遊心安樂道 1.6

1.6

Although all ordinary beings may practice buddhānusmṛti, until they reach the ten abodes of understanding, their status is essentially that of retrogression. If in a defiled land, encountering four conditions for retrogression, they promptly retrogress; if born in the West, because of four conditions, they ultimately do not retrogress. As for the four conditions: first, due to long life and absence of illness, they do not retrogress; in the defiled land, due to short life and many illnesses, they retrogress. Second, due to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas who are perfectly wholesome spiritual friends, they do not retrogress, as the sūtra says: "Because one attains gathering in one place with such supreme wholesome persons"; in the defiled land, due to many evil companions, they retrogress. Third, due to the absence of women, and the objects of the six sense faculties all being conditions for progressing on the Path, they do not retrogress, as the sūtra says: "Seeing forms with the eyes, they immediately arouse the bodhicitta," and so on; in the defiled land, due to the presence of women, they retrogress. Fourth, due to having only wholesome minds, they do not retrogress, as the sūtra says: "There is not even a hair's-tip of ground where evil is committed"; in the defiled land, due to having unwholesome minds and indeterminate minds, they retrogress. Moreover, both of those two sūtras state: "Those who are reborn there all attain non-retrogression." They do not say that only persons of non-retrogression attain rebirth, just as a person here who has the three feelings, if born in that land, has no suffering or equanimity, but only feelings of pleasure.