaning of these seventeen lines themselves. What follows is a related matter: of the two Tang eyes, neither came to rest upon this passage.

The commentary of the Cien line stops at the scriptural text; the hymns of the Shandao line stop at the scriptural text. This is the one place in this edition that neither of the two mirrors reaches.

And this is no oversight; it is a boundary. They knew where the sūtra ends.

That is followed here: the passage is received, its status marked, nothing devised in its stead; its standing is not raised because it stands on the fascicle, nor is it cut because it is not the scriptural text.

As for the account that Nāgārjuna received this dhāraṇī in a dream, and the matter of the oral reception between Tripiṭaka master Yeshe and Dharma master Xiu of Tianping Monastery — they are set down word for word, and whether they are credible is not investigated. Inquiry of that kind belongs to the study of the scriptural catalogues; a translated and annotated edition transmits the text and does not undertake to expose forgeries. Recorded, not adjudicated.

A sūtra recited comes to its end at “paid homage and departed.” And the fascicle goes on for seventeen lines more — lines that hold no word of the Buddha’s, but hold what those who read this sūtra, over more than a thousand years, added to it themselves.