Closing the Ground Contemplation
The ground contemplation closes with its own account of rebirth as a matter of degrees rather than an all-or-nothing outcome: beings can attain the pure land and still remain, for a time, confined within a lotus not yet open, their own residual doubt requiring a bodhisattva's own intervention before they can fully emerge.
Benefits: Erasing Many Kalpas of Offense, and a Lotus Not Yet Open
五、從若觀是地者下，至心得無疑已來，正明顯觀利益。即有其四。一明指法唯觀寶地，不論餘境。二明因觀無漏之寶地，能除有漏多劫罪也。三明捨身已後必生淨土。四明修因正念不得雜疑，雖得往生含華未出、或生邊界，或墮宮胎。或因大悲菩薩入開華三昧，疑障乃除，宮華開發身相顯然，法侶携將遊於佛會。斯乃注心見於寶地，即滅宿障罪僣。願行之業已圓，命盡無疑不往。今既觀斯勝益，更勸辨知邪正。
Fifth, from "should one contemplate this ground" down through "the mind attains freedom from doubt," this makes plain the revealing of this contemplation's own benefit. There are four points within it. First, this makes plain that this teaching directs one to contemplate the jeweled ground alone, and no other object besides. Second, this makes plain that, through contemplating this ground free of all defilement, one is able to remove offenses accumulated across many kalpas of defiled existence. Third, this makes plain that, once this present body is relinquished, one shall without fail be reborn in the pure land. Fourth, this makes plain that, in cultivating this cause through right mindfulness, one must not allow mingled doubt to arise — for though rebirth may indeed be attained, one's own lotus may not yet have opened, or one may be reborn instead at the very border of that land, or fall into a kind of palace-womb. Yet, through the aid of some great compassionate bodhisattva, who enters the samādhi that opens the lotus, this very doubt and obstruction is thereby removed, the palace-lotus opens, one's own bodily form becomes clearly manifest, and companions in the Dharma escort one to roam within the Buddha's own assembly. This is thus what comes of fixing the mind and beholding the jeweled ground directly: the very offenses and transgressions of past lives are thereby extinguished. Once the karma of one's own vow and practice has been fully perfected, then, when this present life comes to its end, one shall go there without any doubt at all. Having now contemplated this very excellent benefit, one is further exhorted to distinguish and recognize what is correct from what is mistaken.
This passage returns to the image first introduced in the water contemplation's own verse of praise — beings reborn yet confined within an unopened lotus — and makes its cause explicit: "mingled doubt," a residual hesitation carried over from this present life, is what delays full emergence into the pure land's own assembly. What is notable is what resolves this state: not further personal effort on the confined being's own part, but "the aid of some great compassionate bodhisattva," entering a specific samādhi for precisely this purpose. Rebirth in this account is thus never purely self-powered even after death — assistance remains available, and necessary, at every stage of the process, from the initial contemplation through this final, delayed opening.
Correct and Mistaken, and the Close of the Ground Contemplation
六、從作是觀已下，正明辨觀邪正。邪正義者，前日觀中已說。上來雖有六句不同，廣明地觀竟。
Sixth, from "having formed this contemplation" onward, this makes plain the distinguishing of what is correct from what is mistaken in this practice. As for the meaning of correct and mistaken, this has already been explained within the earlier sun contemplation. Though the above has unfolded across six distinct points, this concludes the full explanation of the ground contemplation.
Shandao's brief closing here — simply pointing back to the sun contemplation rather than restating the correct/mistaken distinction in full — confirms how deliberately that earlier rule was built to govern every contemplation to come, exactly as promised in Part 31. Having now completed three contemplations built from a single continuous progression — the sun for direction and diagnosis, water transformed into the pure land's own ground, and the ground itself brought into full, unified vision — the practice turns next to something markedly different in kind: no longer terrain or light, but living form, in the pure land's own jeweled trees.
Third Contemplation Complete
This closes Part 38, and with it the ground contemplation, the third of the sixteen, in full. Part 39 turns to the fourth contemplation, that of the jeweled trees (寶樹觀) — the longest and most detailed of the contemplations so far, with ten distinct points describing trees whose every root, trunk, branch, and fruit is formed from combinations of jewels, each one flowing directly from Amitābha's own undefiled mind.
Continue to Part 39 — The Jeweled Trees Begin →