Shandao's Own Vow
Having closed his commentary on the sūtra itself, Shandao speaks now in his own voice for the first time across four fascicles — naming himself an ordinary being of shallow wisdom who dares not trust his own interpretation of so profound a teaching, and vowing before the Three Jewels to seek a dream-sign before committing a single word of it to writing.
Why This Teaching Had to Be Carried Forward
竊以真宗叵遇，淨土之要難逢，欲使五趣齊生，是以勸聞於後代。但如來神力轉變無方，隱顯隨機王宮密化，於是耆闍聖眾小智懷疑，佛後還山弗闚委況，於時阿難為宣王宮之化定散兩門，異眾因此同聞，莫不奉行頂戴。
Humbly I consider: the true teaching is difficult to encounter, and the essential truth of the pure land is rare to meet with; wishing that beings of all five destinies might together attain this rebirth, I have for this reason urged that it be heard by later ages. Yet the Thus Come One's own spiritual power transforms without any fixed pattern, concealing or revealing itself according to each capacity; the teaching given secretly within the royal palace — when the assembled sages at Vulture Peak, of lesser wisdom, harbored their own doubts about it, and the Buddha, having returned to the mountain, gave them no glimpse of its full particulars — at that time, Ānanda proclaimed the palace's own transformative teaching, the two gates of the contemplative and the dispersed, and this differing assembly, hearing it together through him, was without exception moved to uphold and revere it.
This is the first passage in four fascicles where Shandao is not explaining the sūtra's own text, but explaining himself — why he undertook this commentary at all. The detail he chooses to dwell on, that even the sages gathered at Vulture Peak initially doubted a teaching delivered privately within the palace, sets up the stakes of what follows: if wisdom greater than his own could still hesitate before this teaching, what right does an ordinary being have to interpret it without some further confirmation?
A Vow Before the Three Jewels
敬白一切有緣知識等，余既是生死凡夫，智慧淺短。然佛教幽微，不敢輒生異解，遂即標心結願，請求靈驗，方可造心。「南無歸命盡虛空遍法界一切三寶，釋迦牟尼佛，阿彌陀佛，觀音勢至，彼土諸菩薩大海眾，及一切莊嚴相等。某今欲出此《觀經》要義，楷定古今，若稱三世諸佛、釋迦佛、阿彌陀佛等大悲願意者，願於夢中得見如上所願一切境界諸相。」
Respectfully I address all good friends bound to me by this same karmic affinity: I myself am but an ordinary being caught within birth and death, my own wisdom shallow and slight. Yet the Buddha's own teaching is profound and subtle, and I dare not carelessly give rise to any deviant interpretation of it; I have therefore set my own mind upon this resolve, forming a vow, and sought a numinous sign in confirmation, only then daring to set my mind to this undertaking.
"Namo — I take refuge in and submit my life to the Three Jewels throughout the whole of empty space and the entire Dharma realm: Śākyamuni Buddha, Amitābha Buddha, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, the vast ocean-like assembly of bodhisattvas within that land, and every one of its adorned and sublime marks. I now wish to bring forth the essential meaning of this Contemplation Sūtra, fixing a standard for it across past and present alike. Should this accord with the great compassionate intent of the buddhas of the three times, of Śākyamuni Buddha and Amitābha Buddha, I pray that within a dream I may be granted the sight of every one of these very conditions and marks I have just prayed for."
"Fixing a standard for it across past and present alike" (楷定古今) is Shandao's own stated ambition for this commentary — not merely one interpretation among others, but a standard meant to settle the question for every reader who comes after. It is precisely because the ambition is this large that Shandao will not proceed on his own authority alone: he asks, in the plainest terms, for a sign confirming that this undertaking accords with the compassionate intent of the buddhas themselves, before he allows himself to trust his own reading of so profound a teaching.
Part 108 Complete
This closes Part 108. Part 109 turns to what came in answer to this vow: three months of scripture-recitation and recollection of the Buddha's name, and the first vision granted that very night — a western sky filled with jeweled mountains and buddhas beyond counting, followed by a recurring dream in which an unnamed monk personally instructed Shandao in the structure of this very commentary.
Continue to Part 109 — The First Vision →