From Chapter 36 of “Journey to the West”
劈 pī crack, split open, strike, destroy
破 pò break, tear, destroy
pángmén side-door, figuratively: improper means
見 jiàn see
月 yuè moon
明 míng bright, light
From Master Hsuan Hua’s commentary on the Surangama Sutra:
The sutras tell us that in the Dharma-ending Age, not even one in a million people who cultivate will attain the Way. That many people cultivate and not even one person among them attains to the Way! Then what shall we do? Don’t worry. It goes on to say, “Only by mindfulness of the Buddha are they taken across.” The dharma door of reciting the Buddha’s name is very easy. With the dharma door of mindfulness of the Buddha,
One transcends the three realms
through the side door (horizontally),
And carries one’s karma into that rebirth.What does it mean to transcend the three realms through the side door? It’s like an insect in a piece of bamboo. If the insect were to gnaw its way out through the length of the bamboo, it would have to go through all the sections; it would take a long time. If the insect were to gnaw a hole in the side of the bamboo instead, it would get out very easily. People who are mindful of the Buddha are like the insect who goes out the side of the bamboo; they escape the three realms on a horizontal plane, right at the level they are. “One carries one’s karma into that rebirth.” The karma one carries is former karma, not current karma, it is old karma, not new karma.
This means that before you understood the method of being mindful of the Buddha, you created offenses. You can take that karma with you when you go to rebirth in the Pure Land. But you shouldn’t continue to create bad karma once you know about reciting the Buddha’s name, because you can’t take that karma along. Once you know about mindfulness of the Buddha, you should change your ways. Don’t keep creating bad karma. If you do, you will be piling karma on top of karma, adding offenses to offenses. That’s called “knowing clearly and transgressing intentionally,” in which case, the offenses are tripled.