(3) 'Unblessed, surely, are the worlds to which a man goes by giving (as his promised present at a sacrifice) cows which have drunk water, eaten hay, given their milk, and are barren.'

(1) Verily, that divinity having struck off the evil of these divinities, even death, made this go to where is the end of the quarters of heaven. There it set down their evils. Therefore one should not go to [foreign] people, one should not go to the end [of the earth], lest he fall in with evil, with death.

(24) “ Again, in the nadir, passing through the countries equal in number to the sands of the river Ganga, he may take a Buddha-land [among them], and deposit it anywhere, at any height, passing through the countries equal in number to the sands of the river Ganga, as if he was lifting a leaf of the date with a needle, no disturbance being caused thereby in the land.

(2) Therefore I must heedfully fulfil my vow; if I labour not this very day, down, down I fall. Numberless are the Enlightened who have passed by in search of all living beings; and through my own fault I have not come into their healing hands. If this day also I shall be as I have been again and again, misery, sickness, death, maiming, dismemberment, and the like will fall to my lot; and when shall I win that most rare boon, the coming of one of the Enlightened, faith, human birth, and fitness to labour in righteousness, a day of health with food and no vexations? Life is a brief instant, and plays us false; the body is like a thing held in precarious tenure. Truly with deeds such as mine have been I shall not again win human birth; and if I win it not, evil awaits me; whence should good come? Since I work not righteousness when I am able, how shall I do it when crazed by the pains of hell? I do no righteous work, and gather sin; the very name of good destiny is lost to me for millions of seons. Therefore the Lord has said that human birth is exceedingly hard to win; hard as for a turtle to pass its neck into the hole of a yoke in the ocean....

(35) Discipline (Sila) is the pure land of the Bodhisattvas; when he shall arrive at full enlightenment, beings who fulfil the practice of the ten good deeds will be born in that land.

(12) Buddha said: “ Go ye [Bodhisattvas]. Keep back the fragrance of your bodies lest those beings feel attachment [towards you] in their minds. Again you should abandon your real forms lest those who seek to be Bodhisattvas in that land should cherish [the feeling of] self-abasement. Again, you should not be contemptuous of them and thus create a hindrance-thought; and why? All the lands in all the ten quarters are [equal] even as the sky, but only for those beings who find pleasure in the inferior law Buddhas do not manifest their lands of purity.”

(37) Diligence (Virya) is the pure land of the Bodhisattva; when he shall arrive at full enlightenment, beings who practise all virtues will be born in that land.

(23) Death said: 'Choose sons and grandsons who shall live a hundred years, herds of cattle, elephants, gold, and horses. Choose the wide abode of the earth, and live thyself as many harvests as thou desirest.'

(45) To preach how to be delivered from the eight disadvantages is the pure land of the Bodhisattva; when he shall arrive at full enlightenment, there in that land he will find neither the three unhappy regions nor the eight misfortunes.

(144) Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carded by the Eternal Will of the Father,. and not for your sake alone. Dismiss (from your mind) the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aërial flight of birds gives no true knowledge nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud:, flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.