The Surangama Sutra

by Hsuan Hua

  Distortions in Visual Awareness Based on Karma

  Ānanda said to the Buddha, “The World-Honored One has elucidated the teaching concerning causes and conditions and concerning the existence of things in and of themselves, but we have not yet understood the teaching about inhering and conjoining and not inhering or conjoining. And now when we hear further that the essence of visual awareness of which the true awareness is aware is not the same as the true awareness, another layer has been added to our confusion and distress.

  “It is my humble wish that, with his great kindness, the Buddha will open our Wisdom-eye and reveal the enlightened mind in all its purity.” With these words, he wept sorrowfully, bowed, and waited to receive the Sage’s instructions.

  Then the World-Honored One took pity on Ānanda and on the others in the great assembly. He wished to make clear to them the wondrous path of practice that would lead them all to the samādhi of the Great Dhāraṇī.43 He said to Ānanda, “You have a keen memory, but it serves only to increase your erudition. You have not yet understood the practice of calming the mind from which subtle insight arises. Listen carefully as I give instruction point by point for your sake, and also for the sake of all in the future who have outflows, so that they may attain full awakening.

  “All beings are bound to the cycle of saṃsāra, Ānanda, due to the false distinctions made by two kinds of distorted awareness. Wherever these two kinds of awarenesses arise, beings undergo the karma of the cycle. What are these two kinds of distorted awareness? The first is the distorted awareness based on the karma of individual beings; the second is the distorted awareness based on the karma beings share.

  As you read this section of text, you should experience terror. You should be shocked. The Buddha tells Ānanda that all beings of this world are bound to the cycle of death and rebirth, passing through a succession of lives. They spin around like the wheel of an automobile, sometimes being born in the heavens, sometimes entering the hells. Sometimes they become asuras, sometimes they are people. Sometimes they become animals. Sometimes they are hungry ghosts.44... The cycle of death and rebirth keeps on turning under the power of two kinds of distorted awareness which result when the conscious mind makes false distinctions. These distortions in awareness stem from individual and shared karma.... For any karma you create, both individual and shared, there is an appropriate consequence which you must undergo. If you are virtuous and act for the good, you may be reborn in the heavens. If you commit offenses, you will fall into the hells.... The process is entirely impartial. (II, 175–6)

  “What is the distorted awareness based on individual karma, Ānanda? Let us consider the example of a person with an eye disease.45 At night, when he looks at a lamp, it seems to him that circular bands of light surround the lamp with the entire spectrum of colors. What do you think? Are the circles of colored light that appear around the lamp at night an aspect of the lamplight or an aspect of his own visual awareness? If the circles of colored light were an aspect of the lamplight, Ānanda, wouldn’t they be seen by other people besides the person with the eye disease, instead of being visible only to him? On the other hand, if the circles of colored light were an aspect of the person’s visual awareness, wouldn’t his awareness itself be colored? If that were the case, what kind of thing would this colored awareness be?

  Individual karma is what makes you different from other people.... It is created from deluded thoughts of great expectations for the self.... In the analogy, “other people” represents the Buddhas and the great Bodhisattvas; the “person with the eye disease” represents ordinary beings; the lamp represents true reality, since when the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas look, they see true reality, while ordinary beings see a distorted reflection. (II, 178–83)

  “Further, Ānanda, if the circles of colored light were not an aspect of the lamplight, then when the person with the diseased eyes glanced around him at a screen, a curtain, a table, or a sleeping mat, he would see the colored circles surrounding them as well. And if the circles of colored light were not an aspect of his visual awareness, he would not see the circles at all. Why then does he in fact see them?

  “Therefore, you should know that, although the colors are in fact intrinsic to the lamplight, the illusory circles of colored light arise from the disease in his eyes. However, although the circles of colored light and his awareness of them are due to the disease, his awareness of the disease is not itself diseased. In short, you cannot say that the illusory circles of color are an aspect of the lamplight or an aspect of his visual awareness. But you also cannot say that they are not an aspect of the lamplight or of his visual awareness. In the same way, in the analogy of the two moons, the second moon is neither the real moon nor a reflection of the real moon. When pressure is applied to the eyeball, one sees two moons. Those who understand this will not argue that the second moon, which results from the pressure on the eye, is the real moon or that it is not the real moon, or, further, that it is an aspect of visual awareness or is not an aspect of visual awareness.

  “The same is true of the illusory circles of light around the lamp: they arise from the disease in the eyes. Can you say now that they are an aspect only of the lamplight or only of visual awareness? You cannot. Even less can you distinguish them as neither an aspect of the lamplight nor an aspect of visual awareness.

  In the analogy of the person with the eye disease, his awareness of the colors represents ordinary beings’ distorted awareness... while his awareness of his disease represents the pure seeing of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.... The second moon is analogous to the circles of color seen by the person with the eye disease. (II, 184–5)

  “What is meant by the distorted awareness that is based on shared karma? Ānanda, in Jambudvīpa’s seas there are three thousand land masses. In their midst lies a great continent, and in that continent, from east to west, there are two thousand three hundred large countries. On the various islands in the ocean there may be two or three hundred countries, or in some cases only one or two countries, or as many as thirty, forty, or fifty.

  “Suppose, Ānanda, that among them is an island where there are two countries only, and that the people of one of these countries share the experience of unfortunate circumstances. It may be that the people of that country see many inauspicious phenomena. They may see two suns or two moons, or rings or half-rings of white or colored light around the sun or the moon. They may see meteors or comets streaking down or across the sky, or else patterns of inauspicious energies in a bowed shape or in the shape of ears above or beside the sun, or bands of light reaching across the sky — many such inauspicious phenomena as these.46 Only the people of that one country see these phenomena; the people in the other country do not see them at all or even hear of them.

  “Ānanda, I will now compare these situations in order to clarify them. First let us consider the distorted visual awareness based on beings’ individual karma. When the person with an eye disease sees the illusory circles of colored light around a lamp, the circles seem to him to be external objects, but in fact what the person sees is a consequence of the disease. The disease places a distorting strain on his visual awareness; it is not the colored light that places the strain. However, what is aware of the disease is not defective. In the same way, all that you can now see — the mountains, the rivers, the many lands, and the various forms of life — are the result of a disease that has existed in your visual awareness since time without beginning. The essence of visual awareness and what it is aware of47 cause what seem to be external phenomena to appear. Once we add another layer of understanding to our enlightenment, our awareness and what it is aware of become defective.48: While the awareness that is added to enlightenment is defective, however, the awareness that is the fundamental, enlightened, understanding awareness is not defective. That is, the true awareness that is aware of the defective awareness is not itself defective. That true awareness, which is aware of the essence of awareness, is not to be confused with the ordinary
visual awareness, or the awareness of sounds, or any of the other types of awareness.

  “To restate: your visual awareness of me now, and of yourself and of the ten classes of beings that can be seen in the world, is a defective awareness. It is not the awareness that is aware of the defect. The true nature of the essence of visual awareness is not defective, and therefore it is not what is ordinarily referred to as visual awareness.49

  “Ānanda, consider the distortion in visual awareness experienced by the people of that one country, in response to their shared karma. Compare it to the distorted visual awareness experienced by the person whose eyes are diseased, in response to his individual karma. The situations of the person with the eye disease and the people of that one country are similar, in that the illusory circles of colored light are a consequence of the eye disease, while the inauspicious phenomena seen by the people of that country are due to the miasmal energies that arise from their shared karma. Both the individual karma and the shared karma have come into being because of distortions in awareness that have existed since time without beginning.

  “Nevertheless, all the beings with outflows and all the lands in the ten directions, including the Sahā world, with its four great seas and with the three thousand landmasses of Jambudvīpa, are fundamentally the enlightened, wondrous, luminous mind that understands and has no outflows. The conditions necessary for them all to arise are the illusory, diseased distortions in visual awareness, in awareness of sounds, and in all the other types of awareness. When these conditions are present in combination, the beings and lands come into being; when these conditions are not present, the beings and lands cease to be.

  “When you remain entirely untouched by conditions, whether or not they are present in combination, you bring to an end all the causes of coming into being and ceasing to be. At that moment, you will awaken to perfect enlightenment, which is your true nature and which neither comes into being nor ceases to be. It is the pure, fundamental mind, the fundamental, everlasting enlightenment.”

  Visual Awareness Exists Neither Through Inhering Nor in Conjoining

  “Ānanda, you have already understood that the wondrous, luminous, enlightened nature of your visual awareness does not arise from causes and conditions and that it does not come into being on its own. But you do not understand yet that the original, enlightened nature of your visual awareness also does not exist because of inhering or because of conjoining, nor because of a lack of inhering or a lack of conjoining.50

  “I will now ask you again, Ānanda, about the objects you perceive before you. Your deluded thinking about the world tells you that what causes these objects to exist is either inhering or conjoining. Therefore you wrongly suppose that what causes the enlightened mind51 to exist is either inhering or conjoining.

  “Suppose the wondrous, pure nature of your visual awareness52 exists through inhering. Does it then exist through inhering in light? Does it exist through inhering in darkness? Does it exist through inhering in space? Does it exist through inhering in solid objects? If it exists through inhering in light, then when you see in the presence of light, precisely where in the light does it inhere? Visual awareness and light each have their own distinct qualities, so if visual awareness were inherent in light, what qualities would each of them have then? Either they would have the ability to see, in which case you would be seeing your own awareness, or they would not have the ability to see, in which case you would not be able to see light. In any case, how can light be inherent in your visual awareness, since the enlightened nature of your visual awareness is in fact already complete in itself? Likewise, since light is already complete in itself, how could your visual awareness have been inherent in light? Again, since your visual awareness is different from light, it would cease to be itself if it were to inhere in light, and light would likewise cease to be what we call light if it inhered in visual awareness; each would lose its nature. In short, it cannot be right to say your visual awareness exists through inhering in light. Nor can it be right to say your visual awareness exists through inhering in darkness, in space, or in objects.

  “Once again, Ānanda, does the wondrous, pure nature of your visual awareness exist through conjoining with light? Does it exist through conjoining with darkness? Does it exist through conjoining with space? Does it exist through conjoining with objects?

  “If your visual awareness existed in conjoining with light, then in total darkness, when no light is present, you would not be aware of the darkness since your awareness would be conjoined with light rather than with darkness. If, even so, you could see darkness without your awareness being conjoined to darkness, it follows that you would not see light when your awareness was conjoined to light.53 And if you could not see light when your awareness had been conjoined to it, then since you could not see light, how would you know when it was light or dark? The same arguments could be made to show that your visual awareness does not exist through conjoining with darkness, with space, or with objects.”

  Ānanda said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One, I am now thinking that the wondrous, fundamental, enlightened nature of our visual awareness does not exist either through inhering in or through conjoining with the objects before us or with our processes of perceiving of them.”

  The Buddha said, “Now you are saying that your enlightened awareness does not exist either through inhering or through conjoining. I will continue to question you, then. If the wondrous, essential nature of your visual awareness does not inhere in or conjoin with anything, then are you saying that it does not inhere in light? That it does not inhere in darkness? That it does not inhere in space? That it does not inhere in solid objects?

  “If it did not inhere in light, then a boundary would necessarily exist between your visual awareness and the light. Look carefully now: where is your awareness? Where is the light? And where is the boundary between them? If, Ānanda, your visual awareness were nowhere within the confines of light, it would follow that your awareness and the light had not come into contact, and so you would not be able to see where the light is. Then how could a boundary exist between them? The same can be said of the notion that your visual awareness does not inhere in darkness, in space, or in solid objects.

  “Moreover, if the wondrous, essential nature of your visual awareness did not become conjoined to anything, then does it not become conjoined to light? Does it not become conjoined to darkness? Does it not become conjoined to space? Does it not become conjoined to objects?”

  “If your visual awareness did not become conjoined to light, then light and your awareness would be entirely incompatible, just as light and your awareness of sounds are incompatible. They would never come into contact. Further, since you would not be able to see where the light is, how could you know whether or not your awareness had become conjoined to it? The same would be true of your visual awareness not becoming conjoined to darkness, to space, or to solid objects.”

  * * *

  A lines on a Buddha’s fingertips, his palms, and the soles of his feet form the shape of wheels.↩

  Softness of the hands and fine webbing between the fingers are also among the thirty-two hallmarks that characterize of the body of a Buddha.↩

  The other four monks who were staying with Ājñātakauṇḍinya at the Deer Park were Aśvajit, Bhadrika, Daśabala-Kāśyapa, and Mahānāma. After becoming fully awakened, the Buddha went to the Deer Park, where he taught these five ascetics; they were awakened by his teaching and became his first disciples.↩

  Skt. saṃsāra, the continuous undergoing of the suffering of repeated deaths and rebirths. It is contrasted with nirvana.↩

  That is, our experience of what seems to be an external world is in fact the experience of images produced in our minds.↩

  Kātyāyana and Vairāṭiputra were contemporaries of the Buddha who taught forms of skepticism. This Kātyāyana is said to have been a fierce opponent of the Buddha; he is not to be confused with the Buddha’s disciple Mahākātyāyana
.↩

  A material of extreme hardness and durability.↩

  Skt. kṣaṇa.↩

  Skt. jīva means “the principle of life.”↩

  The king mentioned above that the non-Buddhist teachers expressing this view were Kātyāyana and Vairāṭiputra. Here the Buddha mentions instead Maskāri Gośālīputra, presumably because Maskari was named first in a standard list of six major non-Buddhist teachers (Ch. wai dao liu shi, 外道六師) who were contemporaries of the Buddha.↩

  A ritualized symbolic gesture, usually of one but sometimes of both of the hands, representing a particular aspect of the Buddha’s teaching.↩

  The text here probably refers both to the body of the Buddha and to the Buddha’s mind. The Dharma-body mentioned here is identical with the true mind of the Buddha.↩

  Ch. zheng bian zhi 正