觀無量壽佛經疏 4.11

4.11

The sūtra says: "The first is the sincere mind." 'Sincere' (zhi) means true, and 'earnest' (cheng) means real. This is to clarify that the understanding and practice cultivated through the bodily, verbal, and mental karmas of all sentient beings must be performed within a true and real mind. One must not outwardly display the appearance of virtue, goodness, and diligence while inwardly harbouring falsehood and deception, with hundreds of kinds of greed, anger, perversity, falsity, and craftiness, an evil nature hard to subdue just like snakes and scorpions. Though one gives rise to the three karmas, they are called good poisoned by impurities; they are also called false and deceitful practices, and are not called true and real karma. If one establishes the mind and initiates practice in this way, even if one exerts body and mind to the point of suffering, rushing about and acting urgently through all twelve periods of the day and night like someone putting out a fire on their head, it is altogether called good poisoned by impurities. If one wishes to dedicate such practice poisoned by impurities to seek rebirth in that Buddha's Pure Land, this is utterly impossible. Why is this? It is precisely because when that Amitābha Buddha was performing the bodhisattva practices in his causal stage, everything cultivated through his three karmas, down to a single thought and a single kṣaṇa, was performed within a true and real mind, and whatever he carried out, gave, or sought was likewise entirely true and real.