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The Shurangama Sutra, Volume Two: A Simple Explanation by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua
Book
- A Few Good Men
- A Treasury of Mahāyāna Sūtras
- Abiding in Good and Noble Deportment
- Appendix to the New Edition of the Bodhicaryāvatāra
- Buddha Pronounces the Sūtra of the Great Cundī Dhāraṇī
- Chapter on Entering the Inconceivable Liberated State of Samantabhadra's Practices and Vows
- Dialogue With Bodhisattva Infinite Wisdom
- Mahāvaipulya Sūtra of the Tathāgata Store
- Myōhō-renge-kyō
- On Entering into the Inconceivable State of Emancipation by the Practice and Vows of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra of the Mahavaipulya Buddha Avatamsaka Sutra
- On the Pāramitā of Ingenuity
- Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma
- The Buddhist Feminine Ideal
- The Definitive Vinaya
- The Dhâranî of Tchundi
- The Diamond Cutter of Doubts: A Commentary on The Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā-prajñā-pāramitā Sūtra) By Ch'an Master Han Shan
- The Diamond Prajna Paramita Sutra
- The Diamond Prajna-Paramita Sutra
- The Diamond Sutra (Chin-Kang-Ching), or Prajna-Paramita
- The Diamond Sutra (Hsüan Hua)
- The Diamond Sutra (Wai-tao and Goddard)
- The Diamond Sutra and The Sutra of Hui Neng
- The Diamond Sutra: The Perfection of Wisdom
- The Diamond Sutra: Translated from Kumarajiva's Chinese Version
- The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion
- The Essentials of the Dharma Blossom Sutra
- The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of The Avatamsaka Sutra
- The Giving Rise of the Ten Kinds of Mind of the Bodhisattva
- The Great Vows of Samantabhadra
- The Healing Buddha (1979)
- The Healing Buddha (1989)
- The Lankavatara Sutra: A Zen Text
- The Lion's Roar of Queen Śrīmālā
- The Lotus Sutra (2016) (BDK)
- The Lotus Sutra (Watson)
- The Lotus Sutra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic
- The Lotus Sutra: The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma
- The Lotus of the Wonderful Law or The Lotus Gospel (2005)
- The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana-sutra (3 vols.)
- The Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sutra: The Śūraṅgama Samādhi Sutra
- The Prediction of Mañjuśrī's Attainment of Buddhahood
- The Scripture of Master of Medicine, Beryl Radiance Tathāgata and The Sutra of the Girl Candrottarā
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Eight
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Five
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Four
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume One
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Seven
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Six
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Three
- The Shurangama Sutra - Volume Two
- The Shurangama Sutra: Sutra Text and Supplements
- The Skill in Means (Upāyakauśalya) Sūtra
- The Sky as a Mahāyāna Symbol of Emptiness and Generous Fullness: A Study and Translation of the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā: Volume 2: Edition and Translation
- The Sutra of Queen Śrīmālā of the Lion's Roar and the Vimalakīrti Sutra
- The Sutra of the Lord of Healing
- The Sutra of the Master of Healing
- The Tale of King Udayana of Vatsa
- The Threefold Lotus Sūtra
- The True Lion's Roar of Queen Śrīmālā
- The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra
- The Vimalakīrti Sūtra (Watson)
- The Vow to Live the Life of Samanta-bhadra
- The Vows of Bodhisattva Samantabhadra Sutra
- The Śūraṅgama Sūtra: A New Translation
- Vaipulya Sūtra of Śrīmālā's Lion's Roar That Reveals the Great Skillful Means of the One Vehicle
- Vajra-chhedika, the "Kin Kong King," or Diamond Sutra
- Vimalakīrti's Discourse on Emancipation
- Vimalakīrti-Nirdeśa-Sūtra: Translated from the Chinese
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Description
This is the second of eight volumes of the Shurangama Sutra, with commentaries from the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua.
Having just rescued Ananda from Matangi's daughter, the Buddha now endeavors to reveal to Ananda the true, perfect mind which all Buddhas reside in. Without discovering this true mind, Ananda will surely fall again in the future, since he has from the beginning been using the false mind to learn and cultivate.
To reveal the true mind, the Buddha chooses to discuss "The Seeing Nature". The Buddha demonstrates in great detail that the seeing nature does not move, cannot be destroyed, cannot be lost, is separate from everything, does not intermingle, is not obstructed, is one with everything, transcends the ordinary, and finally, the genuine seeing is apart from seeing. The true mind is to be found in the seeing nature.
However, the Buddha’s last explanation of the true mind, that the genuine seeing is apart from seeing, proofs to be too much for Ananda. Ananda reverently requests again for further instruction. In "The Two False Views", the Buddha then attempts to explain the reason why living beings lose their original true minds: it is due to the false views of individual and collective karma, which defines self and others. Wherever these views arise, the true mind will be as if lost.
Further, in "Mixing and Uniting", the Buddha then attempts to break Ananda's attachment to the idea that the true mind is to be found in the place where the mind mixes and unites with existence.
He first uses the seeing nature to demonstrate that the true mind does not mix and unite. Fearing that Ananda will then attach his true mind to that which does not mix and unite, the Buddha then quickly breaks his attachment by demonstrating that the seeing nature also mixes and unites with phenomena. This is compassionately done in hope that Ananda will abandon both mixing & uniting and non mixing & uniting.
To reveal the true by using the false mind is not easy, as the above testifies.
Having just rescued Ananda from Matangi's daughter, the Buddha now endeavors to reveal to Ananda the true, perfect mind which all Buddhas reside in. Without discovering this true mind, Ananda will surely fall again in the future, since he has from the beginning been using the false mind to learn and cultivate.
To reveal the true mind, the Buddha chooses to discuss "The Seeing Nature". The Buddha demonstrates in great detail that the seeing nature does not move, cannot be destroyed, cannot be lost, is separate from everything, does not intermingle, is not obstructed, is one with everything, transcends the ordinary, and finally, the genuine seeing is apart from seeing. The true mind is to be found in the seeing nature.
However, the Buddha’s last explanation of the true mind, that the genuine seeing is apart from seeing, proofs to be too much for Ananda. Ananda reverently requests again for further instruction. In "The Two False Views", the Buddha then attempts to explain the reason why living beings lose their original true minds: it is due to the false views of individual and collective karma, which defines self and others. Wherever these views arise, the true mind will be as if lost.
Further, in "Mixing and Uniting", the Buddha then attempts to break Ananda's attachment to the idea that the true mind is to be found in the place where the mind mixes and unites with existence.
He first uses the seeing nature to demonstrate that the true mind does not mix and unite. Fearing that Ananda will then attach his true mind to that which does not mix and unite, the Buddha then quickly breaks his attachment by demonstrating that the seeing nature also mixes and unites with phenomena. This is compassionately done in hope that Ananda will abandon both mixing & uniting and non mixing & uniting.
To reveal the true by using the false mind is not easy, as the above testifies.
Citation
Buddhist Text Translation Society, trans. The Shurangama Sutra, Volume Two: A Simple Explanation by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. 2nd ed. Burlingame, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society, 2002. https://repstein.faculty.drbu.edu/Buddhism/Shurangama/ps.ss.02.v2.020526.screen.pdf.
Publisher Link
Table of contents
- Introductionvi
- User's Guideviii
- Exhortation to Protect and Propagateix
- The Eight Guidelinesxii
- Outlinexiii
- Chapter 1. The Seeing Nature1
- Seeing Is the Mind4
- Seeing Does Not Move9
- Seeing Does Not Become Extinct28
- Seeing is Not Lost46
- Seeing Does Not Return58
- Seeing Does Not Intermingle80
- Seeing Is Not Obstructed103
- Seeing Is Not Separate116
- Seeing Transcends the Ordinary42
- Seeings is Apart from Seeing159
- Chapter 2. The Two False Views172
- Chapter 3. Mixing and Uniting208
Interconnections
1 Full translation of
Śūraṃgamasūtra. (T. Dpa' bar 'gro ba'i mdo; C. Shoulengyan jing; J. Shuryōgongyō; K. Sunǔngǒm kyǒng 首楞嚴經). A Chinese indigenous scripture (see apocrypha), usually known in the West by its reconstructed Sanskrit title Śūraṃgamasūtra, meaning "Heroic March Sūtra." Its full title is Dafoding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing Shoulengyan jing, in ten rolls. (This indigenous scripture should be distinguished from an early-fifth century Chinese translation of the Śūraṃgamasamādhsūtra, attributed by Kumārajīva, in two rolls, for which Sanskrit fragments are extant.) According to the account in the Chinese cataloguer Zhisheng's Xu gujin yijing tuji, the Śūraṃgamasūtra was brought to China by a śramaṇa named Pāramiti. Because the Śūraṃgamasūtra had been proclaimed a national treasure, the Indian king had forbidden anyone to take the sūtra out of the country. In order to transmit this scripture to China, Pāramiti wrote the sūtra out in minute letters on extremely fine silk, then he cut open his arm and hid the small scroll inside his flesh. With the sūtra safely hidden away, Pāramiti set out for China and eventually arrived in Guangdong province. There, he happened to meet the exiled Prime Minister Fangrong, who invited him to reside at the monastery of Zhizhisi, where he translated the sūtra in 705 CE. Apart from Pāramiti's putative connection to the Śūraṃgamasūtra, however, nothing more is known about him and he has no biography in the Gaoseng zhuan ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"). Zhisheng also has an entry on the Śūraṃgamasūtra in his Kaiyuan Shijiao lu, but there are contradictions in these two extant catalogue accounts of the sūtra's transmission and translation. The Kaiyuan Shijiao lu merely records that the śramaņa Huidi encountered an unnamed Western monk at Guangdong, who had with him a copy of the Sanskrit recension of this sūtra, and Huidi invited him to translate the scripture together. Since the names of this Western monk and his patron Fangrong are not mentioned, the authenticity of the scripture has been called into question. Although Zhisheng assumed the Śūraṃgamasūtra was a genuine Indian scripture, the fact that no Sanskrit manuscript of the text is known to exist, as well as the inconsistencies in the stories about its transmission to China, have led scholiasts for centuries to questions the scripture's authenticity. There is also internal evidence of the scripture's Chinese provenance, such as the presence of such indigenous Chinese philosophical concepts as yin-yang cosmology and the five elements (wuxing) theory, the stylistic beauty of the literary Chinese in which the text is written, etc. For these and other reasons, the Śūraṃgamasūtra is now generally recognized to be a Chinese apocryphal composition. The sūtra opens with one of the most celebrated stories in East Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's attendant Ānanda’s near seduction by the harlot Mātaṅgī. With Ānanda close to being in flagrante delicto, the Buddha sends the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī to save him from a pārājika offense, by employing the śūraṃgama dhāraṇī to thwart Mātaṅgī's seductive magic. The Buddha uses the experience to teach to Ānanda and the congregation the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which counters the false views about the aggregates (skandha) and consciousness (vijñāna) and reveals the tathāgatagarbha that is inherent in all sentient beings. This tathāgatagarbha, or buddha-nature, is made manifest through the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which constitutes the "heroic march" forward toward enlightenment. The Śūraṃgamasūtra was especially influential in the Chan school during the Song and Ming dynasties, which used the text as the scriptural justification for the school's distinctive teaching that Chan "points directly to the human mind" (zhizhi renxin), so that one may "see the nature and achieve buddhahood" (jianxing chengfo). Several noted figures within the Chan school achieved their own awakenings through the influence of the Śūraṃgamasūtra, including the Ming-dynasty master Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623), and the sūtra was particularly important in the writings of such Ming-dynasty Chan masters as Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615). The leading Chan monk of modern Chinese Buddhism, Xuyun (1840-1959), advocated the practice of the Śūraṃgamasūtra throughout his life, and it was the only scripture that he ever annotated. As a mark of the sūtra's influence in East Asian Buddhism, the Śūraṃgamasūtra is one of the few apocryphal scriptures that receives its own mention in another indigenous sūtra: the apocryphal Foshuo fa miejin jing ("The Sūtra on the Extinction of the Dharma") states that the first sūtra to disappear from the world during the dharma-ending age (mofa) will in fact be the Śūraṃgamasūtra. The Tibetan translation of this Chinese apocryphon was produced during the Qianlong era (1735-1796) of the Qing dynasty; the scripture was apparently so important in contemporary Chinese Buddhism that it was deemed essential for it to be represented in the Tibetan canon as well. (Source: "*Śūraṃgamasūtra." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 873–74. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
1 Teaching based on
Śūraṃgamasūtra. (T. Dpa' bar 'gro ba'i mdo; C. Shoulengyan jing; J. Shuryōgongyō; K. Sunǔngǒm kyǒng 首楞嚴經). A Chinese indigenous scripture (see apocrypha), usually known in the West by its reconstructed Sanskrit title Śūraṃgamasūtra, meaning "Heroic March Sūtra." Its full title is Dafoding rulai miyin xiuzheng liaoyi zhu pusa wanxing Shoulengyan jing, in ten rolls. (This indigenous scripture should be distinguished from an early-fifth century Chinese translation of the Śūraṃgamasamādhsūtra, attributed by Kumārajīva, in two rolls, for which Sanskrit fragments are extant.) According to the account in the Chinese cataloguer Zhisheng's Xu gujin yijing tuji, the Śūraṃgamasūtra was brought to China by a śramaṇa named Pāramiti. Because the Śūraṃgamasūtra had been proclaimed a national treasure, the Indian king had forbidden anyone to take the sūtra out of the country. In order to transmit this scripture to China, Pāramiti wrote the sūtra out in minute letters on extremely fine silk, then he cut open his arm and hid the small scroll inside his flesh. With the sūtra safely hidden away, Pāramiti set out for China and eventually arrived in Guangdong province. There, he happened to meet the exiled Prime Minister Fangrong, who invited him to reside at the monastery of Zhizhisi, where he translated the sūtra in 705 CE. Apart from Pāramiti's putative connection to the Śūraṃgamasūtra, however, nothing more is known about him and he has no biography in the Gaoseng zhuan ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"). Zhisheng also has an entry on the Śūraṃgamasūtra in his Kaiyuan Shijiao lu, but there are contradictions in these two extant catalogue accounts of the sūtra's transmission and translation. The Kaiyuan Shijiao lu merely records that the śramaņa Huidi encountered an unnamed Western monk at Guangdong, who had with him a copy of the Sanskrit recension of this sūtra, and Huidi invited him to translate the scripture together. Since the names of this Western monk and his patron Fangrong are not mentioned, the authenticity of the scripture has been called into question. Although Zhisheng assumed the Śūraṃgamasūtra was a genuine Indian scripture, the fact that no Sanskrit manuscript of the text is known to exist, as well as the inconsistencies in the stories about its transmission to China, have led scholiasts for centuries to questions the scripture's authenticity. There is also internal evidence of the scripture's Chinese provenance, such as the presence of such indigenous Chinese philosophical concepts as yin-yang cosmology and the five elements (wuxing) theory, the stylistic beauty of the literary Chinese in which the text is written, etc. For these and other reasons, the Śūraṃgamasūtra is now generally recognized to be a Chinese apocryphal composition. The sūtra opens with one of the most celebrated stories in East Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's attendant Ānanda’s near seduction by the harlot Mātaṅgī. With Ānanda close to being in flagrante delicto, the Buddha sends the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī to save him from a pārājika offense, by employing the śūraṃgama dhāraṇī to thwart Mātaṅgī's seductive magic. The Buddha uses the experience to teach to Ānanda and the congregation the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which counters the false views about the aggregates (skandha) and consciousness (vijñāna) and reveals the tathāgatagarbha that is inherent in all sentient beings. This tathāgatagarbha, or buddha-nature, is made manifest through the śūraṃgamasamādhi, which constitutes the "heroic march" forward toward enlightenment. The Śūraṃgamasūtra was especially influential in the Chan school during the Song and Ming dynasties, which used the text as the scriptural justification for the school's distinctive teaching that Chan "points directly to the human mind" (zhizhi renxin), so that one may "see the nature and achieve buddhahood" (jianxing chengfo). Several noted figures within the Chan school achieved their own awakenings through the influence of the Śūraṃgamasūtra, including the Ming-dynasty master Hanshan Deqing (1546–1623), and the sūtra was particularly important in the writings of such Ming-dynasty Chan masters as Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615). The leading Chan monk of modern Chinese Buddhism, Xuyun (1840-1959), advocated the practice of the Śūraṃgamasūtra throughout his life, and it was the only scripture that he ever annotated. As a mark of the sūtra's influence in East Asian Buddhism, the Śūraṃgamasūtra is one of the few apocryphal scriptures that receives its own mention in another indigenous sūtra: the apocryphal Foshuo fa miejin jing ("The Sūtra on the Extinction of the Dharma") states that the first sūtra to disappear from the world during the dharma-ending age (mofa) will in fact be the Śūraṃgamasūtra. The Tibetan translation of this Chinese apocryphon was produced during the Qianlong era (1735-1796) of the Qing dynasty; the scripture was apparently so important in contemporary Chinese Buddhism that it was deemed essential for it to be represented in the Tibetan canon as well. (Source: "*Śūraṃgamasūtra." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 873–74. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
