The Wind in the Jeweled Trees
Ouyi resolves the doubt his own previous page anticipates — why a land free of karmic rebirth would still have birds at all — before turning to a second, insentient Dharma-sound: wind moving through jeweled trees, sounding like a hundred thousand instruments at once. This is where Ouyi makes his sharpest, most direct claim in the whole commentary: that treating the Pure Land as nothing more than a metaphor for one's own mind is itself a kind of mockery of the teaching.
Why the Birds Are Not Karmically Born
舍利弗！汝勿謂此鳥實是罪報所生。所以者何？彼佛國土無三惡道。舍利弗！其佛國土尚無惡道之名，何況有實？是諸眾鳥，皆是阿彌陀佛欲令法音宣流，變化所作。
Śāriputra, do not think that these birds are actually born from the karmic retribution for wrongdoing. And why? Because that buddha-land has no three lower paths of rebirth at all. Śāriputra, that buddha-land does not even have the name of the three lower paths — how much less could they actually exist there? All these birds are transformations conjured by Amitābha Buddha, so that the sound of the Dharma might spread and flow.
二、徵釋伏疑。恐有疑曰：既是淨土，何有眾鳥？故今釋曰：非罪報所生，乃彌陀欲令法音宣流故變化作此諸鳥耳。
Second, raising and resolving a lurking doubt. There might be a doubt raised: since this is the Pure Land, how could there be birds at all? And so this passage now resolves it, saying: they are not born from karmic retribution, but are birds conjured through transformation by Amitābha, precisely so that the sound of the Dharma might spread and flow.
Question: "Since it says there is not even the name of the lower paths there, are white cranes, peacocks, and the rest not, by themselves, already names belonging to the animal path?"
Answer: "Since they are not born from karmic retribution at all, then each and every name in fact designates the Tathāgata's own ultimate merit and virtue — what is meant is an ultimate white crane, an ultimate peacock, and so on, nothing but beautiful titles for inherent virtue itself. How, then, could they still be called names of a lower path?"
Question: "If the Buddha wishes the sound of the Dharma to spread and flow, any manner of manifestation would do — why did it have to be conjured specifically as birds?"
Answer: "There are four causes and conditions, in terms of the four siddhāntas: first, ordinary feeling delights in birds such as these, and manifesting in accord with that feeling brings about joy; second, that even birds can preach the Dharma causes those who hear it to give rise to goodness; third, that birds are able to preach the Dharma prevents any inferior view arising toward birds in general, counteracting discriminating thought; fourth, since the birds are precisely conjured by Amitābha himself, no different from Amitābha's own Dharma-body, this causes one to awaken to the fact that the Dharma-body is universally equal, lacking nothing and creating nothing that is not itself."
Compare the shorter treatment of this same objection-and-answer in the reading note to Section 5 of the sūtra's own page. Ouyi's fourfold answer is itself organized by the four siddhāntas — the worldly, individually-fitted, therapeutic, and ultimate benefits of a teaching — the same fourfold analysis already used in Part 3's reading note on the assembly of śrāvakas.
The Wind in the Jeweled Trees
舍利弗！彼佛國土，微風吹動，諸寶行樹及寶羅網出微妙音，譬如百千種樂同時俱作。聞是音者，自然皆生念佛、念法、念僧之心。
Śāriputra, in that buddha-land, when a gentle breeze moves, the rows of jeweled trees and the jeweled nets send out a subtle, wondrous sound, like a hundred thousand kinds of music playing all at once; and everyone who hears that sound naturally gives rise to a mind mindful of the Buddha, mindful of the Dharma, mindful of the Saṅgha.
二、風樹音。眾鳥法音是化作有情聲，風樹法音是化作無情聲，情與無情同宣妙法，皆是阿彌陀佛願力所成、種智所現，皆是吾人淨業所感、唯識所變。佛心生心互為質影，如眾燈明各遍似一，全理成事、全事即理、全性起修、全修在性，讀者亦可深長思矣。奈何舍此淨土而別談唯心，淨土甘墮鼠即鳥空之誚也哉！初別明二種法音竟。
Second, the wind-and-trees' sound. The Dharma sound of the birds is a sentient voice brought about through transformation; the Dharma sound of the wind and trees is an insentient voice brought about through transformation. Sentient and insentient alike proclaim the wondrous Dharma together — both are accomplished through Amitābha Buddha's own vow-power, manifested through his own comprehensive wisdom; both are brought about through our own pure karma, transformed through consciousness alone. The Buddha's mind and the minds of beings serve as substance and reflection for one another, like the light of many lamps, each pervading everywhere and yet seeming as one; the whole of principle becomes phenomena, the whole of phenomena is itself principle; the whole of inherent nature gives rise to cultivation, the whole of cultivation abides within inherent nature. Let the reader ponder this deeply and at length as well. How, then, could one possibly set aside this very Pure Land in order to speak instead of "mind-only" apart from it — willingly reducing the Pure Land to the mockery of a tale where a rat turns into a bird, only for both to prove empty! This closes the first part, distinguishing the two kinds of Dharma sound.
This is the sentence behind the reading note to Section 2 of the sūtra's own page, which cites Ouyi's argument against collapsing the Pure Land into a purely inward "唯心淨土" reading — but this argument in fact occurs here, in the wind-and-trees passage, not at the "ten hundred thousand million buddha-lands" passage several sections earlier. The closing idiom "a rat turns into a bird, only for both to prove empty" (鼠即鳥空) is obscure even in the original — Ru-Yi has not located an earlier source for the exact image, and translates it according to its most plausible sense within the sentence: a folk warning against a story of transformation that dissolves, on examination, into nothing at all. Ouyi's target is precise: not the doctrine that mind and Pure Land are ultimately non-dual — a claim his own commentary makes repeatedly and at length — but the specific move of using that non-duality as a reason to stop treating Sukhāvatī as an actual place. The "whole of principle becomes phenomena, the whole of phenomena is itself principle" formula repeats, almost verbatim, the argument already made about taking and forsaking on Part 2.
Closing: Accomplished Merit
舍利弗！其佛國土成就如是功德莊嚴。
Śāriputra, that buddha-land is accomplished with just such adornments of merit.
二、結歎功德成就。重重結歎，欲令聞者深信而不疑也。初、陳依報國土妙竟。
Second, closing by praising the accomplishment of merit. This closing praise is given again and again, in order to cause the listener to believe deeply and without doubt. This closes setting forth the wondrous dependent reward, the land itself.
Part 7 Complete
This closes the entire description of Sukhāvatī's dependent reward — the land itself, from its railings and trees down to the wind moving through them. Part 8 turns to the direct reward: Amitābha himself, why his name means both infinite light and infinite life, the ten kalpas since his own attainment of buddhahood, and the innumerable śrāvakas and bodhisattvas — including any being who ever arrives there at all — who never fall back from the path.
Continue to Part 8 — Infinite Light, Infinite Life →