by Hsuan Hua
For each of these fifty states of mind, a vivid description is given of the mental phenomena experienced by the practitioner. In essence, what is presented is a unique method of cataloguing and classifying spiritual experiences, together with an indication of what causes lead to such experiences. Although the fifty states of mind described are by no means an exhaustive list of all possible states, the text offers a framework for the classification of all spiritual experience, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist.
Finally, in dialogue with Ānanda, the Buddha describes the immense amount of merit that is earned by those who teach others about the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Śūraṅgama Mantra.
4. The Meaning of the Title
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is an abbreviated title. A longer but still partial title in widespread use is the “Sūtra on the Śūraṅgama Mantra That Is Spoken from above the Crown of the Great Buddha’s Head.” The full title is the “Sūtra on the Śūraṅgama Mantra That Is Spoken from above the Crown of the Great Buddha’s Head, and on the Hidden Basis of the Thus-Come Ones’ Myriad Bodhisattva-Practices That Lead to Their Verifications of Ultimate Truth.” This full title conflates two of the titles which the Buddha himself suggests in a brief passage near the end of the Sutra.29
In the Buddhist tradition, a sutra is a discourse that contains the teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni or the teachings of other Buddhas or enlightened beings.
A Buddha is a fully enlightened being who has developed perfect wisdom and universal compassion. The particular Buddha whose teachings were spoken for the benefit of beings of this planet and this age, and who lived in northern India during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.,30 was the Prince Siddhārtha Gautama, who upon attaining full awakening, became the Buddha Śākyamuni. He is sometimes referred to as the “historical Buddha.” It is he who gives the teachings contained in this Sutra.
“Great” describes the true nature of a Buddha — not his physical body but his fully awakened mind, which fills the entire universe. This aspect of a Buddha is sometimes symbolically represented as the Buddha Vairocana, who is the “Great Buddha” referred to in the title.
The “Hidden Basis of the Bodhisattva’s Practices” is the Śūraṅgama Mantra and the Śūraṅgama Samādhi.
“Thus-Come One” is an honorific name used to address a Buddha.
The word “Bodhisattva” can be translated as “awakening being.” Bodhisattvas devote themselves to the awakening of all beings, while at the same time they engage in the “Myriad Practices” that will lead to their own full awakening.
When one becomes a Buddha, which is the goal of the myriad Bodhisattva-practices, one can verify through one’s own experience the nature of ultimate truth.
5. Levels of Teaching
The Buddha taught at two different levels: he taught the unchanging, true Dharma, which applies to all circumstances at all times, and he taught provisional Dharma, which he tailored to the needs of his audience and fitted to the context and circumstances. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra was spoken in response to the disastrous error of judgment and behavior that Ānanda almost made while on his almsround, making plain his need to develop the power of samādhi, as recounted in the Sutra’s prologue.
The Buddha’s provisional teachings vary because his audiences varied in their aspirations, in their level of accomplishment, in their practice of meditation, and in their capacity for understanding. Some of the records of his teachings contain several levels of instruction in the same document, while other records confine themselves to a single type of teaching. All of his teachings are not necessarily appropriate for everyone at all levels.
Further, during a career of almost fifty years, as his audiences matured in their practice, his teachings progressed gradually from the introductory to the advanced. In some cases, the later teachings substantially critique the earlier ones, replacing provisional teachings with ultimate ones. Such critiques are a feature of this Sutra, as are critiques of non-Buddhist teachings that existed in India during and before the Buddha’s time.
Buddhist tradition holds that, after the Buddha's nirvana, the general level of understanding and practice of the Buddhist teachings slowly declined. The first major sign of that decline occurred roughly five hundred years after his nirvana; this was the schism that divided Buddhism into the Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) or Northern Buddhism, which subsequently spread to China, Korea, Java, Vietnam, and Tibet; and the Theravada (“Teaching of the Elders”) or Southern Buddhism. This southern form spread to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The Mahāyāna itself divided further into various sub-schools, among them the Emptiness school (Mādhyamaka); the Consciousness-Only school (Yogācāra); the Pure Land teachings; the Matrix of the Thus-Come One (Tathāgatagarbha) teachings; and the Esoteric teachings (called Vajrayāna in Tibet). The Śūraṅgama Sūtra contains teachings that are consonant with all of these schools, while placing particular emphasis on the Matrix of the Thus-Come One teachings and on the Esoteric teachings, both of which were flourishing in India before being introduced into China in the late seventh and eighth centuries.
Another approach given in the traditional commentaries to an understanding of the levels of teaching in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra enumerates and explains four successive gateways of inquiry and understanding: 1) intellectual inquiry into the meaning of the Sutra text; 2) meditation on the coming into being of phenomena from our own making of distinctions, as elaborated by the Consciousness-Only school; 3) a noumenal approach that directly fathoms the true nature of phenomena, which is that they are empty of any real essence and have no independent existence, as elaborated by the Emptiness school; and 4) the realization of the unobstructed interrelationship of noumenon and phenomena, as found in the Matrix of the Thus-Come One teachings and later elaborated in the Chinese Huayan School.
6. The Reasons for the Teaching
Traditional commentators have identified six concerns that are addressed by the Buddha’s teachings in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. They may be summarized as follows:31
The first is the importance of balancing learning and meditation practice. Ānanda was considered to have the keenest memory of all the Buddha’s disciples. But he made the false assumption that he could rely solely on his intelligence and his special relationship with the Buddha; as a result, he neglected his practice. Consequently, he did not have sufficient samādhi to ward off the spell that the courtesan cast on him.
The second is the danger of charlatans who pose as teachers and whose wrong views are a consequence of their own mental derangement. The Sutra condemns self-described spiritual teachers who brag of advanced spiritual accomplishments and who violate the rules of moral behavior. The Buddha warns against such people in three places in the text: in Part VII and Part IX.3B, in which he discusses purity, and in Part X, in which he describes the demonic states associated with the five aggregates.
The third is the need for a proper understanding of the difference between one’s true mind and one’s distinction-making consciousness, since this understanding is a prerequisite for right practice. Since what people generally consider to be their mind is not their true mind, the early portion of the Sutra systematically explores wrong presuppositions about the mind in order to reveal the nature of the true mind.
The fourth is that correct understanding must be followed by meditation practice that is grounded in the true mind. Once we commit ourselves to following a path to awakening, we need to learn the practice necessary to make progress. This includes learning the proper meditation techniques, choosing those meditation practices that are grounded in our deepest being, and avoiding meditation practices that will not lead to full awakening. In the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua’s words:
There are many gateways to the Dharma in the practice of samādhi, and there are other samādhis not taught in Buddhism. But in cultivating samādhi, if you begin in a direction that is wrong even by the width of a hair, you will end up missing your target by a thousand miles. Therefore it is
necessary to cultivate proper samādhi.... People who take a wrong path do not develop proper samādhi because they work among the branches rather than applying themselves to the roots. They work on this body, which is a false shell. They take the ordinary thinking mind, the sixth consciousness, to be the true mind. As a result, their practice gives them a little of the experience of stillness, but what they experience is not genuine. They force themselves to keep their thoughts from arising, but they haven’t dug out the root of their deluded thinking, so they can’t put an end to death and rebirth. It is like trying to stop grass from growing by placing a rock on it. When the rock is removed, the grass grows right back.32
The fifth is that, in order to practice meditation correctly, one must know how to get rid of distortions in one’s mental processes. Proper meditation techniques, once learned, must be used to systematically eliminate both the coarse and the subtle cognitive processes that are obstacles to progress on the Path. Those mental activities are often likened to dust on the mirror of our true mind. The Sutra exhorts us to make a commitment to purifying our minds.
The sixth is that, in order to teach others, we must not only realize the true nature of our minds but also learn the various skillful means necessary to help others along the Path. The provisional teachings make use of skillful means to bring people into the Dharma.
7. Correspondence of Teachings in the Sutra to Schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism
Several of the essential Mahāyāna teachings represented in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra were later systematized by specific schools. Knowledge of these schools can therefore be useful in gaining a clearer understanding of the teachings of the Sutra, particularly when the Sutra alludes to a teaching but does not explain it in detail. For this reason, a brief summary is given here of some of the relevant teachings of the Consciousnness-Only (Yogācāra) school, the Matrix of the Thus-Come One (Tathāgata-garbha) school, and the Esoteric school.
The Consciousness-Only School
Although the eight consciousnesses doctrine of the Consciousness-Only school of Mahāyāna Buddhism is not explicitly taught in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, traditional commentators have found this doctrine to be useful in explaining the meaning of the text.
The Consciousness-Only school describes the mind as a system of seven active consciousnesses (vijñāna), all of which develop out of an eighth, the “storehouse consciousness.” The latter is passive and contains the potentials, or “seeds” (bija), for the development and activity of the first seven consciousnesses. The seventh consciousness, or “individuating consciousness” (manas), contains the innate sense of self. The sixth consciousness contains the learned sense of self and is a perceptual and cognitive processing center. It makes distinctions among the data sent to it from the first five consciousnesses, which are the perceptual awarenesses of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. The sixth consciousness also makes distinctions about cognitive objects, such as thoughts and emotions.
Once the first seven consciousnesses have emanated out of the eighth consciousnesses, they are usually experienced as separate and distinct, but these faculties remain fundamentally one.
The eight consciousnesses account for the full range of mental processes. In this system there is no need for the notions of a real, permanent self or of real, permanent external (and internal) phenomena. All actual and potential realms of experience are shown to be contained within the transformations of consciousness. They appear as manifestations of the distinction-making mind. What truly exists is consciousness only, that is, the purified eighth consciousness.
Nevertheless, because of our attachment to and belief in the reality of self and in the reality of the phenomena that we perceive and understand to be the external world, the true nature of the world and of ourselves is obscured, so much so that we are entirely unaware of it.
The Matrix of the Thus-Come One Teachings
These teachings focus on the nature of ultimate reality and the potential that all beings have to awaken to that reality. Through correct Buddhist practice, we can bring forth from our spiritual wombs33 the embryonic Buddha that is found within every sentient being. The eight consciousnesses described in the Yogācāra doctrine are considered to be real only provisionally. Ultimately they are illusory, as the Buddha explains in Part III. Our world of illusion arises from the Tathāgata-garbha, the Matrix of the Thus-Come One (other equivalent terms include the Buddha-nature, the Dharma-body, and the true mind). This essential spiritual reality is inherent in all beings, and the work of spiritual practice is to remove the dross of illusion that covers it. The Matrix of the Thus-Come One school emphasized the presence of this spiritual essence in all sentient creatures, and from this arose an emphasis on vegetarianism, which appears in this Sutra in Part VII.
In Part IV, the Buddha explains how the illusory world of mental and physical phenomena — of me, you, and things — comes to appear from the first appearance of ignorance in the enlightened mind. This explanation, which is consonant with the Tathagāta-garbha teachings, is not meant to be historical or temporal. It is more an exposition of the layers of our experience or awareness. The implication is that we are living on the surface of our consciousness. What we are actually aware of is merely the surface of a deeper mind or potential consciousness. Even though we may be entirely content to live on that surface, we have the potential to deepen our awareness. Buddhist practice is concerned with this deepening, which involves a reversal of the direction of our awareness, away from the world of illusion and toward our original mind, which is identical to the mind of all Buddhas.
Esoteric Teachings
The Esoteric teachings, also known as Buddhist tantra or Vajrayāna, include various methodologies of meditation and other practices that are often privately transmitted from teacher to disciple in formal transmissions or empowerment rituals. They include the recitation of mantras, sometimes in coordination with mudras (ritual dispositions of the hands) and the use of ritual implements, and also teachings about the visualization of deities, the ritual creation of sacred spaces (mandalas), and the making of elaborate offerings. The central chapter of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Part VIII) describes certain of these practices in detail. Moral purity is an essential prerequisite for all of the Esoteric practices, as is the case for all Buddhist practice, and the Sutra contains strong warnings about the dangers of moral impurity, which became widespread in many of the early Indian Buddhist tantric circles.34 Since that time, failure to recognize the necessity of moral purity has been a frequent pitfall for a significant number of teachers and students of the esoteric teachings, both in Asia and the West.
8. The Syllogism and the Tetralemma
Many readers may be surprised by how much logical argumentation they encounter in the first half of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. In fact, Buddhism and other Indian religions developed highly elaborated systems of formal logic. In this Sutra, both the Buddha and Ānanda make use of syllogisms that are advanced as proof of propositions. These syllogisms largely conform to the system of logical inference developed by Buddhist logicians in India and known as hetu-vidyā.35 Occasionally, too, one encounters an example of fourfold negation (the tetralemma).
The Syllogism
According to the ancient Indian formal logic,36 the truth of a proposition can be demonstrated in a five-step syllogism:
A proposition (pratijñā) is stated;
The reason (hetu) that the proposition is claimed to be true is stated;
One or more instances (dṛṣṭānta or udāharaṇa) of the proposition that can be found in ordinary life are given;
These instances are applied (upanaya) to the proposition, showing how they demonstrate its truth;
The conclusion (nigamana) reiterates the proposition, now demonstrated.
These five steps were later reduced to three, in effect leaving out the last two of the five:
Proposition,
Reason,
Instances: positive instance,
negative instan
ce.
In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Buddha uses elements of both the three-step and the five-step procedures.
What is perhaps most striking to a Western reader is the importance given to instances. In effect, specific cases of a proposition, provided that they are precisely applicable, are considered to be demonstrative of the truth of the proposition in general. Debate therefore centers on whether an instance is in fact an applicable case, that is, whether the truth of the proposition can indeed be inferred from it.37 This pattern of inference by instance is a dominant rhetorical element in the first half of the Sutra. The following example, drawn from the beginning of Part II, may be helpful in following the many occurrences of this pattern:
Proposition: it is the mind, not the eyes, that see (in the text this step is implicit rather than stated);
Reason: our visual awareness is active even if nothing is being seen;
Instance drawn from ordinary life: In the Buddha’s words, “If you asked a blind man on the street, ‘Do you see anything?’” he would no doubt answer, ‘All I see is darkness.’”
Application of the instance: “Reflect upon what that might mean. Although the blind man sees only darkness, his visual awareness is intact.”
Conclusion: “The eyes themselves simply reveal visible objects; it is the mind that sees, not the eyes.”38
