Why Begin With the Sun?
Shandao pauses to clarify a detail easy to misread: the exclusion of "those born blind" is not a judgment about disability, but a narrow technical point about who has a stored memory of sunlight to work from. He then opens a three-part answer to a question every reader has likely already asked: of everything in the world, why the sun, and why first?
Who This Contemplation Excludes, and Why
二、從云何作想下，至皆見日沒已來，正明牒所觀事。此明諸眾生等，久流生死，不解安心，雖指西方，不知云何作意。故使如來為生反問，遣除疑執，以示正念之方。言凡作想者，此明總牒前意，顯後入觀之方便。言一切眾生者，總舉得生之類。言自非生盲已下，此明簡機堪與不堪。言生盲者，從母胎中出眼即不見物者，名曰生盲。此人不得教作日觀，由不識日輪光相故。除生盲以外遇緣患者，教作日觀盡得成就。由未患眼時，識其日輪光明等相。今雖患目，但令善取日輪等相，正念堅持，不限時節，必得成就。
Second, from "how, then, is this contemplative thought to be formed" down through "all beheld the sun as it set," this makes plain the citing of the very matter to be contemplated. This makes plain that sentient beings, having long flowed through birth and death, do not understand how to settle their own minds — and though told to point toward the West, do not know how, in practice, to direct their own attention. For this very reason, the Tathāgata poses a question back to her, so as to dispel this very doubt and attachment, and to show the method of right mindfulness. As for "as for anyone forming this contemplative thought": this makes plain the general citing of the preceding intent, revealing the expedient means for entering contemplation that follows. As for "all sentient beings": this raises up, in general, every class of being capable of attaining rebirth there. As for "excepting only those born blind" and what follows: this makes plain the distinguishing of capacities, between those fit to receive this teaching and those not. As for "born blind": this names one who, emerging from the mother's own womb, has never once been able to see anything at all. Such a person cannot be taught to perform the sun contemplation, since they have never known the sun's own disc or its radiant form. Excepting those born blind, anyone who has instead lost their sight through some later affliction may still be taught the sun contemplation, and shall without fail attain accomplishment in it — since, before their eyes were afflicted, they already knew the sun's own disc and its radiant form. Now, though their eyes are afflicted, one need only cause them to skillfully grasp again the sun's own form, holding fast to right mindfulness, without regard to any fixed span of time, and accomplishment shall without fail be attained.
Shandao's own criterion here is narrower, and more specific, than "blindness" as a general category: what actually disqualifies someone from this particular contemplation is never having possessed a visual memory of sunlight to draw on, not blindness itself. Someone who lost their sight later in life, he insists, "shall without fail attain accomplishment," working from a memory formed before the affliction arose. The practice being described is thus revealed as an act of memory and mental reconstruction as much as present perception — which is precisely why it remains open to so wide a range of practitioners, including many a casual reading of "the sun contemplation" might have assumed were excluded from it entirely.
Three Reasons, and the First: A Fixed Direction
問曰：「韋提上請願見極樂之境，及至如來許說，即先教住心觀日，有何意也？」
答曰：「此有三意。一者欲令眾生識境住心，指方有在。不取冬夏兩時，唯取春秋二際。其日正東出，直西沒。彌陀佛國，當日沒處，直西超過十萬億剎即是。
Question: "Vaidehī had earlier requested to behold the realm of Ultimate Bliss, and, once the Tathāgata had granted to explain it, he first taught her to settle her own mind and contemplate the sun. What is the meaning of this?"
Answer: "This carries three meanings. The first is that he wished sentient beings to recognize this object and settle their own minds upon it, so that a fixed direction might actually exist for them. One does not take the two seasons of winter and summer for this, but only the two seasons of spring and autumn, when the sun rises due east and sets due west. Amitābha's own buddha-land lies at the very place where the sun sets — directly to the west, beyond a hundred thousand koṭis of buddha-lands, is that very land."
The practicality of this first reason is easy to underestimate: before any inner transformation can be discussed, the practitioner needs an actual, fixed, physically locatable direction to face — and the sun, precisely because it rises due east and sets due west only during spring and autumn, supplies a compass reading available to any observer on earth, without instruments or instruction. Two more reasons remain to be given for why the sun specifically was chosen; this first one alone already grounds the entire sixteen-contemplation structure in something as plain and universal as watching a sunset.
Part 29 Complete
This closes Part 29. Part 30 continues with the second reason — an extended, detailed instruction in posture, in visualizing the body's own four elements as empty, and in the practice of confession for practitioners who perceive their own karmic obstructions as clouds obscuring the sun.
Continue to Part 30 — Posture, Emptiness, and Clouds Before the Sun →