From Water to Ice to Lapis Lazuli
Having contemplated the sun's own radiance, the practice turns to something more structural: the level, unbroken ground the pure land is built upon, in a world where the very ground beneath one's own feet never stops rising and falling.
Why Water, After the Sun?
二、就水觀中，亦先舉，次辯，後結。即有其六。一、從次作水想下，至內外映徹已來，總標地體。問曰：「前教觀日，為知業相等，故令觀日。今此觀中，又教觀水。有何所以？」答曰：「日輪常照，以表極樂之長暉。復恐彼地不平，類此穢國之高下。但以娑婆闇宅，唯日能明。此界丘阬未無高下之處，欲取能平之者，無過於水。示斯可平之相，況彼瑠璃之地也。」
又問曰：「此界之水，濕而且軟。未審彼地亦同此水也？」答曰：「此界之平水，以對彼地等無高下。又轉水成氷者，對彼瑠璃之地內外映徹也。此明彌陀曠劫等行無偏，正習俱亡，能感地輪之映徹。」
Second, within the water contemplation, the text likewise first raises the matter, next distinguishes it in detail, and finally concludes it. There are six points in all.
First, from "next, form the contemplative thought of water" down through "shining through, both within and without," this generally marks out the very substance of the ground itself.
Question: "The earlier teaching had us contemplate the sun, so as to come to recognize the mark of our own karma, and it was for this reason that we were taught to contemplate the sun. Now, within this present contemplation, we are further taught to contemplate water. What is the reason for this?"
Answer: "The sun's own disc shines constantly, and thereby represents the enduring radiance of the Land of Ultimate Bliss. Yet one might further fear that the ground of that land is uneven, resembling the raised and sunken terrain of this defiled world. But this Sahā world is a darkened dwelling, where only the sun itself is able to give light — and within this world, where hills and hollows never cease to rise and fall, if one wishes to grasp something capable of representing perfect level ground, nothing surpasses water. This reveals the very mark of what can be made level, all the more so in the case of that land's own lapis lazuli ground."
A further question: "The water of this world is wet and yielding. It is not yet clear whether the ground of that land shares this same nature as our own water."
Answer: "The level water of this world corresponds to that land's own ground, both being equally without any rise or fall. Further, the transformation of water into ice corresponds to that land's own lapis lazuli ground, shining through, both within and without. This makes plain that Amitābha's own practice, cultivated across boundless kalpas, was without any bias or partiality, both the defilements themselves and their residual habits entirely extinguished — and it is this very practice that is able to bring about the shining, translucent ground of that land."
The logic Shandao supplies here moves through three distinct stages of resemblance rather than one: water represents level ground in general, because level water is the one thing in an uneven world capable of standing for a surface without rise or fall; ice, water's own transformed state, represents the specific quality of shining through, "both within and without," that lapis lazuli possesses; and the transformation itself — water becoming ice — stands for the transformation of Amitābha's own boundless practice into a perfected, luminous result. What might look like an arbitrary chain of visual analogies turns out to be a deliberate structure, where each step in the physical transformation the practitioner visualizes corresponds to a specific claim about how the pure land's own ground came to exist at all.
Part 32 Complete
This closes Part 32. Part 33 continues with the detailed instruction for this contemplation's own practice — a bowl of water, a small white mark held between the brows, and the careful observation of ripples that reveals, moment by moment, whether the practitioner's own mind remains settled or has begun to stir.
Continue to Part 33 — A Bowl of Water, and the Mind's Own Ripples →