Five Reasons Rebirth There Cannot Fail
The sixth doubt is short, but it presses the fifth doubt's answer to its limit: even granting a bound, ordinary being can arrive in the pure land by Amitābha's own power, what stops that same being's wrong views and passions from simply reasserting themselves once he is there? The answer lists five features of the land itself that make backsliding structurally impossible.
Doubt 6: What Keeps a Bound Being From Falling Back?
第六疑
問：「設令具縛凡夫得生彼國，邪見、三毒等常起。云何得生彼國，即得不退，超過三界？」
釋曰：「得生彼國，有五因緣不退。云何為五？一者、阿彌陀佛大悲願力攝持，故得不退；二者、佛光常照，故菩提心常增進不退；三者、水鳥、樹林，風聲、樂響，皆說苦、空，聞者常起念佛、念法、念僧之心，故不退；四者、彼國純諸菩薩以為良友，無惡緣境，外無神鬼、魔邪，內無三毒等，煩惱畢竟不起，故不退；五者、生彼國即壽命永劫，共菩薩、佛齊等，故不退也。在此惡世，日月短促；經阿僧祇劫，復不起煩惱，長時修道，云何不得無生忍也？此理顯然，不須疑也。」
Doubt 6
Question: "Suppose an ordinary being, still bound in every fetter, does attain rebirth in that land — wrong views and the three poisons still constantly arise in such a being. How, then, could being born in that land bring immediate non-retrogression, surpassing the three realms altogether?"
Explanation: "Rebirth in that land brings non-retrogression through five causes and conditions. What are the five? First, Amitābha Buddha's power of great compassionate vow sustains and holds one fast, and so one does not retrogress. Second, the Buddha's light constantly shines upon one, and so the aspiration for enlightenment constantly advances without retrogression. Third, the water, the birds, the groves of trees, the sound of the wind, and the music all proclaim suffering and emptiness, and one who hears them constantly gives rise to mindfulness of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and so does not retrogress. Fourth, that land is populated purely by bodhisattvas as one's good companions, with no adverse conditions at all — outwardly, no spirits, ghosts, or demons; inwardly, no arising of the three poisons or any other affliction whatsoever — and so one does not retrogress. Fifth, once born in that land, one's lifespan lasts for eternal kalpas, equal to that of the bodhisattvas and buddhas there, and so one does not retrogress. In this evil world, the days and months pass swiftly and are soon spent; yet even so, cultivating the path for asaṃkhyeya kalpas without ever ceasing to give rise to affliction, how could one fail, in that land, to attain the acceptance of the non-arising of dharmas? This principle is perfectly clear, and there is no need to doubt it."
Chengyu pauses over one phrase that, taken too literally, would flatten this doubt's whole answer: the water and birds and wind "proclaim suffering and emptiness" (苦空), which in strict Abhidharma terms names only two of the four aspects properly belonging to the truth of suffering — a Hīnayāna-level teaching that could hardly be all Amitābha's own land has to offer. He resolves it by insisting the phrase must be read more broadly, as standing in for suffering and not-suffering, both and neither, emptiness and not-emptiness, both and neither — "the perfectly-toned sound responding to every capacity at once; the Buddha's intent runs deep, and one must follow the meaning rather than the letter to reach it." He backs this with the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's own graded reading of the same word: "ordinary beings have suffering, without the truth of it; the two vehicles have suffering, and see the truth of it; bodhisattvas understand suffering as no-suffering, and still hold to the true truth." A being newly arrived there, on Chengyu's account, first sees Amitābha's coarser mark and hears exactly this created, arising-and-ceasing teaching of suffering and emptiness; only after attaining non-retrogression, seeing the subtler mark, does the same being hear the uncreated, perfectly wondrous version of the same four truths. The treatise, he notes, is simply speaking from where a being first arrives, which is why it says "suffering, emptiness" and stops there.
He also resolves an apparent contradiction with the Amitābha Sūtra's own claim that Amitābha "has immeasurable, boundless śrāvaka disciples" — which would seem to sit awkwardly against this doubt's claim that the land is "populated purely by bodhisattvas." The two statements describe two different vantage points on the same land, not two different lands: this defiled world's śrāvakas are weary of a life thick with suffering and long only for extinction, while a being born into that pure and blissful land is, by the very fact of being born there, already effectively a bodhisattva — no different, Chengyu says, from how the arhats gathered at the Deer Park in Śākyamuni's own early teaching turn out, by the time of the Lotus assembly, to have been bodhisattvas in disguise all along.
Part 6 Complete
This closes Part 6, and with it the treatise's core case for why the pure land, and not this world, is where a struggling practitioner should actually direct his effort. Part 7 takes up a live alternative within the same broadly Mahāyāna world: why not simply wait for Maitreya in Tuṣita Heaven instead?
Continue to Part 7 — Tuṣita or Sukhāvatī? →