佛說觀無量壽佛經 雜想觀

In the ninth contemplation the Buddha’s body was six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of yojanas, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā. In the last contemplation of the good done in concentration, the Buddha says: first contemplate sixteen feet.

The Sūtra Admits First That It Cannot Be Caught

“As was said before, the body of the Buddha of Measureless Life is measureless in its extent, and it is not within reach of the power of an ordinary person’s mind.”

This is not somebody else’s remark. It is the sūtra turning back to gloss what came before: that object is too vast, this mind too small.

The Pivot Is One Word — Yet

“Yet by the power of that Tathāgata’s vow of former lives, whoever remembers and forms the image will necessarily succeed.”

That the object is vast and the mind small is the plain fact; this sentence says on which side accomplishment rests — not on the power of the mind, but on the power of the vow.

The object contemplated may shrink and the contemplating mind may be feeble; the side relied upon has never shrunk.

Small Ones Are True Too

“At times he appears with a great body filling the whole of space; at times he appears with a small body of sixteen feet or of eight.”

Great body and small body are the appearing of one and the same person. And the sūtra adds a verdict: “the forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold.”

Great and small may differ; the colour does not change.

Knowing Them by the One Thing on the Head

“The Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, in every place, have bodies the same as those of sentient beings.”

Then how are they to be recognized? “One need only contemplate the mark upon the head to know that this one is Avalokiteśvara and that one is Mahāsthāmaprāpta.”

There is no need to look at the whole body. That one thing on the head is enough.

The Thirteen Contemplations End Here

“This is called the contemplation of mixed images, and it is named the thirteenth contemplation.”

From the setting sun to the image sixteen feet high, the objects contemplated on the seat have all been spoken of. What comes next is what nine kinds of person meet with at the end of life.

Translated in the Liu Song by Kālayaśas, The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life, T12n0365, the thirteenth of the sixteen contemplations and the last contemplation of the gate of the good done in concentration, from “The Buddha told Ānanda and Vaidehī” down to “to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.” The figures at the head of each segment give the Taishō page, register, and line.

〔一 · The Charge and Command, Concluding the Exhortation and Giving Rise to What Follows〕（0344b25）The Buddha told Ānanda and Vaidehī: “If there are those who wish with a mind of utmost sincerity to be born there in the west —

〔二 · Contemplating the Image in Order to Represent the True〕（0344b26）they should first contemplate an image sixteen feet high upon the water of the pool.

〔三 · The Object Vast and the Mind Small〕（0344b26）As was said before, the body of the Buddha of Measureless Life is measureless in its extent, and it is not within reach of the power of an ordinary person’s mind.

〔四 · Amitābha’s Vow Is Weighty, and All Who Form the Image Succeed〕（0344b27）Yet by the power of that Tathāgata’s vow of former lives, whoever remembers and forms the image will necessarily succeed.

〔五 · Comparison That Shows the Greater〕（0344b28）Merely to form the image of the Buddha already gains measureless merit; how much more to contemplate the Buddha’s body complete in its marks!

〔六 · Great and Small Alike Are True〕（0344c01）Amitābha Buddha, in the spiritual power that is as he wills, manifesting freely in the lands of the ten directions: at times he appears with a great body filling the whole of space; at times he appears with a small body of only sixteen feet or of eight.

〔七 · The Light and Its Marks No Different from the True〕（0344c02）The forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold; and the manifested Buddhas within the circular radiance, and the jeweled lotus flowers, are as was said above.

〔八 · Pointing to the Same as the Earlier Contemplation〕（0344c04）The Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, in every place, have bodies the same as those of sentient beings.

〔九 · Exhorting the Contemplation of What Distinguishes the Two〕（0344c05）One need only contemplate the mark upon the head to know that this one is Avalokiteśvara and that one is Mahāsthāmaprāpta.

〔十 · The Two Sages Alike Assist Amitābha〕（0344c06）These two bodhisattvas assist Amitābha Buddha and universally convert and deliver all sentient beings.

〔十一 · General Conclusion〕（0344c06）This is called the contemplation of mixed images, and it is named the thirteenth contemplation.

〔十二 · The Judgment of Right and Wrong〕（0344c07）To make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.”

In the ninth contemplation the sūtra taught the contemplation of the true body of the Buddha of Measureless Life: a body six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of yojanas, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, in height, the white tuft between the brows like five Mount Sumerus, the eyes like the water of the four great seas. That is the largest measure this sūtra ever sets out.

By the thirteenth contemplation, which is the last of the good done in concentration, the Buddha says instead: “They should first contemplate an image sixteen feet high upon the water of the pool.”

Sixteen feet. This is a plain subtraction the sūtra performs upon the object contemplated.

From the image of the ground onward this sūtra has been speaking of the object as larger and larger, more and more excellent, in order to lift a person’s mind. This contemplation goes the other way: it draws the thing contemplated all the way down to a height a person can see by raising his eyes.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles opens this contemplation into eleven segments, marking the beginning and end of each sentence, and in the second segment already points out that this is a changing of the object and a turning of the mind. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life makes only two segments, and at the contemplation before had already posed the question: why should the universal contemplation and the mixed be made two? The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Sūtra Itself Admits First That It Cannot Be Done

Before the subtraction, the sūtra says one plain thing.

“As was said before, the body of the Buddha of Measureless Life is measureless in its extent, and it is not within reach of the power of an ordinary person’s mind.”

That measure just given is not something the power of an ordinary person’s mind can reach. This sentence is not somebody else’s remark; it is the sūtra turning back in the next contemplation to gloss the one before.

Having come this far through the sixteen contemplations, the sūtra does not pretend that all twelve have been accomplished. It states the difficulty to its face: the object is too vast, this mind too small; it cannot be caught.

Then on What Ground Can It Still Be Accomplished

The sentence that follows is the pivot of this contemplation:

“Yet by the power of that Tathāgata’s vow of former lives, whoever remembers and forms the image will necessarily succeed.”

One word — yet — turns it about. That the object is vast and the mind small is the plain fact; but what accomplishment rests on is not the side of the mind’s power. It is the side of that Buddha’s vow of former lives. Whoever remembers and forms the image will necessarily succeed.

The readings handed down put this down very heavily: it is not that the small is therefore easy to accomplish, nor that the great therefore does not appear; it is simply that Amitābha’s vow is weighty, and so all who form the image succeed.

Read straight through, the first twelve contemplations of this sūtra look like an exercise that grows harder by degrees; at this sentence the whole axis of hard and easy shifts its place. The object contemplated may shrink and the contemplating mind may be feeble; the side that is relied upon has never shrunk at all.

Where One May Form the Image

The sūtra names only one place: “They should first contemplate an image sixteen feet high upon the water of the pool.”

And the readings handed down widen that sentence. The commentators of old list the places where the mind may be settled and the image formed: upon the flowers on the water of the pool, within the jeweled palaces and jeweled pavilions, beneath the jeweled groves and jeweled trees, within the jeweled terraces and jeweled halls, and inside the jeweled clouds and flower canopies of open space — “in places such as these, settling the mind on each in turn and forming the image of it, one forms in every case the image of a manifested Buddha,” and the reason is “that capacity and object may match each other and accomplishment may come easily.”

Capacity and object matching each other is the whole reasoning of this contemplation. If the object is too vast and the capacity too small, the two do not join; adjust the object to a place where they can join, and only then can it be accomplished.

If you have tried forming the image by the earlier contemplations, you will probably recognize the difficulty: a body six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of yojanas, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, in height cannot be brought to mind — not from unbelief, but because there is simply no measure of that size in the mind in which to set it. And sixteen feet is a height a person can see by raising his eyes.

The sūtra has not made the Buddha smaller. It has moved the entrance to where the hand can reach.

The Small One Is True as Well

Once the object has shrunk, a doubt comes with it: is that small image of sixteen feet still the Buddha?

The sūtra’s answer is not argument but description: “Amitābha Buddha, in the spiritual power that is as he wills, manifesting freely in the lands of the ten directions: at times he appears with a great body filling the whole of space; at times he appears with a small body of sixteen feet or of eight.”

The great body and the small body are both his appearing, and both fall under those four words, the spiritual power that is as he wills. Then a verdict is added: “The forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold.”

Great and small may differ; the colour does not change. The manifested Buddhas within the circular radiance, and the jeweled lotus flowers, are also the same as what was said before.

The commentators of old point out here that this one sentence about the colour of true gold is precisely where right and wrong are settled in this contemplation. If the image contemplated is not of the colour of true gold, then it is not an object this contemplation allows — however great or however small it may have appeared.

This way of judging runs along the same line as the first contemplation. The first contemplation judged right from wrong not by how high or low what was seen was, but only by whether what was imaged and what appeared were the same. This contemplation judges true from false not by the size of the body, but only by the colour. Neither criterion lies in quantity. Both lie in whether the two things fit.

And after speaking of the two bodies, great and small, the sūtra adds one more sentence pointing back: “the manifested Buddhas within the circular radiance, and the jeweled lotus flowers, are as was said above” — that shrunken image is no different in its light and marks from the true body described before. The measure of the body may follow the capacity; the light and its marks do not.

Two Senses of “as He Wills”

Before speaking of the two bodies, the sūtra gives a general reason: “Amitābha Buddha, in the spiritual power that is as he wills, manifesting freely in the lands of the ten directions.”

The readings handed down open those words, as he wills, into two.

One is according with the will of sentient beings: following what they think in their minds, he answers what they need and delivers them. As large as you can hold in your mind, so large does he appear.

The other is according with Amitābha’s own will: the five eyes illumine in full, the six supernormal powers are unhindered, and he observes which capacity may be delivered, so that in a single thought, with nothing before and nothing after, body and mind go to it together.

Taken together, the two say one and the same thing: the size of the body in which he appears is not a limit upon the Buddha; it is the measure of the capacity. And of these two, the first is set up for you, while the second is his own affair.

Recognizing Them by One Thing on the Head

This contemplation also has one very practical instruction.

“The Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, in every place, have bodies the same as those of sentient beings.”

The bodies these two show in every place are the same as those of sentient beings. Then how is one to recognize them?

“One need only contemplate the mark upon the head to know that this one is Avalokiteśvara and that one is Mahāsthāmaprāpta.”

One looks only at the head. The tenth contemplation said that within Avalokiteśvara’s heavenly crown there is a standing manifested Buddha; the eleventh said that upon Mahāsthāmaprāpta’s fleshy protuberance there is a jeweled vase. To recognize a person one need not look at the whole body; that one thing is enough.

And the sūtra goes on to say why they are here: “These two bodhisattvas assist Amitābha Buddha and universally convert and deliver all sentient beings.”

The Good Done in Concentration Closes Here

“This is called the contemplation of mixed images, and it is named the thirteenth contemplation.”

From the setting sun of the first contemplation to the image sixteen feet high of this one, the thirteen contemplations are walked through. What Vaidehī had asked for at the outset was teach me reflection, teach me right reception; these thirteen contemplations are the answer to those two sentences.

What the sūtra will speak of next is no longer the object contemplated on the seat, but what nine kinds of person meet with at the end of life.

Looking back over the sequence of these thirteen, one finds that it does not run upward all the way. The first six, from the sun, the water, the ground, the trees, and the pool to the pavilions, are the surface of that land; the seventh sets up the Flower Throne, the eighth the image, the ninth sees the Buddha’s true body, the tenth and eleventh the two great beings — that much runs upward. The twelfth puts the person inside, and the thirteenth draws the Buddha back to sixteen feet — and that runs downward and back.

A sūtra that teaches contemplation does not, where its contemplation section ends, climb to a summit; it turns around and sets the door lower.

And over that low door the same sentence is still written: the forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold. So this is not a Buddha at a discount; it is the same Buddha, appearing at a size that can be caught.

The good done in concentration, at its last step, does not arrive at a higher object; it walks back to a smaller image — and upon that smaller image the same sentence is written: the forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Image Sixteen Feet High

The above is the meaning of this passage of the sūtra itself. Below, two eyes, one of the Sui and one of the Tang, cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra; only the same image sixteen feet high upon the water of the pool, looked at in two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary in Four Fascicles. He opens this contemplation into eleven segments and marks the beginning and end of each sentence. He explains why the contemplation of a small image is taught: “this is the Tathāgata teaching sentient beings to change the object and turn the mind, and so enter contemplation”; and he lists the places where the image may be formed — upon the flowers on the water of the pool, in the jeweled palaces and pavilions, beneath the jeweled groves and trees, within the jeweled terraces and halls, and inside the jeweled clouds and flower canopies of open space — “in places such as these, settling the mind on each in turn and forming the image of it, one forms in every case the image of a manifested Buddha, so that capacity and object may match each other and accomplishment may come easily.” He explains what accomplishment rests upon: “it is simply that Amitābha’s vow is weighty, and so all who form the image succeed.” As for what distinguishes the two bodhisattvas, he reads the character as head, and so takes as the distinction the standing manifested Buddha upon Avalokiteśvara’s head and the jeweled vase upon Mahāsthāmaprāpta’s head. He also states the matching of principal and companions in one line: “when the Buddha is great the attendants too are great; when the Buddha is small the attendants too are small.” This contemplation once finished, he gathers the whole up: from the contemplation of the sun to the contemplation of the Flower Throne is the dependent recompense, from the contemplation of the image to the contemplation of mixed images is the direct recompense, and here the meaning of the one gate of the good done in concentration is complete.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He divides very sparely, making only two segments, and what concerns him is the doubt in people’s minds: having heard before of the vast and measureless, and hearing now of contemplating the small, will they not doubt that this is the Buddha’s body, and so be irreverent toward the small image? His answer is that “whether what is contemplated be great or small, it is in every case the Buddha’s body; this sweeps away the doubts of the assembly and gives rise in people to a weighty regard”; what this contemplation does is precisely to sweep that doubt away. As for what distinguishes the two bodhisattvas, what he reads is the mark upon the hand, and so he speaks of their hands being soft, having eighty-four thousand lines, and receiving and drawing in sentient beings with these jeweled hands; and he also records alongside it the account of those who take it as the head, closing with the judgment “both alike are the text of the sūtra, and there is no harm in using either.”

One line reads it as the gate of practice lowering a step to meet the capacity; the other reads it as the gate of doctrine sweeping away doubt to give rise to reverence.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: the forms in which he appears are all of the colour of true gold.