Let’s first translate this part of the Sutra into the vernacular Chinese.
At the time, the Bhiksu Dharmakara collected the pure actions taken to adorn those 210 koti wonderful Buddha Lands. Having contemplated in this way, he went to the World Sovereign King Buddha. He made obeisance at that Buddha’s feet and circled Him three times. Standing properly with his palms joined, he said to that Buddha, “World-Honored One, I have collected the pure actions to adorn my Buddha Land.”
That World Sovereign King Buddha told the bhiksu, “You now may declare your vows. Know that now is the right time to delight all multitudes. After other Bodhisattvas have heard you, they too can train in the way that you have, and fulfill immeasurable great vows.”
The bhiksu Dharmakara said to that Buddha, “I pray that you will grant me your attention and appraisals. I will declare my vows completely before the multitude.”
This part of the Sutra states that after examining 210 koti wonderful Buddha Lands, the Bhiksu Dharmakara has gone through five Kalpas of contemplation, comparison and planning to form his own Pure Land. In fact, when Buddhas have perfected their merits, they reside in a state where both noumenal and phenomenal are interdependent and all phenomena exist in perfect harmony and do not obstruct each other. It is not difficult to form such a vast and beautiful world; however, it is really difficult to make every sentient being happy from the worlds in ten directions and quickly attain Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi, since every sentient being has his own distinctive hobbies, habits, and desires, and even these desires may vary over time. I think everyone can understand this point. If one day you become truly wealthy and build a Bodhimanda in majestic splendor, are you able to make every sentient being who enters the place live in rejoicing? Even if the Bodhimanda is filled with beautiful treasures, some people may become depraved because of their greed for personal possession of these material things.
Amitabha Buddha has achieved the goal of both satisfying all the desires of sentient beings and enabling them to become Buddhas while enjoying ease and comfort. Bhiksu Dharmakara examines 210 koti wonderful Buddha Lands in order to know about the needs, hobbies, habits, and desires of different beings and then makes 48 vows based on observations. If these 48 vows are fulfilled, then the world He forms will far surpass all the Buddhas’ Lands in the ten directions. In the worlds of Buddhas, whether it is the ease and comfort enjoyed by the sentient beings or the speed of becoming Buddha, the West Pure Land ranks first.
After he has a confident mind about the future Pure Land world, he goes to the World Sovereign King Buddha and says, “World-Honored One, I have collected the pure actions to adorn my Buddha Land.” The World Sovereign King Buddha tells the bhiksu to declare his vows to delight all multitudes and says that after other Bodhisattvas have heard his vows, they can learn from him and train in the way that he has. Bhiksu Dharmakara declares his 48 vows of the Pure Land completely before the World Sovereign King Buddha and the multitude. These vows are essentially concerned with the pure, solemn and wonderful aspects of the West Pure Land and all kinds of merits and benefits about what this Pure Land can bring to sentient beings in the worlds of the ten directions.
All right, let’s listen to the 48 vows declared by Bhiksu Dharmakara. In the latter part of the Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha tells us that Bhiksu Dharmakara has successfully fulfilled every great vow he has made. Therefore, when we hear these vows one by one, we feel not only personally on the scene, but also fully aware of the advantages of the West Pure Land in comparison with our world. Some benefits can be directly obtained from the hearing of some of the great vows at the present moment, without the need for sentient beings to get reborn in the Western Pure Land.
The First Vow and the Second Vow
The First Vow: After I become a Buddha, if there should be hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts, or animals in my land, I would not think that I have completed Buddhahood and I would not attain the perfect enlightenment.
The Second Vow: After I become a Buddha, if gods in my land, after their death, should take any of the three evil life-paths, I would not think that I have completed Buddhahood and I would not attain the perfect enlightenment.
The above two vows clearly state that in the Pure Land there will not be the three woeful paths which exist in our world. Moreover, sentient beings reborn in the Pure Land will not, after their death, meet the evil destinies of reincarnation—animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings in their former worlds because of recompense caused by their past evil doings. Even if one resolves to save sentient beings in other worlds and chooses to shorten his infinite life in the Pure Land, he will absolutely not fall into the three evil paths once again due to his past evils, unless he wishes to manifest his appearance there. These two vows show that Bhiksu Dharmakara hopes that all beings can stay away from sufferings and fears.
The world we live in is called the World of Saha, which can be classified into “the three regions and the six paths.” The three regions refer to “the realms of desire, of form, and of non-form,” while the six paths which only exist in the realm of desire refer to the three good paths, namely, asuras, men and devas, and the three evil states of existence, namely, the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals. Only devas live in the realm of form and the realm of non-form. All sentient beings transmigrate in the three regions and six paths ceaselessly. We human beings belong to the realm of desire. If sexual passion does not cease to exist, we basically reincarnate in the six paths of the realm of desire, and it is beyond our ability to enter the realms of form and non-form.
Among the three evil paths, hell beings and hungry ghosts are invisible to us, but the miserable living state of animals is there for all to see. Except for pets kept by humans, other animals struggle daily to feed themselves and reproduce offspring. Moreover, if humans choose to eat meat, they are doomed to be pulled apart, skinned, fried and grilled at any time, becoming dishes on the table. In the World of Saha, humans are just a species in the realm of desire. Without the internal merits or Samadhibala (the power of meditation) and the external salvation of great Bodhisattvas, human beings defiled with bad habits and desires are bound to suffer continuous reincarnation in the six paths of the realm of desire. Furthermore, due to human beings’ desires and habits, the Three Evil Paths are places we often visit, which means we often end up in a tragic fate of being fried, steamed, and grilled by others. In fact, although human beings belong to the good path, they sometimes feel as painful as living in hell when they are seriously sick or suffer physical and mental anguish when their desires are thwarted.
In “Shurangama Sutra”, from the perspective of humanity, the Buddha reveals Ten Causes and Six Retributions leading to the hells. The Ten Causes refer to ten human habits, including: 1. The habit of sexual desire; 2. The habit of craving, which, when one is attracted to something, leads to incessant grasping, controlling and conquering; 3. The habit of hatred; 4. The habit of festering resentment; 5. The habit of arrogance, with haughty feelings of self-superiority; 6. The habit of enticement joined with a fondness for conniving to entrap others to obtain personal gains and happiness; 7. Predilection for concealment of one’s own faults leads to vociferous court proceedings to take revenge against others; 8. The habit of falsehood, which, when joined to deviousness, leads to insinuations and treachery to gain extra advantage by unfair means; 9. The habit of holding wrong views, which, when joined to a temperament that automatically rejects the opinions of others, leads to mistaken understandings; 10. The habit of blaming, which, when joined to a predilection for defamation, leads to making false accusations.
These ten bad habits have been widely found in humans. When a person is near death, all the things they do and say following these ten bad habits, and all the harm they cause to themselves and others, become the visions of the Antarabhava (the period between death and rebirth, a stage varying from seven to 49 days, when the karma-body will certainly be reborn) of this sentient being. These habitual causes result in the retributions of hells that involve one’s own sight, hearing, awareness and cognition. Sentient beings rotate in different hells and suffer extreme physical and mental pains. Once they have burned away their debts in the hells, they ascend to be reborn as hungry ghosts. Being hungry and thirsty all the time, with all their might, they are unable to obtain what they need for life. After finishing the karmic debt which he was due to pay as a ghost, he is born in the body of an animal to repay his debts from his previous lives. Once these animals pay the debts they incurred in previous lives, they can now return to their original status as humans.
It is easy for a person to fall into the three evil paths because once the circumstantial cause consummates, these bad habits and desires instantaneously flare up. No sentient beings would like to fall into the Three Evil Paths, or even bear to see the sight of them, for the Three Evil Paths are indeed the most distressful places for sentient beings in the Worlds of Ten Directions. Because He cannot bear to see the sufferings of all beings, Bhiksu Dharmakara makes the first great vow that there should not be three woeful paths of hell-dwellers, hungry ghosts and animals in His Land. There are no three evil paths in the West Pure Land. Even if we are born out of the lotus in the Pure Land with our usual habits and desires, we will be forever free from seeing and experiencing the three evil paths.
To fulfil this great vow in one’s own pure land, one needs to have none of these ten bad habits, even no definitions and cognition of these habits in one’s mental and physical world. Only when the Bodhisattva completely exhausts all defilements in his heart and erases all traces of harm and being harmed to the extent that even the cognition about exhaustion and elimination is void, can the Bodhisattva show no three evil paths in his Pure Land. However, in this World of Saha, it is difficult for Bodhisattvas to practice and perfectly achieve this path in extreme cases of killing, stealing and lustful desire.
In fact, there are no three evil paths in the worlds where all Buddhas reside. In “The Lotus Sutra”, Shakyamuni Buddha said that His World of realization within was also the Pure Land of Bliss free from the three evil paths. The evil world of five turbidities is the world where all sentient beings reside, which is a consequence of their own delusion in space and time created by the same karma of habits and desires. Shakyamuni Buddha enters our time and space to show the same way of life like ours and becomes a Buddha in the capacity of a human being. It is only for the convenience of enlightening the sentient beings and enabling all to see a person with the habits like ours, who through cultivation, is capable of liberating from the cycle of birth and death and obtaining eternal peace and freedom. So, all trust that following His example, they can also attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi with full confidence. Shakyamuni Buddha proclaims Triyana (the Three Vehicles) to deliver the sentient beings from all terrors and worries in this world and to help them no longer experience the sufferings of the three evil paths. It is the common aspiration of all Buddhas to deliver all sentient beings from sufferings and attain happiness. The difference only lies in the various methods of convenience They employ.
Another point commands our attention: at the end of every vow, there is a sentence pattern “if… (this vow is not fulfilled), I would not attain the perfect enlightenment.” Here, “I would not attain the perfect enlightenment” does not mean that I have attained the perfect enlightenment, yet I derecognize the fact; but means that if this vow is not fulfilled, I would forever feel the fruit of Buddhahood I have attained to be incomplete. Having practiced for a few years and having learned the knowledge about the truth of the immaterial nature, some people acquire the power of fixity in a measure and feel their minds somewhat free from delusion; however, they can hardly wait to announce that they have attained Buddhahood, earnestly looking forward to public recognition. And some, after cultivating patience under provocation for a few days and having done a little bit of meritorious work, would pour out their grievances by saying that they have already put in a lot of effort, but why haven’t they become Buddhas yet. But Amitabha Buddha says, if He cannot fulfill these great vows, He would feel that He has not yet fully achieved anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. Similarly, the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva makes the great vow, “If Hell is not empty, I would not become a Buddha.” It is a fact that no matter how much has already been accomplished, all Great Bodhisattvas would not feel they have completed the fruit of Buddhahood if they feel they cannot give benefits to all living beings simultaneously. This is the reason why they do not manifest themselves as Buddhas in a particular world, but choose to appear as Bodhisattvas incessantly in the Worlds of Ten Directions to deliver sentient beings.
Take Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva for example, uncountable kalpas before, He had already been a Buddha named True Dharma Brightness Tathagata, but often manifests as a Bodhisattva of Samyak-sambodhi, who postpones His own Buddhahood until He perfects his merits and fulfils His vow to grant whatever is requested to release all from sufferings. Manjushri Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, and Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva are all such bodhisattvas. We shall learn from Amitabha Buddha and all these great bodhisattvas who resolve to attain the perfect enlightenment for the sake of benefiting every sentient being rather than just obtaining the ultimate happiness on their own. If they could not benefit boundless beings, they would not consider that they have fully achieved anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.
However, we should not raise doubts about those Bodhisattvas who have already shown the Buddhas’ fruit, such as Shakyamuni Buddha who has become a Buddha in our world. There are altogether a thousand Buddhas appearing in the Bhadrakalpa (the present kalpa). They will in succession manifest themselves as Buddhas fully achieving anuttara-samyak-sambodhi in our world. To meet the needs of liberating the sentient beings, They appear as the founders of Buddhism and the original teachers in our world. We need Amitabha Buddha, and even more need Shakyamuni Buddha who, by His attainment of Buddhahood in the land of intense sufferings and bitterness, sets an example for all of us to follow and proclaims the right views to liberate us. If it were not for Shakyamuni Buddha to enter the time and space formed by our habits and desires and introduce Amitabha Buddha’s West Pure Land, we would have no knowledge of the Pure Land at all. We are currently listening to “The Sutra of Amitayus Buddha”, basking in both Amitabha Buddha’s merits and benefits and the dharma rain bestowed upon us by Shakyamuni Buddha. Similar to Shakyamuni Buddha, all Buddhas demonstrate to sentient beings the realization of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, which is none other than the supreme blessings and merits-giving to sentient beings. In addition, the meaning of “I would not attain the perfect enlightenment” at the end of each vow is similar to the first vow as I have explained above, so no more explanation will be made hereafter.
The Third Vow and the Fourth Vow
The Third Vow: After I become a Buddha, if gods in my land should not be the color of gold, I would not think that I have completed Buddhahood and I would not attain the perfect enlightenment.
The Fourth Vow: After I become a Buddha, if gods in my land should have varied shapes and forms, beautiful or ugly, I would not think that I have completed Buddhahood and I would not attain the perfect enlightenment.
These two vows are concerned with the physical appearances of gods in the West Pure Land. The gods born there are of one color, that is, a golden color, which only comes after the completion of Buddha’s merits. These two vows are made for satisfying sentient beings’ love for beauty. In our world, there are white people, black people, yellow people, and so on. In the West Pure Land, gods are of the same color, that is, the color of gold. Racial discrimination no longer exists there. Even gods are the same in physique, so there is no need for making differentiation between beauty and ugliness, good and bad in the Pure Land. In this way, everyone does not have to be jealous of others, and each of them radiates a golden light like Buddha.
In the “Shurangama Sutra”, the reason for Ananda’s adoption of the monastic practice by abstaining from worldly love and desires is that he saw the Buddha’s body shining with a wondrous brilliant concentration of golden light. He felt that it was so majestic, supremely wonderous and incomparable that a body with such hallmarks could not be the consequence of an act of sexual love. Ananda believed that through cultivation he could assume such a dignified appearance. That is why Ananda let the hair fall from his head so he could follow Buddha.
All beings are entitled to having golden-colored bodies after their birth in the West Pure Land. Sentient beings in many worlds attach much importance to their appearances. For example, as humans, we tend to be unsure of ourselves due to our ugly looks, let alone those born disabled or postnatal disabled, to whom deformity causes severe pain. The third and fourth vows show Bhiksu Dharmakara’s hope that all beings can attain the perfect physical marks of a Buddha. Not just that they have no regrets about their appearances, but also that they feel in their hearts that they are no different from the Buddhas in terms of form and color.
Although gods in the Western Pure Land all have the same golden-colored body, a perfect physical mark of a Buddha, beings in our world are still inclined to make a distinction of the brilliance and the range of the light gods shed, since in our world the sentient beings keep a jealousy and comparison mentality that defiles the sight, the hearing, the awareness and the cognition. So, in a sense, in the Pure Land, in order to enable gods there to have no discrimination over beautiful and ugly or wholesome and unwholesome states, it is not enough to let them have the same appearance. To start with, besides his own perfection of merits and attainment of the wonderous golden-colored body, Bhiksu Dharmakara must treat all the sentient beings equally in the Bodhisattva path. No discrimination shall arise and no preference or disgust shall be activated over the beauty and the ugliness of the various forms of the sentient beings. In dealing with various beings from the three regions and the six paths, Bodhisattvas have nothing but infinite compassion and loving kindness in their hearts, their minds being pure and free from defilements, never jealous of or competing with others. Only with the blessing of these perfect merits can all living beings in the Pure Land look exactly the same.