The Bodhisattva Who Cannot Yet Save Others
This page opens Ru-Yi's translation of the Treatise on Ten Doubts About the Pure Land (淨土十疑論), a short question-and-answer treatise transmitted under the name of the Tiantai founder Zhiyi. It carries Yang Jie's 1076 preface in full, this project's honest account of what modern scholarship actually knows about who wrote this treatise, and the first of the ten doubts: the charge that seeking rebirth in a pure land, rather than staying in this world to save suffering beings, is itself a failure of a bodhisattva's compassion.
Translation Method
The Chinese source is Taishō volume 47, no. 1961, the Jingtu Shiyi Lun (淨土十疑論), transmitted together with a preface by the Song layman Yang Jie (楊傑, styled Wuwei Zi) dated 1076 and a postscript by Chen Guan (陳瓘) dated 1093 — both carried over into this translation along with the treatise itself, rather than trimmed away as later additions.
The treatise has, since at least the tenth century, been transmitted under the name of Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597), the founding systematizer of the Tiantai school, and it names him outright on its own title page and in Yang Jie's preface. That attribution deserves an honest look rather than either a flat repetition or a flat denial, because modern textual scholarship has raised a real objection to it that is difficult to answer on the evidence usually cited. The most substantial treatment of the question is the Japanese scholar Mochizuki Shinkō's (望月信亨, 1869–1948). His central piece of evidence sits inside Doubt 7 of this very treatise: the story of three companions, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, and Siṃhabhadra, who vowed to bring each other news of Tuṣita Heaven after death. That story, in the form it takes here, is the one recorded in Xuanzang's (玄奘) Great Tang Records of the Western Regions (大唐西域記), compiled after Xuanzang's return from India in 645 CE — forty-eight years after Zhiyi's own death in 597. If the treatise genuinely draws this story from Xuanzang's record, as Mochizuki argued, it cannot have been written by Zhiyi himself. Mochizuki added two further points: no Sui- or Tang-dynasty Buddhist bibliography or biography lists this work among Zhiyi's writings, and Japanese Tiantai (Tendai) catalogs of his works are silent on it as well.
The transmission history to Japan complicates the picture further rather than resolving it. The earliest attested import of this text, carried back by Saichō (最澄), founder of Japanese Tendai, in the early ninth century, went under a different title — Amituo Jing Jue Shiyi (阿彌陀經決十疑) — and Saichō's own catalog of the works he brought home lists no author for it at all. A later Enryaku-ji catalog, the Tiantai Zong Zhangshu (天台宗章疏), attributes it instead to Zhanran (荊溪湛然, 711–782), Tiantai's sixth patriarch — not to Zhiyi. Fittingly, the first person on record to openly doubt the attribution to Zhiyi was also a Japanese Tendai scholar-monk: the twelfth-century Shōshin (證真). Sustained critical study of the question did not develop further until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating in Mochizuki's analysis in the early twentieth.
None of this settles the matter beyond dispute, and it is worth being precise about what kind of question it is. Many genuine works transmitted under Zhiyi's name — including his most influential ones — were never written by his own hand: they are lecture-records, "expounded" (說) by Zhiyi and set down in writing by his disciple Guanding (灌頂), the very verb this treatise's own title page uses of him. A text shaped, expanded, or finished by students after a teacher's death is not, on its own, an implausible category in this tradition. What makes this particular case harder to defend is more specific: if Mochizuki's reading of the Doubt 7 citation is correct, it points to composition — or at least final compilation — after 645 CE, which would place at least that passage beyond even a posthumous editorial hand working from Zhiyi's own notes or lectures. This project does not resolve the question, because it cannot be resolved from a translator's chair; it presents the treatise under its traditional title and attribution, as it has been read and revered for a thousand years, while setting out here, plainly and once, the case modern scholarship has made against taking that attribution at face value. What is not in doubt is the treatise's influence and its long service, whoever wrote it, in defending Pure Land practice against exactly the objections it goes on to answer.
Whatever its authorship, this treatise is read here with the commentary of Chengyu (澄彧), a Song-dynasty monk about whom little else is recorded, prefaced by Zanning (贊寧, 919–1001), the eminent monk-historian who compiled the Song Biographies of Eminent Monks. Zanning's preface is dated 983 CE — already treating the attribution to "the Great Master Zhiyi" as settled fact, and predating Yang Jie's own preface by nearly a century, though still, like Yang Jie's, from within the Song dynasty rather than from any Sui or Tang source. Chengyu's commentary, the Zhu Shiyi Lun (注十疑論, X1149), runs to a single fascicle and reads largely as a philological gloss: definitions of technical terms, citations tracing each of the treatise's own scriptural quotations back to their source, and the occasional doctrinal clarification. Classical text is set in the left-hand column below, our English in the right. See also this site's note on translation method.
Yang Jie's Preface (1076)
宋無為子楊傑述
愛不重不生娑婆，念不一不生極樂。娑婆，穢土也；極樂，淨土也。娑婆之壽有量；彼土之壽則無量矣。娑婆備諸苦；彼土則安養無苦矣。娑婆隨業轉輪生死；彼土一往則永證無生法忍，若願度生，則任意自在，不為諸業轉矣。其淨穢、壽量、苦樂、生死，如是差別，而眾生冥然不知，可不哀哉？
阿彌陀佛，淨土攝受之主也；釋迦如來，指導淨土之師也。觀音、勢至，助佛揚化者也。是以如來一代教典，處處叮嚀，勸往生也。
阿彌陀佛與觀音、勢至，乘大願船，泛生死海，不著此岸、不留彼岸、不止中流，唯以濟度為佛事。是故《阿彌陀經》云：「若有善男子、善女人，聞說阿彌陀佛，執持名號，若一日乃至七日，一心不亂。其人臨命終時，阿彌陀佛與諸聖眾現在其前，是人終時，心不顛倒，即得往生極樂國土。」又經云：「十方眾生，聞我名號，憶念我國，植諸德本，至心迴向，欲生我國，不果遂者，不取正覺。」所以祇洹精舍無常院，令病者面西，作往生淨土想。蓋彌陀光明遍照法界念佛眾生，攝取不捨。聖、凡一體，機、感相應。諸佛心內眾生，塵塵極樂；眾生心中淨土，念念彌陀。
吾以是觀之，智慧者易生，能斷疑故；禪定者易生，不散亂故；持戒者易生，遠諸染故；布施者易生，不我有故；忍辱者易生，不瞋恚故；精進者易生，不退轉故；不造善、不作惡者易生，念能一故；諸惡已作、業報已現者易生，實慚懼故。雖有眾善，若無誠信心、無深心、無迴向發願心者，則不得上上品生矣。
噫！彌陀甚易持，淨土甚易往，眾生不能持、不能往，佛如眾生何？夫造惡業入苦趣，念彌陀生極樂，二者皆佛言也。世人憂墮地獄，而疑往生者，不亦惑哉？
晉慧遠法師，與當時高士劉遺民等，結白蓮社於廬山，蓋致精誠於此爾。其後七百年，僧、俗修持，獲感應者非一，咸見于淨土傳記，豈誣也哉？
然贊輔彌陀教觀者，其書山積。唯天台智者大師《淨土十疑論》最為首冠，援引聖言，開決群惑，萬年闇室，日至而頓有餘光；千里水程，舟具而不勞自力，非法藏後身不能至於是也。
傑頃於都下甞獲斯文，讀示所知，無不生信，自遭酷罰，感寤益深，將廣其傳，因為序引(熙寧九年仲秋述)。
Written by Yang Jie, styled Wuwei Zi ("Master of the Unconditioned").
If love is not deep, one is not born into the Sahā world; if mindfulness is not one-pointed, one is not born into Ultimate Bliss. The Sahā world is a defiled land; Ultimate Bliss is a pure land. Life in the Sahā world is measured; life in that land is measureless. The Sahā world is furnished with every suffering; that land rests in ease, without suffering. In the Sahā world one turns through birth and death carried by karma; once arrived in that land, one forever realizes the acceptance of non-arising — and if one then wishes to bring beings across, one does so entirely at will, no longer turned about by karma. Such is the difference between purity and defilement, measured life and measureless life, suffering and ease, birth-and-death and its end — and yet sentient beings remain in the dark, not knowing it. Is this not a cause for grief?
Amitābha Buddha is the lord who gathers in and receives beings into the pure land; the Tathāgata Śākyamuni is the teacher who points the way to it; Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta assist the Buddha in spreading his teaching. This is why, throughout the Tathāgata's teachings of a lifetime, he urges rebirth there again and again, in passage after passage.
Amitābha Buddha, together with Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, rides the ship of the great vow across the sea of birth and death — clinging to neither this shore nor that shore, nor resting in the current between — with nothing for their Buddha-work but to ferry beings across. This is why the Amitābha Sūtra says: "If there is a good son or good daughter who, hearing Amitābha Buddha spoken of, holds fast to his name for one day, or up to seven days, with one undistracted mind — then when that person's life comes to its end, Amitābha Buddha, together with the whole assembly of sages, will appear before them, and at the moment of death that person's mind will not be inverted, and they will at once attain rebirth in the land of Ultimate Bliss." And another sūtra says: "If beings of the ten directions, hearing my name, keep my land in mind and plant every root of virtue, sincerely dedicating it and wishing to be born in my land — and this does not come to pass — then I will not accept complete enlightenment." This is why the Jetavana monastery built a hall for the dying, where the sick were turned to face west, to form in their minds the thought of rebirth in the pure land. For Amitābha's light illuminates the entire Dharma-realm, gathering in every being mindful of the Buddha and never abandoning them. Sage and ordinary being are one substance; capacity and response answer each other. Within every buddha's mind, every speck of dust is Ultimate Bliss; within the mind of every sentient being, every single thought is Amitābha.
Seeing it this way: the wise are easily born there, for they can cut through doubt; those settled in meditation are easily born there, for they are not scattered; those who keep precepts are easily born there, for they are far from every defilement; those who give are easily born there, for they do not possess what they give; those who bear with insult are easily born there, for they do not give way to anger; those who persevere are easily born there, for they do not turn back; those who neither do good nor do evil are easily born there, for their mindfulness can be made one; and even those who have already done evil, whose karmic retribution has already appeared, are easily born there, for they carry a true sense of shame and dread. And yet, however many good qualities one may have, without a mind of sincere faith, a profound mind, and a mind that dedicates and vows to be reborn there, one will not attain the highest of the highest grade of rebirth.
Ah! Amitābha is so easy to hold in mind; the pure land is so easy to reach — and yet sentient beings cannot hold him in mind, cannot reach it. What is the Buddha to do with such beings? To commit evil karma and fall into a realm of suffering, and to be mindful of Amitābha and be born into Ultimate Bliss — both of these are the Buddha's own words. That people of this world worry over falling into hell, and yet doubt the possibility of rebirth there — is this not itself a kind of delusion?
In the Jin dynasty, Master Huiyuan, together with the eminent recluse Liu Yimin and others of that time, formed the White Lotus Society at Mount Lu — surely bringing their utmost sincerity to bear on exactly this. In the seven hundred years since, monastics and laypeople alike, in their practice, have obtained more than a few responses, all recorded in the accounts of the Pure Land tradition — how could these all be fabrications?
And yet, of the books that assist and elucidate Amitābha's teaching and contemplation, there are as many as mountains. Only the Tiantai Great Master Zhiyi's Treatise on Ten Doubts stands foremost among them — drawing on the sages' own words, it opens and resolves the crowd of doubts, like sunlight suddenly filling a room dark for ten thousand years, or a boat that carries one a thousand watery miles without any labor of one's own strength. None but Dharmākara come again could have brought this about.
I, Jie, once obtained this text while in the capital, and read it aloud to those I knew — none failed to come to faith in it. Since then I myself have suffered a severe punishment, and my sense of its truth has only deepened. Wishing now to spread it more widely, I have written this preface to introduce it. (Written in mid-autumn of the ninth year of Xining [1076].)
Doubt 1: Does Seeking the Pure Land Betray a Bodhisattva's Compassion?
淨土十疑論
隋、天台智者大師說
第一疑
問曰：「諸佛、菩薩以大悲為業，若欲救度眾生，秖應願生三界，於五濁三塗中救苦眾生。因何求生淨土自安其身，捨離眾生則是無大慈悲，專為自利，障菩提道。」
答曰：「菩薩有二種：一者、久修行菩薩道，得無生忍者，實當所責；二者、未得已還，及初發心凡夫。凡夫菩薩者，要須常不離佛，忍力成就方堪處三界內，於惡世中救苦眾生。故《智度論》云：『具縛凡夫，有大悲心願生惡世，救苦眾生者，無有是處。』何以故？惡世界煩惱強，自無忍力，心隨境轉，聲、色所縛，自墮三塗，焉能救眾生？假令得生人中，聖道難得，或因施、戒、修福，得生人中，得作國王、大臣，富貴自在。縱遇善知識，不肯信用，貪迷放逸，廣造眾罪，乘此惡業，一入三塗，經無量劫，從地獄出，受貧賤身；若不逢善知識，還墮地獄。如此輪迴，至於今日，人人皆如是，此名難行道也。故《維摩經》云：『自疾不能救，而能救諸疾人？』又《智度論》云：『譬如二人各有親眷，為水所溺，一人情急，直入水救，為無方便力故，彼此俱沒；一人有方便，往取船筏，乘之救接，悉皆得脫水溺之難。』新發意菩薩，亦復如是。如是，未得忍力，不能救眾生。為此常須近佛，得無生忍已，方能救眾生，如得船者。又論云：『譬如嬰兒不得離母，若也離母，或墮坑井，渴乳而死；又如鳥子翅羽未成，秖得依樹傅枝，不能遠去，翅翮成就，方能飛空，自在無礙。』凡夫無力，唯得專念阿彌陀佛，使成三昧，以業成故，臨終斂念得生，決定不疑。見彌陀佛，證無生忍已，還來三界，乘無生忍船，救苦眾生，廣施佛事，任意自在。故論云：『遊戲地獄，行者生彼國，得無生忍已，還入生死國，教化地獄，救苦眾生。』以是因緣，求生淨土，願識其教。故《十住婆沙論》，名易行道也。」
Treatise on Ten Doubts About the Pure Land
Expounded by the Tiantai Great Master Zhiyi, of the Sui dynasty
Doubt 1
Question: "Buddhas and bodhisattvas take great compassion as their work. If they wish to save and liberate sentient beings, they should vow only to be born within the three realms, and save suffering beings amid the five turbidities and the three evil destinies. Why then seek rebirth in a pure land, setting one's own body at ease? To abandon and leave sentient beings behind is to be without great compassion — devoted only to one's own benefit, and an obstruction to the path of bodhi."
Answer: "There are two kinds of bodhisattva. The first has long practiced the bodhisattva path and has already attained the acceptance of non-arising — such a one truly deserves this reproach. The second has not yet attained it, down to the ordinary being who has only just given rise to the aspiration for enlightenment. A bodhisattva of this second kind must never be separated from a buddha for long; only once the power of forbearance is accomplished is such a one fit to dwell within the three realms and save suffering beings in an evil age. This is why the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says: 'That an ordinary being, still bound in every fetter, though possessed of a mind of great compassion, should vow to be born in an evil age to save suffering beings — there is no such thing.' Why is this so? In an evil world the power of affliction is strong; lacking any power of forbearance of one's own, one's mind is turned about by whatever it meets, bound by sound and form, and one falls of oneself into the three evil destinies — how then could one save other beings? Even supposing one manages to be born among human beings, the sagely path is hard to attain there. Or perhaps, through giving, precepts, and cultivated blessings, one is born among human beings and becomes a king or a minister — wealthy, honored, at ease. Yet even meeting a good teacher, one refuses to believe and follow; given over to greed and confusion, indulging without restraint, one commits every kind of offense at large, and riding on this evil karma, falls at once into the three evil destinies. After measureless kalpas, emerging from hell, one takes on a body poor and lowly; and if one still does not meet a good teacher, one falls back into hell again. Turning in this way, down to the present day — everyone is exactly the same. This is called the hard path.
"This is why the Vimalakīrti Sūtra says: 'One who cannot heal his own sickness — how could he heal the sicknesses of others?' And the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says: 'Suppose two people, each with a relative drowning in the water. One, in his urgency, plunges straight into the water to save them; but having no skillful means, both of them drown together. The other has skillful means: he goes and finds a boat or a raft, and by riding it to make the rescue, both are entirely delivered from the danger of drowning.' A bodhisattva who has only just given rise to the resolve is exactly the same: not yet having attained the power of forbearance, he cannot save other beings. This is why he must always stay close to a buddha; only once he has attained the acceptance of non-arising can he save beings — like the one who found the boat.
"The treatise also says: 'It is like an infant, who cannot bear to be parted from its mother — should it be parted from her, it might fall into a pit or a well, or die of thirst for milk. Or it is like a fledgling bird whose wing-feathers are not yet grown: it can only cling to the tree and stay among its branches, unable to go far. Only once its flight-feathers are complete can it soar freely through open sky, at ease and without obstruction.' An ordinary being has no such power; he can only single-mindedly hold Amitābha Buddha in mind, until this is brought to samādhi. Because this work is accomplished, at the moment of death he gathers his mindfulness and attains rebirth there, without any doubt of it. Having seen Amitābha Buddha and realized the acceptance of non-arising, he then returns to the three realms, and riding the boat of that very acceptance of non-arising, saves suffering beings, carrying out the Buddha's work at large, entirely at his own will. This is why the treatise says: 'Sporting freely in the hells' — the practitioner, born in that land, having realized the acceptance of non-arising, returns again into the land of birth and death, teaches and transforms beings in the hells, and saves suffering beings. It is for this reason that one seeks birth in the pure land — I wish that all may come to know this teaching. This is why the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā names it the easy path."
Chengyu glosses the "five turbidities" the questioner invokes with a full breakdown drawn from the Sūtra of the Compassionate Flower: the turbidity of the kalpa itself, when the other four turbidities gather within a single age and the human lifespan begins to shorten — the sūtra dates its onset to the point where lifespans, having run from eighty thousand years down to thirty thousand, fall further still to twenty thousand; the turbidity of affliction, the five dull fetters of greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt; the turbidity of sentient beings, a name given to the fruit of wrong views and arrogance across the six destinies; the turbidity of views, wrong views of every kind together with the sixty-two speculative views; and the turbidity of lifespan, growing steadily shorter. He also pauses to gloss "hell" (地獄) by its Sanskrit — naraka, which he renders literally as "an instrument of suffering" — and even stops over the raft in the treatise's central parable: north of the river it is called a fa, he notes, south of it a different regional word, both meaning nothing more than bamboo and wood bound together to carry people and goods across water. It is a small detail, but characteristic of how Chengyu reads: even the vehicle of a parable gets a plain, concrete gloss before its point is allowed to land.
On the treatise's central image — "sporting freely in the hells" — Chengyu glosses it as a bodhisattva entering hell to rescue beings there entirely at will, as freely as a game, precisely because the power that sends him there is no longer karma but his own vow. And on the "easy path" the questioner is being pointed toward here, he adds only a forward reference: the term comes from the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā, and its full meaning — self-power set against other-power — is worked out at length in Doubt 5, not this one.
Part 1 Complete
This closes Part 1: Yang Jie's preface, this project's account of the authorship question, and the treatise's first doubt — the charge that a bodhisattva who seeks a pure land has abandoned the beings he vowed to save. The answer draws a line between the bodhisattva who has already realized the acceptance of non-arising, who bears that charge rightly, and the one who has not, for whom staying in this world without that power is not compassion but the blind plunging-in of the parable's first rescuer. Part 2 turns to a subtler objection: if all dharmas are, at root, unborn, isn't seeking any "birth" at all — even birth in a pure land — already a contradiction?
Continue to Part 2 — Is Seeking Birth a Betrayal of Emptiness? →