The Surangama Sutra

by Hsuan Hua

  Celestial musicians, one of the eight kinds of spirit-beings.↩

  Skt. saṃbhoga-kāya, Ch. bao shen 報身, a spiritual body that a Buddha perfects upon reaching full enlightenment. This body is visible only to Bodhisattvas and Buddhas.↩

  Included here are the five groups of ten, the four additional practices, and Equivalent Enlightenment.↩

  Skt. vaipulya, the “expanded” teachings; that is, the teachings of the Mahāyāna.↩

  The verse concludes part 3 above.↩

  Skt. sakṛdāgāmin, one who must undergo only one more rebirth.↩

  King Virūḍhaka was the son and successor of King Prasenajit, who appears in part 2.3 of this Sutra. Virūḍhaka was ridiculed as a child by members of the Śākya tribe (to which the Buddha belonged), and when Virūḍhaka assumed the throne, he exacted his vengeance by annihilating not only the Buddha’s Gautama clan but the entire tribe of Śākyans.↩

  The story of Sunakṣatra is found in chapter forty of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. Upon seeing a naked ascetic on the floor of a tavern, Sunakṣatra denied the existence of cause and effect and made the false statement that the naked ascetic was an Arhat. He later also taught that the Buddhas, Dharma, and nirvana have no real existence.↩

  The story of Sunakṣatra is found in chapter forty of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. Upon seeing a naked ascetic on the floor of a tavern, Sunakṣatra denied the existence of cause and effect and made the false statement that the naked ascetic was an Arhat. He later also taught that the Buddhas, Dharma, and nirvana have no real existence.↩

  See part 9.10 below.↩

  See part 4.1 and note 11.↩

  “Lesser weight” indicates a proportion closer to eighty percent, and “greater weight” indicates a proportion of more than ninety percent (Yuanying, 1223).↩

  That is, violating the ten major Bodhisattva Precepts.↩

  The text says simply Ch. er xi 二習, “two habits.” The present translation adds to the phrase in accord with the Ven. Hsüan Hua’s commentary in order to make more accessible an already difficult passage.↩

  This very compact discussion of ten causes for birth in the hells follows a repeating rhetorical pattern. Each of the ten causes is described in seven steps, as follows: 1) To begin the first sentence of each of the ten, a habit is identified. 2) Next, in the same sentence, an emotion corresponding to that habit is identified (this step is omitted in the discussion of the first cause). 3) Still in the same sentence, acts that can result from the habit and emotion are identified. 4) The next sentence describes what the habit, emotion, and acts, when indulged to excess, cause the person to feel. 5) The next sentence explains the process just described by comparing it to a parallel situation in daily life, as in a syllogism. 6) In the second paragraph, the Buddha considers what will happen to the offenders once they reach the hells. 7) Finally, the Buddha suggests how extremely wary the sages are of creating such negative karma.↩

  The wrong view that the self is real is the first of the five wrong views (Skt. mithyādṛṣṭi; Ch. xie jian 邪見). The second of these, not mentioned in the text, is the wrong view of endings (that is, the view that humans are always reborn as humans, or, at the other extreme, that there is no life after death). The third, which is mentioned in the text, consists of wrong views concerning karma; the fourth, not mentioned in the text, consists of stubborn attachment to one’s views. The fifth, wrong views concerning prohibitions, refers to belief in the efficacy of unbeneficial acts of asceticism.↩

  That is, the court of King Yāma, the lord of death, who judges the karma of the dead and the corresponding retribution that the dead must undergo.↩

  Seeing and fire are associated because sexual desire often arises in response to what is seen.↩

  Ch. mei gui 魅鬼, a ghost that possesses animals, as mentioned here. It may also possess a person. The Sanskrit name is not known.↩

  Skt. vyāḍa, Ch. wang-liang 魍魎.↩

  In asking for instruction at the beginning of part 9.6 above.↩

  That is, when an overpayment was made during their long lives as animals.↩

  In this section on ascetic masters, the Chinese is so extremely terse that the meanings are hardly intelligible without the aid of the commentarial tradition. Yet difficulties exist even with the commentaries, since the Chinese commentators, at least before modern times, were not generally familiar with the Indian practices described in the text. The tendency was to interpret these practices in terms of Daoist practices, which were well known in China. Here, Daoist influence seems to be present in the Chinese text. The Chinese xian 仙 (which is translated here as “ascetic master,” but which is more often rendered into English as “immortal”) usually referred to the recluses and alchemists of the Daoist tradition. However, the original Sanskrit was probably ṛṣi, a class of pre-Buddhist ascetics who were considered to be different from both ordinary humans and gods.↩

  The first six groups of ascetic masters gain skill in various modes of travel; the last four gain skill in various practices.↩

  Disasters caused by fire, wind, and water.↩

  Skt. Tuṣita. This heaven consists of an inner court, presided over by the Bodhisattva Maitreya and populated by Bodhisattvas, and an outer court, populated by the gods here described.↩

  “Dhyāna” elsewhere has referred to the practice of meditation in stillness or to states of mind achieved through meditation; here, however, “dhyāna” refers to the states of mind of the gods in the eighteen heavens in the realm of form.↩

  That is, suffering and bliss.↩

  That is, their sixth consciousness is inactive.↩

  That is, the five-hundredth eon.↩

  The nine kinds of habits refer to the first nine categories of the eighty-one categories of cognitive delusion.↩

  Ch. wu fan tian 無煩天. The Sanskrit name of this heaven is unclear. The translation here is of the name as it is given Chinese text, but this name may be a descriptive choice by the Chinese translators.↩

  Skt. ātapas — the heat generated by distress.↩

  What has disappeared here is the other half of the individuating consciousness (Yuanying, 1332).↩

  Cognition in the sense of the distinction-making consciousness.↩

  Quoting Zhenjiao, the Ven. Yuanying explains that the gods of the first of the formless planes seek to put an end to form; those of the second, to space; those of the third, to the seventh consciousness; and those of the fourth, to the eighth consciousness (1324).↩

  The fourth heaven of the fourth dhyāna.↩

  The text here refers back to the first divergence, at the pinnacle of the Heavens of Form, where some gods become great Arhats, while others, including those referred to in the present passage, enter the planes of formlessness.↩

  Excepting the gods who chose at one of the two divergences to follow a path to sagehood.↩

  That is, of Buddhas.↩

  “Any form” refers both to a body and to the external forms of the realm of desire and the realm of form.↩

  Skt. pudgala.↩

  That is, on earth.↩

  The Chinese text mentions only “the destiny of gods” and the “destiny of ghosts”; these stand respectively for all the higher and lower destinies.↩

  That is, the Śūraṅgama Samādhi.↩

  That fundamental delusion has no cause is the subject of part 4.1 above.↩

  Fifty Demonic States of Mind

  Dangers May Arise with Advanced Practice

  Then the Thus-Come One prepared to leave the Dharma seat. Rising from the Lion’s Throne, he placed his hand on the table before him, which was wrought of the seven precious things.1 But then, moving his body, which was the color of purple-golden mountains, he sat down again, and he said to Ānanda and to the rest of the great assembly, “You who still need instruction, you Hearers of the Teaching and you Solitary Sages, have now dedicated yourselves to attaining a great awakening — the supreme
and wondrous enlightenment. I have now taught you the right method for practice. But you are still not aware of the subtle demonic events that can occur when you undertake the practices of calming the mind and contemplative insight. If you do not purify your mind, you will not be able to recognize demonic states as they arise. You will not find the right path, and you will fall into the error of wrong views.

  “Demons may arise within you from the five aggregates. Or a celestial demon or a ghost or a spirit — perhaps a mountain spirit or an animal-possessing ghost — may come to possess you. If your mind is not clear when this happens, you may well take a burglar to be your own child. Or you may feel satisfied with a small accomplishment, as did that monk who was ignorant of the Dharma. Having only reached the level of the fourth dhyāna, he made the false claim that he had become a sage. When his reward of celestial life had run its course and the signs of decay had appeared, he vilified the Arhats’ enlightenment, and so he was reborn in the Unrelenting Hell. Listen carefully while I explain this matter in detail.”

  Earlier, Ānanda asked the Buddha how to practice; he asked for teaching on behalf of the beings of the future. He now understands the principle of self-cultivation, the theory, but since he lacks experience, he doesn’t know what can occur while in the midst of practice. So the Buddha said, “You are still not aware of the subtle demonic events that can occur when you undertake the practice of calming the mind and contemplative insight.” Here “calming the mind” refers to the practice of the great Śūraṅgama Samādhi. (VIII, 2–3)

  The Buddha says that if your mind has not been fully purified, and if your motivation is not correct, then the slightest improper thought can make you vulnerable to being caught by a demon.... If you encounter a demonic state and fail to recognize it and understand it, you will end up “taking a burglar for your own child,”... and then all the priceless treasures in your house will be stolen. What is your priceless treasure?... It is your very own Matrix of the Thus-Come One.... It is your own vital energy, which penetrates heaven and earth, to the point that all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are fundamentally the same as us, because our vital energies are interconnected. This energy is like our breath; it can be detected. What is within our vital energy and what controls it is the Dharma. Therefore, it is essential that we nurture our energy; for example, we should not lose our temper... or talk too much. (VIII, 4–6)

  Ānanda and the others in the assembly who still needed instruction stood up, bowed to the ground joyfully, and then quieted their minds in order to be ready to receive the Buddha’s compassionate teaching.

  The Buddha said to Ānanda and the rest of the great assembly, “You should know that although the twelve classes of beings in this world have outflows, they are, nevertheless, fundamentally identical to the Buddhas of the ten directions, in that they all are fundamentally endowed with the wondrous enlightened understanding — with the awakened, perfect, essential mind. But their thinking is deluded and they have a confused view of the truth, and so they stubbornly cling to emotional attachments.

  “As a result, space appears, and as they become more and more confused, worlds come into being. In the lands in the ten directions, numerous as motes of dust, beings who have outflows are created out of confusion, obstinacy, and deluded thinking. You should know that space is created within the mind. It is like a wisp of cloud in the vastness of the sky. The worlds in the emptiness of space are even less significant. If you discover true reality by returning to the source, space throughout the ten directions will disappear. How could all the lands not cease to be as well?

  Earlier the Sutra said that the space created within the great enlightenment is like a single bubble in all the sea.2 Now it says that the space created in our minds is like a wisp of cloud in the vastness of the sky. Since the scope of empty space is so small compared to our minds, how vast our minds must be!... This passage describes how our enlightened nature pervades all places.... To “discover true reality by returning to the source” is to become a Buddha, or at least a fourth-stage Arhat. (VIII, 13)

  “When you practice meditation in stillness and enter samādhi,3 the essence of your mind merges with the minds of the Bodhisattvas of the ten directions and with the minds of all the great Arhats, who have ended outflows. You abide in a place of profound purity. Then the kings of demons, ghosts, and spirits and the general population of gods see their palaces collapse inexplicably. Their lands quake. Terror strikes the creatures who move through water, on land, and in the air. Ordinary people, in the darkness of their confusion, know nothing of these events.

  “All these demonic beings have five spiritual powers; they lack only freedom from outflows because they are still attached to the stress of entanglement with perceived objects.4 How could they be happy with seeing their palaces destroyed? Celestial demons, shape-shifting ghosts, and succubus-demons will all come to disturb your samādhi. But despite their furious rage, they are subject to the stress of entanglement with perceived objects, while you abide within wondrous enlightenment. Therefore they can do you no harm any more than wind can blow light away or a knife cut water. You are like water at the boil, and they are like ice frozen solid; as they come close to your warmth, they will melt. They have only their spiritual powers, so they can visit you only briefly. They cannot disturb you except through your mind, which is the host of the five aggregates. Only when the innkeeper is befuddled can his guests do as they please.

  “When you are absorbed in meditation, fully awake and free of delusion, how will the deeds of these demons be able to affect you? For you, the five aggregates will have dissolved, and you will have entered into the light of understanding. These deviant hordes rely upon dark energy, and your light will overcome their darkness. If they come near you, they will be destroyed. How will they dare to linger and try to disrupt your samādhi? But if you have not awakened to the light of understanding and are confused by the five aggregates, Ānanda, you yourself could become a disciple of demons and could turn into a demon yourself.”

  Fifty demonic states are described in this section of the Sutra, but in fact there are countless numbers of these states.... These demonic states are basically nothing but a mass of yin energy, which comes from our yin thoughts. Yin thoughts include thoughts of desire, anger, and delusion. They give rise to the aggregates of form, sense-perception, cognition, mental formations, and consciousness; and in each of these aggregates, various kinds of yin phenomena naturally appear when your skill reaches a certain level. If your skill hasn’t reached that level, then you won’t encounter these demonic states even if you want to. They will manifest only when your skill has reached a certain level. Don’t worry when they appear. There’s no need to fear being possessed by demons. When these yin phenomena appear, you should remain calm, as if they didn’t exist. See them as if not seeing them; hear them as if not hearing them.... If you don’t let your attention be diverted by sights, sounds, odors, flavors, objects of touch, and objects of cognition, then the demonic states will have no way to harm you. If you are without desire, anger, and delusion, you will subdue these states.... The demons that you encounter in your practice are illusions produced from the yin thoughts and yin energy in your own nature. If you can remain unmoved by these illusory appearances, then there will be no problem.... No matter what level you reach in your cultivation, do not become happy or afraid. That is the essence of what is needed to overcome demonic obstacles. (VIII, 21–2)

  ¨Your encounter with the Mātaṅga woman was an exception, and it turned out to be a minor incident. Though she tried to make you break the Buddha’s rules, all she was able to do was to cast a spell on you. In the end, you only broke one among all the eighty thousand rules of conduct. Because your mind was pure, you did not fall. But if the demons of the aggregates had been able to destroy your precious Dharma-body, you would have become like a member of the family of a government minister whose property has been confiscated. The family is uprooted and scattered, with no one to pity them or come t
o their aid.

  Ten Demonic States of Mind Associated with the Aggregate of Form

  “You should know, Ānanda, that when you sit in a place for awakening, all your thoughts may melt away. When your thoughts come to a halt, only an essential awareness will remain. Movement outside your mind will seem the same as stillness, and the presence of thoughts in your mind will seem the same as the absence of thoughts. When you abide in this state, having entered samādhi, you will be like someone who ordinarily can see clearly but who finds himself in a dark place. His essential nature will be wonderfully pure, but his mind does not yet emit light. He is in the region of the aggregate of forms.

  “When his mind’s vision does become bright, then ten directions will open out before him, and the darkness will be dispelled. Having come to the end of the aggregate of forms, he will now transcend the turbidity of time.5 His contemplations show him that the illusion of solid matter is the basis of this aggregate.6

  [1] “However, Ānanda, in the midst of his mental darkness,7 this person’s intense scrutiny within his wondrous awareness may reveal that the four primary elements are not ultimately interwoven into the body. Then in an instant he will be able to leave his body. This state is called ‘the essential awareness being able to emerge into one’s surroundings.’ What the practitioner has gained is temporary. It does not indicate that he has become a sage. There is nothing unwholesome about his state unless he thinks that he is now a sage. If he does think he is a sage, he will be open to a host of deviant influences.