樂邦文類 4.79

4.79

You have noted my saying: 'In the Western Pure Land, the wind chants through precious leaves, and the waves stir in golden canals.' Whose realm is this? My reply is: It is none other than this seeing and hearing; there is no other principle apart from them. Since the doctrinal meaning has been made manifest, how could I avoid pointing it out? In the Pure Land, both the circumstantial and primary rewards proclaim the wondrous Dharma; those who hear it ought to understand that sense faculties and sense objects leave no trace, and that object and self are as one. How could one cling to the idea of there being a person confronting an objective realm separate from oneself? When a practitioner of the perfect and sudden teaching here gives rise to consciousness upon the sense faculties confronting the sense objects, he understands that it is through the dharmadhātu. Confronting the dharmadhātu, one gives rise to the dharmadhātu; it is truly not an object outside the mind, nor a mind outside the object. Thus the mind of itself knows the mind, and the object of itself sees the object. Yet how could an object see an object? How could the mind know the mind? Once knowing and seeing are forgotten, verbal explanation is also cut off; thus it is forcedly named the inconceivable object and contemplation. If this is already so when practiced in the ordinary ranks, what need be said of its realization in the ranks of sages? Moreover, if one were to forcedly discuss the differentiated aspects of the realms that are abandoned, the coarsest among the coarse is the realm of ordinary beings, and the subtlest among the subtle is the realm of the Buddha. These are merely distinctions in the pedagogical teachings. If one now speaks of it perfectly as abandoning without abandoning, the beginner is able to abandon what the Buddha abandons, because the single mind's threefold contemplation is itself the Buddha's wisdom. This is what was meant in my previous letter: 'Confronting all objects, illuminate and understand them through this contemplation.'