佛說觀無量壽佛經 義疏通講

The first sentence of the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life is “Thus have I heard.” The second sentence carries us inside the palace walls of Rājagṛha: a son imprisons his father, and then draws a sword to kill his mother. A sūtra that means to teach people to fix their thought single-mindedly and to contemplate the West opens with kindred blood turned against itself.

How far this opening passage extends has never been read in one way. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles assigns the whole of it to the introduction, counting all the way to Vaidehī’s question, “How are they to see Amitābha Buddha and the world of Ultimate Bliss?”, so that the main body begins only at the contemplation of the sun. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life instead breaks off the introduction at “the place of pure karma,” so that everything from the Buddha’s sending forth the light between his brows already belongs to the main teaching. The segmentation followed here is the former. The two draw the boundary differently; the reasons of each stand in his own book; both are preserved here, and no reconciliation is attempted.

As for the Imperially Composed Praise of the Buddha of Measureless Life at the head of the fascicle, it is not the sūtra text itself. It stands before the title of the sūtra, and neither commentary explains one word of it. It is reproduced and preserved as it stands; what is discussed below is the sūtra.

The Introduction Is Not Merely an Opening

The introduction of most scriptures reports a time, a place, and a company: at one time, the Buddha was dwelling in such a place, together with so many people. The introduction of this sūtra has these three as well, but it uses only two lines for them — Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa at Rājagṛha, twelve hundred and fifty great bhikṣus, thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas, with Mañjuśrī as their leader.

And then the text turns at once to the palace city.

“At that time in the great city of Rājagṛha there was a prince named Ajātaśatru, who followed the instigation of that evil friend Diaoda and seized and held his father, King Bimbisāra.” From this sentence onward — through the lady’s entreaty of the Buddha, the Buddha’s sending forth light and revealing the lands, and the Buddha’s disclosure of the three kinds of merit — everything is still inside the introduction. Which is to say: the “introduction” of this sūtra takes up nearly a third of the whole.

An introduction this long is long because it is not merely reporting time, place, and persons. It is reporting why this sūtra had to be spoken.

The commentators of old divided this long stretch into seven parts: the introduction preceding the teaching, the cause of the imprisonment of the father, the cause of the imprisonment of the mother, the cause of weariness of suffering, the cause of delight in purity, the cause that discloses practice through the good done in a scattered mind, and the cause that shows contemplation through the good done in concentration. Of the seven, five are telling one single thing — how a person came to be driven to the point where nothing was left but to seek a way out.

A Son, a Father, a Mother, and a Sword

Ajātaśatru seized his father the king and “confined him within a chamber of seven walls, and issued orders to the ministers that not one of them should go to him.”

Seven walls, to cut off every passage; an order that not one minister may go, to cut off every human tie. The sūtra writes the deed with two actions: suddenly to seize upon the king’s person is called “taking”; having got him, not to let go is called “holding.”

The mother, Vaidehī, went. She “bathed and made her body clean, mixed butter and honey with parched flour and smeared it on her body, filled her many necklaces with grape juice, and secretly presented it to the king” — first washing herself clean, then putting butter and honey on her body, then setting the dry roasted barley meal upon the butter and honey, then dressing and putting on her necklaces, with the beads of the necklaces filled full of grape juice and sealed at one end with wax. To look at, it was only ordinary finery.

When the great king saw it, he scraped the butter and flour from her body, rolled it into a ball, and ate it.

This was every device a mother could think of. The sūtra writes it in the finest detail — fine enough that a reader can almost see the motion of smearing food on one’s own body and then putting on layer after layer of clothing.

The gatekeeper saw, and told. When the prince had heard it, he cursed his mother as a thief — “My mother is a thief, and the companion of thieves” — and at once “drew a sharp sword, wishing to kill his mother.”

He curses his mother as a thief because she secretly brought provisions and so kept his father from dying. There is a very cold logic in that sentence: in his eyes, to let a man live is itself a kind of stealing.

Two Ministers Withdraw with Their Hands on Their Swords

What stopped that sword was not the Buddha. It was two ministers.

Moonlight and Jīvaka first paid homage to the great king — one who would remonstrate with a great man must first bow, to show that the person is honoured — and only then spoke. What Moonlight cited was not the Buddha-Dharma but the old books and histories transmitted in the non-Buddhist tradition: since the beginning of the aeon, evil kings who killed their fathers out of greed for the throne have numbered eighteen thousand, but “it has never been heard that anyone was so lawless as to kill his mother.”

That sentence is worth seeing clearly. He did not say that killing a father was right. He said: even those eighteen thousand evil kings never went this far.

Then he said that it “defiles the kṣatriya lineage” — the kṣatriya being the highest of the four castes, the lineage of kings; while the present conduct is the conduct of the lowest stream of the four castes. And at the last he said, “It is not fitting that we should dwell here any longer.”

Having spoken, they “laid their hands upon their swords and withdrew, walking backward.”

A hand on the sword is for defence; walking backward is not daring to turn one’s back. Those two motions together put down the whole air of that hall.

Ajātaśatru was startled and afraid, and asked Jīvaka, “Will you not stand by me?” Jīvaka answered with a single sentence: “Great king! By no means kill your mother.”

And the sword was laid down.

Her First Words Were Not a Cry for Help

The mother was not killed, but she was “shut within the inner palace and not let out again.”

The first thing she did was to bow from afar toward Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa and pay homage to the Buddha. And her first words were not a plea for rescue, but this: “In former times the Tathāgata, the World-Honored One, constantly sent Ānanda to console me. Now I am filled with sorrow; the World-Honored One is majestic and grave, and I have no way to see him.”

Someone used to come and see me, and now no one comes — that is what she says first.

Then the Buddha came. The sūtra writes it strangely: Maudgalyāyana and Ānanda came through the air, while the Buddha himself “vanished from Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa and appeared within the royal palace.” Not appearing on the way, but simply present at the other end — because the restrictions in the palace were so severe that, had anyone seen the Buddha come in from outside, further obstruction would only have been raised.

Vaidehī raised her head, saw the Buddha, and “broke off her own necklaces, cast her whole body upon the ground, and wept aloud toward the Buddha.”

Those necklaces were the very things that had hidden the grape juice a few days before. Now she tore them off with her own hands. Ordinarily her clothes and ornaments were attended to by others; seeing the Buddha now, in her shame she pulled them off without even undoing the clasps.

She asked two questions: “What offence did I commit in a former life, that I should bear so evil a son?” and “What causes and conditions can the World-Honored One have, that he should have Devadatta for a kinsman?”

The first question is asked about herself; the second is asked about the Buddha. Her meaning is plain: if even a buddha has a Devadatta, then why do I have an Ajātaśatru?

To the first question the sūtra makes no direct reply.

From “I Do Not Want This Place” to “I Want That One”

The real turn comes in the next sentence: “I pray only that the World-Honored One will expound to me at length a place without sorrow or torment. I would be born there, and take no more delight in Jambudvīpa, this turbid and evil world.”

She stops asking why, and begins to ask where.

And what she means to leave is not only that palace. The sūtra goes on: “This turbid and evil place is filled with hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals, and there are many gatherings of what is not good. May I in the future not hear the sounds of evil, nor see evil persons.”

The whole of Jambudvīpa is evil, and there is not one place in it worth coveting — what she means to relinquish is the entire world. This is the conclusion forced out of her by a son of her own body: if even a son born of one’s own body can turn a murderous mind upon his parents, how much more anyone unrelated. And so she makes no distinction between near and distant kin, and gives up all together.

Then come four words: “beg in sorrow for repentance.”

To go to a pure place, one must first own the old debts on one’s own account. She did not wait for the Buddha to remind her.

Only last comes the request for the Dharma: “I pray only that the Buddha-sun will teach me to contemplate the place of pure karma.”

The words “Buddha-sun” set Dharma and simile side by side — when the sun comes out, all darkness is wholly removed; when the Buddha’s wisdom shines, the long night of ignorance grows bright. What she asks for is not the name of a place, but the means of getting there.

The Measureless Lands upon the Terrace of Light

The Buddha did not answer directly. He sent forth the light between his brows; the light turned into a golden terrace, and the pure lands of the buddhas of the ten directions all appeared within it.

Some lands were composed of the seven precious substances, some purely of lotus flowers, some like the palace of Īśvara, some like a mirror of crystal. The sūtra lists them one by one, and then says that he “let Vaidehī see them.”

Why not simply name one? Why make them all appear?

Because if it were only told to her, she could not see it, and a doubt would remain in her mind. So they were manifested one by one, set before her eyes, for her to look at and to choose for herself.

And she chose: “I now delight to be born in the world of Ultimate Bliss, where Amitābha Buddha is.”

That sentence is her own. The Buddha revealed the lands of the ten directions and designated none of them — and the one she chose is precisely the one he was about to teach.

What the Buddha Taught First Was Not Contemplation

Having chosen, what she asked for was a practice: “Teach me reflection, teach me right reception.”

But what the Buddha spoke of first was not contemplation. It was the three kinds of merit.

“First: be filial and care for father and mother, serve and attend teachers and elders, be kindly of mind and not kill, and cultivate the ten wholesome deeds. Second: take up and hold the three refuges, be complete in the various precepts, and not transgress in deportment. Third: give rise to the aspiration for awakening, believe deeply in cause and effect, recite the scriptures of the Great Vehicle, and encourage and urge on those who practise.”

The order here is worth pausing over. The capacities of sentient beings are of two kinds: some can be concentrated, some are scattered and unsettled; and if only the way of concentration were taught, a great many people could not take hold of it. So the three kinds of merit are opened out first, and those who are scattered also have a road to walk.

And the first of the three kinds of merit is to be filial and care for father and mother.

In a sūtra initiated by the killing of a father and the imprisoning of a mother, the first good deed the Buddha names is filial care for father and mother. The sūtra does not point out the contrast; it simply goes on speaking in order. Parents are the utmost field of merit in the world, and the Buddha is the utmost field of merit beyond the world; if a person will not acknowledge even the utmost field of merit in the world, there is no way to begin saying anything else to him.

When the three kinds of merit have been taught, the Buddha adds a sentence: “These three kinds of karma are the very cause of the pure karma of all the buddhas of the past, the future, and the present.”

Not an expedient devised for this one occasion and this one person.

“You Are an Ordinary Person”

In the last section of the introduction the Buddha formally charges them to listen and permits the teaching: “Listen intently, listen intently! Reflect well upon it and keep it in mind.” Listening intently is so that the wisdom born of hearing may arise; reflecting well is the wisdom of reflection; keeping it in mind is the wisdom of cultivation.

Then he explains why seeing is possible at all: “By the Buddha’s power they will be able to see that pure land, as when one holds a bright mirror and sees one’s own face.”

Holding a mirror to look at one’s own face is the least effortful kind of seeing there is. And before that, the sūtra has already said four words: “by the Buddha’s power.”

Then the Buddha says something very weighty to Vaidehī: “You are an ordinary person; the thought of your mind is weak and inferior, you have not yet gained the deva-eye, and you cannot see far.”

Whom is that sentence spoken to?

If you take Vaidehī to have been a sage all along, a great bodhisattva merely putting on a display, then this sūtra has nothing to do with you — what a sage can contemplate, we cannot. And so the sūtra fixes her here as an ordinary person: the thought of her mind weak and inferior, her sight insufficient, unable to see that far. What an ordinary person who cannot see depends upon is that “the buddhas, the tathāgatas, have a different skillful means.”

On this point the commentators of old read in two ways: one says that she is indeed an ordinary person, and that this word of the Buddha is precisely to cut off the later doubt that “she could do it because she was a sage”; the other says that she is in reality a great bodhisattva who displays herself as one among ordinary beings. Both readings stand, and both are preserved here without adjudication.

What the sūtra itself says is those four words.

The Last Question Is Asked for Those Who Come After

The introduction closes on Vaidehī’s last question:

“One such as I am today sees that land by the Buddha’s power. But after the Buddha has passed away, when sentient beings are turbid, evil, and not good, pressed by the five sufferings, how are they to see Amitābha Buddha and the world of Ultimate Bliss?”

She has already seen. What she asks about is what people are to do after the Buddha has passed away.

Among the five turbidities, the turbidity of the aeon is not that the aeon itself is turbid, but that when the aeon declines the many evils increase; the turbidity of views is turning all one’s own evils into good and seeing everything in others as wrong; and the five sufferings are the suffering of birth, of old age, of sickness, of death, and of parting from what is loved.

Someone who has just come alive from under the blade, who has just seen the pure lands of the ten directions with her own eyes, turns back and asks: those who have no buddha in the world, and who are pressed by these things — how are they to see? Among the people she asks for, we are included.

Here the introduction ends. In the next sentence, the Buddha begins to teach the contemplation of the sun.

The reason the whole sūtra needs so long a passage for its introduction lies in that one question: it first lets us see how a person comes to have nowhere left to go, and then lets us see for whom that road was opened.

Carrying Forward — Two Sets of Eyes, Two Introductions

What stands above is the meaning of this long passage of the sūtra in its own right. What follows lets two sets of eyes, from the Sui and the Tang, shine upon it from the side — a mirror is not the sūtra, only the same matter in the royal palace seen under two ways of reading.

The line of Shandao is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He assigns the introduction all the way to “how are they to see the world of Ultimate Bliss,” and begins the main body at the contemplation of the sun, saying openly that this division of his is “not the same as that of the various masters” — for in his view, though there are many meanings above the contemplation of the sun, “when one looks at the movement of the text, it is only the causal introduction.” Within the introduction he distinguishes seven causes and settles every sentence upon the event: the glossing of “taking” and “holding,” the manner of filling the necklaces with juice, the reason for laying a hand on the sword and withdrawing backward, the calculation behind the prince’s asking “is he still alive” rather than asking directly about death — each has its explanation. He reads Vaidehī as an ordinary person, and reads Ajātaśatru by holding him to the deed. And the governing theme of the whole sūtra, as he reads it, is that “this Contemplation Sūtra takes the samādhi of contemplating the Buddha as its governing theme, and likewise takes the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha as its governing theme, with single-minded dedication of the vow to birth in the Pure Land as its substance”; the place of this sūtra, as he reads it, is that Śākyamuni sends forth from this quarter while Amitābha comes from that land to welcome — “called from there and sent forth from here, how could one not go?” He further distinguishes two levels within this sūtra, the essential gate and the vast vow: the essential gate is the two gates of concentration and scattering in this sūtra, while the vast vow is that “of all ordinary beings, good or evil, who attain birth there, there is none who does not ride upon the power of Amitābha Buddha’s great vow and its karmic force as the dominant condition.”

The line of Zhiyi is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He ends the introduction at “the place of pure karma,” so that everything from the sending forth of light enters the main teaching; and the governing theme of the whole sūtra he establishes as “contemplation of mind as the governing theme and true reality as the substance,” saying further that “when contemplation of mind is pure the buddha-land is pure — this is the sūtra’s governing purport,” and dividing this land from that by four kinds of pure land. Reading the initiating introduction, he says outright that “the present sūtra takes precisely the killing of the father as its initiating occasion,” and that the reason for raising such an act of rebellion is “to display the utter evil of this realm, so that people may be wearied of it and cast it away” — if even a son of one’s own body can act so, only then can people be taught to delight together in the Pure Land. Reading Ajātaśatru and Devadatta, he judges them to be “the skillful expedient manifestations of a great being, who walks in what is not the path and thereby penetrates the Buddha’s path”; reading Vaidehī, he judges her to be “in reality a great bodhisattva, who at this assembly attains the patience of non-arising, and displays herself as one among ordinary beings.” He is especially detailed in glossing names: Gṛdhrakūṭa is rendered Spirit Vulture; Diaoda is here rendered Deva-Heat; Jīvaka is here rendered Made Firmly Alive; the five parts of the body are the two elbows, the two knees, and the crown of the head; chanmo is a Sanskrit word while huiguo, confessing one’s faults, is Chinese.

The two draw the introduction differently, establish the governing theme differently, and read Ajātaśatru and Vaidehī differently. One line reads this matter in the royal palace as a real event, the other reads it as the expedient manifestation of a great being; one lets the governing theme of the sūtra come to rest in recollecting the Buddha and dedicating the vow, the other in contemplation of mind and true reality.

And the sūtra itself never says which reading is the right one. It only sets down, in order, first a sword, then a light, and last a question.

What Vaidehī asked for was the land of Ultimate Bliss, and the Buddha consented to teach her. The first thing he taught her was to sit down, face the west, and watch the sun go down.

This passage runs to only one hundred and thirty-five characters and is one of the shortest in the sūtra. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles judges it to be the place where the first sentence of the main body stands — the long train of events in the royal palace that makes up the introduction is only now finished. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life instead cuts the sixteen contemplations into three lengths: the first six contemplate the dependent recompense, the next seven the direct recompense, and the last three speak of birth in that land by the three grades — and this contemplation is the first of the first length. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Buddha Did Not Hand Over That Land Directly

In the passage just before, the Buddha had already sent out light and made all the pure lands of the buddhas of the ten directions appear on a golden dais for her to see. She had already settled on Ultimate Bliss.

By rights, what should come next is direct instruction in how to look at that land.

But what the Buddha says first is this: “You and all sentient beings should make the mind single, bind your thought to one place, and form the image of the west.”

Before saying what is to be looked at, he says where the mind is to be put. And it is not put in the west; it is bound to one place — there must first be a one place before there can be any question of which place it is.

The minds of sentient beings are scattered and restless; consciousness is more restless than a monkey, and once it has ranged over the six dusts it can no longer be brought to a stop. Unless entanglement is let go of and the body entrusted to stillness, this one place cannot be set up at all. And so the readings handed down have split this one sentence into eight ones: one body, one mind, one dedication and direction, one place, one object, one continuity, one refuge, one right mindfulness — eight things, every one of them one, and only then is the image called accomplished.

“Unless One Is Blind from Birth”

The sūtra then says something rarely met with: “Of all who form the image, every sentient being who is not blind from birth, everyone who has eyes, sees the sun set.”

One kind of person is first set aside: the one blind from birth.

Blind from birth means that from the time he came out of the mother’s womb his eyes did not see things. Such a person cannot be taught to form the image of the sun, because he does not know the luminous appearance of the sun’s orb — what has never been seen cannot be imaged.

But the real weight of the sentence lies in its second half: apart from those blind from birth, one whose eyes were afflicted by later circumstance can be taught to form the image of the sun and will succeed in it. Before his eyes were afflicted he already knew the appearance of the sun’s brightness; now, though the eyes are ruined, if only he takes up that appearance well and holds it firmly in right mindfulness, with no limit set of season or time, he will succeed all the same.

That is to say, the threshold of this contemplation is not eyesight. It is having once seen.

And what the sūtra sets as the threshold is something everyone in the world has seen — the sun going down.

The sūtra does not require that anyone first possess supernormal powers, first obtain the divine eye, first accumulate a certain amount of practice. It asks a single question: have you seen the sun set? If you have, there is something here for you to do. That question follows directly from the passage before, where the Buddha had just said, “You are an ordinary person; your power of forming images is weak and frail, you have not yet obtained the divine eye, and you cannot see at a distance.” Here the object to be contemplated is at once set low enough that the eyes of an ordinary person can just reach it.

Why the Sun of All Things

The commentators of old set a question here: what she asked for was the objects of Ultimate Bliss, and since the Buddha consented to teach, why did he first teach her to settle the mind and contemplate the sun?

The answer is given in three intents.

First, the direction pointed to has a definite place. The sun rises due east and sets due west; Amitābha’s buddha-land lies at the far end of that setting, straight west beyond a hundred thousand koṭis of lands. If sentient beings are to know the object and settle the mind, there must first be a direction that can be pointed to. Not the two seasons of winter and summer, but only the two junctures of spring and autumn — because in those two the sun rises due east and sets due west, and the bearing is most exact.

A land that cannot be seen has its bearing fixed by something that can be seen any day.

Second, knowing how heavy one’s own karmic obstruction is. This intent is the most unexpected of the three, and the next section takes it up alone.

Third, knowing the luminous appearance of that land. The manifold adornments and radiance of the twofold recompense of Ultimate Bliss, dependent and direct, shine within and without, surpassing this sun a hundred thousand ten-thousandfold. If you do not know what the light over there is like, then look first at the appearance of the brightness of this one orb — only with a lowest term of comparison in hand does one know what it is that surpassing a hundred thousand ten-thousandfold surpasses.

The three intents taken together say one and the same thing: this one orb is the only thing in this world fit to be set beside that land. The Sahā world is a dark house, and nothing the eye falls on can serve to compare with that land; only the bright sun spreading its radiance can still let the image be lodged and Ultimate Bliss be marked from afar.

Three Kinds of Cloud on the Sun’s Orb

The second intent is worth pausing over longer.

When someone truly sits down by this method — body upright, mind unscattered, the mind turned slowly to look at that orb — one of sharp faculties sees the bright appearance present before him in a single sitting, perhaps the size of a coin, perhaps the size of a mirror’s face.

And on that very brightness he sees whether his own karmic obstruction is light or heavy.

One kind is the black obstruction, like a black cloud obstructing the sun; one is the yellow obstruction, like a yellow cloud obstructing the sun; one is the white obstruction, like a white cloud obstructing the sun. The sun, obstructed by cloud, cannot shine forth brightly; the karmic obstruction of sentient beings is likewise, screening the object of the pure mind so that the mind cannot illumine clearly.

This is a very honest arrangement: one need not ask another how far one has come in practice; one need only see how bright that orb has become.

And once it is seen, what then? The sūtra does not say, but the gate of practice does: adorn the place of practice, set up an image of the Buddha, bathe clean and put on pure garments, burn fine incense, and before the Buddha’s image repent of everything done by body, speech, and mind from the beginningless past; weep in sorrow with raining tears, give rise to deep shame that penetrates within to the marrow of the heart, and reproach oneself to the bone. When the repentance is finished, return and sit as before. If those three obstructions are wholly removed and the object contemplated is bright and clear, this is called sudden extinction; if one repentance removes only one colour and several are needed before all are gone, this is called gradual removal.

As for when to repent, the words of the ancients are blunt: it is like boiling water or fire burning the body — the moment one feels it, one throws it off. How could there be room to wait for the time, wait for the place, wait for the conditions, wait for the person, and only then begin?

Clear and Distinct Whether the Eyes Are Closed or Open

The direct teaching of how to observe is a single sentence: “You should raise up this thought and image: sit upright facing the west and look closely at the sun; make the mind stand firm, and hold the image single without letting it shift.”

The body upright, the face west, the eyes looking closely, the mind standing firm, the image not shifting — five things, and not one of them missing.

Then comes the test of accomplishment: “Once the sun has been seen, let it be clear and distinct whether the eyes are closed or open.”

Seeing it with the eyes open does not count; only its remaining when the eyes are shut counts as accomplished. For what is seen with the eyes open may be a matter of the eyes; what remains when the eyes are shut is a matter of the mind.

At this step the settled bliss of samādhi comes to be present, and body and mind, within and without, melt and flow beyond all conceiving.

The Moment It Is Most Easily Lost

And it is at precisely this moment that it is most easily lost.

The readings handed down set down a heavy warning here: when this object is seen, one must by all means gather the mind and make it settled, and must not let a mind of craving and grasping arise. Let a craving mind arise, and the water of the mind stirs; let the mind stir, and the pure object is gone that instant. It may stir, or darken, or blacken, or bring out a jumble of blue and yellow and red and white, and settle no more.

The remedy is equally simple: know that it is one’s own craving mind that has moved, then settle the mind in right mindfulness and start again from where it began — the stirring appearance is removed, and the still mind appears again.

We probably all recognize this process. Quiet is reached with difficulty, and just as one feels there it is, that very thought of there it is undoes it.

Right Contemplation and Wrong Contemplation

The whole passage closes on a judgment: “To make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.”

What is the criterion?

Contemplating the sun, one sees the sun: mind and object correspond, and that is right. Contemplating the sun, one does not see the sun but brings out other mixed objects instead: mind and object do not correspond, and that is wrong.

There is not a word in this criterion about how high or low the object seen is. It asks one thing only: is what you meant to look at the same as what you saw?

Wrong contemplation therefore does not mean seeing something dreadful, nor does it mean a crooked intent. What is in the mind is the sun, and what appears before it is something else: that is what non-correspondence means. Even if what appears is a spread of light or a storied tower, so long as it is not the one thing contemplated, it is wrong all the same. This way of judging pins contemplation down to correspondence and leaves no room for anyone to explain himself out of it.

And this judgment does not govern only this one contemplation — for the fifteen that follow, wrong and right, gain and loss, are one and the same as here. What the first contemplation sets up is not merely an object to be contemplated; it is a measuring rod that the fifteen to come will all have to use.

The sūtra thus frames the whole sequence of the sixteen contemplations upon the most ordinary of things: a person sits down, faces west, and watches the sun go down.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Setting Sun

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 setting sun, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He fixes the main body at this sentence and states of himself, “the main body that I now fix and establish differs from that of the other masters.” He divides this contemplation into five segments: the general charge and general exhortation, citing the matter to be contemplated, directly teaching how to observe, distinguishing the sign of accomplishment, and the general conclusion. The answer in three intents comes from him; the detail of the manner of sitting comes from him — sitting upright with legs crossed, the right foot on the left thigh, the left hand laid on the right hand, the body straight and upright, the mouth closed but the teeth not touching, the tongue propped against the palate so that the breath passages are free. So too does the scattering of the five great elements to the five directions, leaving only the great element of consciousness “resting clear and gathered, like a round mirror.” The three colours of karmic obstruction, sudden and gradual repentance, and the craving mind that stirs and loses the object are all fine articles of the gate of practice that he sets out. For him this contemplation is the “provisional support” — the sun’s orb is an object of this world that resembles and can be seen, not the real, outflow-free object of that land, and one enters the true by way of the provisional.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He explains this contemplation very briefly: “it shows and directs the binding of the mind”; then he marks the outline sentence by sentence and stops at “from ‘this is’ onward is the conclusion.” The meaning he attaches lies not in method but in the removal of doubt — “right contemplation is taught and directed in order to remove the doubting mind” — and he cites what the larger sūtra makes clear, that those who cultivate merits with a doubting mind and are born in that land fall into the border region and further undergo womb-birth; hence this contemplation must be made, to remove doubt. Whether offences are extinguished he leaves until the third contemplation, the contemplation of the ground, before judging: “the water before was image and cannot extinguish offences. The contemplation of the ground is actual, and so can cut them off.” And in the preface to his own fascicle, the simile he uses is precisely this one: “the setting sun, a suspended drum, used to mark the direction in which the image is sent.”

One line reads this orb as the entrance to the gate of practice, and measures it down to posture and breath; the other reads it as the expedient for removing doubt, and measures it by position in the stages and by the extinction of offences.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: seeing the sun about to set, its shape like a suspended drum.

The first contemplation looked at the setting sun. For the second, the sūtra says: form the image of water.

Yet from beginning to end of this passage, what is really to be seen is not water. When the water has been looked at it must freeze into ice; when the ice has been seen through it must turn into beryl; and only when the beryl stands present is the object of the contemplation there — a ground transparent within and without. The water is only the entrance.

This passage runs to three hundred and thirty-three characters. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles judges it in six segments: first the general setting forth of the substance of the ground, next the adornments beneath the ground, next the adornments upon the ground, next the adornments in the air, next the wind sounding the instruments and setting forth the sound of the Dharma, and last the general conclusion. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life judges it briefly, in three segments only: raising the object to be contemplated, directly setting the practice of contemplation going, and concluding the contemplation; and he marks the sequence besides by four turnings — forming the image of water, changing water into ice, changing ice into beryl, and contemplating the beryl until it becomes the great ground. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

Something in This World That Can Be Level

The contemplation before this taught one to look at the sun, because the Sahā world is a dark house and, of all the eye falls upon, only that one orb is bright enough to serve for pointing at Ultimate Bliss from afar.

Why, then, must water be looked at as well?

The readings handed down set a question here: above, the contemplation of the sun was taught so that the appearance of one’s karmic obstructions might be known, and therefore the sun was contemplated; now this contemplation teaches the contemplation of water — for what reason?

The answer is plain enough. The sun’s orb shines constantly, and represents the long radiance of Ultimate Bliss; but there was still the fear that one might suppose the ground of that land to be high in one place and low in another, as it is here. This world is all hills and hollows, and there is not one spot in it that is truly level; and if one would find in this world a thing able to be level, nothing is more fit than water. That mark of what can be level is taken up, and by it the ground of beryl there is likened.

Put otherwise: the first contemplation borrowed brightness; the second borrows levelness. Both are things this world already has, and neither has to be cultivated into existence before it can be seen.

The questioner will not let it go: the water here is wet and moreover soft — is the ground there also like this water?

The answer: the level water of this world is used only to answer to the ground there as being equally without height or depth; as for water freezing into ice, that is used to answer to the shining through, within and without, of that ground of beryl.

So water and ice are each borrowed for one meaning — water for its levelness, ice for its transparency. Once they have been borrowed, both withdraw, and what remains is the ground.

Why That Ground Is Level

There is one more sentence here easily read past.

Why is the ground there without height or depth, transparent within and without? The commentators of old refer the matter back to the causal stage: Amitābha’s practice through vast kalpas was even and without partiality, the active defilements and their residues alike gone, and the ground-wheel he called forth is transparent in this way.

This is a thread that runs from end to end of the sūtra: the array of adornments that is seen has a history behind it. It is not beautiful out of nowhere; it grew into this shape because someone, through measureless kalpas, cultivated a practice with no partiality in it.

The ground is level because the practice was level.

A Bowl of Water

The sūtra says only, “form the image of seeing all in the west as one great water.” It does not say how such an image is to be raised at all.

The gate of practice, however, gives a thoroughly homely method. In a quiet place take a bowl of water, fill it well to the brim, and set it on the ground before your sitting-couch; sit on the couch, fix between your brows something white about the size of a bean, bend your head down over the surface of the water, and with the whole mind watch that one point of white and nothing else.

At the beginning the surface will not stop rippling, and looking down you cannot see your own face. Look long, and the face gradually appears — at first unsteady, now long, now short, now broad, now narrow, now seen, now not seen; at this point the mind must be used more finely still. Before long the ripples grow so slight that they seem to move and not to move, and the face appears plainly.

Then try one thing: when the water has grown still, drop a grain of rice into it, and the ripples run through the whole bowl and that point of white moves with them; drop a bean, and the waves are larger and the white is now seen, now not; drop a jujube in, and the waves are larger still, and even your own head and face are wholly hidden and do not appear.

The ancients glossed this simile without leaving a word of it over: the bowl is a simile for the body as vessel; the water is a simile for one’s own mind; the waves are a simile for scattered images and the afflictions. The waves gradually coming to rest is the checking and letting go of the manifold entanglements and the settling of the mind upon a single object; the water still and the object appearing is the mind that apprehends being unscattered and the object apprehended not moving, within and without calm and quiet, and the appearance that was sought standing out plainly.

And losing it is just as simple: with a subtle image or with a coarse one, once the water of the mind stirs, the still object is gone that instant.

A bowl of water, a grain of rice, a jujube — this is an experiment a person can finish in his own room. It does not tell you what the mind is; it only lets you see when the mind has moved.

Beneath the Ground, Upon the Ground, in the Air

Once the ground of beryl stands present, the sūtra is in no hurry to move on. It first speaks of this ground from top to bottom.

Beneath: there are golden banners of adamant and the seven precious substances holding the ground up. The banners have eight sides and are complete with eight angles — being complete with eight angles, say the readings handed down, is to show that they have no round shape. Each single side is made of a hundred jewels; each single jewel-pearl has a thousand rays of light; each single ray has eighty-four thousand colours. These rays shine upon the ground of beryl like a koṭi of thousands of suns, more than looking can exhaust; one newly born there, at first glance, can hardly take them all in.

Upon: cords made of yellow gold are spread in mingled order, the boundaries marked out with the seven precious substances, their divisions plain and clear. Here the commentators of old add a caution: do not suppose that in that land there are only pathways made of gold and none made of the other precious substances.

In the air: within each single jewel there come forth rays of five hundred colours; those rays are like flowers, and again like the stars and the moon, and hanging in empty space they form a dais of light; upon the dais are towers by the thousand and the myriad, made of a hundred jewels combined; and on either side of the dais are a hundred koṭis of flower banners and measureless instruments of music, serving as adornment.

Where they are said to be like flowers and again like the stars and the moon, the commentators mark one thing: the Buddha is compassionate, and feared that people would not recognize them, and so borrowed a simile to show them forth.

That sentence is worth keeping. A simile here is not ornament; it is what one is driven to. What is spoken of does not exist in this world, and so one is left to lean on what this world does have. The whole contemplative method of the sūtra is built upon that necessity.

One Caution and Two Places of Praise

The section on what is upon the ground is extremely short, yet the commentators of old added to the sūtra’s words a caution of their own.

The sūtra says only that cords of yellow gold are spread in mingled order, and the commentators gloss it: gold forms the pathways, whose shape is like golden cords. Then they add — do not suppose that there are only pathways made of gold and none made of the other precious substances. It may be that mingled jewels form the ground and beryl forms the pathways, or that beryl forms the ground and white jade forms the pathways, or that purple gold and white silver form the ground and a hundred jewels form the pathways; in this way they are inlaid one within another, combined one with another, and shine one upon another, light upon light and colour upon colour each unlike the rest, and yet with no confusion in them.

The sūtra wrote down one arrangement; the commentators warn us not to read one arrangement as the only one.

Of praise in verse there are two places, each attached to its own segment, and they are not to be run together. The first stands at the end of the segment that generally sets forth the substance of the ground: there, after it has been said that the appearing or losing of the object and the judgment of right and wrong are the same as in the preceding contemplation, Vasubandhu’s praise is cited — “Contemplate the aspect of that world: it surpasses the paths of the three realms; ultimate, like space, it is vast and without bound” — and it is gathered up with the words, “this in general clarifies the measure of the ground of that land.” Those four lines speak in general of the measure of the whole of that ground, not of the segment on what is upon it. The second stands in the segment on what is upon the ground, where the commentator makes words of praise of his own: “The jeweled ground’s adornment is beyond all measure; everywhere its light shines upon the ten directions,” and this speaks of the excellence of the adornments upon the ground.

So many numbers have been given already: eight angles, a hundred jewels, a thousand rays, eighty-four thousand colours, five hundred coloured rays, towers by the thousand and the myriad. And those four lines of general setting forth use not one number at all; they say only, vast and without bound.

Numbers are there for a person to take hold of; the boundless is what no number takes hold of. The sūtra gives you both.

The Wind Passes, and the Instruments Sound of Themselves

The last segment is the shortest and the most unexpected.

Eight kinds of pure wind come forth from the light, sound those instruments of music, and set forth the sounds of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self.

That whole expanse of beryl, golden banners, jewel-pearls, daises of light, towers and flower banners has been laid out at such length, and it comes to rest at the end upon four terms: suffering, emptiness, impermanence, non-self.

Adorned to the utmost, what is spoken is still these four words.

The readings handed down gather them up as the four inversions and the four real marks — an ordinary person takes the impermanent for permanent, the suffering for pleasant, the selfless for a self, the impure for pure, and these are the four inversions; the reverse of them is the four real marks. This is what the wind and the instruments of Ultimate Bliss are performing day and night.

Not one word spoken in that land is new. It only takes what cannot be heard on this side and says it, over and over, in a way that can be heard.

Eyes Open or Shut, It Must Still Be There

The whole passage closes upon two sentences.

The first is about holding: when this image is accomplished, contemplate the things one by one and make them utterly clear and distinct; whether the eyes are closed or open, do not let them scatter away and be lost; excepting only the time of eating, recollect this matter constantly at every other time.

The first contemplation said, “let it be clear and distinct whether the eyes are closed or open”; this one says, “whether the eyes are closed or open, do not let them scatter away and be lost” — the same test of accomplishment, stated in a harder way: it is not enough that it can be seen; it may not be dropped.

The second sentence is the judgment: to make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation. The criterion is exactly that of the first contemplation, and the readings handed down say so outright: the object appearing or not, being lost or not, wrong and right, are one and the same as in the contemplation of the sun before.

One measuring rod, set up in the first contemplation, is here taken up and used.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Ground

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 ground, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. In the Section on the Profound Meaning he first cuts the whole dependent recompense apart: the image of the sun, the image of water and the image of ice are the provisional support, because they are objects of this world that resemble it and can be seen; and from the ground of beryl down to the contemplation of the jeweled towers is the true support, because those are the real, outflow-free, visible objects of that land. By this judgment the second contemplation falls exactly upon the seam between the provisional and the true — its first half still borrows things of this world, while its second half already stands on the ground of that land. He sets up besides the judgment of that which rests and that which is rested upon: the pools and groves of the seven precious substances are that which rests, the jeweled ground of beryl is that which is rested upon; the ground is that which bears, the pools, terraces and trees are what is borne. Here lies the reason why the sixteen contemplations take the ground first and the trees, the pools and the towers after. The practice of the face reflected in a bowl of water comes from him, and so does the matching, one by one, of bowl, water and waves.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He explains this contemplation very briefly, in three topics only, and marks its sequence besides by four turnings. Where he alone puts out his strength is upon a number: which eight are the eight kinds of pure wind? He says that in that place there are in truth no seasons, and that if this eight is to be lodged somewhere, then setting aside up and down there remain the four cardinal and the four intermediate directions, and so it says eight; and he adds a further remark — it may also be set against the eight trigrams. This is a rare thing among the two commentaries on this sūtra: a likening of that land by the numerical arts of this one.

One line reads this passage as a set of exercises that can be done indoors, and measures it down to a bowl of water and a grain of rice; the other reads it as a set of names and numbers to be made exact, and measures it down to eight directions.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: their light is like flowers, and again resembles the stars and the moon.

The third contemplation is one of the shortest passages in the whole sūtra: one hundred and thirty-seven characters.

Yet it does three things no other contemplation does: it divides seeing into two layers; it states for the first time a number of kalpas of offences extinguished; and the Buddha calls Ānanda aside by name to charge him that this teaching be handed on.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles judges this contemplation in six segments, the text of the first two of which in fact still lies at the end of the contemplation before — he reads the third contemplation as beginning at “when this image is accomplished.” Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life judges it in four: the gradual image-contemplation, the actual contemplation, the benefit, and showing the contemplation to be wrong or right. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

Roughly Seen

The sūtra says: “Once the image of water is accomplished, this is called roughly seeing the ground of the land of Ultimate Bliss.”

The contemplation before had already seen the ground of beryl shining through within and without; here it says only “roughly seen.”

The readings handed down gloss it finely: when the mind is gathered without a break, one sees the appearance of the Pure Land; this is called seeing within the imaging mind, because thought and conception are still present.

Which is to say: that object has indeed come to stand present, but the manner of its presence is still imaging — you thought it out, and you know that you are thinking it. There is still someone looking within the mind, and something looked at.

Hence it is called rough.

Rough does not mean bad. It is really seen, and the dimness of confusion is already lessened by that much; only there is still one layer of imaging in between.

Nor is this roughness had for the asking. Before the mind gathered without a break, the readings handed down set out four things: the mind must first mark out one object and may not contemplate them jumbled together; the mind being fixed upon a single object, the object appears of itself, and once it has appeared it must be made clear and distinct; the object having appeared to the mind, whether the eyes are closed or open it is to be guarded and not lost; and in the four bearings of the body one recollects constantly, day and night, excepting only the time of sleeping, holding it in memory and not letting go. Only when those four are in place does the fifth, the gathering of the mind without a break, come into question at all. What is called roughly seen is where this whole course of practice lands; it is not there the moment one sits down.

Clear and Distinct

The sentence that follows carries the weight of this contemplation: “If one attains samādhi and sees the ground of that land clear and distinct, it is beyond anything that words can tell in full.”

The readings handed down: the imaging mind grows gradually subtler, conceptual thought is removed all at once, right reception corresponds and one realizes samādhi — and then one truly sees the subtle and wondrous matters of that object; how could they be told in full?

The difference between the two layers is not that the object has grown finer. It is that the side which sees has changed.

In the first layer there is still someone imaging; in the second the imaging mind has come to rest, discursive concerns have vanished, and nothing is left but correspondence.

And to describe that second layer the sūtra uses a negation: it cannot be told in full.

The two contemplations before laid out description upon description — a koṭi of thousands of suns, a dais of light, towers by the thousand and the myriad, eighty-four thousand colours — and here, all at once, description stops. Not because there is nothing more to say, but because the saying cannot be finished. The sūtra marks the arrival at that layer by saying that it cannot be told to the end.

The readings handed down add a sentence here on why that ground cannot be told in full: the ground is broad and without bound, the jeweled banners are not one alone, the manifold treasures blaze with colour, and their turnings and changes grow ever more numerous. It is not that words of description have run out; it is that the thing described is still changing. And precisely for that reason beings are exhorted to incline their whole minds toward it, and to keep it constantly as though before their eyes.

Two Sentences Answering Two Requests

The weight of this contemplation within the whole sūtra far exceeds its number of characters.

In the introduction Vaidehī asked for two things: teach me to reflect, teach me right reception.

The readings handed down match those two requests, one by one, back to this contemplation: “one who forms an image in this way is said roughly to have seen the land of Ultimate Bliss” answers to “teach me to reflect” — reflection being the expedient prior to contemplation, the thinking out of the general and the particular characteristics of the twofold recompense of that land, dependent and direct; and “if one attains samādhi and sees the ground of that land clear and distinct” answers to “teach me right reception” — right reception being that the imaging mind wholly rests, discursive concerns all vanish, and there is correspondence with samādhi.

The commentators of old declared expressly that such a reading differs from that of the other masters. The others matched the sentence on reflection with the three kinds of merit and the nine grades, taking it as the good done in a scattered mind, and matched the sentence on right reception throughout with the sixteen contemplations, taking it as the good done in concentration. He does not agree, and his reason lies in this very passage: the Flower Ornament Sūtra says, “reflection and right reception are but a different name for samādhi,” which agrees with this text on the contemplation of the ground; and since that is so, how could the sentence on reflection be carried over to the side of the good done in a scattered mind?

And so these hundred and thirty-seven characters became the textual ground for the bound of the good done in concentration. “From the contemplation of the sun down to the thirteenth contemplation is called the good done in concentration” — and where that line is drawn depends upon the two sentences here.

Eighty Koṭis of Kalpas

“If one contemplates this ground, the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.”

The sixteen contemplations have come as far as the third, and words on the extinction of offences appear for the first time. Neither of the two before had them.

Why this contemplation and no other?

The two houses answer differently, and in answering they show each other up.

One line says: because what is contemplated is a jeweled ground free of outflows, it can remove offences of many kalpas that are with outflows. The object is free of outflows and the offences are with outflows; by that this is removed.

The other says: the water before was image and cannot extinguish offences; the contemplation of the ground is actual, and so can cut them off. The difference lies not in the substance of the object but in whether the contemplation is empty or actual.

One speaks from the thing contemplated, the other from the degree of the contemplating. The sūtra itself explains nothing; it gives only the number.

And after the number comes a sentence that matters more: “Casting off this body, in another life one will surely be born in the pure land, and the mind attains freedom from doubt.”

The extinction of offences is not the terminus. The mind’s attaining freedom from doubt is.

Doubt

Upon those words — the mind attains freedom from doubt — the readings handed down set a heavy note.

The right mindfulness with which the cause is cultivated may not have doubt mixed into it. One who is born there with doubt mixed in is born there all the same — but he is held within the flower and does not come out, or is born in the border region, or falls into a palace-womb.

This is a rarely stated thing: doubt does not obstruct birth in that land; doubt obstructs seeing the Buddha. You get there; only, having arrived, you must still wait.

Wait until when? Until a bodhisattva of great compassion enters the samādhi that opens the flowers; then the obstruction of doubt is removed, the palace-flowers open, the bodily form stands plain, and companions in the Dharma take him by the hand to go to the assembly of the Buddha.

So the benefit of this contemplation is not only the removal of the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas. It includes one thing more: that the mind should no longer keep by it that question, is it really so?

Taught for the Ages to Come

In the middle of this passage the Buddha suddenly calls Ānanda aside alone.

“Hold the Buddha’s words, and for the great assembly of all the ages to come who wish to be freed from suffering, teach this method of contemplating the ground.”

The two contemplations before were spoken to Ānanda and Vaidehī together; here for the first time they are divided — Vaidehī has use for it before his very eyes, while Ānanda is charged with carrying it to those who come after.

The readings handed down state very bluntly here what the buddhas’ appearing in the world is for: when the buddhas appear and by manifold expedients exhort and transform beings, it is not that they wish people merely to restrain evil and cultivate merit so as to enjoy the pleasures of gods and men. The pleasure of gods and men is like a flash of lightning: in a moment it is gone, and one enters again the three evil destinies to undergo suffering for a long time.

So the sifting is strict: those who wish to cast off this body of birth-and-death, to escape the eight sufferings, the five sufferings and the sufferings of the three evil destinies, and who trust and are willing to practise as soon as they hear — for such, without sparing body or life, teach it at once. If a single person can cast off suffering and come out of birth-and-death, this is called truly repaying the Buddha’s kindness.

One person. That is the figure the ancients set for repaying the Buddha’s kindness.

And after the sifting, the readings handed down cite a sūtra to speak of two kinds of people.

The one: he hears the gate of the Pure Land taught, and hears as though he had not heard, sees as though he had not seen. Such a one has but now come from the three evil destinies; the obstruction of his offences is not yet exhausted, and so no trust or inclination toward it arises in him.

The other: he hears the gate of the Pure Land taught, and on the instant sorrow and joy course through him together and the hair of his body stands up. Such a one has in the past already cultivated this Dharma; hearing it again now, he gives rise to joy, and practising in right mindfulness he will surely be born there.

Both passages say one thing: our first response to this teaching is not something that began in this life.

And the sūtra itself says none of that. The sūtra sets only one condition — for all the ages to come, whoever wishes to be freed from suffering. To wish to be freed from suffering is enough.

The Same Measuring Rod, Taken Out a Third Time

This passage closes upon a sentence already heard: “To make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.”

The first contemplation ended with just this sentence. So did the second, with only one character altered in the phrase for making it — a difference of a single character, and the same judgment. Here it is the third time.

The readings handed down do not gloss it again when they reach this place; they write only that the meaning of wrong and right has already been stated in the contemplation of the sun. The words are few, yet both houses still set up a separate topic here to mark it. That one judgment recurs does not turn it into a formula; on the contrary, contemplation after contemplation from here on takes it up and measures afresh with it.

And within this one short passage the one addressed changes three times.

First the Buddha tells Ānanda and Vaidehī, and what he speaks of is the sign that the contemplation is accomplished — spoken to those seated before him. Next the Buddha addresses Ānanda alone, and what he speaks of is the carrying of this teaching into the future — spoken for those not yet born. Last, all at once, no one is named, and only a judgment is left: contemplating in this way is right, contemplating otherwise is wrong.

From the method contemplated it turns into entrustment, and then turns back to the criterion. This turn will be seen again and again in the sūtra from here on.

And through all three turns, the measuring rod itself has not moved. Those seated before him are measured by it, and so are the people of the ages to come.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Ground

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 ground, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He reads this contemplation as the pivot of the whole sūtra: in the Section on the Profound Meaning he cites this passage verbatim twice, using it to match Vaidehī’s two requests back to the text of the sūtra, using it to draw the bound between the good done in concentration and the good done in a scattered mind, and on that ground declaring that he differs from the other masters. He opens the sign of accomplishment into six matters, of which the fifth glosses roughly seen as seeing within the imaging mind, thought and conception being still present, and the sixth glosses samādhi as the imaging mind growing subtler, conceptual thought removed all at once, and right reception corresponding — the division into two layers comes from him. So does the attaching of the extinction of offences to an object free of outflows, and the threefold mark of the obstruction of doubt: held within the flower and not coming out, born in the border region, fallen into a palace-womb. And he reads this contemplation as beginning at “when this image is accomplished,” earlier than the sūtra’s own division of the text.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He judges four segments, and by the two names gradual image-contemplation and actual contemplation marks out the very same two layers. His judgment on the extinction of offences is brief, yet it is one of the plain threads of his book: the water before was image and cannot extinguish offences; the contemplation of the ground is actual, and so can cut them off. At the first contemplation he had already said that this course of contemplations is for removing the doubting mind; and here, where the sūtra says that the mind attains freedom from doubt, the two places meet exactly.

One line reads this ground as the standing-place from which the whole sūtra is judged; the other reads it as the one step that leads from image to actuality.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: clear and distinct, beyond anything that words can tell in full.

The first three contemplations move quickly: the sun, the water, the ground. At the fourth the sūtra suddenly slows down.

Four hundred and fourteen characters, all of them spent upon a single tree — how tall the tree is, how large its leaves, how many colours are on the leaves, what flowers open among the leaves, what fruit is set upon the flowers, what canopy the fruit becomes, and what appears within the canopy. And when all of that has been seen, one must begin again at the root of the tree and go over it a second time, one thing at a time.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides this contemplation into ten segments, the finest division given to any of the first six contemplations of the good done in concentration; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides it into three, and opens five further items within the direct contemplation. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

“Next Contemplate the Jeweled Trees”

The image of the ground has been accomplished; next one looks at the trees.

This order is not arbitrary. The beryl ground accomplished in the contemplation before is that which bears; the pools, the terraces, the trees and the towers are what is borne. Only once the ground stands firm is there anywhere for a tree to stand.

And the sūtra’s manner of speaking has changed as well. The first three contemplations set out a single whole expanse — the sun, the water, the ground, each one thing. This contemplation says “contemplate them one by one” — tree by tree.

Here the method of contemplation passes from the whole expanse into the particular.

Seven Layers Are Not Seven Rows

“Form the image of rows of trees in seven layers.”

Seven layers — does that mean seven rows?

The readings handed down deny it outright: that land is broad and boundless, and its jeweled trees and jeweled groves are hardly to be measured at seven rows. What is called seven layers means that upon a single tree gold is the root, purple gold the trunk, white silver the branches, agate the twigs, coral the leaves, white jade the flowers, and pearl the fruit — seven tiers, each of one jewel; and these seven tiers can in turn serve one another as root and trunk and on to flower and fruit, so that they are seven times seven, forty-nine layers. There are also cases where one jewel makes one tree, and cases where two jewels, three, four, and on to a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of jewels beyond telling together make one tree.

So “seven layers” speaks not of how many rows there are but of how many tiers.

As for “row,” the commentators gloss it as briefly as can be: although the groves and trees of that land are many, row after row they stand straight and orderly with no confusion.

And one more word is worth pausing over: why is this called forming an image and not contemplating?

Because one is not yet at ease in that true contemplation which is free and follows the mind, and must borrow a provisional image in order to settle the mind before the benefit can be realized.

The image is for those who cannot yet contemplate. That sentence runs through all thirteen contemplations of the good done in concentration, and only here is it said outright.

The Trees Do Not Grow Old and Die

“Each tree is eight thousand yojanas high.”

Eight thousand yojanas: the conversion handed down is three hundred and twenty thousand li.

But the number is not the point of the sentence. The commentators add a passage here that is the most doctrinal thing in the whole unit: there are no trees there that grow old and die, none that are small, and none that are newly born and then grow slowly larger; all the trees arise at once and together, and their size and number are equal throughout.

Why?

Because that station is a realm without outflows and without arising — and what room is there in it for growing by degrees through birth and death?

That one sentence turns non-arising from a term into a scene before the eyes: there is no tree there that you can find in the act of growing. No saplings, no dead wood, not one tree older than another by a few years.

The trees on this side are born and grow old, rising year by year; the trees on that side “arise all at once and together,” and there are “none that grow old and die, none that are small and newly grown, and none that are newly born and grow by degrees” — not a single countable year among them.

And where do these trees come from? The commentators answer: they all flow forth from Amitābha’s outflow-free mind — because the Buddha’s mind is free of outflows, the trees too are free of outflows.

Colour Comes Out of Colour

Then follows a strange chain of sentences:

“From within the colour of beryl comes forth a golden light; from within the colour of crystal comes forth a red light; from within the colour of agate comes forth the light of giant-clam shell; from within the colour of giant-clam shell comes forth the light of green pearl.”

It is not four jewels set side by side; it is the light of one jewel issuing from within the colour of another, link fastened to link, and only after four turns is it gathered up by “coral, amber, and all the host of jewels serving as reflecting ornament.”

On this side each colour keeps to itself: red is red, green is green. On that side the colours give birth to one another.

Above the Trees There Is a Whole World Besides

Look upward, and there is more above the trees than there is in the trees themselves.

Nets of fine pearl spread over and cover the trees; upon each tree there are seven layers of net, and between each layer of net five hundred koṭis of palaces of fine flowers, like the palace of the great Brahmā King; within the palaces the youths of the gods are there of themselves; upon each youth there are five hundred koṭis of Shijiapilengqie maṇi jewels for necklaces; and the light of those maṇi jewels shines a hundred yojanas, as though a hundred koṭis of suns and moons had been joined together — they cannot be named one by one, and among the intermingled host of jewels their colour is the highest of all.

From tree to net, to palace, to youth, to necklace, to the light of the necklace — six levels, each smaller than the one above it, and the number at each level larger than the one above it. This is the fixed rule by which this sūtra writes of adornment: the finer it goes, the larger the numbers grow.

Flower and Fruit Do Not Grow from Within

There is a sentence of the commentators here that is easily passed over.

The sūtra says, “among the many leaves grow fine flowers, and upon the flowers there are of themselves fruits of the seven precious substances,” and the commentators gloss it: when flower and fruit open, they do not come forth from within.

On this side the flower is pushed open out of the bud and the fruit is set from the heart of the flower; both have a process that runs from inside outward. On that side there is no such process — because, the commentators say, Dharmākara’s practice in the causal stage was deep, and so they are there of themselves.

It is still the same single line: every one of the things seen there hangs upon the practice that one person once performed. The trees have no countable years and the flowers need no bud, because they were not grown.

Inside the Fruit the Ten Directions Appear

Look further down: leaf, flower, fruit.

Each leaf is exactly equal in length and breadth, twenty-five yojanas each; upon the leaves are a thousand colours and a hundred kinds of figuring, like the necklaces of the heavens. Among the leaves there are fine flowers besides, of the colour of Jambūnada gold, turning and turning among the leaves like a whirling wheel of fire.

Then from among them the fruits well up and are born, like the jeweled jar of Śakra.

The fruit sends out a great radiance, which becomes banners and pennants and measureless jeweled canopies. And it is within these jeweled canopies that —

“All the buddha-deeds of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system are reflected; and the buddha-lands of the ten directions appear within them as well.”

One leaf, one flower, one fruit; the fruit is transformed into a single canopy, and within that canopy appear all the buddha-deeds of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system, with the buddha-lands of the ten directions all inside it.

From the smallest place the largest is turned back out. All the way down the passage has been dividing into finer and finer parts, dividing as far as a single fruit; and here it suddenly turns its head, and one canopy holds the ten directions.

Among the gods and men of that land there is not one who does not see it.

Look Once More

When all of it has been seen, the sūtra says: “Once this tree has been seen, one should also contemplate it one by one in order.”

It has been seen, and still it must be looked at again — and looked at in order.

The readings handed down set that order out: first contemplate the root of the tree; next form the image of the trunk and the branches and on to the flowers and fruit; next the nets and the palaces; next the necklaces of the youths; next the size of the leaves and the light and colour of the flowers and fruit; next the pennants and canopies displaying the buddha-deeds at large. Whoever can contemplate them one by one in this order will find that nothing fails to be clear.

Six tiers of order, which take everything the sūtra has just said and walk it through again from the other end.

The first time the Buddha spoke it and you listened; the second time you go the road yourself. Having heard and having walked are made two different things in this contemplation.

And what the sūtra asks for as the sign of accomplishment is a single word: distinct. Trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit — every one of them must be distinct.

It does not count as accomplished to see a blaze of golden splendour. It counts when each single thing can be told apart from the rest.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Tree

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 tree, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He gives ten topics, the fullest division this contemplation receives. The reckoning of the seven layers as forty-nine comes from him; so does the meaning that the trees flow forth from Amitābha’s outflow-free mind and that they neither grow old and die nor grow by degrees; so does the sentence that the image is for those not yet at ease in true contemplation; and the sixfold order in which the contemplation is accomplished is an article of the gate of practice that he alone provides. He also cites two hymns here: one saying, “Great compassion of the right path, born of world-transcending roots of good; its pure radiance is complete, like a mirror, like the orbs of sun and moon”; the other saying, “In Amitābha’s pure land the jeweled trees are many; on all four sides their twigs hang down, heavenly garments drape and wind about them” — turning a passage of scripture into something that can be chanted.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He explains this contemplation with the greatest brevity, giving only five items within the direct contemplation: clarifying the substance of the trees, clarifying the appearances of adornment, clarifying the manner of their growing, the manifesting of the buddha-lands, and the conclusion of the contemplation. On the seven layers, on non-arising, and on the order he says not a word. Yet there is one thing that only he has: for the name Shijiapilengqie he gives a rendering — Able and Holy. He writes that rendering later, at the tenth contemplation, the contemplation of Avalokiteśvara, because there this jewel-name occurs once again.

One line reads this single tree as a course of practice to be walked through in order; the other reads it as a set of sections to be marked out clearly, and one name to be rendered.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: once this tree has been seen, one should also contemplate it one by one in order.

The second contemplation also forms the image of water, and the fifth forms the image of water again.

But the water in the two places is not at all the same thing. The water of the second contemplation is borrowed — its levelness is borrowed in order to liken it to that ground; and once the loan has been made the water turns into ice, turns into beryl, and leaves the stage. The water of the fifth contemplation is that land’s own water: eight pools of it, flowing out of a single pearl, pouring in among the flowers, following the trees up and down, and speaking the Dharma all the way as it goes.

The trees of the contemplation before stand still and do not move; the water of this contemplation is in motion from beginning to end.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides this contemplation into seven segments and calls it the contemplation of the jeweled pools; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides it into five and calls it the contemplation of the pools. And the name the sūtra itself marks is the image of the water of the eight excellent qualities. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Trees Are There, and One Thing Is Still Missing

“Once the image of the trees has been accomplished, next one should form the image of the water.”

Why does water come after trees?

The readings handed down answer in the plainest household terms: fine and excellent as the jeweled trees are, without the water of pools they could still not be called good. First, that that land may not be empty; second, that the dependent recompense may be adorned.

A place with no water in it is dry, however handsome it may be. The judgment is not lofty, but it is exactly the reason for the order.

And this pool of water stands one layer away from the water of that opening contemplation. The readings handed down cut the first six contemplations into two lengths, the provisional and the true: the image of the sun, the image of water and the image of ice are the provisional support, objects of this world that resemble it and can be seen; from the beryl ground down to the jeweled towers is the true support, the real, outflow-free, visible objects of that land.

The trees of the contemplation before and the pools of this one both fall within that second length, the true support. What is borrowed goes as far as the image of ice; from the beryl ground onward, what is looked at belongs to that land itself.

The Water Comes Out of a Single Pearl

“In the land of Ultimate Bliss there are eight pools of water. Each pool of water is made of the seven precious substances; and that jewel is soft, and is born from the king of wish-fulfilling pearls.”

Here is something worth stopping over: that water does not well up from underground, nor does it fall from the sky; it is born out of a single king of wish-fulfilling pearls.

And so the commentators of old give it a name — wish-fulfilling water.

Since the water comes forth from the wish-fulfilling jewel, and since the banks of the pools are formed of the seven precious substances whose jewel-light shines through and illumines all, the water of the eight qualities takes on the very colour of the mingled jewels. That is why it is called jewel water.

It is not that jewels have been set in the water; it is that jewels have become the water.

As for which eight the eight excellent qualities are, the sūtra does not list one word of them — for that one must go to the commentators, and a section below is given to it alone.

Divided into Fourteen Branches

“It divides into fourteen branches, and each branch takes on the colour of the seven precious substances. Gold makes the channels, and beneath the channels adamant of mingled colours is used for the sand of their bed.”

Eight pools, dividing into fourteen branching channels. The channels are of gold, and what is laid on their beds is adamant of mingled colours for sand.

The readings handed down set a single remark upon the word adamant: adamant is the substance that is free of outflows.

That is a judgment which had already appeared in the second contemplation — there it was the adamantine banners of the seven precious substances beneath the ground, and here it is the adamantine sand beneath the water channels. The same word appearing in two places says the same thing: the underlying stuff of that land is free of outflows.

And though the water divides into fourteen branches, it is not in disorder. The commentators describe it in four words: separate courses that wind and return. They divide as they flow, and they turn back again.

The Water Goes on Its Way, and Speaks as It Goes

“In each pool of water there are sixty koṭis of lotus flowers of the seven precious substances, and each lotus flower is round and full, exactly equal in length and breadth, twelve yojanas each. The water formed of maṇi jewels pours in among the flowers and follows the trees up and down.”

Maṇi is the wish-fulfilling pearl.

The water pours in among the flowers, and also follows the trees up and down. That word “follows” is an interesting one — the water is not running downhill; it is climbing along the trees.

And then comes the most singular sentence in this contemplation:

“The sound of that water is subtle and wondrous, expounding suffering, emptiness, impermanence, non-self, and the perfections; and there are also those sounds that praise the marks and excellences of the buddhas.”

The sound of water is speaking the Dharma.

How is it spoken? The commentators divide it into two places: in one, the jewel water pours in among the flowers, and where its slight waves touch one another a wondrous sound comes forth, and in that sound the wondrous Dharma is spoken; in the other, the jewel water rises up the bank and follows the twigs, flowers, fruit and leaves of the trees, now up and now down, and where they touch in between a wondrous sound likewise comes forth, and in that sound the wondrous Dharma is spoken.

It is not that someone is expounding a sūtra at the water’s edge; it is that the water itself gives forth sound wherever it meets something, and the sound it gives forth is the Dharma.

In the other two sūtras that speak of Ultimate Bliss there are pools of the seven precious substances too, and water of the eight excellent qualities too; but there it is the flocks of birds that set forth the notes of the Dharma, not the water. This sūtra divides the matter into a before and an after: the water speaks first, and the birds are still to come.

And the Dharma spoken has its levels as well: now it speaks of the sufferings of sentient beings, stirring a bodhisattva’s great compassion and urging him to lead others; now of the dharmas of gods and men; now of the dharmas of the two vehicles; now of the dharmas before the grounds and upon the grounds; now of the dharmas of the ground of buddhahood and its three bodies.

One and the same sheet of water speaks a different Dharma to different people. Whatever step you stand on, that is the step whose words you hear.

The instruments sounded by the wind in the second contemplation spoke four terms: suffering, emptiness, impermanence, non-self. The water of this contemplation adds the perfections after those four, and then adds the praising of the marks and excellences of the buddhas. From the dharmas that break attachment, on to the dharmas of the gate of practice, and on to the Buddha who is the refuge.

Which Eight Are the Eight Qualities?

The sūtra says “water of the eight excellent qualities,” and does not list one word of which eight qualities they are.

For the list one must go to the commentators. One house lists them as: pure and moistening, without stench, light, cool, soft, sweet, harmonious and suitable when drunk, without ill once drunk. The other lists them as: light, clear, cool, soft, sweet, without stench, harmonious and suitable when drunk, without ill once drunk. The order differs; the eight items are broadly the same set.

And both houses do the same thing with them: they assign the eight qualities back, one by one, to the entries. For the quality gathered under the entry of form, one house has “pure and moistening” and the other only the single word “clear”; for the rest, without stench belongs to the entry of smell, light and cool and soft to the entry of touch, sweet to the entry of taste, and harmonious and suitable when drunk and without ill once drunk to the entry of dharmas. In the five entries to which they are assigned, the two houses agree entirely.

There is another sūtra that speaks of Ultimate Bliss which does not put the commentators to the trouble of supplying anything: its own text sets out the list of the eight qualities — clear and pure, clear and cool, sweet, light and soft, moistening, calm and harmonious; when drunk it removes hunger, thirst and measureless other troubles; and once drunk it can nourish the faculties and the four great elements. The three lists differ from one another item by item, and all are kept here together, with no judgment as to which list is the settled text.

This takes one pool of water apart into a course of study. When you go to drink that water, what the eyes get, what the nose gets, what the body gets, what the tongue gets, and even what the mind gets, are each of them distinct.

The water on this side has all of these too. It is only that nobody has ever counted them out separately in this way.

The Light Becomes Birds

In the last section the water changes its identity once more.

“From the king of wish-fulfilling pearls a golden, subtle and wondrous radiance wells up, and that light becomes birds of a hundred jewel-colours, which sing in harmony, their voices plaintive and pure, ever praising the recollection of the Buddha, the recollection of the Dharma, and the recollection of the Saṅgha.”

That pearl gives birth in front to the water of eight flavours and sends forth behind every kind of golden light; and the light in turn becomes birds of a hundred jewel-colours. The birds sing in harmony, plaintive and pure, ever praising the recollection of the Buddha, of the Dharma, and of the Saṅgha.

The readings handed down give one sentence to each of the Three Jewels here: the Buddha is the unsurpassed great master of sentient beings, able to remove what is wrong and turn beings toward the right; the Dharma is the unsurpassed good medicine of sentient beings, able to cut off the poisonous sickness of the afflictions and to make the dharma-body pure; the Saṅgha is the unsurpassed field of merit of sentient beings.

And so the direction of this contemplation becomes plain: out of one pearl comes water, and the water speaks suffering, emptiness, impermanence and non-self; out of the same pearl comes light, and the light becomes birds, and the birds praise the recollection of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṅgha.

One end is what is to be broken, the other is what is returned to. In the middle is the same pearl.

And the commentators add one more remark about what the pearl does: it does not merely break the dark and dispel the dim — wherever it reaches, it can perform the deeds of a buddha.

Count the water of this passage back through, and its actions make a string of six: born, divided, poured, following, welling, transformed. The water is born out of the pearl, divides into fourteen branches, pours in among the flowers, and follows the trees up and down; the light wells up out of that same pearl, and the light is transformed into birds.

Six words, one after another, with nowhere among them that anything stands still. The adornment there is not a set of objects laid out to be looked at; it is a course of events going on.

Those Sixteen Characters at the End

This passage closes on a single sentence, and the sentence does not differ by one character from the close of the first contemplation:

“To make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.”

The object contemplated has by now come a long way — from one setting sun, through water, ground and trees, to these eight pools; and the further it goes the more crowded it grows, with sixty koṭis of lotus flowers, fourteen branching channels, eight excellent qualities, the numbers rising all the way. And to this closing judgment not one word has been added.

The commentators of old divided the outline, one into seven segments and one into five, and each of them ended at the general conclusion, setting up no separate topic for this sentence. The sūtra, however, says it over again after one contemplation and after the next.

The objects contemplated grow finer with every exchange; the one line on which it all counts or fails to count is still only those sixteen characters.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Pool of Water

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 pool of water, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He gives seven topics and calls this the contemplation of the jeweled pools. The two reasons why the pools are taught after the trees come from him; so do the derivations of the names wish-fulfilling water and jewel water; so does the list of the eight qualities with its assignment to the five entries; and so does the division of the water’s speaking of the Dharma into the two places, among the flowers and up on the bank, with the Dharma spoken opened into four levels. He also writes a long hymn here, running from the jeweled pools of the eight qualities all the way to the jeweled palaces and towers, the assemblies of the buddhas and the holy hosts as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, and closing on a vow: may those with this affinity keep it ever in mind, and when life is laid down be born together in that Dharma hall. And in glossing the eight qualities he states expressly that he has already expounded the meaning of these eight at length where he taught the Amitābha Sūtra.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He gives five topics: the substance of the pools, the appearance of the pools, following the mind and suiting its wish, the benefit, and the conclusion of the contemplation. His list of the eight qualities differs slightly in order from Shandao’s while agreeing entirely in the five entries. And the rendering of the name maṇi is given by him alone: the wish-fulfilling pearl.

Shandao calls this the contemplation of the jeweled pools, Zhiyi calls it the contemplation of the pools, and the sūtra calls it the image of the water of the eight excellent qualities.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: the sound of that water is subtle and wondrous.

The first five contemplations run straight through: the sun, the water, the ground, the trees, the pools. At the sixth the sūtra names something new — the towers — and then says something old:

“When this image has been accomplished, it is called having roughly seen the jeweled trees, the jeweled ground, and the jeweled pools of the world of Ultimate Bliss.”

What is looked at is the towers, and what is accomplished is the trees, the ground, and the pools.

This contemplation is therefore called “the general image.”

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides it into eleven segments and calls it “the contemplation of the jeweled towers” — naming it from the thing looked at. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides it into four and calls it “the general contemplation” — naming it from the matter it gathers in. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

There Are Pools Now, and One Thing Is Still Missing

Why must there be towers after the fifth contemplation?

The readings handed down use the same turn of phrase as at the contemplation before: though the pure land has jeweled streams pouring through it, without jeweled towers and palace pavilions it is still not called fine; for this reason the adornment of the dependent recompense is to be complete in every kind.

At the image of the trees it was said, “without the water of the pools it would still not be called good”; here at the image of the pools it is said, “without jeweled towers and palace pavilions it is still not fine” — all the way along, one thing is still missing.

By the end of this contemplation, what was missing has been filled in.

How Many Towers

“In the land formed of many jewels, upon each and every tract of ground there are five hundred koṭis of jeweled towers.”

The commentators split this sentence into two matters. “Upon each and every tract of ground” states where the towers stand: the tracts of ground extend throughout that land, and so the towers too are without end. “There are five hundred koṭis” states the number: since it is so upon a single tract of ground, so it is throughout that land as well.

The reckoning deserves notice. It does not say that there are five hundred koṭis of towers in that land all told; it says that upon each and every tract of ground there are five hundred koṭis, and that the tracts of ground extend throughout the land.

The ground of the second contemplation was one single expanse. Here that single expanse is divided again into countless “tracts,” and upon each tract five hundred koṭis are set.

Inside the Towers, and Outside Them

“Within those towered pavilions are measureless gods, making celestial music. There are also musical instruments hanging in space, like the jewel banners of the heavens, sounding of themselves without being struck.”

The commentators divide inside from outside here: what is within the towered pavilions is “the adornment inside the pavilions,” and the instruments hanging in the air are “the adornment outside the towers.”

Inside, the gods are making music — there are players.

Outside, the instruments hang in space, like the jewel banners of the heavens, and sound of themselves without being struck — there are no players.

And there is a step here, taken up from the second contemplation. The second said, “eight kinds of pure wind issue from the light and strike these instruments.” There the instruments had to have wind to strike them before they would sound. By this contemplation not even the wind is needed.

From having something to depend on, to depending on nothing. The commentators say it in five words: “with no thought raised, the thing accomplishes itself.” Nothing has to set the mind going; the matter completes itself.

And in the same sentence there are four more words: through the six periods of day and night.

That sounding is not a performance with a beginning and an end. On the outer side there is not even anyone playing, and so there is no moment of starting and no moment of stopping — the sound streams forth the tones of the Dharma through the six periods of day and night, and is always so.

Things Without Consciousness Are Speaking the Dharma

This passage raises its objects with three occurrences of the word “are”: there are five hundred koṭis of jeweled towers, there are measureless gods, there are also musical instruments. From things, to persons, to instruments — three raisings and it stops, and below that the text turns to the accomplishing of the contemplation and to the benefit.

And the power of speaking the Dharma the sūtra gives to the last of these three, the one least likely to speak of itself.

“Among these many sounds, all speak of recollecting the Buddha, recollecting the Dharma, recollecting the saṅgha of bhikṣus.”

The commentators set down a blunt judgment here: “the music, though it has no consciousness, yet has the power to speak the Dharma.”

This is something the sūtra has been accumulating all along. In the second contemplation the wind struck the instruments and they set forth suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self; in the fifth the water flowed among the flowers and gave out sound wherever it met something, and in those sounds the wondrous Dharma was spoken; in this one the instruments sound of themselves without being struck and speak the three recollections.

In that land, what speaks the Dharma is not confined to what has feeling. Wind, water, instruments: whatever can sound is speaking; wherever you go, there is sound speaking the Dharma. And what is spoken runs from “suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self” through to “recollecting the Buddha, recollecting the Dharma, recollecting the saṅgha of bhikṣus.”

The words that break attachment come first; the words that name what is turned toward come after.

Look at One Thing; a Whole Expanse Appears

“When this image has been accomplished, it is called having roughly seen the jeweled trees, the jeweled ground, and the jeweled pools of the world of Ultimate Bliss.”

The commentators gloss this sentence closely: “dwelling single-mindedly upon the object, hoping to see the jeweled towers, holding the thought fast without shifting, all the adornments from the ground upward appear together.”

What is hoped for is one thing only; what appears is the whole.

This is what “general” means. It is not looking through the earlier five contemplations a second time; it is looking well at this one thing, whereupon everything before it is already there.

And the word the sūtra uses is still “roughly seen” — the third contemplation said “roughly seen the ground of the land of Ultimate Bliss,” and here it says “roughly seen the jeweled trees, the jeweled ground, and the jeweled pools of the world of Ultimate Bliss.”

What is seen has grown, and the name for it is still rough.

The weight increases and the verdict refuses to slacken. That layer of “clear and distinct, beyond the telling” the sūtra stated once at the third contemplation and has left standing up ahead ever since.

Where “rough” lies the readings handed down answered at the image of the ground: when the mind is gathered without a break one sees the appearance of the pure land, and this is called “seeing within the imaging mind” — the reason it is still called rough is that “awareness and imaging are still there.”

Seen it truly is; only this seeing is still within the imaging mind, and still carries that portion of imaging with it.

“Rough” does not say that the object seen falls short; it says that the mind that sees is still imaging. However much more is seen and however whole the expanse becomes, so long as it is accomplished by imaging the name does not change.

“General” Is Not a Short Cut

If looking at the towers accomplishes the trees, the ground, and the pools, were the earlier contemplations then looked at for nothing?

They were not.

The five before were set up one at a time: once the ground stood, the trees had somewhere to stand; once the trees stood, the pools were not empty; once the pools stood, the towers were not lacking. By this contemplation everything that has been set up is present at once, and what is contemplated is only the last thing added.

“General” does not press five matters into one; the five are already there, and you have only to hold the sixth in view.

Reading this far one is inclined to breathe out and feel that the dependent recompense has been told. But what the sūtra gives next is not a closing of the work. It is a larger number.

Removing the Gravest Evil Karma of Measureless Koṭis of Kalpas

“If one sees these, the gravest evil karma of measureless koṭis of kalpas is removed, and after the end of this life one will surely be born in that land.”

The third contemplation said “the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death,” and gave a number; this one says “the gravest evil karma of measureless koṭis of kalpas,” gives no number, and adds two words: “the gravest.”

The commentators gloss the benefit as a single line: “observing according to the method removes the obstructions of many kalpas; the vessel of the body being pure, it accords with the Buddha’s fundamental mind, and casting off the body for another world one will surely go there, beyond doubt.”

Obstruction removed — the vessel of the body pure — in accord with the Buddha’s fundamental mind — bound to go. Four steps, each hooked to the one before.

The extinction of offences is still not where this lands. Where it lands is “according with the Buddha’s fundamental mind.”

Birth in that land is stated so flatly — “one will surely be born in that land,” with no room left in the sentence for turning aside — because what it hangs on is not how many offences were removed, but whether that step of according with the Buddha’s fundamental mind has come to ground. Once it has, then and only then, casting off this body for another world, can that word “surely” be spoken.

One Stretch Comes to an End

The dependent recompense goes as far as this contemplation.

In the Section on the Profound Meaning the readings handed down cut the whole of the dependent recompense: from the contemplation of the sun to the contemplation of the Flower Throne is the dependent recompense; among these the contemplation of the Flower Throne is “the particular support,” belonging to Amitābha alone, while the other six contemplations are “the common support,” belonging to the ordinary beings and sages of the dharma-realm and used in common by all who gain birth there.

So this contemplation is the last of the common support.

And within those six there is a second cut: the image of the sun, the image of water, and the image of ice are “the provisional support,” because they are objects of this world that resemble it and can be seen; while from the beryl ground down to this contemplation is “the true support” — the real, outflow-free, visible appearances of that land.

What is gathered up at the end of this contemplation is therefore not one set of adornments only. The road from a borrowed object to that land’s own object has also been walked to its end here.

The ground, trees, pools, and towers looked at in these six contemplations are used in common by everyone born there; the Flower Throne to be looked at in the next belongs to the Buddha alone.

The sūtra, having come this far, finishes what belongs to everyone before it begins on what belongs to the Buddha.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Tower

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 tower, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He marks out eleven items, more than for any other of the first six contemplations of the good done in concentration. He calls this the contemplation of the jeweled towers, naming it from the thing contemplated. The division between where the towers stand and how many they are, the division of inside the pavilions from outside the towers, the phrase “with no thought raised, the thing accomplishes itself,” the judgment that “the music, though it has no consciousness, yet has the power to speak the Dharma,” and the sign of accomplishment — “hoping to see the jeweled towers, holding the thought fast without shifting, all the adornments from the ground upward appear together” — all come from him. So too does the whole frame of common and particular support, true and provisional support: this contemplation is precisely the end of the true support and the last of the common.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He calls this the general contemplation, naming it from the matter it gathers, and he lists plainly what “general” takes in: “first the jeweled towers, second the trees, third the ground, fourth the pools” — four matters. The sūtra raises three, the jeweled trees, the jeweled ground, and the jeweled pools; he counts in the jeweled towers that are contemplated and makes four. In his general list of the sixteen contemplations this one is written as “the general contemplation, contemplating all the towers, ground, pools, and the rest” — the same reckoning.

One line names it from the thing seen, the other from the meaning it takes in; and the sūtra marks it of itself as “the general image.”

And the sūtra itself has said only this: sounding of themselves without being struck.

What the first six contemplations looked at was the ground, the water, the trees, the pools, the towers — the look of a whole land. At the seventh the sūtra suddenly halts and says once more, “Listen closely, listen closely.”

Among the sixteen contemplations, this is the only one that begins again in this way. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides this contemplation into nineteen sentences, the finest division of any passage in the sūtra; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life marks the whole of it as “clarifying the Buddha’s body,” and says that in answering the lady’s request the Buddha opens five gates of contemplation — the Flower Throne, the image, the Buddha’s body, Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta — so that the seventh through the eleventh contemplations of this sūtra are, for him, five doors beneath a single item of the outline. The two houses gather them differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Sentence Was Not Finished, and the Buddha Came

The sūtra says: “While he was speaking these words, the Buddha of Measureless Life stood in the air, with Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, those two great beings, attending on his left and right.”

Śākyamuni Buddha is speaking in the royal palace, and halfway through the speaking the Buddha of Measureless Life appears in the air.

The sentence is written at great speed. There is no request beforehand, no waiting, no “then the World-Honored One entered such and such a samādhi” — only “while he was speaking these words.” The Buddha of this quarter, for the sake of sentient beings, settles his thought upon the west; the one over there knows it, and his shadow draws near to the eastern region. The two World-Honored Ones answer what is before them with no difference at all; it is only that one is manifest and one is hidden.

Why Standing

The commentators of old set a question here, and it is not a polite one: the Buddha’s virtue is so honored and lofty that he ought not to stir lightly; and since he is willing not to abandon his original vow and to come in answer to great compassion, why does he not sit properly to meet what is before him?

The answer is that the Tathāgata has a hidden intent of his own.

The Sahā world is a realm of suffering, where sundry evils dwell mixed together and eight kinds of suffering burn all at once; a movement turns into an offence, deceit hides inside a smiling face, the six thieves follow at every moment, and the fire pit of the three evil destinies is underfoot, on the very edge of swallowing one. At such a time, if he does not raise his foot to rescue the lost, how by his own strength is anyone to get out of the prison of karmic bondage?

And so it is “he stands, snatches them up, and is off” — there is no time to sit down.

That one sentence writes out the urgency of the whole sūtra. The Buddha’s posture is decided by the situation of sentient beings.

And beside the one who comes standing there are only two attendants, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. No other assembly is brought — this shows that “there is no remaining company”; the number of those who come is the weight of the matter.

What She Asks Is Not for Herself

Vaidehī has seen. She bows her head to his feet, and her first words are: “It is by the Buddha’s power that I have now been able to see the Buddha of Measureless Life and the two bodhisattvas.”

First she acknowledges that it is by the Buddha’s power that she sees.

Then she asks: “How are the sentient beings of the future to contemplate the Buddha of Measureless Life and the two bodhisattvas?”

She does not ask how am I to contemplate. She has already seen; he is standing before her. What she asks about is those who come later and cannot see.

The last question of the introduction was of the same kind: “if, after the Buddha has passed away, sentient beings are turbid, evil, and not good, and are pressed by the five sufferings, how are they to see Amitābha Buddha and the world of Ultimate Bliss?” In one sūtra this person asks the same kind of question twice, and neither time is it asked for herself. The readings handed down take both places as proof that these sixteen methods of contemplation were spoken from the first for beings constantly submerged, and have nothing to do with sages great or small.

What the Buddha Teaches First Is the Throne

What was asked is “how are they to contemplate the Buddha of Measureless Life,” and what the Buddha answers is: “Whoever wishes to contemplate that Buddha should raise up this thought and image: upon the ground of the seven precious substances, form the image of a lotus flower.”

To contemplate the Buddha, first contemplate the seat the Buddha sits on.

The ground, water, trees, pools, and towers of the first six contemplations are used in common by all who gain birth in that land, and are therefore called “the common support”; this Flower Throne alone is the seat on which that one Buddha sits, and is called “the particular support.” Here for the first time in the whole sūtra the view narrows from everyone’s land to his own seat.

And the Buddha still does not hand over the body directly. First the throne, then the image, then the true body — the seventh, eighth, and ninth contemplations climb one step at a time.

Eighty-Four Thousand Veins on a Single Leaf

The elaboration of this passage is extreme.

Each leaf of the lotus flower takes on the colours of a hundred jewels; on the leaf are eighty-four thousand veins, as though drawn by the heavens; each vein has eighty-four thousand rays of light. The smallest leaf is two hundred and fifty yojanas across and along; great leaves such as these are eighty-four thousand. Between leaf and leaf are a hundred koṭis of maṇi-pearl kings, each giving out a thousand rays of light, and the light joins into a canopy of the seven precious substances that covers the whole ground. Upon the dais stand four jeweled banners, each like a hundred thousand myriad koṭis of Mount Sumeru. The jeweled pearls upon the banners have again eighty-four thousand rays of light apiece, each ray making eighty-four thousand kinds of golden colour, each golden colour filling that jeweled land and turning into adamantine daises, nets of fine pearl, clouds of mingled flowers.

The numbers turn upward the whole way, until reading them makes the head swim.

But the sūtra closes at the last upon the smallest of sentences: “all are to be made distinct, as one sees one’s own face in a mirror.”

Holding up a mirror to one’s own face — that is the least laborious and most ordinary kind of seeing there is. Koṭis upon koṭis of adornment, and the whole test is that.

Contemplate Only a Square Inch, a Single Foot

How, then, is anyone to lay hold of a thing so elaborate?

The gate of practice speaks very plainly: at the outset one may not image many objects in disorder, for then concentration cannot be reached; contemplate only a square inch, a single foot — no more than that.

The wider the object contemplated, the less the mind can catch it. So it is first shrunk to a size you can hold — not that the flower has become small, but that the place where one lays hold can only ever be this size.

For how long? Perhaps a day, two days, three days; perhaps four, five, six, seven days; perhaps a month, a year, two or three years. Day or night, walking, standing, sitting, or lying, the three activities of body, speech, and mind are constantly to be joined with concentration.

Then comes the heaviest sentence of all: everything must be let go of, let go until one is like a deaf, blind, foolish person who has lost his wits, and then this concentration comes easily. Otherwise the three activities turn with whatever comes along, the settled image flies off after the waves, and though one lived out a thousand years the Dharma eye would never once have opened.

Like a deaf, blind, foolish person who has lost his wits — the comparison is not flattering, but it is honest. What it speaks of is not how well practice is carried; it is whether the myriad entanglements have really been let go.

Two Kinds of Seeing

Once there has been seeing, a further distinction remains.

One kind is called seeing by way of the image: awareness is still there within, and though the pure object is seen it is not greatly clear.

In the other, awareness within and without has been extinguished; then one enters the samādhi of right reception, and the pure object seen is no longer a seeing by way of the image — only at that step is there anything to compare with.

This distinction matters. It makes I seem to have seen and it has been seen into two different things, and the line between them is drawn not by how fine the object is, but by whether the one who knows and is aware is still standing there.

This Throne Was Brought Forth by a Vow

As the passage closes the Buddha calls Ānanda once more and adds a word about where it came from: “A wondrous flower such as this was accomplished by the power of the vow of the bhikṣu Dharmākara of old.”

Who is the bhikṣu Dharmākara? He is that Buddha’s name in the causal stage. He made great vows in the presence of the Buddha World-Sovereign King, and only when the vows were fulfilled was there this throne.

So this flower did not grow there of its own accord. It is a vow that a person once made, grown into what it now is.

Reading the long passage of adornment before, we read appearances; only at this sentence do we learn where those appearances came from — every leaf, every ray of light, is the shape of a vow.

The last two sentences are still the old measuring rod: “To make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation.”

From the criterion set up at the first contemplation, not one word has changed.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Lotus

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 lotus, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He divides this contemplation into nineteen sentences and makes each one concrete. The meaning of the three honored ones appearing comes from him — the teaching lord of the Sahā world settles his thought upon the west, and the compassionate honored one of Peace and Bliss casts his shadow over the eastern region; “the two honored ones consent and answer with no difference; it is only in being hidden or manifest that they differ.” The question and answer on why the Buddha stands and does not sit come from him, the answer being “he stands, snatches them up, and is off, having no time to sit properly to meet what is before him.” The whole form of the method comes from him too — first repenting with all one’s heart before an image of the Buddha and disclosing the offences one has committed, then requesting Śākyamuni and the Buddhas of the ten directions with mind and mouth, then being mindful of Amitābha’s original vow, and only then entering contemplation, sitting cross-legged facing west, slowly turning the mind, contemplating only a square inch and a single foot, with no limit set of days, months, or years. The distinction between seeing by way of the image and right reception is likewise his. For him the single contemplation of the Flower Throne is “the particular support,” belonging to Amitābha alone, plainly divided from the common support of the six contemplations before. He gathers the whole contemplation into four clauses: “Thus the flower rests upon the jeweled ground, rare treasures lie between its leaves, the dais gleams with its four banners, and the light performs the work of a Buddha.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He does not set this contemplation out on its own but marks the whole as “clarifying the Buddha’s body,” with four items beneath it: the charge to listen and the consent to teach, clarifying the appearance of the Buddha’s manifested body, the request for the future, and answering the request by clarifying the Buddha’s body at length; and the last of these opens into five gates of contemplation, of which the Flower Throne is the first door and the image, the Buddha’s body, Avalokiteśvara, and Mahāsthāmaprāpta are the four that follow. Within the gate of the Flower Throne he divides into five: clarifying the method by which the throne is accomplished together with distinguishing its appearance; clarifying its power to accord with capacities and benefit beings; concluding the contemplation; clarifying that it was accomplished by the power of the vow; and clarifying that the contemplation has benefit for the future. He sets up no fine articles of method and no question and answer on the appearing of the three honored ones; he threads it through with the outline alone, and his weight falls on two matters: that the throne was accomplished by a vow, and that the contemplation has benefit.

One line reads this Flower Throne as the place where the gate of practice is entered, and measures it down to posture, to season, and to whether a state of mind is genuine; the other reads it as the first of the five gates of the Buddha’s body, and measures it by what the outline gathers and to whom the benefit belongs.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: a wondrous flower such as this was accomplished by the power of the vow of the bhikṣu Dharmākara of old.

The seventh contemplation taught the throne upon which the Buddha sits. Once the contemplation of the throne was accomplished, the sūtra says: “Once this matter has been seen, next you should form the image of the Buddha.”

Here, for the first time in the sixteen contemplations, the object contemplated is set upon the Buddha himself. And what he says first is not what a buddha looks like; it is a piece of doctrine. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides this contemplation into thirteen sentences and sets up a barrier of his own beneath it; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life marks the whole of it as the clarifying of the forming of the image, divides it into three topics, and assigns separate positions in time to the two words “makes” and “is.” The two houses read differently, and each keeps his reasons in his own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Buddha First Answered a “Why”

The sūtra says “next you should form the image of the Buddha,” and immediately asks: “Why so?”

Why must one form the image of the Buddha?

The “why” is raised by the Buddha himself, and answered by him. The answer runs to four sentences, of which eight characters weigh most:

“The buddhas, the tathāgatas, are the dharma-realm body, and they enter everywhere into the imaging mind of every sentient being; therefore, when your minds form the image of a buddha, this mind is at that very moment the thirty-two marks and the eighty secondary excellences conforming to the form. This mind makes the Buddha; this mind is the Buddha. The ocean of perfect and universal knowledge of the buddhas arises from the imaging mind.”

To understand this passage one thing must first be seen clearly: the reason is given before the method of contemplation is taught. Only when the reason has been given does the sūtra say, “one who would form the image of that Buddha should first form the image of his figure.”

That is to say, these eight characters are not a piece of independent metaphysics. They are the explanation of why you are able to form the image at all.

How the Buddha Gets In

The three characters of “dharma-realm body” have from of old been construed in two ways.

One takes them apart: the dharma-realm is the sphere that is converted, namely the realm of sentient beings; the body is the body that converts, namely the body of the buddhas. Because the mind pervades it is called the dharma-realm; because the body pervades it is called the dharma-realm; because there is no obstruction it is called the dharma-realm — the mind arrives, and the body arrives with it; the body follows upon the mind, and therefore it is called the dharma-realm body.

The other takes them together: the dharma-realm body is simply the Buddha’s body, which pervades everywhere and has the dharma-realm for its substance.

Both constructions join to the same next sentence: “enters into the imaging mind of every sentient being.”

And how does he enter? One line says: because sentient beings give rise to the thought and wish to see the buddhas, the Buddha knows it with unobstructed wisdom and so is able to appear within the mind that is imaging him. Therefore, whether a practitioner sees the Buddha in thought and image, or in a dream, or in concentration, the meaning of that sentence is fulfilled. The other line says: the minds of sentient beings being pure, the dharma-body is unhindered, and so it is said that he enters into the imaging mind of sentient beings — like the white sun rising in the sky, its reflection appearing in a hundred streams.

The sun has not divided itself. It is the waters that have each caught sight of it.

The Mind Takes One Mark as Object, and That Mark Appears

Then comes the most practical sentence of all: “Therefore, when your minds form the image of a buddha, this mind is at that very moment the thirty-two marks and the eighty secondary excellences conforming to the form.”

The gate of practice spells this out finely: from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, the mind’s imaging does not let go, and one contemplates them one by one without a moment’s rest. For whichever mark the mind takes as its object, that mark appears; if the mind does not take them as object, the many marks cannot be seen. It is one’s own imaging mind that makes them, and only so do they appear in answer to the mind.

The marks are not waiting there to be seen; wherever the mind reaches, there the light comes on.

And the eighty secondary excellences need not be imaged separately — once the Buddha’s marks have appeared, all the excellences follow of themselves.

“This Mind Makes the Buddha; This Mind Is the Buddha”

Then those eight characters.

Three houses have read them, and not one of them takes a roundabout way.

One line says: this mind makes the Buddha — relying on one’s own mind of trust, one takes that mark as object and makes it accordingly; this mind is the Buddha — the mind is able to form the image of the Buddha, and he appears in dependence on the Buddha-body imaged; this is the mind-Buddha, and apart from this mind there is no other, different buddha.

One line divides “makes” and “is” into two positions in time: the Buddha was originally not there, and is there because the mind has become pure; and by reason of this samādhi the mind will in the end come to be a buddha — that is “makes.” But if, having heard that he was originally not there and is there because the mind is pure, one supposes mind and Buddha to be flatly two, therefore it says “is precisely” — outside the mind there is no buddha and no cause of a buddha; at the beginning of training it is called making, and when it is finally accomplished it is the Buddha.

And one line says it most briefly of all: this mind makes the Buddha says that the mind is able to make a buddha; this mind is the Buddha says that outside the mind there is no buddha. It is like fire coming out of wood: the fire cannot be apart from the wood; and just because it cannot be apart from it, it can burn the wood, and when the wood is burnt by the fire, the wood is fire.

The three houses do not say the same thing, and yet all three put the weight in the same place: the mind with which you are now imaging is not a bystander.

A Barrier He Set Up Himself

And it is just here that one line adds a barrier.

Some practitioners take the meaning of this one gate and make of it a contemplation of the consciousness-only dharma-body, or a contemplation of the intrinsically pure buddha-nature — of that reading it is said that “their intent is greatly mistaken, and there is not the least part of resemblance.”

The reason is given plainly: the sūtra says in so many words that in forming the image one provisionally sets up the thirty-two marks. How should the dharma-realm body of suchness have marks that can be taken as object, or a body that can be grasped? The dharma-body has no form, the eye cannot face it, there is nothing else of its kind to set beside it, and so empty space is all one can take to figure its substance. Whereas this gate of contemplation points out a direction, sets up a mark, and settles the mind there to take the object — nowhere in it is marklessness or the departure from thought taught.

The last sentence weighs most: the Tathāgata knew from afar that ordinary beings of the last age, guilty and turbid, cannot so much as set up the mark and settle the mind, much less depart from the mark and seek that matter — which would be like a man with no supernormal power trying to build a house in mid-air.

Within one and the same commentary, “apart from this mind there is no other, different buddha” and “their intent is greatly mistaken” stand not five lines apart. Both are there, and both are his. What the sūtra says, we read as it stands; what boundary he drew, we record as it stands. No reconciliation is imposed here.

From the Crown to the Soles, and from the Soles Back to the Crown

Only when the doctrine has been given does the method of contemplation come.

“Whether the eyes are closed or open, one sees a jeweled image of the colour of Jambūnada gold, seated upon that flower.” — the throne made in the contemplation before is now put to use: an image must have somewhere to sit.

The method of contemplating the image is as before: from the crown one images them one by one — the face, the brows, the tuft-mark, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the throat, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the fingers — and then draws the mind back upward: the chest, the belly, the navel, the shins, the knees, the feet, the ten toes, the thousand-spoked wheels. From above downward is called forward contemplation; from the thousand-spoked wheels below upward is called reverse contemplation. Settling the mind thus, in reverse and forward order, one will surely succeed before long.

And the Buddha’s body, the Flower Throne, and the jeweled ground must be contemplated throughout, above and below; no single stretch of it may be taken by itself.

One judgment is set down here with great weight: among the thirteen contemplations, those of the jeweled ground, the jeweled flower, and the golden image are the most essential; if one would teach another, let him teach this method — once this one method is accomplished, the other contemplations are of themselves clear.

Out of Concentration, and Still Hearing

After the contemplation of the image is accomplished, what the sūtra writes of is not that the object grows larger, but that a sound arrives.

The practitioner will hear the flowing water and the light, and the trees of many jewels, the wild ducks and geese and the mandarin ducks, all speaking the wondrous Dharma. And the sentence after it is the joint: “Whether he has come out of concentration or entered it, he constantly hears the wondrous Dharma.”

Not in concentration only. Out of it, it is still there.

Then the sūtra hands over a measuring rod: on coming out of concentration one must hold what was heard in memory and not let it go, and “let it be made to accord with Xiuduoluo” — let what has been heard correspond with the sūtras, the scriptural teaching. If it does not accord, it is called false imagining; if it does accord, it is called seeing the world of Ultimate Bliss in a rough image.

This rod is set very steadily. It does not ask whether what you heard was beautiful or strange; it asks one thing only: does it square with what stands in the scriptures? If it does not, it is false imagining, though a whole sitting of concentration was spent on it.

And if it does square, all one is granted is six characters: seeing the world of Ultimate Bliss in a rough image — seen roughly, no more; not yet truly seen. The sūtra will not grant a fraction more.

In This Present Body

The whole contemplation closes on its benefit: “To make this contemplation removes the offences of measureless koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death, and in this present body one attains the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha.”

The four characters “in this present body” are worth a pause. The contemplation before said that one “will necessarily be born in the world of Ultimate Bliss,” which speaks of what comes after; this one speaks of what is gained in this very body.

A provisionally established figure, once the contemplation of it is accomplished, yields the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha.

Those whose obstructions are heavy cannot climb to the contemplation of the true Buddha, and so the great sage let down his compassion and first taught them to pour the mind upon a figure. The image is provisional; the samādhi is real.

Carrying Forward — Three Eyes Reading the Same Eight Characters

The above is the meaning of this passage of the sūtra itself. Below, three eyes cast their light from the side — the mirror is not the sūtra; only the same eight characters, seen through three ways of reading.

The Tanluan line (Northern Wei) is the reading of the Commentary on the Treatise on Birth in the Pure Land. Glossing the line of the treatise on the marks and excellences whose light is one fathom and whose form-image surpasses that of the multitude of beings, he cites the whole of this passage as the question, and then answers it himself: the dharma-realm is the mind-dharma of sentient beings, and because the mind is able to give rise to all dharmas, worldly and world-transcending, the mind is named the dharma-realm; the dharma-realm is able to give rise to the body of the tathāgatas’ marks and excellences, just as form and the rest are able to give rise to eye-consciousness, and therefore the Buddha’s body is called the dharma-realm body. His similes are two: the first, that when the water is clear the form-image appears, and water and image are neither one nor different, so that the body of the Buddha’s marks and excellences is itself the mind’s imaging; the second, that fire comes out of wood, and the fire cannot be apart from the wood. His gloss on these eight characters is the shortest — “‘this mind makes the Buddha’ says that the mind is able to make a buddha; ‘this mind is the Buddha’ says that outside the mind there is no buddha.”

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He divides this contemplation into thirteen sentences; he sets up as question and answer why the Buddha raises the buddhas in general (the answer being that they alike realize the three bodies, and that in compassion and in wisdom their fruit is round, level and equal, without a second); he opens the dharma-realm body into three meanings; and he brings “this mind is itself the thirty-two marks” down to a settled sequence of the mind from crown to feet. The names of forward and reverse contemplation come from him, and so does the judgment that among the thirteen contemplations those of the jeweled ground, the jeweled flower, the golden image and the rest are the most essential, and so does the exclusion of the contemplation of the consciousness-only dharma-body and of the intrinsically pure buddha-nature. For him this contemplation is the provisional direct recompense — a true image provisionally set up for the mind to settle upon, made like to that Buddha so that the object may be realized, and all for the sake of the true body in the ninth contemplation. The judgment of wrong and right in this contemplation he attaches not to the last two sentences but to “let it be made to accord with Xiuduoluo.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He divides this contemplation into three topics, and puts out his greatest strength on the positions of “makes” and “is”: at the beginning of training it is called making, and when it is finally accomplished it is the Buddha; with a view to one’s own future fruit, that by contemplation one is born there is called the mind’s making the Buddha; and what appears in the mind while one is now contemplating the Buddha is the very substance of the dharma-body of the buddhas, which is called the mind’s being the Buddha. He reads “let it be made to accord with Xiuduoluo” as correspondence with the scriptural teaching, and gives a further gloss besides: entering concentration is Xiuduoluo, and on coming out of concentration the mind accords with the concentration. The gloss on the three titles is also his — Duotuoajiadu, Aluohe, Sanmiaosanfotuo, which are the Tathāgata, the Worthy of Offerings, and the Perfectly and Universally Knowing One.

One line reads these eight characters as the not-one-and-not-different of mind and Buddha, and measures it by water and image; one reads them as a provisional mark that is a stair to the true body, and measures it by the forward and reverse order of settling the mind; one reads them as the beginning and end of cause and fruit, and measures it by the positions of making and being.

And the sūtra itself has said only two sentences: this mind makes the Buddha; this mind is the Buddha.

What the eighth contemplation looked at was an image — whether the eyes were closed or open, a jeweled image, seated upon the Flower Throne. That was provisionally set up.

At the ninth, the sūtra says: “Once this image is accomplished, next you should further contemplate the bodily form and the light of the Buddha of Measureless Life.”

From the image to the body. Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles calls this contemplation “the contemplation of the true body,” and brings out beneath it the meaning of the three conditions of recollecting the Buddha; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life calls it “the contemplation of the Buddha’s true dharma-body,” and beneath it glosses the Buddha’s mind by the three kinds of kindness of the Explanatory Treatise. The two houses set up different things, and each keeps his reasons in his own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

A Number Too Large to Read Through

The sūtra opens with measure:

The Buddha’s body is as many yojanas in height as six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of the sands of the Gaṅgā. The white tuft between his brows curls to the right, winding smoothly, like five Mount Sumerus. His eyes are pure as the water of the four great seas, clear white and distinct. The light that every pore of his body sends forth is like a Mount Sumeru. That Buddha’s circular radiance is like a hundred koṭis of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system.

These numbers are too large for a reader’s mind to catch.

One line of reading stops here from of old and works the sum out in earnest: a man of the world is seven feet tall and his eye something over an inch; one of the four great seas is eighty-four thousand yojanas, and the four together three hundred and thirty-six thousand yojanas — reckoning by the proportion of eye to body, the body could be at most ten thousand times the eye. How then should it run to six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of the sands of the Gaṅgā of yojanas? And so he judges: the three characters of “the sands of the Gaṅgā” are an error of the translator.

The other line of reading says not a word here, and marks four characters only: the measure of the body.

Both readings stand, and both are the words of their own books. What the sūtra writes is six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of the sands of the Gaṅgā of yojanas — and there it stands written.

Why Does the Light Gather In Only Those Who Recollect the Buddha?

The numbers pile upward: eighty-four thousand marks; within each mark, eighty-four thousand excellences; within each excellence, eighty-four thousand rays of light.

And then the sūtra says something short: “Each single ray shines everywhere upon the worlds of the ten directions, gathering in the sentient beings who recollect the Buddha and not forsaking them.”

The light shines everywhere; what it gathers in is those who recollect the Buddha.

The readings handed down set a question here, and set it bluntly: those who fully cultivate the many practices, if only they dedicate and direct the merit, all attain birth in that land — why then does the Buddha’s light, which shines everywhere, gather in those who recollect the Buddha alone?

The answer is three layers of condition.

First, the intimate condition. The mouths of sentient beings constantly utter the Buddha’s name, and the Buddha hears; their bodies constantly pay homage to the Buddha, and the Buddha sees; their minds constantly recollect the Buddha, and the Buddha knows. Sentient beings hold the Buddha in mind, and the Buddha holds sentient beings in mind — the three acts of body, speech, and mind on either side do not part from each other, and so it is called intimate.

Second, the proximate condition. Sentient beings wish to see the Buddha, and the Buddha, answering that thought, is present before their eyes; and so it is called proximate.

Third, the dominant condition. Sentient beings utter and recollect, and the offences of many kalpas are removed; when life is about to end, the Buddha with the host of sages comes of himself to welcome them, and no bond of wrong karma can bar the way; and so it is called dominant.

All three names are plain ones: intimate, proximate, dominant. They state three faces of one and the same thing — it is not that the Buddha plays favourites; it is that those three acts have really made contact.

Where the mouth does not utter, the body does not pay homage, and the mind does not recollect, the light shines everywhere all the same; only there is no hand at the other end to take it.

“Because He Contemplates the Buddha’s Body He Also Sees the Buddha’s Mind”

The weightiest sentence of the passage stands in the middle: “To make this contemplation is called contemplating the body of every buddha; and because one contemplates the Buddha’s body one also sees the Buddha’s mind.”

What is contemplated is a body; what is seen is a mind.

How can that be?

One line explains it very briefly: because he sees the Buddha’s body he sees the Buddha’s mind — the body arises from the mind, so that to see the body is to see the mind; and because the body has been seen, the mind’s imaging turns clearer, and only then does he come to see the Buddha’s mind.

The other sets it inside the five stages of the contemplation’s accomplishment: by contemplating he comes to see the buddhas of the ten directions; because he sees the buddhas the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha is brought to completion; to contemplate one buddha alone is to contemplate the body of every buddha; by seeing the Buddha’s body he sees the Buddha’s mind; and the Buddha’s mind has kindness and compassion for its substance, embracing all things everywhere with this level and equal great kindness.

Neither line makes “seeing the mind” into anything mysterious. The body is what the mind has made; therefore wherever the body appears, there the mind is.

What the Buddha’s Mind Is

And the sūtra itself supplies the answer next, leaving nothing in suspense: “The mind of the buddhas is great kindness and compassion; with a kindness that is without object he embraces all sentient beings.”

The Buddha’s mind is nothing else: it is great kindness and compassion.

As for the kindness that is without object, one line cites a treatise dividing kindness into three:

One has sentient beings as its object — without raising the mind to lay hold of any sentient being, benefit appears of itself upon sentient beings. As the scripture says: I in truth do not go; it is the power of the wholesome root of kindness that lets sentient beings see such things.

One has dharmas as its object — without raising the mind to contemplate dharmas, it shines of itself upon all dharmas, as the sun shines upon things and makes no distinctions.

The third is without object — the mind is not raised to contemplate the principle, and yet it abides of itself in the level and equal first meaning, and with such kindness it embraces all sentient beings.

The three kinds of kindness are, each above the last, less moved. By the third, even the thought I am being kind is not set up, and the benefit appears all the same.

There is a simile too, and it comes from the same treatise: like the spawn a fish lays — if the mother does not hold them in mind, the young rot away; so it is with sentient beings, and if the Buddha does not hold them in mind, their wholesome roots decay.

Earlier it was said that he gathers them in and does not forsake them, which is the meeting of the three acts; here it is said that where he does not hold them in mind the wholesome roots decay, which is that where there is no meeting there is nothing. Two faces of one thing, of which sūtra and treatise have each stated one.

Reading this sentence, we easily put the weight on the word kindness; the sūtra puts it on the words without object — that benefit should appear where no mind is raised at all is the hard thing it means to say.

And After It Has Been Seen?

After the contemplation is accomplished, the sūtra gives two layers of fruit.

The first is here and now: “One who sees this matter sees at that very moment all the buddhas of the ten directions” — see this one, and one sees all the buddhas of the ten directions; and because the buddhas are seen, this is called the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha. The readings handed down divide this stretch into five layers, one of which is: to contemplate one buddha alone is to contemplate the body of every buddha.

The second lies in the life to come: “To make this contemplation is, when this body has been cast off and the world to come is reached, to be born before the buddhas and to attain the patience of non-arising.”

The four characters “casting off the body, in the world to come” are said very plainly — cast off this body, go on to the life to come. And what is promised is not a place but a standing: to be born in the presence of the buddhas.

One line puts the matter in quite household terms: because he cultivates the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha the seeing of the Buddha is aroused, and he vows to meet him constantly, birth after birth — like a man who practises a craft, and who, working at it from youth to full age, comes to make fine things of himself.

We probably understand this too. Do a thing long enough and it stops being a thing you have to resolve upon.

And the last sentence of the whole contemplation pushes the fruit one stage further: “Because he attains the sight of the measureless buddhas, the buddhas, present before him, give him the prediction.” Having seen, he is also recognized — the buddhas are there before him and give him the prediction. The readings handed down put it more precisely still: once the buddhas are seen, the prediction is received within concentration.

Entering by a Single White Tuft

At this point the sūtra suddenly folds up the whole spread of adornment.

Before, it said “those rays, those marks and excellences, and the manifested Buddhas cannot be told in full” — there is no ending them. And what follows is: “One should only hold the image in mind, so that the mind sees it clear and distinct.”

And after that comes the most practical sentence of all: “One who contemplates the Buddha of Measureless Life enters by a single mark or excellence: he contemplates the white tuft between the brows alone, and makes it utterly clear.”

Of eighty-four thousand marks, one is taken; and of that one, the single white tuft between the brows — look at that until it is clear.

Why? Because the marks and excellences are too many to be contemplated all mixed together; and once the one mark of the white tuft is seen, all the many marks appear of themselves.

This is the most usable sentence in the sūtra. All those koṭis upon koṭis of tiers of number are handed over at last as one entrance, and that entrance is no bigger than a point between the brows.

And the fruit the sūtra promises follows just as fast: see the mark of the white tuft between the brows, and the eighty-four thousand marks and excellences will of themselves come to be seen; see the Buddha of Measureless Life, and one sees the measureless buddhas of the ten directions; attain the sight of the measureless buddhas, and the buddhas give the prediction there before one.

A single white tuft, and it opens on the ten directions.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same White Tuft

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 white tuft, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He calls this contemplation “the contemplation of the true body” and divides it into twelve sentences. He sets it in the frame of the true and the provisional within the dependent and the direct recompense: the eighth, of the image, is “the provisional direct recompense,” and this one is “the true direct recompense” — by that provisional direct recompense scattered images are gradually stilled and the eye of the mind opens; the twofold pure recompense of that quarter is roughly seen, dullness and delusion are removed, and only then are the real objects seen. The meaning of the three conditions of recollecting the Buddha comes from him, and the three names, intimate, proximate, dominant, come from him; and the three sūtras he cites as warrant are all of this one axis — that in the forty-eight vows of the larger sūtra it is clarified only that by singly recollecting the Name one attains birth, that in The Amitābha Sūtra one attains birth by singly recollecting the Name for one day or seven, and that in the texts of concentration and of a scattered mind in this sūtra it is marked only that by singly recollecting the Name one attains birth. Upon the number of the body’s measure he sets down no doubt at all. The whole contemplation he closes in two sentences: “Such is the true form: its measure far-reaching, its tuft like five mountains; its resounding answers to the capacity, and its light touches all that has consciousness; it is to make all that bears spirit entrust its life and pour out its imaging without remainder, and, riding the Buddha’s original vastness, come alike to that land.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He calls this contemplation “the contemplation of the Buddha’s true dharma-body” and divides it into five topics, setting up among them a topic of his own, “directly clarifying the contemplating of the Buddha’s mind.” At the measure of the body he reckons by the proportion of a man’s eyes to his body and judges the three characters of “the sands of the Gaṅgā” to be an error of the translator; at the Buddha’s mind he cites the three kinds of kindness of the Explanatory Treatise — with sentient beings as object, with dharmas as object, and without object — together with the simile of the fish’s spawn; at birth in that land he cites the Pratyutpanna Sūtra; and at the measure of the white tuft he cites the Sūtra on the Samādhi of Contemplating the Buddha and the Treatise on the Jewel-Nature, saying that one may first take the size of Śākyamuni’s tuft-mark and contemplate it as present, and that only when the samādhi and the contemplating mind are accomplished is it well to contemplate in a measure answering to that Buddha’s marks.

One line reads this body as the true recompense brought about by the original vow, and measures it by how the three acts make contact with the Buddha; the other reads it as the appearing of the dharma-body, and measures it by numbers, by the kinds of kindness, and by the order of the method of contemplation.

And the sūtra itself has said only one sentence: because he contemplates the Buddha’s body he also sees the Buddha’s mind.

The ninth contemplation looked at the true body of the Buddha. This one looks at the figure who stands at his left.

The sūtra says: “When the Buddha of Measureless Life has been seen clear and distinct, next you should also contemplate the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.”

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides this contemplation into fifteen sentences, with an outline item for very nearly every mark; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides it into three items only, and his exposition of the whole contemplation runs to no more than six lines. Nowhere are the two houses further apart in fullness and brevity than here. Each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

From the Crown to the Sole, Laid Out in a Single Descent

The manner of writing in this passage is unlike that of any before it.

The contemplations just past enlarged layer upon layer — one leaf, one ray, one mark, the numbers turning ever upward. This one runs from the crown of the head straight down to the sole of the foot:

the fleshy protuberance on the crown, the circular radiance behind the neck, the heavenly crown above, the face, the tuft between the brows, the arms, the palms, the tips of the ten fingers, the foot lifted, the foot set down.

Ten places, gone through one after another. The “contemplating in sequence” — from above downward — that the eighth contemplation taught has here a ready specimen.

A Body of Eighty Koṭis of Nayutas of the Sands of the Gaṅgā of Yojanas

Look first at the numbers.

“This bodhisattva’s body is eighty koṭis of nayutas of yojanas in height, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā; his body is purple-gold in colour.”

The Buddha’s body in the contemplation before was six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of yojanas, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā. This figure is eighty koṭis — the unit of the number has changed: the former carried “myriads of koṭis,” this one has only “koṭis.” The sūtra offers no explanation of the difference; it simply writes it down.

The colour of the body differs too. The Buddha’s body was “the colour of a hundred thousand myriads of koṭis of Jambūnada gold of the Yāma heaven”; this figure is “purple-gold in colour.” And when it comes to the face the sūtra turns once again: “the face of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara is the colour of Jambūnada gold” — the body purple-gold, the face Jambūnada gold, two colours within one body. The readings handed down set up an outline item here on purpose, and called it just that: “the colour of the face differs from the colour of the body.”

A sūtra written to such a pitch that even a bodhisattva’s face being of a different colour from his body must be marked out on its own.

In His Light, There Is You

In the passage that marks the bodily marks in general there is one sentence of a very singular kind:

“In the light of his whole body the beings of the five destinies and all their forms appear.”

Within the light of his whole body, the beings of the five destinies and every form there is appear inside that light.

The light of the contemplations before shone outward — shining everywhere over the ten directions, everywhere over that jeweled land. The light of this sentence gathers inward: sentient beings appear inside his light.

The sūtra offers no explanation of this; it simply writes it so.

The Standing Buddha upon His Head

Next comes the heavenly crown: “Within that heavenly crown there stands a manifested Buddha, twenty-five yojanas high.”

A bodhisattva, bearing a Buddha upon the crown of his head — and that Buddha is standing.

One line of reading sets down five characters here: “he bears the fruit while walking the cause.”

The fruit is already upon his head; the cause is still being walked beneath his feet.

A Pair of Hands

Then come the hands.

The palms show the colours of five hundred koṭis of mixed lotus flowers; on the ten fingers, at each finger-tip there are eighty-four thousand lines, like the lines of a seal; each line has eighty-four thousand colours; each colour has eighty-four thousand rays of light.

The numbers turn upward again. But this time, when the turning is done, where it comes down is utterly concrete:

“That light is soft, and it shines everywhere upon all; with these jeweled hands he receives sentient beings and draws them in.”

Adornment heaped up in koṭis upon koṭis, and at the end a single hand held out.

And of the nature of that light the sūtra gives two characters only: soft.

Lifting the Foot and Setting It Down

The feet too are written in two motions.

When he lifts a foot, the mark of the thousand-spoked wheel beneath it becomes of itself five hundred koṭis of daises of light; when he sets a foot down, there are adamantine maṇi flowers scattered so widely that nothing is left unfilled.

Lifted, a dais; set down, a flower. A bodhisattva walks, and this is what becomes of the ground he has walked over.

The readings handed down give this section the outline name “the mark of the feet having the working of virtue” — the virtue is nowhere else than in the place where those feet come down. Where the sūtra writes of the hands it says “receives and draws in”; where it writes of the feet it says nothing of any use they serve, but only what appears in the lifting and the setting down. Whether it can be put to use, it does not add a word about.

“No Different from a Buddha’s,” and Then “Do Not Match the World-Honored One”

The weightiest judgment of the passage stands here:

“As for the rest of his bodily marks, the several excellences are complete, no different from a Buddha’s; only the fleshy protuberance on the crown and the mark of the invisible crown do not match the World-Honored One.”

As for the rest of his bodily marks, the several excellences are all complete, and there is no difference from a Buddha.

Only two do not reach: the fleshy protuberance on the crown, and the mark of the invisible crown.

This is the one place in the whole sūtra where it is said outright that the body contemplated falls short of the Buddha in two respects.

The readings handed down state these two characters quite plainly: master and disciple differ in position, and the fruit of his vows is not yet full, and therefore these two marks are wanting — a place of “insufficiency” is used to mark that he still stands upon the ground of the cause.

The sūtra writes with the utmost economy. It does not say therefore you must strive, nor does it say he is in fact already a Buddha and merely displays this. It writes the four characters “do not match the World-Honored One,” and moves on.

And by the time we have read this far we have in fact been told something: in this sūtra, position and rank are recorded as they are. The marks and excellences may be counted upward by eighty-four thousands, but of the two that ought not to reach, not one of them is granted more.

Merely Hearing the Name

After the manner of contemplation, the Buddha calls Ānanda once again and adds a passage of benefit:

“One who makes this contemplation will not meet with calamities; he purely removes karmic obstruction, and removes the offences of birth-and-death of countless kalpas.”

Then comes a sentence lighter still: “Of a bodhisattva such as this, merely to hear his name is to obtain measureless merit — how much more to contemplate him closely!”

Merely to hear his name is to gain measureless merit; how much more to contemplate him closely.

The tone of this sentence is that of raising the light to show the weighty — first the easiest thing, and then the hard one. And in passing it settles a further matter: the capacity this contemplation reaches down to is as low as an ear that has once heard.

Not Meeting with Calamities

The benefit has an earlier sentence still: “One who makes this contemplation will not meet with calamities; he purely removes karmic obstruction, and removes the offences of birth-and-death of countless kalpas.”

Three things: not meeting with calamities; purely removing karmic obstruction; removing the offences of birth-and-death of countless kalpas.

The first belongs to the present life, the second to the ground of the mind, the third to kalpas beyond reckoning. Three things laid out from near to far — and the one placed first is the plainest of all: not meeting with disaster.

The sūtra does not turn it into a guarantee; and the person to whom these three benefits are tied is written in the four characters at the head of the sentence itself — the one who makes this contemplation. It merely sets them out like this, and goes on to speak of the manner of contemplation.

Of the three, the one spoken of first is also the one closest to daily use; the sūtra puts it at the head and not at the end as a conclusion.

Where to Begin

Last comes the manner of contemplation, and these are the two most practical sentences of the contemplation:

“If there is anyone who wishes to contemplate the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, he should first contemplate the fleshy protuberance on the crown, next contemplate the heavenly crown. The rest of the many marks he should likewise contemplate in order.”

First the fleshy protuberance, next the heavenly crown.

And that place just now said not to match the World-Honored One is precisely the fleshy protuberance. The first place the sūtra teaches one to begin is exactly the place where he falls short. The sūtra does not point the contrast out; it merely goes on speaking in order.

The test of it is still the old sentence: “letting them all be clear and distinct, as though he were looking at the palm of his own hand.”

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Pair of Hands

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 pair of hands, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He divides this contemplation into fifteen sentences, and beneath the general marking of the bodily marks divides again into six matters: the size of the body, the colour of the body differing from a Buddha’s, the fleshy protuberance differing from a Buddha’s spiral topknot, the size of the circular radiance, how many the manifested Buddhas and their attendants are, and the light of the body making the beings of the five destinies appear everywhere; the single sentence on the hands he divides into six matters again, ending in “with these hands of jeweled light he receives and draws in those who have the connection.” The meaning of the two marks that do not reach comes from him — “master and disciple differ in position, and the fruit of his vows is not yet full, so that the two marks are wanting, showing that he dwells in a place of insufficiency.” He reads Avalokiteśvara as belonging to “the common direct recompense”; and the image of Avalokiteśvara formed in the eighth contemplation, the contemplation of the image, is provisional, while the true form-body of this contemplation is true. The whole contemplation he gathers up in two clauses: “This is Avalokiteśvara: his vows are weighty and his reflection appears in the ten directions; his jeweled hands rest their radiance and receive and draw beings in according to their capacities.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He divides this contemplation into three items: gathering up what is above, directly clarifying the contemplation of the bodhisattva’s body, and the wrong and right of the contemplation; and beneath the contemplation of the bodily marks he divides into three again: contemplating the bodily marks, clarifying wherein he is the same as and differs from a Buddha, and again raising the benefit and exhorting cultivation. The meaning he brings out in this contemplation is a single sentence — the standing manifested Buddha in the crown “bears the fruit while walking the cause”; and the gloss he brings out is a single entry — Shijiapilengqie is rendered “Able and Holy.” The opening sentence he cites reads “again you should contemplate the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” which differs from the base text’s “next you should also contemplate,” the recension he relied on diverging in that one character.

One line reads this body as one who receives and leads, weighty in vow and with hands that rest their radiance, and measures it by the sameness and difference of mark upon mark and by the insufficiency of rank; the other reads it as the dharma-body of a bodhisattva who bears the fruit while walking the cause, and stops at six lines.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: with these jeweled hands he receives sentient beings and draws them in.

With the eleventh of the sixteen contemplations, the bodily marks of the three holy ones have all been seen.

The opening of this contemplation is spare in the extreme: the fresh start at “The Buddha told Ānanda and Vaidehī” is still there, but what is said comes to no more than the seven characters of “next contemplate the Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāpta,” and with that it turns straight to the bodily marks, without the join of the contemplation before, once so-and-so has been seen clear and distinct. (That fresh start of eight characters is absent from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Dunhuang witnesses and from the current-circulation printing; it is a variant reading.) Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles still divides the passage into thirteen sentences and fixes each mark in place; Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides it into three items only, and says outright that in this contemplation “there is next to no method of contemplation,” since it does not differ from the one before and so is not stated again. The two houses handle it in plainly different ways, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

First What Is the Same, Then What Is Not

“This bodhisattva’s body is the same in size as Avalokiteśvara’s.”

The very first words are “the same as.” The measure of the body, its colour, the features of the face, the marks and light of the body, the outpouring and transformation of the light of the tuft — in all five he is as the one before.

Only then does the sūtra begin on what is not the same: “His circular radiance is two hundred and twenty-five yojanas on each side, and shines two hundred and fifty yojanas.”

The circular radiance of the contemplation before was “a hundred thousand yojanas on each side.” For the circular radiance of this figure the sūtra gives an exact number.

First the sameness is established, and then the difference is marked. Of the two passages among the sixteen contemplations that write the bodily marks of a bodhisattva, one ends with “no different from a Buddha’s” and then marks out two places that do not reach, while the other opens with “the same as Avalokiteśvara” and then marks out the differences item by item — one closes on difference, the other opens on it.

Where the Names Came From

Now comes the most singular thing in this contemplation: the sūtra explains two names of its own accord.

“Merely to see the light of a single pore of this bodhisattva is at once to see the pure and wondrous light of the measureless buddhas of the ten directions — for this reason this bodhisattva is named Boundless Light.”

Merely to see the light of one of his pores is to see the pure and wondrous light of the measureless buddhas of the ten directions — and so he is named Boundless Light.

“With the light of wisdom he shines everywhere upon all, making them leave the three evil destinies and gain unsurpassed power — for this reason this bodhisattva is named Mahāsthāmaprāpta.”

With the light of wisdom he shines everywhere upon all, making them leave the three evil destinies and gain unsurpassed power — and so he is named Mahāsthāmaprāpta.

Among the sixteen contemplations, this is the only one in which the sūtra says of itself why the one contemplated bears the name he bears.

The readings handed down divide the two names into two ways of naming: the first is named from the light, the second named from the virtue. And the light of wisdom is called the light of wisdom because it has what is free of outflows for its substance; it is called unsurpassed power because it can quench the suffering of the three evil destinies throughout the ten directions — the one is substance, the other is function.

The order in which we read it is in fact reversed: the sūtra gives the fruit first — see the light of a single pore and you see the buddhas of the ten directions — and only then turns back to set the name upon it. The name comes after; the matter comes first.

The four characters “the light of a single pore” are worth pausing over as well. The least is raised in order to show the greatest benefit — and this so that one who cultivates may have longing and thirst arise in him, and be willing to enter the contemplation and verify it.

“Sentient Beings Who Have the Connection Are All Able to See It”

Between the two names the sūtra inserts one very short sentence: “Sentient beings who have the connection are all able to see it.”

Just above, the light of his whole body was said to shine upon the lands of the ten directions and show as purple-gold. The shining is everywhere; those who see it are the beings who have the connection.

The readings handed down fix this sentence in place: only those who have a karmic connection with him from lives past come to see and to be touched by this light.

This is written in the same way as the sentence of the ninth contemplation, “sentient beings who recollect the Buddha are gathered in and not forsaken” — the light makes no choice; whether the connection is made or missed lies at the other end.

And the sūtra at once opens the door again: merely to see the light of a single pore of this bodhisattva is to see the pure and wondrous light of the measureless buddhas of the ten directions. The least is raised to show the greatest — and what we have in hand is often no more than that little.

The Five Hundred Daises on the Heavenly Crown

“This bodhisattva’s heavenly crown has five hundred jeweled lotus flowers; each jeweled flower has five hundred jeweled daises. Within each dais the pure and wondrous lands of the buddhas of the ten directions, in all their length and breadth, appear.”

Five hundred flowers, each with five hundred daises, and in every dais the pure lands of the buddhas of the ten directions appear.

The readings handed down add a very fine remark here: the lands of the other quarters appear in this place, and neither end is increased or diminished by it.

What appears at this end is not subtracted from that end.

The Vase upon His Head

“The fleshy protuberance on his crown is like a botoumo flower. Upon the fleshy protuberance there is a jeweled vase, holding all manner of lights and showing everywhere the deeds of a Buddha.”

Within the heavenly crown on the head of the one before there stood a manifested Buddha; upon the fleshy protuberance on the head of this one there is a jeweled vase.

Those who read this sūtra in later ages have all told the two great beings apart by just these two things: one with a standing manifested Buddha on his head, the other with a jeweled vase. For all the marks and excellences the sūtra has written out, the sign by which they are known at the last is these two.

When He Walks, When He Sits

Then come the two sentences with the most motion in the whole passage.

“When this bodhisattva walks, all the worlds of the ten directions quake; and wherever the ground quakes there are five hundred koṭis of jeweled flowers.”

He walks, and the worlds of the ten directions move with him; and wherever they move, there are five hundred koṭis of jeweled flowers.

“When this bodhisattva sits, the lands of the seven precious substances shake all at once.”

He sits down, and the lands of the seven precious substances shake all at once.

A walking and a sitting, and neither is his own affair alone.

And the scene drawn out by that sitting down is the largest in the whole part on the good done in concentration: from the buddha-field of Golden Light below to the buddha-field of the King of Light above, in the space between them divided bodies of the Buddha of Measureless Life measureless as the motes of dust, and divided bodies of Avalokiteśvara and of Mahāsthāmaprāpta, all gathering like clouds in the land of Ultimate Bliss, thronging the open sky, seated upon lotus seats and expounding the Dharma.

From the single Flower Throne of the seventh contemplation to the divided bodies filling the sky here — this road of the good done in concentration goes from one flower to a whole heaven.

“Delivering Suffering Sentient Beings”

And for the purpose of that expounding the sūtra gives four characters only: “delivering suffering sentient beings.”

Here those four characters raise a question. For another sūtra says plainly that the sentient beings of that land have no sufferings at all and receive only pleasures, and that this is why it is called Ultimate Bliss. If there is no suffering, whose suffering are these divided bodies delivering?

The readings handed down take the question head on and answer it in detail:

Suffering and pleasure must be spoken of in two kinds. In the three realms, suffering is the three evil destinies and the eight sufferings, and pleasure is the pleasure of the five desires of gods and men, indulgent and binding — a pleasure that, though called pleasure, is in truth great suffering, with never a single thought of real pleasure in it.

Suffering and pleasure in the Pure Land are another matter: measured against the stages of the grounds, what is below the grounds counts as suffering; measured against what is below them, the grounds count as pleasure. Measured against the higher verification, the lower verification counts as suffering; measured against the lower, the higher counts as pleasure.

So “delivering suffering sentient beings” here means advancing those in a lower station to a higher one, and turning the lower verification into the higher. To answer what one originally sought for is what is called pleasure.

Were it not read in this way — since in that land all the holy ones have what is free of outflows for their substance and great compassion for their function, abiding forever and parted from the arising and ceasing of apportioned birth-and-death — in what sense could anything there still be called suffering?

This one question and answer push the two words “Ultimate Bliss” a layer deeper. No suffering does not mean nothing further to advance to; where there is no suffering of arising and ceasing, there is still the division of higher and lower in station.

We are accustomed to reading that place as a terminus. On this reading there is still higher and lower there, still a turning and advancing — only what is turned is no longer of the kind found in the three realms.

Two Gathered Up Together

The end of this contemplation gathers up not one figure but two: “When this contemplation has been accomplished, it is called the complete contemplation of Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta.”

The tenth contemplation gathered up one; this one gathers up two.

And the few sentences of benefit in between give the fruit of both contemplations together: it removes the offences of birth-and-death of countless kalpas, asaṃkhyeya in number; one who makes this contemplation is not lodged in the womb, and constantly roams the pure and wondrous lands of the buddhas.

The four characters “Not lodged in the womb” are the most concrete of all the fruits granted along this road of contemplating the direct recompense.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Jeweled Vase

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 jeweled vase, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He divides this contemplation into thirteen sentences: five matters in which he is of a kind with Avalokiteśvara, four in which the circular radiance differs, eight in the shining and benefiting of the light of the body, four in which the heavenly crown differs from Avalokiteśvara’s, four in which the walking differs, seven in which the sitting differs — comparing each item with the contemplation before and marking where it is the same and where not. The glossing of the two names comes from him: Boundless Light is named from the light, Mahāsthāmaprāpta named from the virtue, and the light of wisdom has what is free of outflows for its substance and the quenching of the suffering of the three evil destinies for its function. The question and answer on “delivering suffering sentient beings” comes from him too, and the division into suffering and pleasure in the three realms and suffering and pleasure in the Pure Land is his. What he cites, “the circular radiance is a hundred and twenty-five yojanas on each side,” differs from the base text’s “two hundred and twenty-five,” the recension he relied on diverging in that one character. The whole contemplation he gathers up in three clauses: “This, then, is Mahāsthāmaprāpta: his majesty is lofty, and when he sits he shakes the other lands; he can make divided bodies gather like clouds, expound the Dharma and benefit the living, cut off the womb forever and roam constantly in the dharma-realm.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He divides this contemplation into three items: the setting up of the two names by the spiritual power of the light, the sameness and difference with Avalokiteśvara, and the exhortation to cultivate; and he says outright that “there is next to no method of contemplation; it should be no different from the one above, and so it is not clarified again.” He adds here one general remark on the order of the contemplations: the reason one first forms the image and only afterward contemplates the dharma-body of the Buddha is that the Buddha’s dharma-body is wondrous in the extreme and cannot be contemplated at one stroke — form the image first until it comes freely, and the later contemplation of the dharma-body is easy; whereas with a bodhisattva the dharma-body is directly clarified. As to why the two great beings are contemplated at all, he says: the contemplation of the Buddha being finished, these two great beings are the adornment of his retinue — as when a king comes there are of course attendants in train, and where there is a Buddha there must be bodhisattvas. What he cites, “it removes the offences of measureless kalpas,” differs from the base text’s “countless kalpas, asaṃkhyeya in number.”

One line reads this body as marks compared item by item with the contemplation before, and measures it by the substance and the function of the light; the other reads it as the adornment of the Buddha’s retinue, and stops at six lines.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: when this contemplation has been accomplished, it is called the complete contemplation of Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta.

By the time the sixteen contemplations have come this far, the setting sun has been seen, and the great water, the jeweled ground, the jeweled trees, the water of the eight excellent qualities, the storeyed pavilions, and the Flower Throne; the image of the Buddha has been seen, and the true body of the Buddha of Measureless Life, and Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta as well. The object contemplated has been pushed all the way from the sun’s orb of this world to the dependent recompense of that land, and on to the direct recompense of that Buddha and the two great beings. At the twelfth contemplation the sūtra suddenly moves that object to a different place: what is to be seen this time is the very person who is doing the contemplating.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles judges this contemplation to be the twelfth of the thirteen of the good done in concentration and divides it into six segments: citing what precedes and giving rise to what follows, gathering the mind into contemplation, neither concentration nor scattering left out, the benefit of the contemplation accomplished, the general conclusion, and the raising again of the one who contemplates; and he further breaks the middle segment into nine consecutive images. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life divides more sparely, making only two segments, and poses a question first: since both the universal contemplation and the mixed speak of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas, why should they be made two contemplations? The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

One Sentence Puts the Person Inside

The sūtra uses a single sentence: “When you see this matter you should raise up thought and image and set your mind upon it, and see for yourself that you are born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the west.”

The sentence pattern of the first eleven contemplations was always “see” this, “contemplate” that — the thing contemplated outside, the mind that contemplates within, and a boundary running between them. This sentence takes the boundary away: what is contemplated is precisely the one who contemplates. You are not standing on this shore looking at that land; in concentration you see that you are already there.

And not vaguely there, either. There is a seat: “seated cross-legged within a lotus.”

The seventh contemplation had already contemplated the Flower Throne in the fullest detail, and the throne then was still empty. At this contemplation someone is sitting on it.

One Image After Another

What the sūtra teaches next is not a vague object but a string of actions.

First form the image of the lotus closing, then form the image of the lotus opening. When the flower opens, rays of five hundred colours come and shine upon the body — that is the third image. With the light shining on the body, the eyes then open — that is the fourth. With the eyes open, one sees buddhas and bodhisattvas filling the whole of space — that is the fifth.

The readings handed down break this stretch into nine images: the image of one’s own birth there, the image of facing the west, the image of sitting upon the flower, the image of the flower closing, the image of the flower opening, the image of the jeweled light coming to shine upon the body, the image of the eyes opening, the image of seeing buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the image of hearing the Dharma. Nine images, one after another; if the one before is not accomplished, the one after has nothing to rise from.

This order is itself the teaching. It does not let anyone leap in one step to seeing buddhas and bodhisattvas fill the whole of space; it begins from the flower closing — first let that flower close, then let it open. Only when it has opened is there light. The sūtra takes one great matter that is to be accomplished at the end and cuts it into nine small ones, each of which can be taken up in turn.

The Light Shines on the Body

Among the nine images, the sūtra singles out one number: “rays of five hundred colours come and shine upon the body — so form the image.”

All the light spoken of in the earlier contemplations was over on that side. The ninth contemplation said that the circular radiance of that Buddha is “like a hundred koṭis of the three-thousandfold great-thousand world-system” — that is light upon the object contemplated. At this contemplation the destination of the light changes: it does not shine upon the object; it comes and shines upon the body.

And the body it shines upon is the one you have just now formed as an image, seated within the lotus.

The light shines, and only then do the eyes open; the eyes open, and only then are buddhas and bodhisattvas seen filling the whole of space. The order cannot be reversed: first one is shone upon, and only then can one see.

All the way through the sixteen contemplations the object contemplated grows more and more excellent while the person who contemplates stays outside the object. At this image the light within the object falls for the first time upon the one contemplating — the boundary between what is contemplated and what contemplates is dissolved by light, not by imaging.

The Sounds Have to Match

The last of the nine images is hearing the Dharma. And what is it that is heard?

“The sounds put forth by the water, the birds, the groves of trees, and all the buddhas are all setting forth the wondrous Dharma.”

The fifth contemplation had already said something like this: the sound of the water there is subtle and wondrous, setting forth suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self; the birds there constantly praise the recollection of the Buddha, of the Dharma, and of the Saṅgha. But this contemplation adds a further test: “it accords with the twelve divisions of the scriptures.”

The twelve divisions of the scriptures are the whole range of forms in which the Buddha taught in his lifetime. What is heard must accord with them — this is a criterion, and a criterion that can actually be checked. If what is heard in concentration does not accord with what the Buddha taught, then it is not an object this contemplation allows.

The commentators of old say that what this stretch clarifies is that neither concentration nor scattering is left out, the mind being guarded and constantly remembering: as in concentration, so also in a scattered mind; and the effect is twofold, that the contemplating mind becomes bright and pure, and that the several evils do not arise. That is to take a method of verification and state it as a settled condition.

What is worth pausing over is the direction in which this criterion points. It does not compare upward — it does not ask how high or how rare the object you heard was; it checks backward — it asks whether what you heard and what the Buddha taught agree. A criterion that compares upward leaves a person more and more alone the further he practises, because only he knows what he has seen. A criterion that checks backward is public: the twelve divisions of the scriptures are there for anyone, and anyone may hold his experience up against them.

The criterion set up at the first contemplation was “the correspondence of mind and object,” and what it watched was whether what was imaged and what appeared were the same. What this sentence of the twelfth contemplation sets up is a correspondence of another kind, and what it watches is whether what is heard and what has been handed down run the same way. Neither criterion asks about high or low. Both ask only whether the two things fit.

The Real Test Comes Outside Concentration

Then comes the shortest sentence in this contemplation, and the easiest to read past: “If you come out of concentration, you still remember and hold it and do not lose it.”

However well it is seen in concentration, if it scatters the moment one rises from the seat, this contemplation is not accomplished. One has to come out of concentration and find that the object is still held fast in memory and has not been lost. Only then does it count.

The test of the first contemplation was “let it be clear and distinct whether the eyes are closed or open” — present either way. The test of the twelfth is that it be present both in concentration and out of it. It is the same line of reasoning, measuring at a greater distance: from the opening and closing of the eyes to the entering and leaving of concentration.

Most of us have probably known the experience: at some quiet hour the mind is perfectly clear, and once ordinary life resumes there is nothing left of it. The standard the sūtra sets here is aimed at exactly that.

And having said “remember and hold it and do not lose it,” the sūtra says next: “When this matter has been seen, this is called seeing the world of Ultimate Bliss of the Buddha of Measureless Life.” Only here does it count as having seen.

What the eleven earlier contemplations saw were the items of that land one by one — the ground, the trees, the pool, the pavilions, the throne, the image, the Buddha’s body, the two great beings. What this sentence sees is the whole of it together: the world of Ultimate Bliss of the Buddha of Measureless Life.

Once that one test is passed, everything seen before it is acknowledged in retrospect as a real seeing.

The Direction Turns Around

In the last two sentences the sūtra changes the subject.

Everything so far has been the practitioner going to look at the Buddha. Here it is: “The manifested bodies of the Buddha of Measureless Life are numberless, and together with Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta they constantly come to the place of this practitioner.”

Numberless manifested bodies, and the two great beings, constantly coming to where this practitioner is.

It is not the practitioner going over there; it is that side coming here. And not once, but constantly.

The readings handed down judge this sentence to be the benefit of being guarded and kept in mind that the one who contemplates receives, and say of a person who has come this far that he is one who pours out his thought in the wish to see the twofold adornment of the west, dependent and direct, clear and distinct and constantly as though seen with the eye. Since that side is already clear and distinct in his mind as though seen with the eye, that side is also constantly at his place. An image of birth in that land, carried this far, is no longer merely a matter of where one wants to go.

Where the Sixteen Contemplations Have Come

From the first contemplation to the eleventh, what the sūtra teaches is the moving of the mind inch by inch over to that side: first the setting sun of this world, then the ground, trees, pool, pavilions, and throne of that land, then the Buddha and the two great beings. The more excellent the object, the harder for the contemplating mind to keep up.

The twelfth contemplation adds nothing further upward. It turns about and gathers everything already seen into one image: seeing for oneself that one is born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the west.

What the earlier contemplations contemplated was what that land contains; what this one contemplates is you inside that land.

And what the sūtra teaches next is not a higher object but a string of very homely actions: sit down, the flower closes, the flower opens, the light shines, the eyes open, one sees, one hears. Of these, the light, the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the sound of the Dharma have all been spoken of in the eleven contemplations before; the closing of the flower, the opening of the flower, and the image of the eyes opening are set out for the first time only here. It takes what was scattered through eleven contemplations and re-enacts it on one person, and adds what was missing: the look of the moment of one’s own birth there.

So this contemplation is not a twelfth new thing. It is a gathering up of the eleven before it; and the few things newly added only fill in that one moment of being born.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Seeing of Oneself

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 seeing for oneself that one is born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the west, looked at in two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary in Four Fascicles. He opens this contemplation into six segments, and breaks the stretch from “one should raise up one’s own mind” onward into nine consecutive images, marking each one — the finest division of any passage in this contemplation. He explains “it accords with the twelve divisions of the scriptures” not from the roster of those divisions but from the effect: “first, the contemplating mind becomes bright and pure; second, the several evils do not arise. Because within there is correspondence with the joy of the Dharma, without there is no obstruction from the three wrong things.” The closing sentence, “they constantly come to the place of this practitioner,” he judges to be the benefit the practitioner receives of being guarded and kept in mind by the three bodies, and he states the manner of it as “clear and distinct and constantly as though seen with the eye.” For him this contemplation is the gate of practice, made good one step at a time.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He does not divide the nine images finely; he makes only two segments — first the forming of the image of one’s own body going there, then the manifested bodies of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas coming and appearing. What concerns him more is a question of doctrinal classification: why should the universal contemplation and the mixed be made two? His answer is: “the universal contemplation forms the image of one’s own body going there, and contemplates the objects of that land one by one, each complete.” What the mixed contemplation clarifies, on the other hand, is that the spiritual power of the Buddha and the bodhisattvas is unhindered, their size not fixed, appearing according to what is before them, and it is therefore named mixed. The one has a fixed object contemplated in full, the other an unfixed object appearing as occasion requires — the distinction lies there.

One line reads it as nine steps that can be climbed; the other reads it as the boundary between two kinds of object.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: when you see this matter you should raise up thought and image and set your mind upon it, and see for yourself that you are born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the west.

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.

What the first thirteen contemplations contemplated were all objects: the sun, the water, the ground, the trees, the pool, the towers, the throne, the image, the Buddha’s body, Avalokiteśvara, Mahāsthāmaprāpta, oneself, and the image sixteen feet high. From the fourteenth contemplation on, what is contemplated changes to persons — the nine kinds of person who are to be born in that land, and what they meet at the moment their life ends.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles judges the three grades and the nine grades of birth to be the good done in a scattered mind, and first sets up eleven articles as a common form, matching each grade against each article in turn, and saying that in this way a hundred rounds of meaning are made; he further fixes the three positions of the highest grade severally as “the ordinary person of the highest good in the Great Vehicle,” “the ordinary person of the next good in the Great Vehicle,” and “the ordinary person of the lower good in the Great Vehicle.” Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life instead assigns each of the three grades a position in the stages, saying that the highest grade answers to the seed of the path, the middle grade to the seed of the nature, and the lowest grade to the seed of practice. Whether the persons of the nine grades are ordinary or holy, the two houses judge plainly differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Mind Is Spoken of First, Not the Practice

The sūtra opens with a general marking: “Of all who are born in the West there are persons of nine grades.”

Then it goes straight into the highest birth of the highest grade. And the first condition of the highest birth of the highest grade is not how many scriptures have been recited or how many precepts have been kept:

“If there are sentient beings who wish to be born in that land, they give rise to three kinds of mind and are born there at once. What are the three? The first is the mind of utmost sincerity; the second is the profound mind; the third is the mind that dedicates and directs and makes the vow.”

Three kinds of mind. And the sūtra lays down a very hard judgment upon them: “One who is complete in these three minds will necessarily be born in that land.”

The word necessarily does not often appear in this sūtra. The sūtra does not say may attain birth there; it says will necessarily be born there.

The Mind of Utmost Sincerity: No Fine Appearance Outside

The first of the three minds is the mind of utmost sincerity. Utmost means true, sincerity means real — the readings handed down take the two words apart and gloss them, and what they say is one and the same thing: true and real.

And the opposite of the true and real is stated in the heaviest terms. The readings of old have called it “good mixed with poison”: outwardly displaying the appearance of the worthy, the good, and the energetic, while harbouring within what is hollow and false. Even should one drive body and mind bitterly on, running hard and working hard through the twelve hours of day and night as though one’s head were burning, it is still only good mixed with poison, a practice that is hollow and false. To take such a practice and dedicate it toward seeking birth in that land is said to be by no means possible.

This criterion is severe enough to be unsettling. If you look back over your own practice by its measure, you will probably not find many pieces of it wholly clean.

But its reason does not lie on the side of the person; it lies on the side of the Buddha. When that Buddha was practising the bodhisattva practice in the causal stage, everything cultivated in the three kinds of karma, down to a single thought and a single instant, was done within a true and real mind. Since the place toward which the dedication is made was made in that way, what is dedicated to it cannot be a thing of another kind.

This article is not there to sift people out; it is there to set the direction straight.

The Profound Mind: Two Decisions

The second of the three minds is the profound mind. The readings of old give it only one definition: the profound mind is the mind of profound trust. And the profound trust has two layers —

The first: to trust profoundly and decisively that one is oneself at present an ordinary person of offence and evil, of birth-and-death, who through vast kalpas has been constantly sinking and constantly drifting, with no condition for going forth.

The second: to trust profoundly and decisively that the forty-eight vows of that Buddha embrace sentient beings, and that, without doubt and without misgiving, one who rides upon the power of those vows will decidedly be born in that land.

These two layers are the two faces of one and the same decision. The first sees oneself through to the bottom; the second trusts the Buddha’s vow to the bottom. The readings of old make the two into two kinds of a single profound mind and do not divide them into two minds — only when both layers are decided at once is it called profound.

The Mind That Dedicates and Directs and Makes the Vow: Not to Be Talked Out of It

The third of the three minds is the mind that dedicates and directs and makes the vow. All the roots of good, worldly and world-transcending, cultivated in body, speech, and mind in the past and in this present life, together with all the roots of good rejoiced in that others have cultivated, are dedicated and directed with a mind of true and real profound trust, with the vow to be born in that land.

The commentators of old add a sentence here: the profound trust of this mind is as it were adamantine, and is not stirred, confounded, or destroyed by any persons of different view or different learning, of divergent understanding or divergent practice.

Which is to say that the testing of this one mind comes not when one is slack oneself, but when someone else opens his mouth.

We probably all recognize that loosening: a thing has already been settled, and then someone says, surely that won’t do — and the mind wavers. That the commentators of old put this warning under the mind that dedicates and directs and makes the vow is no accident: dedicating and directing is an act that has to be carried the whole way, and one backward glance midway loses the road.

Two Sets of Three, Not One

The three minds having been stated, the sūtra says “three” once more:

“There are, further, three kinds of sentient beings who are to attain birth there. What are the three? The first are those who are kindly of mind and do not kill, and who are complete in the various observances of the precepts. The second are those who read and recite the Vaipulya scriptures of the Great Vehicle. The third are those who cultivate the six recollections and dedicate and direct them, vowing to be born in that buddha-land.”

This set of three is practice, not mind. And the three stand side by side, not one above another: a person who keeps the precepts and cultivates kindness but does not recite scriptures counts; a person who is devoted to reciting the Great Vehicle but is not strong at keeping the precepts counts; a person who cultivates only the six recollections — recollection of the Buddha, of the Dharma, of the Saṅgha, of the precepts, of relinquishment, and of the gods — and dedicates them counts.

The readings of old are plain about it here: the natures and habits of sentient beings are not the same and each clings to a different dharma; the precepts can hold the capacities of the five vehicles and the three buddhas, the Dharma can perfume into being the wisdom of the three worthies and the ten grounds, and if one weighs them by their virtue and use, each has its one capacity.

The sūtra does not ask that one person have every one of them. It asks only that the one he has be real, and that it be dedicated.

Reading the passage on the three minds we tend to tighten up; reading this one we should slacken again: the three minds speak of the direction of the mind, and these three kinds of sentient being speak of what one has in hand. There is only one direction; what is in hand differs from person to person.

One Day, or Up to Seven Days

Then comes the time: “Complete in merit such as this, in one day or up to seven days one attains birth in that land.”

For the highest birth of the highest grade, the time the sūtra gives is one day to seven days.

The readings handed down break this sentence into an upper and a lower limit: at the upper limit exhausting a whole lifetime, at the lower reaching to one day, one hour, one thought. And their general intent is that “once the mind is aroused one vows to finish out this life without retrogression, taking the Pure Land alone as one’s term” — not that seven days of doing it is the end of the matter, but that from the moment the mind is aroused this whole life faces that way.

Three Kinds of Terrace

The difference among the three positions of the highest grade the sūtra writes upon the terrace they sit on at the end of life.

The highest birth of the highest grade sits upon the adamantine terrace, and what comes to welcome him is Amitābha Buddha with countless manifested buddhas; the middle birth of the highest grade sits upon the purple-gold terrace, and what comes to welcome him is the Buddha with a thousand manifested buddhas; the lowest birth of the highest grade sits upon a golden lotus flower, and what comes to welcome him is five hundred manifested buddhas.

On arrival there, the speed with which the flower opens is likewise of three ranks: for the adamantine terrace there is no question of closing or opening, and he arrives there straight away; the purple-gold terrace “opens after a single night”; the golden lotus flower takes one day and one night before it opens, and after it has opened it is seven days before he attains the sight of the Buddha, and even having seen the Buddha “his mind is not yet clear about the many marks and signs,” so that only after three sevens of days does he see them clearly.

The readings of old refer this difference to one place: because the practice is strong the highest of the highest obtains the adamantine terrace, and because the practice is inferior the middle of the highest obtains the purple-gold terrace.

The difference is not on the Buddha’s side but on the side of the practice. The same Buddha comes to welcome them, and the manner of his coming differs according to the practice; the same land is arrived at, and whether it is seen clearly differs according to the practice. And all three positions are born there — this is the point the sūtra never lets waver while it is stating the differences.

A Small Thing Easily Read Past

In the passage on the middle birth of the highest grade there is a sentence: “After seven days have passed, at that very time he attains non-retrogression in unsurpassed perfect awakening.”

Seven days. On which side are these seven days counted?

The commentators of old set up a distinction here: the seven days spoken of are likely the seven days of this world, and are not the seven days of that land; what passes here as seven days is, in that place, an instant of a single thought.

This distinction alters not one character of the sūtra; it only reminds the reader that the time on the two sides is not measured by one and the same rule.

The same measure is used elsewhere. The lowest birth of the highest grade must wait until “after three sevens of days does he see them clear and distinct”; those twenty-one days in the middle are three sevens of days in this world, and what length they are in that place the sūtra does not say, nor do the commentators say it in its stead. The sūtra gives the numbers and gives no conversion.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Company of the Highest Grade

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 company of persons mounting the terrace to birth in that land, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. In the Section on the Profound Meaning he has first fought out a round with the other masters: some judge the highest birth of the highest grade to be a bodhisattva from the fourth ground up to the seventh ground, and he asks in return — the functioning of a bodhisattva of the fourth or seventh ground is beyond conceiving; what use would he have for the good of one day or seven days, or for the flower-terrace and the outstretched hand that come to welcome him? His conclusion is: “Again, looking at the good done in concentration in this Contemplation Sūtra, and at the sense of the text above and below concerning the three grades, all are ordinary persons of the five turbidities after the Buddha has passed from the world; it is only because the conditions they meet differ that the nine grades come to be distinguished.” The three persons of the highest grade are ordinary persons who met the Great Vehicle, the three of the middle grade ordinary persons who met the Lesser, the three of the lowest grade ordinary persons who met evil; what the nine grades divide is not rank but the conditions met. He further raises ten passages of the sūtra as witnesses and judges: “This proves that the Tathāgata taught these sixteen methods of contemplation only for the sentient beings who are constantly sinking, and that they have nothing to do with the sages, great or small.”

Among the three minds it is upon the profound mind that he puts out most strength: from profound trust he opens two gates, establishing trust with respect to the person and establishing trust with respect to the practice; within establishing trust with respect to the practice he divides right practice from mixed practice; and within right practice he further divides the act that rightly settles birth from the auxiliary act — “The first, single-mindedly and exclusively to recollect the name of Amitābha, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, asking nothing of whether the season and time be long or short, and not letting go of it from thought to thought — this is called the act that rightly settles birth, because it accords with that Buddha’s vow.” And to guard this trust he sets up, under the mind that dedicates and directs and makes the vow, a simile of his own: a man travels westward a hundred thousand leagues and midway sees two rivers, a river of fire to the south and a river of water to the north, with a white path four or five inches wide between them; on the eastern bank someone urges him, “only travel this path with decision, and there will surely be no peril of death,” and on the western bank someone calls him, “come straight on with one mind and right mindfulness, and I can protect you,” while behind him a band of robbers and evil beasts call him back. He glosses the simile thus: the water figures craving and affection, the fire figures anger and hatred, and the white path four or five inches wide figures that one point of pure mind, vowing for birth in that land, which can arise amid the afflictions of craving and anger in sentient beings. The sūtra has nothing of this simile; the commentator set it up himself, to ward off the trouble of outward crookedness and divergent views.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He says first that what the three contemplations below this contemplate is the persons who are born in that land, and that this has two uses: one, to make people know the differences among the three grades and so put aside the middle and the lowest and cultivate the highest; two, to make people know the highest, middle, and lowest of position. He assigns the three grades their positions: the persons of the highest grade begin from the seed of practice and end at the bodhisattva of understanding and practice; those of the middle grade are from the ten faiths of the outer ordinary and below; the lowest grade is precisely the drifting ordinary person of the present time. The three minds he glosses briefly: utmost speaks of the exclusive and sincerity speaks of the real; profound means that the buddha-fruit is profound and high and one seeks toward it with the mind, and therefore it is called the profound mind — and he cites the Sūtra of the Ten Grounds on “entering the mind that is deep and broad” and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra on “the root being deep and hard to pull up, therefore it is called the profound mind” as his warrant. The six recollections he lists as the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, giving, the precepts, and the gods, differing in one item from Shandao’s “relinquishment.” The difference among the three terraces he also records: “First, in attaining the path there is slowness and speed; second, what is mounted differs. The first is the adamantine terrace, the middle the purple-gold terrace, the lowest the golden lotus flower.”

One line reads the nine grades as ordinary persons differing in the conditions they met; the other reads the nine grades as a stair of higher and lower rank.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: one who is complete in these three minds will necessarily be born in that land.

The three positions of the highest grade spoke of persons who give rise to three kinds of mind, who read and recite the Great Vehicle, who cultivate the six recollections. At the middle grade the persons the sūtra speaks of change to another company: what they rely on is not mind but the precepts. And the last of the three positions of the middle grade has not even the precepts — in a whole lifetime he did one thing only: he was filial and cared for his father and mother, and practised the humaneness and rightness of the world.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles fixes the three positions of the middle grade severally as “the ordinary person of the highest good whose faculties are of the Lesser Vehicle,” “the ordinary person of the lower good of the Lesser Vehicle,” and “the ordinary person of the higher merit of worldly good,” one below another. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life instead assigns the middle grade to the position of the seed of the nature, and, on the matter of the middle grade’s attaining arhatship, works out a reconciliation with the account in the Treatise on Birth in That Land that those of the two vehicles do not attain birth there. The two houses judge differently, and each keeps its reasons in its own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

What This Grade Relies On Is the Precepts

The cause of the highest birth of the middle grade the sūtra sets out very concretely:

“If there are sentient beings who receive and hold the five precepts, who keep the eight-precept fast, who cultivate the various precepts, who commit none of the five heinous acts and are without faults and evils.”

Not one line about forming images, not one line about reciting scriptures. It is all precepts.

And immediately after the precepts comes one sentence: “With roots of good such as these they dedicate and direct them, vowing to seek birth in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the West.”

Keeping the precepts is the cause; dedicating and directing is the gate. The readings handed down bind what the middle grade cultivates to the second of the three kinds of merit — the good of the precepts: there is receiving in full and receiving in part, there is keeping in full and keeping in part, and yet “if only they can dedicate and direct, all attain birth in that land.”

The precepts by themselves will not carry a person to that land; turned in a direction, they will.

This point runs through the three grades alike. What the highest grade cultivates is mind and the practice of the Great Vehicle; what the middle grade cultivates is the precepts; the lowest grade has nothing at all — and in the text of all three grades there is one and the same act: dedicating and directing. What is cultivated may differ very widely; that act of turning round is one and the same.

One Day and One Night Counts Too

The condition for the middle birth of the middle grade is startlingly short:

“If for one day and one night they keep the eight-precept fast, or for one day and one night keep the śrāmaṇera precepts, or for one day and one night keep the full precepts, with no defect in deportment.”

Three ifs side by side; take any one of them. And before each of them stands only one unit of time: one day and one night.

Not a lifetime of keeping the precepts, not decades without transgression. One day and one night.

The commentators of old add a measure here: as to the time of cultivating the precepts, it may be a whole lifetime, or a year, a month, a day and a night, an hour; the time was never fixed, and the general intent in every case takes the end of life as its term — only, they must not be broken. And within that one day and one night one must be “pure and without transgression, so that even a light offence is treated as though one had committed the gravest fault.”

The time may be as short as one day and one night, and within that one day and one night the standard is not lowered.

If you set this sentence beside the highest grade’s “one day or up to seven days,” you will see this sūtra’s constant attitude toward time: it never asks for length; it asks only that that stretch be real.

The Company That Comes to Welcome Is Not the Same

In reading the three grades and nine grades there is one thing very easily read past: the ones who come to welcome are not the same in every grade.

For the highest grade there came Amitābha Buddha with Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, and countless manifested buddhas and a hundred thousand bhikṣus besides. At the highest birth of the middle grade the sūtra writes:

“Amitābha Buddha, with many bhikṣus and with his retinue surrounding him, sends forth a golden light and comes to that person’s place.”

An assembly of bhikṣus only; no bodhisattvas are mentioned.

The readings of old point it out at once: this is because faculties of the Lesser Vehicle in turn call forth an assembly of lesser faculties.

That the assembly called forth differs according to the practice cultivated — this is not a ranking of high and low but the statement of something very plain: what a person has kept close to all his life is what appears before him at the end of it.

If you read the scenes of welcome in the three passages of the highest, middle, and lowest grade side by side, you will see how finely the sūtra writes this. Under each grade there are three positions, and the scene of welcome differs from position to position; taking only the topmost position of each grade as the example: for the highest birth of the highest grade it is the Buddha with the two great beings, countless manifested buddhas, and on to a hundred thousand bhikṣus, śrāvakas, and gods; for the highest birth of the middle grade it is the Buddha with many bhikṣus and his retinue surrounding him; for the highest birth of the lowest grade it is a manifested buddha with a manifested Avalokiteśvara and a manifested Mahāsthāmaprāpta. One and the same Buddha; three manners of appearing.

And the Dharma the Buddha expounds for him is precisely the set of things he is at home in: “he expounds for him suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and no-self, and praises the going forth from home as the leaving behind of all sufferings.”

The commentators of old pause over the words “praises the going forth from home,” and are extremely concrete about it: the manifold worldly ties, the family estate, service to king and office, long campaigns and distant garrison duty — once he has gone forth he looks to the fourfold assembly, has no anxiety in ten thousand affairs, is wholly at ease, and meets no obstruction in going or staying, and so is able to cultivate the path — and therefore it is said to be the leaving behind of all sufferings.

The Lowest of Them

The passage on the lowest birth of the middle grade is the most singular in the three grades and nine grades.

“If there are good men or good women who are filial and care for father and mother, and who practise the humaneness and rightness of the world.”

No precepts, no scriptures, no contemplation, and not even the thought of seeking birth in that land. All this person did in a lifetime was to treat his parents well and to practise the humaneness and rightness of the world.

The readings of old are very clear here: the person of this grade has never seen or heard the Buddha-Dharma, does not understand how to hope for release, and only practises filial care of himself.

Then how does he go?

“When this person is about to end his life, he meets a good friend who expounds for him at length the joyful things of the land of Amitābha Buddha, and also expounds the forty-eight great vows of the bhikṣu Dharmākara.”

At that one moment at the end of life he hears of the matter for the first time.

“Having heard of this, he straightway ends his life. As in the time a strong man takes to bend and stretch his arm, he is born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the West.”

He hears it through and is gone. And for the distance from this world to that land the sūtra gives the length of a strong man bending and stretching his arm.

A Dharma unheard in a whole lifetime is heard once at the last moment; and the sūtra says that this once is enough.

The Road Still to Be Walked after Arrival

The sūtra does not set the fruit of the middle grade very high.

The highest birth of the middle grade “at that very time attains the way of the arhat, the three knowledges, the six supernormal powers, and completeness in the eight liberations”; the middle birth of the middle grade, “hearing the Dharma he rejoices, and becomes a stream-enterer; and after half a kalpa has passed he becomes an arhat”; the lowest birth of the middle grade must wait until “after one small kalpa has passed, he becomes an arhat.”

What all three positions obtain is the lesser fruit, and the speed is of three ranks: one attains it at that very time, one must wait half a kalpa, one must wait a small kalpa.

The speed after birth there is likewise of three ranks. For the highest birth of the middle grade “the lotus flower opens straightway” — it opens at once; the middle birth of the middle grade must wait until “after seven days have passed the lotus flower unfolds”; for the lowest birth of the middle grade the sūtra says only that, born there, he waits “seven days” before meeting the two great beings. The first two ranks speak of the speed with which the flower opens; for the third the sūtra gives only the time of meeting the two great beings and says nothing of the flower opening. The commentators of old refer the speed of the flower’s opening for the highest of the middle to one place: it is because the practice of the precepts was pure and strong.

In the passage on the middle birth of the middle grade the sūtra also uses four very fine words: “the fragrance of the precepts perfumes and cultivates.” The precepts are not a set of rules noted down one by one on paper; they are a scent perfumed into a person — perfume him long enough and the whole man is that scent, and what he calls forth at the end of life is that scent too.

Birth in that land is not the end of the road. It sets a person down in a place where he can go on walking, rather than carrying him the whole way in one step.

In reading the three grades and nine grades we easily put all our attention on whether the going succeeds; and yet at the end of every grade the sūtra goes on to write a stretch about what happens after birth there — seeing the Buddha, hearing the Dharma, obtaining the fruit, arousing the mind. The arriving is only the beginning of that stretch.

Two Very Small Movements

There are two similes in this passage, and both are taken from the smallest movements of the body.

One is in the highest birth of the middle grade: the man sees his own body seated upon a lotus-flower terrace, kneeling upright with palms joined and doing homage to the Buddha, and “in the very instant before he has raised his head, he attains birth in the world of Ultimate Bliss.” Before his head has come up he has arrived. The commentators of old put it beautifully: he lowers his head here, and raising his head is already in that land.

The other is in the lowest birth of the middle grade: “as in the time a strong man takes to bend and stretch his arm.”

The sūtra says of itself, “Amitābha Buddha is not far from here”; and a sūtra that spends so many words on a buddha-body of six hundred thousand koṭis of nayutas of yojanas, as many as the sands of the Gaṅgā, uses for the time needed to go from here to there a single lowering of the head and a single stretching of the arm.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Company of the Middle Grade

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 company of persons keeping precepts and caring for parents, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. For the middle grade he still uses the eleven articles set up for the highest grade as his common form, matching one position after another against them. The fixing of the three positions he writes with perfect evenness: the highest of the middle is “the ordinary person of the highest good whose faculties are of the Lesser Vehicle,” the middle of the middle “the ordinary person of the lower good of the Lesser Vehicle,” the lowest of the middle “the ordinary person of the higher merit of worldly good.” Of the assembly that comes to welcome he says, “the second clarifies that Amitābha comes with an assembly of bhikṣus and there are no bodhisattvas, because faculties of the Lesser Vehicle in turn call forth an assembly of lesser faculties”; of the speed of the flower’s opening, “the first clarifies that the jeweled flower opens straightway, and this is because the practice of the precepts was pure and strong”; of “in the very instant before he has raised his head,” “the sixth clarifies that the practitioner lowers his head here and, raising his head, is already in that land.” Of the person of the lowest birth of the middle grade he judges very bluntly: “The fourth directly clarifies that the person of this grade has never seen or heard the Buddha-Dharma, and does not understand how to hope for or seek it; he only practises filial care of himself.” This grade once finished, he gathers it up in a praise of eight lines, whose first line is: “Persons of the middle grade, middle practice, middle faculties, / by a single day of fasting and precepts are set upon the golden lotus.”

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. Where he puts out most strength within this grade is not on the gate of practice but on reconciliation: the Treatise on Birth in That Land says that those of the two vehicles do not attain birth there, while in this sūtra the middle grade is plainly of the Lesser Vehicle and does attain birth there — how can the two stand together? His answer is: “One squarely settled in the lesser practice is not born there; it is only because at the point of death the seed of the Great Vehicle is aroused that birth there is attained. The sūtra speaks of the present moment; the treatise raises the original beginning.” What the sūtra speaks of is this present moment; what the treatise raises is the original faculty. He asks further: if the middle grade attains arhatship at that very time, why is it not inferior to the upper of the nine grades? And answers that these are śrāvakas fallen back from awakening who are born in that land; their outflow-free path ripening they realize the lesser fruit, yet they do not hold to the lesser position but go back and forth and arouse the great mind, and their advance is all the swifter, so that in five kalpas or in ten they attain the first ground. As for the terms, he puts out the items one by one: the five precepts are not to kill, not to steal, not to engage in sexual conduct, not to speak falsely, not to drink liquor; the four truths are suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the path; the stream-enterer is rendered as cultivating the outflow-free, or as going against the stream.

One line reads the middle grade as the answering of the assembly called forth to the practice of the precepts; the other reads the middle grade as a reconciliation between sūtra and treatise.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: as in the time a strong man takes to bend and stretch his arm, he is born in the world of Ultimate Bliss in the West.

The last of the sixteen contemplations contemplates three kinds of person: one who has made every sort of evil karma and yet does not slander the Great Vehicle; one who has broken and transgressed the five precepts, the eight precepts, and the full precepts, who has stolen the goods of the Saṅgha and taught the Dharma without purity; and one fully possessed of the five heinous acts and the ten evils.

The three have one thing in common: at the very moment when life is ending, what the sūtra opens for them is not a contemplation — it is hearing, it is recollecting, it is uttering the Name. By the time the sūtra reaches this place, the manner of sitting, the objects to be seen, and the tests of accomplishment taught in the first thirteen contemplations are of no use at all, not one sentence of them.

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles fixes the three positions respectively as “the ordinary person who has committed the ten evils, offences of the lighter sort,” “the ordinary person who has broken the precepts, offences of the next sort,” and “the ordinary person fully possessed of the five heinous acts and the like, offences of the grave sort,” and for the birth of those who commit the five heinous acts he sets up his explanation by the gate of restraint. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life says instead that the lowest grade “is the drifting ordinary person of the present time,” and reconciles the same difficulty by the two senses of the person and of the practice. What the two houses answer is plainly not the same, and each keeps his reasons in his own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

Giving Way, One Step at a Time

In reading this passage, what is most easily missed is a whole train of concessions the sūtra is making of itself.

The first concession is in the highest birth of the lowest grade. This man “makes much evil dharma and has no shame or conscience,” and meets a good friend only at the end. What the good friend does is not to teach him a contemplation; it is to praise for him “the title-names at the head of the twelve divisions of the Great Vehicle scriptures” — there is no time even to read the scriptures, only the titles. And “because he has heard the names of these many scriptures, the gravest evil karma of a thousand kalpas is removed.”

The second concession follows at once. Reading the titles is still not enough: “one who is wise then teaches him further to join his palms and fold his hands, and to utter Namo Amitābha Buddha.” From hearing the scriptures the thing turns into uttering the Name.

The third concession is in the lowest birth of the lowest grade, and it retreats all the way to the floor. The good friend still “expounds the wondrous Dharma for him, teaching him to recollect the Buddha” — and yet:

“That person, pressed by pain, has no leisure to recollect the Buddha.”

Pressed by pain until there is no time even to recollect the Buddha. Those few words set down the truest state of a person at the end: it is not that he is unwilling to recollect, but that the pain will not let the recollecting be done.

And so the good companion gives way one step further: “If you cannot recollect that Buddha, you should utter: entrusting my life to the Buddha of Measureless Life.”

Note the difference between recollecting and uttering. Recollecting is a matter of the mind; uttering is a matter of the mouth. When the pain is such that the mind can no longer be master of itself, the sūtra moves the gate of practice to the mouth — “in this way, with a mind of utmost sincerity, he lets the sound go unbroken and is fully possessed of ten thoughts.” If you have ever sat by a sickbed, you probably know how much turns on that shift: at such a time, being able to make a sound is already everything.

From contemplating, to hearing, to recollecting, to uttering. Every giving way lowers the threshold another inch; and at the last inch to which it is lowered, there is still a door.

The direction of the giving way is worth noticing. It does not exchange one requirement for some other, easier requirement; it pares the same one thing down, layer by layer, to its thinnest layer. The Buddha contemplated, the name heard, the Buddha recollected, the Name uttered — from first to last it is one and the same. What gives way is the form of the gate of practice, not the one to whom one turns.

That Number

For the offences removed in the three births, the sūtra gives three figures.

The highest birth of the lowest grade: hearing the title-names of the twelve divisions of scripture removes the gravest evil karma of a thousand kalpas; and because he utters the Buddha’s name, the offences of fifty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.

The middle birth of the lowest grade: he hears the awesome virtue of the ten powers of Amitābha, the light and divine power of that Buddha, and morality, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation — “when this person has heard it, the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.”

The lowest birth of the lowest grade: “In this way, with a mind of utmost sincerity, he lets the sound go unbroken and is fully possessed of ten thoughts, uttering Namo Amitābha Buddha. Because he utters the Buddha’s name, in thought after thought the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.”

Note the four words added at the end: in thought after thought. The first two grades tell how much is removed at one stroke; this grade removes eighty koṭis of kalpas at every single thought.

The one whose offences are heaviest has the most removed. Read straight through, the order runs backwards; and the sūtra has written it exactly so.

To take this as meaning the more offences one makes the better the bargain is to read it upside down. What the sūtra writes is not a piece of trade; it is a rescue.

The readings handed down set a question here: at that same last moment, why does hearing the twelve divisions of the scriptures remove only a thousand kalpas, while a single utterance of the Buddha’s name removes so much more? The answer lies not in how great the power of the Name is in itself, but in the mind that is able to utter it: one who has made offences is heavy with obstruction, and the suffering of death presses upon him besides; though the good person expounds many scriptures, the mind that hears is scattered, and because it is scattered the offences removed are light. But the Buddha’s name is only one, and one name can gather a scattered mind and hold it; he is taught besides to utter the Name in right mindfulness, and because the mind is weighty, many kalpas of offences are removed.

So what that number measures is not the Name; it is the degree to which the mind has been gathered in.

Put that answer back into the passage of the lowest birth of the lowest grade, and you will see it fit exactly: the man is pressed by pain until the recollecting cannot be done, and the good companion has him make a sound and utter the Name — making a sound is precisely the way to force back a mind scattered to its furthest. What the sūtra gives at the last moment is not a higher method; it is a handhold that can better be gripped.

How Long the Wait Before the Flower Opens

The sūtra does not wipe away the cost.

The highest birth of the lowest grade: “when seven sevens of days have passed, the lotus flower then opens.” The middle birth of the lowest grade: “when six kalpas have passed, the lotus flower then opens.” The lowest birth of the lowest grade: “within the lotus flower twelve great kalpas are completed, and the lotus flower then opens.”

Seven sevens of days, forty-nine of them; six kalpas; twelve great kalpas. Birth in that land is one and the same thing, but the waiting comes in three lengths.

And what is the case while the flower has not opened? The readings handed down list three things lost: he cannot see the Buddha and the holy assembly, he cannot hear the right Dharma, he cannot go about serving and making offerings. Apart from these there is no further suffering.

Then a further line is added at once: though he is within the flower for many kalpas and it does not open, this is still better than undergoing every pain within the Avīci hell for long ages and endless kalpas.

That line does not turn the waiting into a reward. It only sets the two sides side by side and measures them once.

Reading this far, one easily raises a doubt: if a single utterance of the Name removes the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas, why must one still be shut in the flower for twelve great kalpas? The sūtra does not answer that doubt. It merely writes the two things down side by side: the offences are removed; the flower has not yet opened. Both are true, and the sūtra does not reconcile them for us.

A Sentence That Does Not Appear

At the end of each of the first fifteen contemplations there stands a judgment of right and wrong. Fourteen of them read: to make this contemplation is called right contemplation; to make another contemplation is called wrong contemplation. The second contemplation states the same judgment with a different opening character.

The sixteenth contemplation has none.

The sūtra closes at “this is called the image of birth in the lowest grade, and it is named the sixteenth contemplation,” and there it stops.

The people this contemplation speaks of meet a good friend only at the end of life. Here the sūtra gives no judgment of right and wrong for this grade — and why that should be, the sūtra does not say, and the commentators do not say either.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Man Who Committed the Five Heinous Acts

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 man uttering the Name at the end of his life, seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He marks the text of the lowest grade as the contemplation of the two courses of conduct, good and evil, and fixes the offences of each of the three positions: the highest of the lowest is the ordinary person who has committed the ten evils, offences of the lighter sort; the middle of the lowest is the ordinary person who has broken the precepts, offences of the next sort; the lowest of the lowest is the ordinary person fully possessed of the five heinous acts and the like, offences of the grave sort. At the coming to welcome by the manifested ones in the highest birth of the lowest grade he lets fall his weightiest words: “Yet if one looks to the intent of the Buddha’s vow, it only urges the uttering of the Name in right mindfulness, the meaning being that birth in that land comes swiftly thereby. It is not like the acts that are mixed and scattered. So it is that in this sūtra and throughout the various collections it is praised at length everywhere, and the uttering of the Name is urged as the essential benefit.”

As for why those who commit the five heinous acts obtain birth by this sūtra when the other sūtra does not permit it, he sets up the gate of restraint: the Tathāgata, fearing lest sentient beings commit these two faults, said by expedient means that they cannot obtain birth in that land, and yet “it is not that they are not embraced”; the five heinous acts having already been done, they cannot be abandoned and left to turn in transmigration, and great compassion still gathers them in to birth in that land, while the offence of slandering the Dharma has not yet been made, and so it is said, to restrain them, that if slander of the Dharma arises there is no birth — this is spoken in terms of karma not yet made. For one who has made them and is born, the flower stays closed for many kalpas; and what is lost within the flower is three things only, which is still better than the Avīci hell.

He also sets up a separate segment upon the eighteen characters at the end of the highest birth of the lowest grade: “it is not that recollecting the Buddha alone obtains birth in that land: recollecting the Dharma and the Saṅgha as well, one may likewise go.” What the sūtra says there is that he is able to hear the name of the Buddha, the name of the Dharma, and to hear the name of the Saṅgha, and that hearing the names of the Three Jewels he thereby obtains birth in that land; and so, he says, the road that can be gone is not the recollecting of the Buddha alone — recollecting the Dharma and the Saṅgha goes there just as well.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. To the same difficulty he answers with two senses. In terms of the person, those who make offences are of the higher sort and of the lower: one of the higher faculties, as when King Ajātaśatru committed a heinous act, will certainly repent gravely, so that the offence is dissolved and thinned, and he may be allowed to obtain birth; people of the lower faculties who commit heinous acts mostly have no grave repentance, and therefore do not obtain birth. In terms of the practice, practice is of two kinds, concentrated and scattered — the samādhi of contemplating the Buddha is called concentrated, and the cultivation of other good karma is scattered; the power of the good done in a scattered mind is slight and cannot extinguish the five heinous acts, and so the larger sūtra, speaking with reference to this, says there is no birth, while this sūtra clarifies contemplation and therefore says that birth is obtained.

The ten thoughts he glosses as “a good mind continuing in succession up to ten thoughts,” and he says that a single thought accomplished may obtain birth in that land, since recollecting the Buddha extinguishes the obstruction of offences, and so recollecting the Buddha is taken as the superior condition. As for how the mind of so short a time can prevail over a whole life of evil, he answers the challenge raised in the Great Treatise: though this mind lasts but a short time, its force is fierce and keen, like a man on the point of death who knows for certain that he cannot escape, whose mind is fixed and whose resolve is settled, surpassing the power of a hundred years of vows — “it is like a man entering the battle line who does not spare his own life; he is called a stout man.”

One line reads it as the two faces, the gathering in and the restraining, of the Buddha’s vow; the other reads it as the two layers, the faculties of the person and the force of the practice.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: because he utters the Buddha’s name, in thought after thought the offences of eighty koṭis of kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.

At the end of a sūtra there is usually a statement of to whom the sūtra is committed and how people are to hold it. The Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life has taught sixteen contemplations — from the setting sun, the jeweled ground, the jeweled trees, and the flower throne, to the body of the Buddha, the two great beings, and the forming of the image of one’s own birth in that land, and then on to the three grades and the nine grades — and when it comes to that last sentence of entrusting, what the Buddha says is this:

“Hold these words well. One who holds these words holds the name of the Buddha of Measureless Life.”

Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles divides the whole sūtra into five sections (the introduction, the main body, the benefit obtained, the transmission at the palace, and the Gṛdhrakūṭa section), and lets fall a sentence here: although the benefit of the two gates, concentration and scattering, has been spoken of above, if one looks to the Buddha’s original vow, its intent lies in sentient beings uttering the name of Amitābha with single devotion. Zhiyi’s Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life instead divides what follows the direct teaching into the two segments of benefit and transmission, and within the transmission at the palace sets up four matters: setting out the names and teaching him to hold it, urging trust, entrusting, and hearing and rejoicing. The two houses come home to different places, and each keeps his reasons in his own book. What is set out below is the sūtra.

The Words Had Barely Ended, and Someone Had Already Gained It

When the sūtra has finished speaking of the nine grades, the first thing that happens is not the breaking up of the assembly. It is payment on the spot.

“At that time, when the World-Honored One had spoken these words, Vaidehī, together with her five hundred attendant women, heard what the Buddha said, and thereupon saw the vast and far-reaching aspect of the world of Ultimate Bliss, and was able to see the body of the Buddha and the two bodhisattvas.”

Thereupon saw. Not go back and cultivate it, not accomplish it in a life to come: at the very moment the speaking ended, she saw.

Vaidehī “in her mind joy arose and she marveled at what had never been before; all at once she was greatly awakened, and obtained the patience of non-arising.” The five hundred attendant women gave rise to the mind set on the unsurpassed path and vowed to be born in that land, and the Buddha gave a prediction to each of them; and even the measureless gods who had been listening to the Dharma from the air gave rise to the mind set on the unsurpassed path.

From the person shut up in the depths of the palace in the introduction, who asked, “What offence did I commit in the past, that I should give birth to so evil a son?” to this moment of being greatly awakened all at once — that is exactly how long a sūtra is.

And the readings handed down add here a distinction in time: she did not obtain the patience of non-arising at this moment, but had obtained it already at the seventh contemplation, when she first saw the Buddha of Measureless Life; what stands here is a general gathering up of the text before, stating the benefit. The sūtra settles the account only at the end, but the thing itself happened along the way.

Ānanda Asked Two Things

After the benefit, Ānanda rose and asked two things:

“World-Honored One! By what name should this sūtra be called? And the essential of this Dharma — how is it to be received and held?”

One question about the name, one about the holding. And the Buddha’s answer likewise has two layers.

First the name. This sūtra has two names: one is Contemplating the Land of Ultimate Bliss, the Buddha of Measureless Life, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, and the Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāpta; the other is Purifying Away the Obstruction of Karma and Being Born Before All Buddhas.

Of the first name the readings handed down say that it marks both the dependent and the direct — the land of Ultimate Bliss is the dependent recompense, the Buddha of Measureless Life and the two bodhisattvas are the direct recompense; one name gathers into itself the whole field of what is contemplated in the sixteen contemplations. The second name speaks not of the object but of the effect: the obstruction of karma purified away, birth before all buddhas.

Two names for one sūtra: one taken from what is looked at, one from where one goes.

The commentators of old call the first name the marking of both the dependent and the direct, and add a line to it: for one able to rely on this sūtra and raise up practice, the clouds of the three obstructions roll away of themselves. A name is not only a way of being called; it is also this sūtra’s own statement of what it is for.

Then the answer about holding: “You should receive and hold it, and let it not be forgotten or lost!”

The Words “How Much More” Turn Upward

What the Buddha says next is a comparison.

The highest layer: “One who practises this samādhi will in this very body be able to see the Buddha of Measureless Life and the two great beings.” One who accomplishes this samādhi sees them in this very body.

And the next sentence at once comes down: “And if there be a good man or a good woman who merely hears the name of the Buddha and the names of the two bodhisattvas, the offences of measureless kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.”

Merely to hear the names — not to accomplish the samādhi, merely to hear — and the offences of measureless kalpas of birth-and-death are removed.

Then one more sentence: “How much more one who holds them in mind and recollects them!”

If hearing is already so much, how much more to keep them in the mind and recollect them.

This form of argument, from the less to the more, was used once at the thirteenth contemplation — “merely forming the image of an image of the Buddha obtains measureless merit; how much more contemplating the Buddha in the fullness of his bodily marks.” The two places are of one type, and yet what is being argued is not the same thing: there it runs from a small image up to the true body, here from hearing the name up to holding it in mind. Set the two sentences side by side and you will see that the sūtra keeps doing one and the same thing — first it writes down the lowest rung, and then says that the higher is still above.

A course of work as long as the sixteen contemplations is here set into a very wide stair: those who can make the contemplation make it; those who cannot hear the name; and those who have heard the name hold it in mind. When the sixteen contemplations have been taught, the sūtra lets the stair all the way down to the hearing of a name; read down along it, nobody is shut outside the door.

The Sūtra Gives One Who Recollects the Buddha a Name

There follows the weightiest judgment in the whole sūtra upon the person who recollects the Buddha:

“If there be one who recollects the Buddha, know that this person is the fentuoli flower among men.”

The fentuoli is the finest among flowers. The commentators of old gloss its other names one by one: the finest flower among men, the rare flower, the highest of the high flower among men, the wondrously fine flower among men. And then they turn these names at once upon the person: one who recollects the Buddha is the finest man among men, the wondrously fine man among men, the highest of the high among men, the rare man among men, the most excellent man among men.

Then the sūtra gives him two companions: “The Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and the Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāpta are his excellent friends.”

The two great beings on whose description the tenth and eleventh contemplations spent so many words become, here, the friends of the person who recollects the Buddha.

What Is Entrusted Is a Name

At the last, the Buddha calls Ānanda by name once, alone.

The Buddha told Ānanda: “Hold these words well. One who holds these words holds the name of the Buddha of Measureless Life.”

“These words” means everything that has been said before. And the Buddha does not stop at remember these words well; he says one sentence more: to hold these words is to hold the name of the Buddha of Measureless Life.

A sūtra that teaches the forming of images entrusts, at the last, a name.

Two Assembly Halls

The sūtra is not yet finished.

“At that time the World-Honored One, his feet stepping through empty space, returned to Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa.” The Buddha goes back from the palace to the mountain — in the introduction he had vanished from Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa and appeared in the palace, and now he goes back by the same road.

“At that time Ānanda expounded at length for the great assembly the matters set out above.” At the assembly in the palace those present were Vaidehī, the five hundred attendant women, Maudgalyāyana and Ānanda, and the measureless gods listening from the air; the great assembly on the mountain had not heard it. And so Ānanda expounded all these matters for that assembly a second time.

That we can read this sūtra today rests precisely on that one sentence.

The readings handed down set down a further note here: why did the Buddha not simply dismiss the assembly, instead of stepping through empty space back to the mountain? It is said to have been in order to increase the reverence of the assembly, and also to conform to what he himself had said before. A sūtra spoken in a closed chamber is at the last carried back to the open assembly, and only then does it become a sūtra that can be transmitted.

The copy in your hands today has come by exactly such a road: spoken in a palace for one person, and then, on a mountain, told over again by one person for everyone.

“Measureless humans, gods, nāgas, spirits, and yakṣas heard what the Buddha said, all rejoiced greatly, paid homage to the Buddha, and withdrew.”

Looking back from here, the words “heard what the Buddha said” appear three times in this passage: Vaidehī and the five hundred attendant women heard what the Buddha said and obtained the benefit; Maudgalyāyana, Ānanda, Vaidehī and the rest heard what the Buddha said and rejoiced; humans, gods, nāgas, spirits, and yakṣas heard what the Buddha said, rejoiced, and paid homage. One and the same expression, three times over, stitches the closed chamber of the palace and the open assembly on Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa into one place.

The commentators of old also take that last word, “rejoiced,” and open it into three senses: the one able to expound is pure — the Buddha’s unobstructed wisdom has no error; the Dharma expounded is pure — it can bring sentient beings to realize the samādhi; and the fruit obtained by relying on the Dharma is pure — cultivation according to the Dharma being fulfilled, the body realizes a pure fruit. The rejoicing is not a courtesy at the breaking up of the assembly; it is the sign that three kinds of purity have all arrived together.

Carrying Forward — Two Eyes on the Same Sentence of Entrusting

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 sentence, “one who holds these words holds the name of the Buddha of Measureless Life,” seen through two ways of reading.

The Shandao line is the reading of the Commentary on the Contemplation Sūtra in Four Fascicles. He divides the whole sūtra into five sections and sets up the benefit obtained as a section of its own, which is one of the places where he differs from the other houses. Among the seven sentences of the transmission at the palace, at the fifth, “if there be one who recollects the Buddha,” he marks out that it “directly shows that the power of the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha is beyond compare, and that the mixed goods are truly not of a kind to be set beside it”; he glosses the four names of fentuoli one by one and turns them into five names for the person who recollects the Buddha; and he says that for one who recollects the name of Amitābha with single devotion, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta constantly follow him like his shadow and guard him, as close kin and friends do. At the sixth sentence he explains the entrusting as “directly clarifying the entrusting of the name of Amitābha, to be transmitted to distant ages,” and then lets fall the sentence to which later ages have most attached themselves:

“Although the benefit of the two gates, concentration and scattering, has been spoken of above, if one looks to the Buddha’s original vow, its intent lies in sentient beings uttering the name of Amitābha with single devotion.”

This sentence answers, head to tail, what he said at the highest birth of the lowest grade: “Yet if one looks to the intent of the Buddha’s vow, it only urges the uttering of the Name in right mindfulness, the meaning being that birth in that land comes swiftly thereby.” One stands at the end of the main body, the other at the end of the section on transmission.

The Zhiyi line is the reading of the Commentary on the Sūtra on Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life. He opens the transmission at the palace into four matters: setting out the names and teaching him to hold it, urging people to uphold and trust, entrusting and charging him to hold it, and hearing the Dharma and rejoicing. In glossing the name of the sūtra he cites it as “named Contemplating Ultimate Bliss, the Buddha of Measureless Life, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta; also named Pure Karma and Birth Before All Buddhas,” and later in his text as “also named Contemplating the Buddha of Measureless Life, and also named Extinguishing and Removing the Obstruction of Karma” — what he cites differs slightly in its characters from the text current today. Of “he will sit at the site of the way” he says: the place where the way is obtained is called the site of the way; the way is obtained beneath the tree of awakening, and therefore it is called sitting. Nor does he let the words “all rejoiced greatly” pass: he gives three senses — the one able to expound is pure, the Dharma expounded is pure, and the fruit obtained by relying on the Dharma is pure. As for why the Buddha had to step through empty space back to Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa, he says it was “in order to increase the reverence of beings and to conform to what he himself had said, and therefore he manifests this change.”

One line reads that last sentence as the entrusting of the Name; the other reads that last section as the account of how a sūtra is handed on.

And the sūtra itself has said only this: one who holds these words holds the name of the Buddha of Measureless Life.