佛說盂蘭盆經疏 1.9

1.9

Fourth, as for revealing the superior field: by way of analogy, just as worldly people, wishing for the five grains in their granaries to be abundant and without lack year after year, must take seeds of grain and wheat, and use oxen and plows to plow the ground and sow them—if they do not sow, they will be exhausted. In the Dharma it is also like this: taking the mind of compassion, the mind of reverence, and the mind of filial piety as seeds, taking food, clothing, wealth, silk, body, and life as oxen and plows, and taking the poor and sick, the Three Jewels, and parents as the fields. If there are Buddhist disciples who wish to obtain within the storehouse consciousness the adornment of a hundred blessings, endless life after life, they must generate minds of compassion, reverence, and filial piety, and take food, clothing, wealth, silk, body, and life to supply, relieve, respect, and support the poor and sick, the Three Jewels, and parents; this is called sowing blessings. If they do not sow, they will be impoverished, devoid of blessings and wisdom, and enter the dangerous paths of birth and death. The field where blessings are sown is called the field of merit, just as the field where grain is sown is called a grain field. However, seeds may be fine and fresh or dry and scorched, and fields may be rich and fertile or rocky and barren. Just as the minds of compassion, reverence, and filial piety may be earnest or casual, poverty may be shallow or deep, and sickness may be light or heavy. The Buddha has true and transformation [bodies], and the transformation has staying in the world or entering extinction; the Dharma has great and small, and the teachings have expedient and real; the saṅgha has those who uphold and those who break [precepts]; parents have those of the present life and of seven lifetimes—each of these corresponds to a fertile or barren field, as is clearly evident. Now, the Ullambana offering assembly is endowed with three kinds of fertile fields, and therefore it is called superior: on the Buddha's day of joy, making offerings to the bhadantas of pure precepts who perform pravāraṇā—the field of reverence is superior; repaying the parents' grace—the field of gratitude is superior; parents being in distress and difficulty—the field of compassion is superior. It is in order to reveal this superior field that this sūtra was spoken.