The Surangama Sutra

by Hsuan Hua

  Contact between faculty and object is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the arising of one of the six consciousnesses.↩

  By referring to the instance of someone pinching himself, the Buddha further shows that it is not logical to suppose that the mind has an essential nature and yet has no definite location. According to Ānanda’s idea, the mind cannot exist until the necessary conditions arise. A pinch is located on the boundary between internal and external; therefore, before the mind can come into existence at the location of the pinch, the essential nature of the mind must be located either inside or outside the body — alternate possibilities that have already been refuted.↩

  The Buddha asserts that if the mind is composed of a single essential nature which pervades the body, then the pinch should be discerned not only at its actual location but wherever the mind extends (i.e., over the entire body). On the other hand, if the mind is composed of more than one essential nature, then Ānanda would have to be two people, as the Buddha has just demonstrated in refuting Ānanda’s fifth supposition. Were the mind to have a single essential nature that nevertheless did not pervade the body, then when one touched one’s head and foot at the same time, one could not be aware of both at the same time.↩

  Ch. shi xiang 實相. The Sanskrit equivalent for this term is uncertain, perhaps dharmatā or bhūtatathatā. Numerous equivalents to this central concept are given in the text, including “true mind,” “suchness of reality,” “Matrix of the Thus-Come Ones,” “Dharma-body,” “Buddha-nature,” “enlightened nature,” and others.↩

  Ānanda is not saying that we cannot be aware of any internal sensations but that, in the case of seeing, which is being discussed, the mind has no visual data about the inside of the body to make distinctions about.↩

  In order to clarify his statement in this sixth supposition, Ānanda says that by “middle” he means between the faculty and its perceived object. He argues that since the Buddha taught that contact between faculty and perceived object is a necessary precondition of the arising of consciousness, then consciousness must arise in the “middle,” between the two, and must constitute the location of the mind.↩

  The Buddha refutes Ānanda’s argument by considering whether the mind’s essential nature includes the essential nature of the eye-faculty and the essential natures of the visible objects that are perceived by it. Here the Buddha returns to an argument similar to one he made in response to Ānanda’s fourth supposition, namely, that it would be impossible for the mind to consist of two different essential natures that are aware. But in the present case, one entity, the eye-faculty, is aware, and the other, the visual object, is not. If the mind includes both, then we are left with “a confused combination of what is aware and what is not aware.”↩

  The Buddha shows Ānanda that if having no specific location is an attribute of something that really exists, then by definition it must have a specific location, and that is contradictory. Therefore, nonattachment implies that something exists and has characteristics and therefore location. Having a definite location is a form of attachment, and so Ānanda’s argument collapses.↩

  Ch. zhen ji 真際, probable Skt. bhūta-koṭi.↩

  Skt. icchantika.↩

  Skt. mleccha.↩

  In Buddhist cosmology, the Sahā world is the world-system we inhabit. The name is interpreted as “what must be borne.”↩

  Ch. e cha