往生集 1.2

1.2

When the Bhagavat first attained samyaksaṃbodhi, he universally expounded the Buddhayāna for all sentient beings. Soon thereafter, because their capacities could hardly be fully accommodated, he revealed the teachings of the triyāna from within the Ekayāna, and furthermore brought forth the single gate of the Pure Land from within the triyāna. Today, we are daily farther removed from the Buddha, and emotional defilements flourish more each day. Advancing, one cannot produce spiritual understanding or transcend to the holy stages; retreating, one stumbles blindly amidst the danger of sinking into perdition. If one does not rely upon this gate, whence can one swiftly escape saṃsāra? How great it is! It may well be called an efficacious medicine that unfailingly cures the chronic afflictions of the final age. Yet, considering that efficacy was abundant in antiquity but is rare today, where does the fault lie? It is simply that people's mouths speak of the Pure Land while their minds dwell in Sahā, and in staunch courage, clear awakening, they do not equal their predecessors—that is all. I have heard that in the past there were biographies of rebirth, but with the passage of many years they vanished and can no longer be seen. Nevertheless, scattered excerpts and traces remain manifold, recorded variously in the books of the hundred inner and outer schools. As I encountered them, I immediately jotted them down; selecting those whose causes and effects were clearly evident, through daily accumulation they formed a compilation, though hardly one-tenth or one-hundredth has been preserved. Now, in this jiashen year, humbly likening myself to living in the marketplace like Zhongfeng, I shut myself away in retreat in the upper chambers. I have taken them and arranged them in chronological sequence according to their categories; I have verified them through the shared destination of the various sages, and supplemented them with sympathetic resonances during their lifetimes—amounting to one hundred and sixty-six entries in all. Here and there I have composed appreciations to bring forth their hidden meanings, entitling the work *Collection on Rebirth*. I have done so that when monastics and laity examine this book, they will point and say: "Such a one was reborn through such liberation; such a one was reborn through such single-mindedness; such a one was reborn through the resonance of extreme sincerity; such a one was reborn through such great compassion and great vows; such a one was reborn through reforming faults ungrudgingly and transforming karma just as they were about to fall. Such a one was reborn in the higher grade; such a one was reborn in the middle or lower grades." This may almost serve as an assured guarantee for practitioners of pure karma by examining the present against antiquity. Yet a visitor once called upon me, and before he had read through even a few biographies, he flared up and said: "The Pure Land is cittamātra; outside the mind there is no land. Rebirth in the Pure Land is an allegory. Do you take it to be an actual birth? Does this not contradict the principle of anutpāda?" I waited until his countenance settled, and slowly said to him: "How easily said! If it were merely anutpāda and nothing more, then with all things annihilated there should not still be cittamātra. If you have truly awakened to anutpāda, how can birth be an obstruction? Since birth is fundamentally non-existent, one may be born all day long without ever having been born. Furthermore, have you completely eliminated your mental outflows?" He replied: "I have not." "Alas! If your mental outflows are not yet exhausted, the conditions for birth have not ceased. If the conditions for birth have not ceased, your physical embodiment must take shelter somewhere. In the vast ocean of suffering of the trailokya, if you are not born into the Pure Land, into what land will you be born? Crawling in the six destinies or wandering at ease in the nine grades—the benefit and harm are as far apart as heaven and the abyss! Have you perhaps not considered this? To embellish empty theories and contend for intellectual height is something I could also do. The reason I do not do so is simply that I fear being born into intellectual dharma and acting merely on hearsay. If you truly do not regard my words as mistaken, then proceeding from the Pure Land to the Buddhayāna has never been separated by even the width of a hair; how could there be any contradiction?" The visitor rose from his seat in awe, and lost in thought, unconsciously began to weep copiously, sobbing with grief. Straightening his robes, he solemnly chanted through to the end of the fascicles, repeatedly bowing and urgently requesting that it be printed on woodblocks. Now that the printing is complete, I relate its origin and development in this way.