The Surangama Sutra

by Hsuan Hua

  Chinese editions of the text also interpolate section headings. All the section and sub-section headings in the present translation were added to the text by the translators. There are no section headings in the original Chinese text.↩

  See the appendix.↩

  For more on the syllogism, see section 9 of the introduction below.↩

  The capital city of the ancient kingdom of Kosala, on the Ganges Plain, in what is now Uttar Pradesh.↩

  The mantra is given in full below in part 8 of the text. The Chinese translators did not translate the mantra but rather transliterated the syllables of the original Indic language into Chinese characters. It is in this form that the mantra is still recited in monasteries that follow the Chinese Buddhist tradition. The present translation gives a transliteration of the sound of the Chinese characters using the pinyin system of romanization.↩

  In the Mahāyāna tradition the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī embodies wisdom.↩

  Part 5.3.↩

  The Tathāgata-garbha. See p. xxxi.↩

  Part 3.1, p. 89.↩

  Part 5.2, p. 182.↩

  Skt. Avalokiteśvara, Ch. Guanshiyin 觀世音. More explanation of this name is given in part 6, note 48.↩

  The passage on the powers of the Bodhisattva Who Hears the Cries of the World recalls a similar account in the celebrated chapter 25 of the Lotus Sūtra, “On the Universal Gateway.” The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, unlike the Lotus Sūtra, explains how the Bodhisattva gained these powers.↩

  The fifth of these basic Buddhist precepts is abstaining from intoxicants.↩

  Skt. bodhimaṇḍa, Ch. dao chang 道場.↩

  Skt. ṛṣi, Ch. xian 仙. See p. xl and part 9.10.↩

  Beings addicted to violence. See part 9.12.↩

  Skt. skandha, Ch. yun 蘊. An explanation of the five aggregates — form, sense-perception, cognition, mental formations, and consciousness — is given at pp. xlvi ff.↩

  Part 9.5.↩

  The dates of the Buddha Śākyamuni’s lifetime are a subject of scholarly controversy.↩

  This section is based on the discussion of these six concerns by the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua in his introduction to The Shurangama Sūtra, v. 1, 24–36.↩

  The Shurangama Sūtra, v. 1, 41–2.↩

  Tathāgata-garbha literally means “the womb of the Thus-Come One,” the ultimate reality from which all appearances spring. The English word “matrix” is used here in its proper meaning of “womb” and “that which gives form, origin, or foundation to something enclosed or imbedded in it” (Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1961).↩

  See Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).↩

  Ch. yin ming 因明, clarification of causes.↩

  See, for example, S. S. Barlingay, A Modern Introduction to Buddhist Logic (Delhi: National Publishing House, 1965), 107 ff.↩

  See Barlingay, 144 ff.↩

  Part 2.1.↩

  See note 7.↩

  Yuanying 圓瑛, Shoulengyan jing jiangyi 大佛頂首楞嚴經講義 (Shanghai: Shanghai shi fo jiao xie hui 上海市佛