The Divination of Good and Evil Karma.
Three wooden wheels cast to divine the good and evil karma of a past life, a full rite of repentance for anyone whose karma proves too heavy for meditation, and — the sūtra's real center of gravity — the "one real realm," the claim that a single, unborn mind-nature underlies every kind of being from the lowest hell to a fully awakened buddha, and the two contemplations Kṣitigarbha builds directly on it. The second Kṣitigarbha scripture on this site, and a very different kind of teaching from the first: not a hell-realm narrative, but a bodhisattva's own method for a mind too doubtful to take up practice any other way. Six parts, translated in full, with reading notes throughout after Ouyi Zhixu's three separate works on this text.
How to read this collection
This is a mid-length sūtra — a little over 13,000 Chinese characters across two fascicles, read here in six parts, three per fascicle. The first fascicle teaches the method of divination its title names: three wooden wheels, cast only within a rite of vow, confession, and a thousand recitations of Kṣitigarbha's name, that measure a karmic seed's existence, its age and force, and its eventual fruit across the three times. The second fascicle turns to what Ouyi Zhixu's commentary treats as this sūtra's true doctrinal weight — the "one real realm" (一實境界), an account of mind-nature that makes hell-being, bodhisattva, and buddha only three names for a single, undivided reality — and the two contemplations built on it, before closing with Kṣitigarbha's own reassurance for a mind too fainthearted, confused, or presumptuous to take up that teaching directly.
Each page carries a continuous run of the base text, matched against Ru-Yi's English translation, with reading notes drawn throughout from Ouyi Zhixu (蕅益智旭, 1599–1655), one of the four great masters of late-Ming Buddhism, who wrote three separate works on this sūtra: a doctrinal overview (Zhancha Jing Xuanyi, X0370), a full line-by-line commentary across both fascicles (Zhancha Jing Shu, X0371), and a ritual manual for actually performing its repentance rite (Zhancha Jing Xingfa, X1485). Where a passage ties into texts already translated elsewhere on this site — the Pure Land collection, the Awakening of Faith, the Fundamental Vows — the reading notes draw that connection out explicitly.
What each page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation, verified against the base text for full coverage.
- Reading notes — "after Zhixu" throughout, drawn from his three works on this sūtra.
- An honest treatment of the sūtra's own warning that its divination method is not worldly fortune-telling, and Zhixu's account of exactly why.
- Cross-references to this site's Pure Land, tathāgatagarbha, and Kṣitigarbha collections wherever this sūtra's own doctrine directly overlaps with texts already translated here.
The Sūtra's Own Structure
The sūtra falls into two fascicles of three parts each. The first teaches the divination method its title names, building from a single wheel that shows whether a karmic seed exists, through a second that measures its age and force alongside a full rite of repentance, to a third and final wheel of one hundred and eighty-nine possible readings across past, present, and future. The second fascicle sets the wheels aside and turns to the one real realm itself — the doctrine the whole method has been pointing toward from its very first cast.
Read by Part
All six parts are translated. Each links to the full bilingual text with reading notes after Ouyi Zhixu.
Translation Notes
Recurring terms, kept consistent across all six parts. Where a term already has an established rendering elsewhere on this site's Pure Land or tathāgatagarbha pages, we reuse it; where this sūtra's own vocabulary has no site precedent, we coin one here. See the full translation notes for the complete glossary, and also this site's note on translation method.