The Surangama Sutra
Page 1
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra
With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua
A New Translation
Buddhist Text Translation Society
On Respecting Sacred Books
In the Buddhist tradition, sutras are understood to contain the teachings of Buddhas and greatly enlightened masters. As guidebooks to the path to awakening, sutras are treated with reverence. It is customary to keep sutra volumes in a clean place, either above or apart from secular works; to handle them with respect; and to read them only while sitting upright or standing.
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra.
Newly translated from the Chinese by the Śūraṅgama Sūtra Translation Committee of the Buddhist Text Translation Society: Rev. Bhikṣu Heng Sure (certifier); Bhikṣu Jin Yan, Bhikṣu Jin Yong, Novice Jin Jing, Novice Jin Hai, Ron Epstein, David Rounds, Joey Wei, Fulin Chang, and Laura Lin.
Copyright © 2009 by the Buddhist Text Translation Society. All Rights Reserved.
The Buddhist Text Translation Society is an affiliate of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, 4951 Bodhi Way, Ukiah, California 95482 (707) 462-0939, bttsonline.org.
ISBN 978-0-88139-962-2
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in Publication Data:
Tripitaka. Sutrapitaka. Surangamasutra. English.
The Surangama sutra : a new translation / with excerpts from the commentary by the venerable master Hsüan Hua.
p. cm. Translated from Chinese originally written in Sanskrit.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Hsüan Hua, 1918-1995. II. Buddhist Text Translation Society. III. Title.
BQ2122.E5B84 2009
294.3'85--dc22
2009002694
09 10 11 12 13 / 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Prologue
The Nature and Location of the Mind The Request for Dharma
The Location of the Mind Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Is in the Body
Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Is Outside the Body
Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Is in the Eye-Faculty
Ānanda Reconsiders Seeing Inside and Seeing Outside
Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Comes into Being in Response to Conditions
Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Is in the Middle
Ānanda Proposes That the Mind Has No Specific Location
The Conditioned Mind and the True Mind
The Nature of Visual Awareness It Is the Mind That Sees
Visual Awareness Does Not Move
Visual Awareness Does Not Perish
The True Nature of Visual Awareness Is Not Lost
Visual Awareness Is Not Dependent upon Conditions
Visual Awareness Is Not a Perceived Object
Visual Awareness Has Neither Shape Nor Extension
Visual Awareness Is Both Separate and Not Separate from Objects
Visual Awareness Arises Neither on Its Own nor from Causes
True Visual Awareness
Distortions in Visual Awareness Based on Karma
Visual Awareness Exists Neither Through Inhering Nor in Conjoining
The Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Five Aggregates Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Aggregate of Form
The Aggregate of Sense-Perception
The Aggregate of Cognition
The Aggregate of Mental Formations
The Aggregate of Consciousness
The Six Faculties Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Eye-Faculty
The Ear-Faculty
The Nose-Faculty
The Tongue-Faculty
The Body-Faculty
The Cognitive Faculty
The Twelve Sites Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Eye-Faculty and Visible Objects
The Ear-Faculty and Sounds
The Nose-Faculty and Odors
The Tongue-Faculty and Flavors
The Body-Faculty and Objects of Touch
The Cognitive Faculty and Objects of Cognition
The Eighteen Constituents Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Coming into Being of the Eye-Consciousness
The Coming into Being of the Ear-Consciousness
The Coming into Being of the Nose-Consciousness
The Coming into Being of the Tongue-Consciousness
The Coming into Being of the Body-Consciousness
The Coming into Being of the Mind-Consciousness
The Seven Primary Elements Are the Matrix of the Thus-Come One The Primary Element Earth
The Primary Element Fire
The Primary Element Water
The Primary Element Wind
The Primary Element Space
The Primary Element Awareness
The Primary Element Consciousness
Ānanda’s Vow
The Coming into Being of the World of Illusion Adding Understanding to Understanding
The Buddhas’ Enlightenment Is Irreversible
The Interfusing of the Primary Elements
Delusion Has No Basis: The Parable of Yajñadatta
Instructions for Practice Five Layers of Turbidity
Choosing One Faculty in Order to Liberate All Six
The Example of the Bell’s Sound
The Analogy of the Six Knots
Twenty-Five Sages Twenty-Five Sages Speak of Enlightenment
The Bodhisattva Who Hears the Cries of the World
The Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s Recommendation
Four Clear and Definitive Instructions on Purity On Sexual Desire
On Killing
On Stealing
On Making False Claims
The Śūraṅgama Mantra Establishing a Place for Awakening
The Śūraṅgama Mantra
The Powers of the Mantra
Vows of Protection
Levels of Being The Coming into Being of the World of Illusion
Twelve Classes of Beings
Three Gradual Steps Avoiding the Plants of the Onion Group
Ending Any Violation of the Fundamental Rules of Behavior
Avoiding Intentional Engagement with Perceived Objects
The Fifty-Seven Stages of the Bodhisattva’s Path Arid Wisdom
Ten Stages of Stabilizing the Mind
Ten Abodes
Ten Practices
Ten Dedications
Four Additional Practices
Ten Grounds
Two Final Stages
Naming the Discourse
The Hells Ānanda Requests Instruction
The Roles of Emotion and Thought
Ten Causes and Six Retributions
The Destiny of Ghosts
The Destiny of Animals
The Destiny of Humans
The Destiny of the Ascetic Masters
The Destiny of the Gods The Gods of the Six Heavens of Desire
The Gods of the Eighteen Heavens of Form: The First Dhyāna
The Gods of the Eighteen Heavens of Form: The Second Dhyāna
The Gods of the Eighteen Heavens of Form: The Third Dhyāna
The Gods of the Eighteen Heavens of Form: The Fourth Dhyāna
The Gods of the Eighteen Heavens of Form: The Pure Abodes
The Gods on the Four Planes of Formlessness
The Destiny of Asuras
The Seven Destinies Are the Result of Karma
Fifty Demonic States of Mind Dangers May Arise with Advanced Practice
Ten Demonic States of Mind Associated with the Aggregate of Form
Ten Demonic States of Mind Associated with the Aggregate of Sense-Perception
Ten Demonic States of Mind Associa
ted with the Aggregate of Cognition
Ten Demonic States of Mind Associated with the Aggregate of Mental Formations
Ten Demonic States of Mind Associated with the Aggregate of Consciousness
The Five Aggregates Arise from Delusion
The Merit of Teaching the Śūraṅgama Dharma
Appendix: A Brief Biography of the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua
The Buddha Śākyamuni in meditation posture, Gal Vihara, Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, twelfth century. Photograph copyright by John C. and Susan L. Huntington, reprinted by permission of the Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Related Art.
The Venerable Master Hsüan Hua on the occasion of Śākyamuni Buddha’s Birthday, in the Buddha-Hall at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, Talmage, California, May 1990. Photo courtesy of Soohoong Liung.
The Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye Bodhsattva Who Hears the Cries of the World, at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, Talmage, California. Camphor wood, twentieth century. Photo courtesy Dharma Realm Buddhist Association archive.
A Buddhist disciple kneeling, probably the Venerable Ānanda. Lacquer on wood, Burmese, nineteenth century. Photo by Christian Maillard
Acknowledgements
The members of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra Translation Committee would like to gratefully acknowledge with special thanks the important work of Bhikṣuṇī Heng Chih, who was the primary translator for the Buddhist Text Translation Society’s first edition of this Sutra. Her translation opened the way for this new translation and made the task much easier than it would otherwise have been.
We would like further to thank Bhikṣuṇī Heng Yin, Madalena Lew, Martin Verhoeven, and Doug Powers for their advice; Bhikṣuṇī Jin Xiang for proofreading the Sanskrit; Anne Cheng for her work in assuring the publication of this book; Stan Shoptaugh for book design; Laura Lin for copyediting; Dennis Crean for book and cover design, pagemaking, copyediting, and advice; Roger Kellerman and Susan Rounds for proofreading; Ruby Grad for indexing; and Mark Vahrenwald for his rendering of the Wheel of Dharma.
Foreword
When Tripitaka Master Hsüan Hua moved to San Francisco to teach the Dharma to Westerners, his first project was to explain the Śūraṅgama Sūtra in detail. During the summer of 1968, he convened a ninety-day meditation retreat that focused not only on meditation but also on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra.
Beginning in 1980, the Buddhist Text Translation Society published Master Hua’s lectures from that summer session, and for the first time a complete Mahāyāna meditation manual was available to Western readers. Earlier English translations of the Śūraṅgama were incomplete and often came without explanation. Master Hua’s presentation placed the Sutra at the heart of the contemplative life, thereby opening a road into actual cultivation of the Dharma for those who desired to follow the Buddha’s path. From Master Hua’s perspective, the Śūraṅgama is not obscure or intimidating, nor is it lofty beyond reach. He explained the text as a kalyānamītra, a good and wise spiritual friend. He was not alone in doing so. Throughout the centuries in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, meditation teachers and monks such as Master Han Shan of the Ming Dynasty, Master Yuanying of the Republic era, and Master Hua’s own teacher Master Xuyun respected and endorsed the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s instructions and used the Sutra as a reliable yardstick of proper samādhi.
Over the years, when I have need advice in cultivation, I have referred to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra for authoritative information. I go to the “Fifty Demonic States of Mind” (part 10) to check on strange states in meditation. I go to the “Twenty-Five Sages” (part 6) for encouragement on the path from the voices of Bodhisattvas. I go to the “Four Clear and Definitive Instructions on Purity” (part 7) for clarity on interaction with the world; for example, there I find the Buddha’s reasons for advocating a harmless, plant-based diet.
In carrying on the perspective of the past, Master Hua emphasized the real-life interaction between the Buddha and his students. I am drawn to the Buddha’s voice as it appears in the Sutra. His tone is at all times both wise and kind. For example, a noble king converses with the Buddha about his childhood alongside the Ganges River. After answering the Buddha’s skillful questions, the king experiences the serenity of his intrinsic nature and loses his fear of death.
The king hears the Dharma and gradually understands; but even before that conversation, a young courtesan meets the Buddha and immediately wakes up. She has fallen in love with Ānanda, but upon hearing the Dharma, she adjusts her priorities, abandons the pursuit of pleasure, and discovers samādhi and wisdom. She becomes an Arhat on the spot, before Ananda does. Her story illustrates the lack of gender or class bias in the Buddha’s teaching as found in Mahāyāna sutras.
In the dialogue between the Buddha and his cousin Ānanda, we find the framework of the narrative and the full expression of the Buddha’s range of teaching skills. The Buddha patiently guides Ānanda through the landscape of his mind as he progresses from book-learning to actual experience.
The Buddha’s teaching in the Sutra came alive for me because at Gold Mountain Monastery as a young monk, I observed Master Hua respond with the same measure of unerring kindness to the variety of faithful Chinese devotees, university professors, and truth-seeking hippies who passed through the door of the monastery. Each received the appropriate measure of Dharma-water to nourish their bodhi sprouts.
Nearly thirty years have passed since the Buddhist Text Translation Society first published the Śūraṅgama Sūtra in English. This new translation adds tools for scholastic investigation, including helpful footnotes, a more systematic treatment of technical terms, and lucid prose that has benefited from three decades of practice. The devotion of the disciples who worked on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (who, I might point out, worked entirely as unpaid volunteers) shows on every page. These individuals — monastics and laity alike — follow Master Hua’s model in keeping alive this jewel of wisdom and making it available for our use. The Dharma came to the West only a short time ago, but the appearance of this new edition shows the deepening of its roots.
I congratulate the many volunteers of the Buddhist Text Translation Society who have given so generously of their time and effort. May their wisdom and virtue become full and continue to benefit all sentient beings so that together we might leave behind the sense-limitations and knots of the mundane world and experience the Buddha’s description of how things are at root. There in the bright realm of the Thus-Come One’s Treasury, infused with the Buddha’s majestic spirit, may we master the three practices that end outflows and realize patience with the state of mind in which no mental objects arise.
Rev. Heng Sure, Ph.D.
President, Dharma Realm Buddhist Association
Director, Berkeley Buddhist Monastery
February 2009
Introduction
1. Overview
For over a thousand years, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra — the “Sutra of the Indestructible”1 — has been held in great esteem in the Mahāyāna Buddhist countries of East and Southeast Asia. In China the Sutra has generally been considered as important and has been as popular as the Lotus Sūtra,2 the Avataṁsaka Sūtra,3 the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra,4 the Heart Sūtra,5 and the Diamond Sūtra.6 The appeal of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra lies in the broad scope of its teachings and in the depth and clarity of its prescriptions for contemplative practice. Because of its wealth of theoretical and practical instruction in the spiritual life, it was often the first major text to be studied by newly ordained monks, particularly in the Chan school. Many enlightened masters and illustrious monastic scholars have written exegetical commentaries on it.7 To this day, for both clergy and laity in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra continues to be the object of devout study, recitation, and memorization.
More specifically, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra has traditionally been regarded as a complete and practical manual for spiritual practice that will eventually lead to enlightenment. It gives instruction i
n the correct understanding of the Buddha-nature, which is the potential within all beings for becoming a Buddha. The Sutra explains how and why this true nature is hidden within our ordinary experience of ourselves and of the world, and it shows how we can uncover this nature and recognize that it is our own true mind. The Sutra also explains that personal integrity and purity of conduct are essential prerequisites for spiritual awakening. It presents the general principles of Buddhist meditation, introduces several specific meditation methods, and recommends which methods are the most effective and the easiest to practice. Further, a considerable portion of the Sutra is devoted to guidelines for discerning what understandings and practices are correct and which deviate into wrong ones. It explains how our own intentional acts, whether physical, verbal, or mental, directly result in our experiences, including our future rebirths at various levels of being, both human and nonhuman. It shows how correct action can also lead to initial awakenings and eventually to the perfect enlightenment of the Buddhas.
Much of the Sutra is devoted to the Buddha Śākyamuni’s instructions to the monk Ānanda, whose personal story provides a narrative frame for the entire discourse. Joined by several of his enlightened disciples, the Buddha shows Ānanda how to turn the attention of his sense-faculties inward in order to achieve a deeply focused state of meditation known as samādhi.8 He tells Ānanda that by practicing a particular form of samādhi, the Śūraṅgama Samādhi, he and anyone else who also maintains purity of conduct and develops right understanding can gain an awakening that is equal to the awakening experienced by all Buddhas.