Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — First Collection, Part 1

The elder Wúwéi Néng of Liuqing Hermitage in Wujiang was my senior in age, my senior in virtue, and my senior in having left the household life. In my early years I traveled about Suzhou and the Lake Tai region, and sat together with him in meditation, in the same hall. Later, when I had taken up residence at Yunqi, he came to receive the precepts and asked to be entered on the roll as my disciple. I declined and would not permit it, but he pressed his request all the harder, saying: "Long ago, even the two great bodhisattvas Puhui and Puxian sought to enter the Lotus Society of Kuanglu — who am I, that I should cut myself off from so fine a gathering?" Unable to refuse him, I did as Dǒng Luóshí once did in seeking discipleship under Xīnjiàn, and granted his request.

That a man of such standing should place himself below one he judged beneath him has the bearing of the ancients. I set it down here to encourage those who come after.

A monk had lain consumptive for years, long wasted upon his pillow. Everyone around him knew he was going to die; he alone entertained no thought of death, and to speak of dying in his presence was to displease him at once. I had someone tell him plainly: "You should quickly settle your affairs, and fix your mind single-mindedly on right mindfulness." He answered that for a sick man it is inauspicious to speak of such things before his birthday — once the day had passed, there would be time enough to discuss it. The seventeenth of that month was the day of his birth. He died suddenly the day before.

Alas — "a human life lasts no longer than a single breath." The Buddha spoke those words to a man who was not yet ill. How much more should they hold for one who lay dying, and still would not wake to them! How sorrowful.

When I was still a layman, I was once at the home of my friend Qián Qǐdōng when a practitioner, hearing me speak of my wish to leave the household life, said to me: "It is not a matter of leaving the household — what matters is finding an enlightened teacher." At the time I did not think much of what he said. Another practitioner once told me: "When it comes to profound writings, one should read only the works of the ancient sages; most recent writings come merely from private opinion, and are not to be trusted." At the time I did not think much of that either.

Now, thinking it over, both remarks have real depth to them — not entirely so in either case, but not entirely otherwise either. The same holds, by the same reasoning, for the tradition I myself follow. I record it here for that reason.

There are clever people who reconcile the sayings of the Chan school with the Confucian classics. This is not merely a matter of fluent, rounded understanding — it also draws in those of shallow discernment, so that they no longer slander the Buddha-dharma out of Confucian prejudice. The intention behind it is certainly a fine one. And yet: taken as the teaching that "coarse words and refined words alike return to the ultimate truth," this is entirely so, entirely so. But if one goes on to parse the texts and press the comparison down to its finest and most exacting point, it turns into idle argument instead — and this is something anyone who has already entered the gate ought not fail to know.

Tiānrú compiled the Combined Commentary on the Śūraṅgama, and someone said of it: "This is Tiānrú's Śūraṅgama, not Śākyamuni's Śūraṅgama." I would say that although the remark is correct, when students newly come to their studies seize on it as grounds to discard the commentaries of the ancients entirely, that is wrong. For suppose one discarded every commentary and kept only the bare sutra text — could one not just as well say, "This is Śākyamuni's Śūraṅgama, not one's own Śūraṅgama"? Then the sutra itself could be discarded — how much more the commentaries! Or again, could one not say, "One's own Śūraṅgama pervades every place"? Then the hundred schools of philosophy, down to the woodcutter's song and the cowherd's tune, none of it could be discarded either — how much more the commentaries!

Not only with the Śūraṅgama — in recent times, students of the sutras in general mostly make no use of commentary at all. Not clinging to received opinion, and going straight to investigate the meaning of the text itself, is indeed a position with real insight to it. But because this has become a fashion, some go so far as to indulge their own private conjecture, hoping merely to appear superior to the ancients, and end up twisting the meaning into eccentric readings! Students newly come to their studies, lacking real knowledge, are led astray by exactly this. And the truth is: the places where the ancients surpass people today are exceedingly many — what they fall short in is perhaps one part in ten; the places where people today fall short of the ancients are exceedingly many — what they surpass them in is perhaps one part in a hundred. Given that, would it not be better simply to preserve the old commentaries for now? It is like someone learning a craft: he must first follow his teacher's instruction as the standard measure; only later, once his own uncanny skill has developed, may he go on to surpass his teacher — and who, at that point, could hold him back? Why the urgent rush to surpass the ancients right away? All the more so since, in the end, one never actually goes beyond the bounds the ancients themselves set.

The layman Cáo Lǔchuān of Gusu [Suzhou] told me this: his daughter, living at her husband's family home, was sitting indoors one summer day when a snake, chasing a pigeon along the top of the wall, fell into the middle of the courtyard. The household saw it and killed it.

Some days later, the snake possessed the daughter and began to speak through her. Lǔchuān went to see her, and the voice said: "I was once the governor of Jingzhou. When Gao Huan rebelled, he pursued me to the river's edge, and I died there in the water. I do not know whether my parents, my wife, and my children are safe."

Lǔchuān, astonished, said: "Gao Huan lived in the era of the Six Dynasties — since then we have passed through the Sui, the Tang, the Song, and the Yuan, and have now come to the great Ming!" Only then did the ghost realize how long it had been dead, and understand as well that it had since been reborn as a snake. It said: "Since I have already become a snake, I hold no grudge in dying a second time. Only perform for me a single recitation of the Emperor Liang Repentance, and I will go." So Lǔchuān engaged the monk Dìngkōng of Sizhou Temple to perform the rite. When it was complete, the spirit asked for a feast as well, and so an additional platform of food was offered for the hungry ghosts on its behalf. The next day the daughter was calm and well again, just as before.

How great, indeed, is the power of repentance ritual, rightly performed!

He Yìn of the Jin dynasty said: "When a crab is put to death, it can still be pitied, since it plainly has awareness. But as for creatures like the giant clam, the ark shell, and the oyster — their eyes and brows lie folded away within, their lips and mouths sealed shut without; they neither flourish nor wither, not even the equal of grass and trees; soundless, scentless — how are they any different from a broken tile, a bit of gravel? Surely they may rightly be kept always in the kitchen, food for the mouth forever."

Ah — what manner of talk is this! Though such creatures have no visible eyes or brows, no lips or mouth, though they seem neither to flourish nor wither, to make no sound or give off no scent — can they truly be without physical form, without any capacity for movement? Whatever has physical form and is capable of movement has awareness. It is only that you fail to recognize the awareness that is there. And in truth, eyes and brows and the rest are not actually absent in them at all — they are merely so minute that ordinary eyes cannot make them out. To wish such creatures kept forever as food for the mouth — He Yìn's offense reaches up to Heaven itself!

As Li Si went to his execution, he turned to his son and said: "I wish I could once more lead the yellow dog with you, carry the grey hawk on my arm, and go out through the eastern gate of Shangcai to chase the cunning hare — could such a day ever come again?" Father and son wept together, and then the punishment fell on three whole clans of their kin. What Li Si regretted, in the end, was having lived to see today's wealth and rank only to die for it — better, he felt, to have lived on poor and lowly as before. But did he never once consider that the hares his hawks and hounds once hunted down felt exactly the same terror he now felt at his own execution? He wiped out whole packs of them; his own three clans were wiped out in turn — the reckoning fits exactly. Not to recognize the offense in that, and to long instead for the very days when he committed it, dying still without having woken to it — such, perhaps, were both Li Si and his son.

A certain Mr. Jīn of Qiantang was sincere and devoted in keeping the fast and precepts. He died of illness, and afterward possessed a child in the household, speaking through him: "My store of good karma was still shallow, and I have not been able to be reborn in the Pure Land. I am now in the realm of the dead — though it is quite pleasant here, and I come and go as I please." One day, still speaking through the child, he scolded his wife and children: "Why, over the matter of my grave, did you kill chickens and prepare a feast? Now I have an officer of the underworld assigned to follow me, and I am no longer quite as free as before!" His daughter-in-law was pregnant at the time, and the family asked him about it. He said: "This child will be a boy, and mother and son will both be well. The child after this one will also be a boy — but then both mother and child will die."

I made careful note of what he said, to see whether it would come true. Before long, a boy was born. She conceived again, and again bore a boy — and this time the boy died shortly after birth, and the mother died along with him. So it turned out that every word he had spoken was accurate.

If this is so, then killing living beings on behalf of one's parents — how could a filial child possibly do such a thing!

There was a scholar who had completed his studies but remained stalled for years at the provincial academy. He prayed to Wenchang [the god of literary destiny]: "If I succeed in the provincial examination, I will kill a deer in your honor." Before long he passed. Having fulfilled his vow, he went on to the metropolitan examination at the Board of Rites, and this time promised two deer — but he died before ever passing it.

Ah! Killing that deer to seek your own official salary and rank — could your heart truly rest easy with that?

The mind admits of no true analogy. Whenever the mind is compared to something, it is only for lack of a better way — a rough approximation offered out of necessity, not the real thing. Take the analogy of the mind as a mirror: a mirror can reflect what stands before it — when the object has not yet arrived, the mirror does not go out to meet it or send it away in advance; while the object stands before it, the mirror feels neither fondness nor aversion; once the object has departed, the mirror retains no trace of it. The mind of a sage is likewise always still and always illuminating, empty and quiescent with respect to past, present, and future alike — and so it is compared to a mirror.

But this is only taking a rough resemblance. Pressed to its ultimate conclusion, a mirror in fact has no awareness at all. If the mind, too, were truly without awareness in just this way, it would be a mere blank, without any spark of life to it — how then could it be called the wondrously bright, true substance [of enlightenment]? The same holds for comparing the mind to a wish-fulfilling jewel, or to empty space, or to any of the other such analogies.

Chen Houshan said: "Studying poetry is like studying to become an immortal — when the time comes, the very bones change of themselves." I would say the same of Chan: studying Chan is like studying to become an immortal — when the time comes, the very bones change of themselves. And so a student need not worry that Chan will fail to be accomplished — only that the time has not yet come; and need not worry that the time has not yet come — only that one's own practice has not yet been diligent enough.

"Hongzhou" refers to Great Master Ma [Mazu Daoyi]. Guifeng [Zongmi] wrote: "The Tathāgata transmitted the Dharma to Kāśyapa, and it passed down in turn to Caoxi [the Sixth Patriarch]. Of Caoxi's teaching, only Heze [Shenhui] received the correct transmission; every other school branches off to the side — like a wish-fulfilling pearl, of which Heze alone grasped the pearl itself." His analysis is extremely refined, but his judgment of the people involved is not right. Mazu received the teaching directly from Nanyue, and Nanyue received it directly from Caoxi; and afterward Baizhang, Huangbo, Linji, Nanquan, Zhaozhou, and countless other great venerable masters all came forth from Mazu's line — yet Guifeng singles out Heze alone for honor. How could this possibly satisfy the whole world?

Guifeng holds that Heze alone brought forth the single word "awareness" as [the essence of] mind, while the other schools only point to mind at the level of its functioning — and on this basis says the others merely grasped the shadow within the pearl, not the pearl itself. But the ancients, in loosening a person's attachments, always adapted to the moment and the capacity of the person before them; there was never any single fixed method. To speak of "awareness" was the direct teaching. To point to mind at the level of its functioning was the skillful teaching. And what made it skillful? The wish to let a person come to know, by way of the shadow, who it is that casts the shadow. If one clings fixedly to the single word "awareness," then consider: when the World-Honored One held up the flower, not a single word about "awareness" was spoken at all — does that mean the World-Honored One falls short of Heze? And besides, the other schools, too, point directly to this same "awareness" in no small number of places — how could they be said to speak only of functioning? Guifeng's insight is, in general, extremely deep, and I hold him in the greatest regard — it is only on this one point that I cannot be satisfied.

Now that I am old and unwell, the community has been choosing a site to build my funerary stūpa, and has changed the site several times already. I said with a sigh: "People in the world exhaust themselves scheming over feng shui, hoping their descendants will enjoy wealth and rank for generations to come. Do you, too, hope that this burial site's good fortune will produce some future court-titled abbot in purple robes? The ancients had a saying: 'Cast the body out among the woods and grasses, to feed the birds and beasts.' I would be content enough simply not to end up in the belly of a crow or a fox — anything beyond that is no concern of a person of the Way."

A sutra says: "Before a bodhisattva has managed to save himself, he first saves others." Foolish people then conclude that a bodhisattva simply saves sentient beings and need not save himself at all. What they fail to realize is that he, too, is counted among sentient beings — how could one save every sentient being and yet leave out precisely one, namely oneself? How can people use "bodhisattva" as an excuse to chase after the external and forget the internal!

Master Guishan said: "A student newly come to the mind, though he may through some causal condition attain in a single thought a sudden awakening to his own true principle, still carries habitual tendencies accumulated over beginningless, boundless kalpas, which cannot be purified all at once. He must be taught to cleanse away, in the flow of his present karmic consciousness, what remains — this and nothing else is what cultivation means; there is no other separate method to teach him where to direct his practice."

Words like these could not be spoken by anyone but one who has plumbed the very source of the Dharma to its bottom. Why is it, then, that people today, the moment they have some small awakening, immediately declare the whole work of a lifetime's study and practice finished?

Fú, a senior lecturer of Taiyuan, was expounding the Nirvana Sūtra at Xiaoxian Monastery in Yangzhou, speaking at length on the profound principle of the Dharma-body, when a Chan practitioner in the audience could not help laughing. When the lecture ended, Fú invited the practitioner for tea and said, deferentially: "I am shallow and limited — I only explain the text according to its words. Just now you were moved to laugh at me; I hope you will instruct me."

The practitioner said: "It is not that what you said, Master, was wrong — only that you spoke merely of the Dharma-body's dimensions, without truly knowing the Dharma-body itself." Fú said: "If that is so, please explain it for me." The practitioner asked: "Do you truly trust me, Master?" "How could I dare not to?" "Then set aside your lecturing for ten days. Sit upright and still, gather in your mind, and let go all at once of every condition, good and bad alike." Fú did exactly as he was told. From the first watch of the night until the fifth, he heard the sound of a horn — and suddenly attained great awakening.

There is also the case of Lecture-Master Liángsuì, who went to study under Magu. Magu, seeing him approach, shouldered his hoe and went into the garden without so much as a glance at him, then returned to his own quarters and shut the door. The next day Liángsuì came again seeking an audience, and again the door was shut in his face; so he knocked. Magu asked: "Who is it?" The moment Liángsuì gave his own name in reply, he suddenly attained great awakening.

These two venerable masters achieved what they did purely because they emptied their minds and placed themselves below the worthy, harboring no trace of self-conceit. How could people today, so full of their own superiority, ever reach such an awakening?

Master Miàoxǐ [Dahui Zonggao] said: "If a student can bring off a phrase like 'a dried shit-stick' the right way, then things like 'a saw cuts through the weight of a steelyard,' 'three catties of flax,' or 'does a dog have Buddha-nature' can all be brought off the same way. But it will not do simply to say such things by rote — one must actually be awakened before it counts. And if you are genuinely awakened, and your own teacher deliberately tells you that you are wrong, that teacher, too, will incur no small karmic consequence for it."

Students should hold fast to these words of Master Miàoxǐ, set aside mere clever talk, and seek genuine awakening instead.

In my Correcting Errors, I explained that the fǎn (反) in fǎn bài (反拜) means "to return," not "to reverse": when a child who has left the household bows to his parents, the parents, unwilling to accept the bow of a monastic child, return the courtesy — it does not mean the parents bow back to the child in reverse. A monk, indignant at this, objected to me: "The Lotus Sūtra says that after the Tathāgata Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū became a buddha, his father, the Wheel-Turning King, bowed to him in worship — that is a father bowing in reverse to his son. The Buddha himself taught it plainly, and it is even carved into the closing pages of the sutra."

I put my palms together and asked him: "And what Tathāgata are you, may I ask?" The monk demurred, saying he would not presume to claim any such thing. I asked further: "Since you are not yet a Tathāgata, are you at least on the verge of perfect enlightenment?" Again he demurred. So I said to him: "Since you dare not claim even that, then wait until you have become a buddha, sit upright for ten more kalpas, and actually attain the rank of the Tathāgata Mahābhijñā-jñānābhibhū — it will not be too late then to accept your parents' bow. Right now you are a monk, not a buddha. The Buddha established rules for monastics; he did not establish rules for buddhas. And besides, the world already slanders the Buddha-dharma as having no regard for father or ruler — it is precisely out of fear of that charge that I wrote to correct such errors, hoping to put an end to the world's mockery and let the true Dharma endure. Why is it that you have no fear of the karma of speech, and are content to be a worm feeding on the lion's own body?" How sorrowful!

The Record of the Monasteries of Luoyang says: "History books are none of them a true record — the people of our own day are fools in life and sages in death; how deeply confused this is!" What is meant is that history tends toward excessive praise, and so is not to be trusted. But the phrase "none of them" overstates the case. The ancients called the historian's brush the "straight brush" — how, then, could what it records be entirely untrue? Confucius said, "When ornament overcomes substance, you get an official chronicle" — which allows that some untruth may creep in, but the phrase should be softened from "none of them" to "not necessarily."

The ancients were careful and sparing in what praise they granted: a single line of judgment upon a person could carry that person's fame down a thousand years. People today, by contrast, treat such judgments as mere formality, doing favors for one another as a matter of course, praising extravagantly and without basis — which only earns them the mockery of anyone with real discernment. How lamentable! This is clearly what provoked the author of the Record of Luoyang to make his remark, and it strikes precisely at the failing of a degenerate age.

If one does not speak this plainly, then how is anyone to tell apart the genuinely accomplished teachers of past generations recorded in the Transmission of the Lamp from the people of today who arrange to have their own names inserted into the patriarchal lineage charts? Let it be known to my disciples hereafter: do not go seeking out eminent officials and great men to embellish, in my name, virtues I have not actually attained.

A worldly scholar once gathered a group of young novice monks to lecture them on the Zhuangzi, and declared grandly: "The Nanhua [Zhuangzi] surpasses the Śūraṅgama in its meaning." Not one monastic or layman present objected to this. Now, the Nanhua is, among worldly books, genuinely lofty and subtle — but to say it surpasses the Śūraṅgama is laughable in the extreme! The man was no more than a village pedant, too petty and low in character to be worth arguing with, and his remark carried no real substance worth refuting either — I fear only for the young novices he might mislead. But those novices with any real intelligence will surely come to understand the truth in time; it is like telling a child that brass is better than gold — once that child grows up, he is bound to spit in the face of the one who deceived him.

Someone said: "Granted, the Zhuangzi is inferior in its doctrine — but its prose is so vast and free-ranging, so capable of delighting and startling the reader, that Buddhist scripture has nothing like it. All the writers of classical prose and rhetoric, and all who prepare for the examinations, flock to it as their model. What do you make of that?"

I answered: "The sutras are the ultimate expression, with no [mere literary] embellishment at all — to set them beside worldly writing for comparison would be like matching the warm radiance of spring against the beauty of a hundred flowers; let us set that comparison aside. If you wish to discuss fine writing, are there not still the Six Classics and the Four Books? And it is Confucius who brings all these traditions to their fullest completion — let me offer a comparison using him. Confucius's writing is upright and luminous, like the sun and moon; the Nanhua, at its best, is like clustered stars and flashing lightning — brilliant but fleeting — and at its worst, like a wildfire burning without control. Confucius's writing is deep and containing, vast as a river flowing to the sea; the Nanhua, at its best, is like a waterfall or a startling wave, and at its worst, like a chaotic, disordered current. Confucius's writing is smoothly fused and gently warm, like fine jade; the Nanhua, at its best, is like crystal or glass, and at its worst, like inferior stone that only resembles jade. Confucius's writing is close at hand and substantial, like the five grains that sustain the people; the Nanhua, at its best, is like the lychee of Annam or the grapes of Dayuan, and at its worst, like an unripe pear or persimmon. This, roughly, is the comparison. Anyone devoted to writing should know, from this, which model to follow — how much more so a monk, for whom literary composition is not even supposed to be his proper occupation!"

Someone asked: "Why is it, then, that venerable masters of old, in their commentaries on the sutras and their treatises, sometimes quote the words of Zhuangzi?"

I answered: "Among the writings of this land, those of the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi are the finest. The Buddhist sutras come from the Five Regions of India, and to make their meaning clear they must borrow the language of this land — if not from these, then from whose words could they possibly borrow? But for the most part only their language is used, not their full meaning — it is a matter of rough resemblance only, something that seems close but is not truly the same. It is like a southerner traveling north: the northerner does not know what a boat is, so the southerner points to a cart and explains: 'Our boats carry cargo across long distances, just as your carts do here.' He borrows the cart to explain the boat — he does not mean that the cart is a boat."

Someone compiled a book called Nourishing Old Age, on the everyday diet and clothing suited to old age — and much of it consists of recipes for roasting and grilling living creatures. It goes so far as to list sparrow, wild goose, pheasant, mandarin duck, deer, hare, camel, bear, and badger — creatures many wealthy young nobles themselves have never so much as tasted. A worthy of old once said: "However well you tend and rest your body, you still cannot out-argue the demon of death." Why, then, when already old, does one still fail to put the mind at rest, and instead labor all the harder at killing? The book that has misled old people across the world, and their children and grandchildren along with them, into the hells together — this is that very book.

Confucius said, "Let the old find peace." He surely did not mean that they should find that peace through killing. Mencius said, "One may eat meat at seventy." He surely did not mean that one should eat the flesh of every living creature indiscriminately. Let whoever first set this practice in motion give it careful thought.

What is gained through the ear by listening is not as broad as what is gained through the eye by reading. What is gained through the eye by reading is not nearly as broad as what is gained through the mind by direct realization. It is fine to let the mind serve as sovereign, the eye as minister, and the ear as attendant. To use the eye in place of the mind is already inferior. To use the ear in place of the eye is inferior to that, again.

According to Hangzhou custom, at the end of each year households make offerings to the gods — the grander households slaughter a sheep and steam a suckling pig, and lesser ones use a pig's head, chicken, and fish. Before I left the household life, I had already taken up the precept against killing, and so I changed the offering to vegetables and fruit instead. My own family — even the smallest children in the house — were startled, and were certain this could not be done.

I lit incense and candles, and announced in a loud voice to the gods: "I myself uphold the precept against killing. To offer sacrifice by killing would be a fault on my part, and would bring the gods no benefit either. This choice, however, is mine alone — everyone else in the household still wishes to use animal offerings. If the gods are displeased by this, let every misfortune fall on me alone; to let it fall on the innocent besides would hardly be the mark of a wise and upright god."

My family still worried for my sake. But by the end of that year the whole household remained safe and well, and from then on this became our custom.

Every person in the world has his own delight, and lives out his life, to its very end, following that delight — only the refinement of the delight differs from person to person. At the coarsest level, one delights in wealth; next, in sensual pleasure; next, in drink. A little more refined, one delights in antiques and curios, or in the game of go and the qin, or in landscapes, or in composing verse. Higher still is delight in reading — opening a book always brings some benefit, and of all the delights, reading is the finest. But even this still belongs to worldly ways. Higher again is delight in reading the Buddhist scriptures. Higher still is delight in purifying one's own mind. When delight reaches the point of purifying the mind, it becomes the finest delight of all, whether within the world or beyond it — and one moves gradually into ever better territory, the way sugarcane grows sweeter toward the root, the further one chews.

Wisdom is of two kinds: worldly wisdom and wisdom that transcends the world. Worldly wisdom is itself of two kinds. The first is broad learning, eloquence, outstanding skill, and far-reaching strategy — people of this kind excel over others simply through the range of what they know and understand. The second is the ability to distinguish good from evil and the crooked from the upright, doing what ought to be done and stopping short of what ought not to be done. To have only the first kind is what is called "wild wisdom," and it leads, in the end, straight down into the three lower realms. To have both together is called "right wisdom," and its karmic reward lies among humans and gods. Why is this so? Because someone whose virtue exceeds his talent is called a noble person, while someone whose talent exceeds his virtue is called a petty person.

Wisdom that transcends the world is likewise of two kinds. The first is the ability to skillfully discern the Tathāgata's true Dharma — the Four Noble Truths, the six perfections, and so on — and to practice according to it. The second is to break through fundamental delusion and, in full accordance with reality, see one's own original mind with total clarity. To have only the first is transcendent wisdom still, but it is called "gradual entry." To have both together is the highest transcendent wisdom, called "sudden transcendence." Why is this so? Because once you have grasped the root, you need not worry about the branches — whereas grasping the branches does not guarantee you have grasped the root. There are people today who, having only just glimpsed the first portion of worldly wisdom, immediately declare themselves greatly and thoroughly awakened — how deeply mistaken and confused this is!

When a person first leaves the household life, the resolve in his heart is invariably keen and forceful. He should take advantage of exactly this moment to apply himself single-mindedly to practice, so that something is actually accomplished. If instead he drifts along idly and lets this moment slip past, then later on — whether he comes to head a monastery, or takes on disciples of his own, or receives abundant offerings from the faithful — he will, more often than not, find himself burdened and encumbered by these very things, and his original resolve will sink and be lost. This is something a practitioner cannot afford not to know.

There was a certain villager of Haichang whose elderly mother-in-law had died; her spirit possessed a member of the household and spoke of the events of her life, and of the retributions of the underworld, in great detail, while the family sat gathered around listening. In the middle of this, the villager himself suddenly gathered his mind and began silently reciting the Buddha's name. The old woman's spirit said to him: "If you keep on like this, why should you worry about failing to achieve buddhahood?" He asked why she said so. She said: "Because your mind is reciting Amitābha Buddha's name." He asked how she knew. She said: "Because I see light shining from your body."

This villager could not even read a single character, and had only, on a sudden impulse, turned his thoughts inward to recite the Buddha's name for a moment — and even this was enough to move a spirit to reverence. How much more so, then, for one who has cultivated this practice for a long time! This is why the merit of reciting the Buddha's name is truly inconceivable.