by Hsuan Hua
With two exceptions, the ten states of mind the practitioner may encounter upon engagement with the aggregate of sense-perception are not a sequence but a set of possible alternatives. Thus “this samādhi” here refers to the practitioner’s state of mind when he first sees the aggregate of forms disintegrate and the aggregate of sense-perception appear. It is not implied that the state can appear only subsequently to the state described in the previous paragraphs. The two exceptions to this pattern are the ninth and tenth states of this group. The tenth builds upon the ninth.↩
Skt. asamkhyeya, one of several Sanskrit words for very large numbers. The translation “quadrillion” suggests the vastness of the amount rather than giving a precise numerical equivalent. It is said to take three asamkhyeya of eons for a practitioner to become a Buddha, but this overconfident practitioner believes he can become a Buddha immediately.↩
Skt. māna, Ch. man 慢 Of seven kinds of arrogance listed in the Abhidharmakośa, five are named here. The two not mentioned are Ch. wo man 我慢, arrogantly considering oneself master of the five aggregates, and Ch. xie man 邪慢, arrogantly supposing one is possessed of virtues that one lacks. See Abhidharmakośabhāṣyan, v. 13, 784–5.↩
A free-standing mound-like structure built to house the relics of an enlightened master.↩
Skt. prasrabdhi, Ch. qing an 輕安, one of the seven constituents of enlightenment.↩
Skt. paramaheśvara, Ch. da zi zai 大自在.↩
This personage is mentioned at greater length on p. 391.↩
The expected sentence offering a name for this state of mind is missing, and according to the Ven. Master Hsüan Hua “it must have been left out of the text when it was first copied.” In his commentary, he suggests that this state of mind may be called “the mental state of samādhi dissolving so that one loses sight of what is right” (VIII, 73–4).↩
That is, the wrong understanding arrived at in the previous (ninth) state of mind.↩
That is, his disciples among the laity.↩
That is, those whom he chooses to represent his teachings after his death.↩
The fifty-seven stages explained in part 9.4 above, together with the three gradual steps described in part 9.3.↩
Skt. manomayakāya, Ch. yi sheng shen 意生身.↩
According to the Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, this sentence means that the practitioner is no longer subject to anxieties that arise from within his own mind. However, because he has not put an end to his own desires, his concentration is not strong enough to withstand influences that come from outside himself. See the Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, The Śūraṅgama Sūtra: Fifty Skandha-Demon States: A Simple Explanation by the Ven. Master Hsüan Hua, bilingual edition (Burlingame, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1996), 545.↩
The accounts of the ten demonic states associated with the aggregate of cognition may be interpreted in two ways: that the practitioner is himself possessed by a demon, or that someone else is possessed by the demon and the practitioner becomes one of that possessed person’s disciples. In his commentary, the Ven. Master Hsüan Hua explained the text according to the second of these two interpretations, and the present translation follows this interpretation. However, Master Hua later stated that the first of these two interpretations is also valid. Ibid., 549.↩
The “good person,” that is, the practitioner, is part of the group of followers whom the possessed person has attracted, and he is misled along with the possessed person’s other followers.↩
That is, to recite as if from memory sutras that they have not actually memorized.↩
That is, food, clothing, bedding, and medicine.↩
The text here is not explicit as to whether the possessed person had made the disciple actually grow a tail that the rest of the disciples cannot see, or whether he has simply caused the disciple to believe he has a tail. In any case, a second disciple is made to see a tail, or to think he sees one, and his stepping on it is sufficient to keep the first disciple from standing up.↩
The five desires may be explained as the desires for wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep, or as desires for the objects of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body.↩
There are said to be eighteen extraordinary bodily powers, and together they count as one of the six types of spiritual power. Of the eighteen kinds of extraordinary bodily powers, six are mentioned here in the text: walking on water, sitting in lotus posture in mid-air, passing through walls, disappearing, reappearing, and traveling great distances in the space of an instant.↩
Skt. pāriṇāmikī cyutiḥ, Ch. bian yi sheng si 變易生死, literally “the death and rebirth of what has been transformed” — so called because only the fourth-stage Arhats, the Solitary Sages, and the Bodhisattvas can transcend the birth and death of the physical body and, if they so choose, can be reborn transformed into a rarified bodily form. They are not yet entirely free, however, of the rise and fall of thoughts and other mental hindrances.↩
The sixth and highest of the heavens of desire. Māra, king of demons, lives there. The Heaven of the Four Kings mentioned in the next sentence is the first of the heavens of desire.↩
Skt. camuṇdā, one of the seven “divine mothers” associated with the worship of the god Śiva.↩
Skt. piśāca.↩
Skt. samyak-saṃbodhi.↩
Ānanda makes this vow in the verse he speaks at the end of part 3.↩
In this paragraph, the practitioner is described as one who has succeeded in putting an end to his attachments to the aggregate of mental formations. The paragraphs that follow describe practitioners who instead run into difficulty. They make errors that involve wrong views. The Sutra describes fifty-four of these wrong views, which are arranged into ten groups. The first five of the groups include various erroneous speculations about the origins of beings in the past, while the last five groups involve speculations about the future, specifically about what beings may encounter after their death. Further, within each of the groups involving speculation about the past, some of the wrong views arise when the practitioner, by means of his spiritual power, looks into previous eons. Other wrong views arise not in association with observations but simply from logical reasoning. All these experiences involve use of the seventh consciousness (the individuating or manas consciousness), not the cognitive activities of the sixth consciousness, since when this practitioner is in samādhi, the aggregate of cognition is no longer present.
The fifty-four wrong views described here roughly correspond to the sixty-two wrong views described in the Brahmajāla Sutta. See The Discourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views: Brahmajāla Sutta, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1998).↩
In contrast to the vulnerability to demonic influences described in the previous section.↩
Skt. asatkāryavāda, Ch. wu yin lun 無因論, the theory that causes do not exist or that causes cannot be found in effects. The analysis of wrong views begins here with two theories that deny causation, the first arising from observations of past eons, the second from speculation.↩
That is, he has been successful in ending his attachment to the aggregate of cognition.↩
See part 5.2 above.↩
That is, the first six of his consciousnesses and their objects.↩
The manas or seventh consciousness.↩
The eighth consciousness.↩
That is, the constant and subtle movement at the origin of life (Yuanying, 1470).↩
Skt. puruṣa, Ch. shen wo 神我, in the Sāṅkhya school of Indian philosophy, the cosmic self.↩
Skt. parikalpita, Ch. bian ji 遍計.↩
Four because the aggregate of consciousness is not included.↩
All five are mentioned here because the practitioner assumes that since attributes of the first four aggregates exist after death, it applies to the fifth also.↩
Eight because he has concluded that each of the first four aggregates has these two attributes: they do not function while
the practitioner is alive, and they cease to exist after his death.↩
The first two of these seven theories concern the perishing of beings in the human realm and in the six heavens of desire.↩
The third theory concerns the perishing of beings in the three heavens of the first dhyāna.↩
The fourth theory concerns the perishing of beings in the three heavens of the second dhyāna.↩
The fifth theory concerns the perishing of beings in the three heavens of the third dhyāna.↩
The sixth and seventh theories concern the perishing of beings in the nine heavens of the fourth dhyāna and on the four planes of formlessness.↩
In the heavens there is no nocturnal darkness.↩
In this and the other nine states of mind encountered during meditation and associated wiith the aggregate of consciousness, the practitioner’s progress is derailed when he adopts one or another of the schools of thought prevalent in India during the Buddha’s time. Here he adopts the theories propounded by Kapila, the founder of the Sāṅkhya school.↩
That is, an ability to create all beings out of his own body.↩
Maheśvara is often identified with the Hindu god Śiva.↩
That is, the enlightened mind.↩
Vasiṣṭha was a Brahmin mentioned in the Mahāyāna-Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra. The name is sometimes given as Vāsiṣṭha. The Senika or Sainika were a non-Buddhist class, perhaps Jain.↩
Here the phrase Ch. wu xiang tian 無 想 天, the heaven of no cognition, is presumably an abbreviated form of Ch. fei xiang fei fei xiang chu 非想非非想處, the Heaven in Which Cognition Is Absent and yet Not Absent. See part 9.11g.↩
Asita was an ascetic master, a teacher of the Buddha Śākyamuni in a previous life, and in the Buddha’s present life, an advisor to the Buddha’s father, Śuddhodana, King of Kapilavastu. It was Asita who predicted upon the birth of the Prince Siddhārtha that the child would grow up to be either a sage-king or a Buddha.↩
The palace is created through his own spiritual power.↩
While the first eight of these theories have been associated with rebirths in an unenlightened state, the ninth and tenth theories are associated with enlightenment as an Arhat (the ninth) or as a Solitary Sage (the tenth). These are sages of the Lesser Vehicle who do not aspire to the enlightenment of a Bodhisattva or a Buddha.↩
The palace is created through his own spiritual power.↩
The Four Noble Truths.↩
That is, he wishes to remain an Arhat, believing that to be the highest spiritual accomplishment; he has no intention of undertaking the Bodhisattva path, Ch. ding xing sheng wen 定性聲聞.↩
This emptiness is not the true emptiness, but rather the emptiness experienced by sages of the Lesser Vehicle, whereas the “city of nirvana” is the nirvana of the Buddhas.↩
That is, the path of the Bodhisattvas.↩
The Śūraṅgama Mantra.↩
See part 4.4 above.↩
That is, the first aggregate, that of form. The next four paragraphs concern the other four aggregates in sequence.↩
Smelling and tasting are understood to be included.↩
The nose-consciousness and tongue-consciousness are understood to be included.↩
In part 5.4.↩
Appendix
A Brief Account of the Life of the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua
One of the most eminent Chinese Buddhist masters of the twentieth century, the Venerable Master Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua) was a monastic reformer and the first Chinese master to teach Buddhism to large numbers of Westerners. During his long career he emphasized the primacy of the monastic tradition, the essential role of moral education, the need for Buddhists to ground themselves in traditional spiritual practice and authentic scripture, and the importance of respect and understanding among religions. He focused on clarifying the essential principles of the Buddha’s original teachings, on establishing a properly ordained monastic community, on organizing and supporting the translation of the Buddhist Canon into English and other languages, and on the establishment of schools, religious training programs, and programs of academic research and teaching.
Born in 1918 into a peasant family in a small village south of Harbin in northeast China, the Venerable Master was the youngest of ten children. His father’s surname was Bai, and his mother’s maiden name was Hu. His mother was a vegetarian, and throughout her life she held to the practice of reciting the name of the Buddha Amitābha. When the Venerable Master formally became a Buddhist in his mid-teens, he was given the Dharma name Anci (“Peace and Compassion”), and after becoming a monk, he was also known as Dulun (“Liberator from the Wheel of Rebirth”). Upon granting him the Dharma-seal of the Weiyang lineage, the Elder Chan Master Xuyun (1840–1959) bestowed upon him the Dharma-transmission name Hsüan Hua (Xuanhua — “To Proclaim and Transform”).
When the Venerable Master was a child, he followed his mother’s example, eating only vegetarian food and reciting the Buddha’s name. When he was eleven years old, upon seeing a dead baby lying on the ground, he awakened to the fundamental significance of death and rebirth and the impermanence of all phenomena. He then resolved to become a monk and practice on the Buddhist Path, but he acquiesced to his mother’s request that he not do so until after her death. When he was twelve, he obtained his parents’ permission to travel extensively in search of a true spiritual teacher.
At the age of fifteen, the Venerable Master went to school for the first time, and when he was sixteen, he started lecturing on the Buddhist sutras to help his fellow villagers who were illiterate but who wanted to learn about the Buddha’s teachings. He was not only diligent and focused but possessed a photographic memory, and so he was able to memorize the Four Books and the Five Classics of the Confucian tradition. He had also studied traditional Chinese medicine, astrology, divination, physiognomy, and the scriptures of the great religions. When he was seventeen, he established a free school in which, as the lone teacher, he taught some thirty impoverished children and adults.
At the age of eighteen, after only two and a half years of schooling, he left school to care for his terminally ill mother. He was nineteen when she died, and for three years he honored her memory by sitting in meditation beside her grave in a hut made of sorghum stalks. During this time, while reading the Avataṃaska Sūtra, he experienced a deep awakening. Subsequently, while seated in deep meditation, he had a vision of the Sixth Chan Buddhist Patriarch Huineng (638–713 C.E.). In his vision Master Huineng came to visit him and to give him the mission of bringing Buddhism to the Western world.
At the end of his period of mourning, the Venerable Master took as his teacher Chan Buddhist Master Changzhi, and he entered Three Conditions Monastery as a novice monk. Chan Master Changzhi subsequently transmitted to him the Dharma of the Pilu Chan lineage. During this time, the Master devoted himself not only to meditation but also to the study of the Buddhist scriptural tradition and to the mastery of all the major schools of Chinese Buddhism.
In 1946 the Master began the long journey to the south of China. In 1947, he received full ordination as a monk at the Buddhist holy mountain Putuoshan. In 1948, after over two thousand miles of travel, the Master arrived at Nanhua Monastery and bowed to Chan Master Xuyun, China’s most widely revered enlightened master. From him the Master received the mind-seal transmission as verification of his awakening, and later a more formal transmission of the Dharma of the Weiyang lineage of the Chan school.
In 1949 the Master left China for Hong Kong. There he taught meditation, lectured on the Buddhist sutras, and sponsored their printing. He also commissioned the making of images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and he aided monastic refugees from mainland China. He also built Western Bliss Garden Monastery, established the Buddhist Lecture Hall, and rebuilt and renovated Flourishing Compassion Monastery.
In 1962, he traveled to the United States at the invitation of several of his Hong Kong disciples who had settled in San Francisco, and he bega
n lecturing at the San Francisco Buddhist Lecture Hall, which had been previously established as a branch of the Buddhist Lecture Hall in Hong Kong. As the community at the Buddhist Lecture Hall in San Francisco grew both in size and in diversity, the institution’s name was changed, first to the Sino-American Buddhist Association and then to the Dharma-Realm Buddhist Association. In 1976 the Venerable Master established the organization’s first branch monastery – Gold Wheel Temple in Los Angeles – and he established a new headquarters as well, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, in Talmage, California.
In the summer of 1968, the Master began the intensive training of a group of Americans, most of them university students. In 1969, he astonished the monastic community of Taiwan by sending there, for complete ordination, two American women and three American men whom he had ordained as novices. They were the first Americans of that period to become fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns. During subsequent years, the Venerable Master trained and oversaw the ordination of hundreds of people, both Asians and Westerners, from among the multitudes who came to California from every part of the world to study with him. These monastic disciples now teach in the twenty-eight temples, monasteries, and convents that the Venerable Master founded in the United States, Canada, and several Asian countries.
