Blog » Symposiums And Lectures » Repentance » A Brief Discussion of the Shurangama Repentance (1)
A Brief Discussion of the Shurangama Repentance (1)2014-03-29
♦ Spoken by Dharma Master Heng Yi
English Translation by Lotus Lee
Has anyone done the Shurangama Repentance before? I found some information to share with everyone about this repentance’s origin, contents, and its purpose. In the colophon of the repentance, it says: “Respectfully compiled according to past precedents by Bhiksuni Kuanru,” and the date is the fourth month of the year Bingxu. The year Bingxu occurs every sixty years; this was probably a recent Bingxu. We can estimate that it was compiled sometime after the first or second world war, because the colophon continues: “After the world war ended, there have been droughts, and plagues run rampant. It is exceedingly difficult for the people to survive. I have respectfully compiled the words of past sages and worthies, and with utmost sincerity, composed the repentance dharma of the foremost Shurangama spoken from the great crown of the Buddha’s head. We rely on the compassionate ones to eradicate our individual and shared karma. At the same time, this repentance can be used in one’s daily cultivation in order to wipe away offenses and accumulate blessings.” Therefore, this repentance we are bowing today should be rather recent. If we wish to explore the origin of the dharma door of repentance, we need to go back to Great Master Zhizhe of the Tiantai school. Master Zhizhe lived during the Chensui period, which was during the sixth century of the Common Era. He was probably born during the fourth year of Emperor Wu of Liang’s reign.
What we know about Master Zhizhe is that he was the founding patriarch of Chinese Buddhism’s Tiantai School. In the twenty-third chapter of the Dharma Flower Lotus Sutra, the Original Conduct of Medicine King Bodhisattva chapter, it says that in one of his past lives, Medicine King Bodhisattva was known as the Bodhisattva whom all beings take delight in seeing. At the time, he immolated himself to make offerings to Virtue as Pure and Bright as the Sun and Moon Buddha. The Buddhas praised this Bodhisattva, saying: “Good indeed, good indeed! Good man, this is true diligence and making true offerings of Dharma to the Tathagatas.” Master Zhizhe was cultivating the Dharma Flower Lotus Sutra, and when he read the sentence “Good indeed, good indeed! Good man, this is true diligence and making true offerings of Dharma to the Tathagatas,” he became enlightened and attained Dharma Flower Samadhi.
After Master Zhizhe attained Dharma Flower Samadhi, he made vows to compose repentance ritual manuals in order to help cultivators attain samadhi by cultivating the dharma door of repentance. Many sutras have mantras in them; examples are the Lotus Sutra, the Prajna Sutra, the Sutra of Golden Light, the Shurangama Sutra, and even the Avatamsaka Sutra’s forty-two syllables can be counted as mantras. Most people recite mantras only when they are reciting the sutras. The repentance ritual manuals composed by Master Zhizhe of the Tiantai school have a unique characteristic, in that each manual concentrates on a sutra and incorporates the principle of the sutra into the repentance ritual simultaneously. He would include the mantras as well. The format of the entire repentance would be similar to the Shurangama Repentance we have right now.
We established that Master Zhizhe incorporated sutra text and mantras into the repentance ritual manual in the hopes that cultivators could attain samadhi through doing repentances. The samadhi they would attain corresponds to the sutra that the repentance is based on: Dharma Flower Samadhi for the Lotus Sutra and the Great Shurangama Samadhi for the Shurangama Sutra. Why did he incorporate mantras into the repentance manuals? This is because most people believe that mantras have the power to eradicate our karmic offenses, especially demonic obstructions that cultivators sometimes encounter. Mantras are an efficient way to eradicate these obstructions.
Let us look at Master Zhizhe’s definition of repentance. He thought that in cultivation, if practitioners violate the precept substance, these violations will be obstructions to attaining samadhi. In other words, if we receive the precepts but break them and violate the precept substance, causing it to defiled, we will be unable to attain samadhi. Therefore, having a pure substance is the most important element for attaining samadhi. Disclosing and repenting of offenses is a way to eradicate offenses, regain the purity of the precept substance, and accomplish the cultivation of cessation and contemplation. This was his fundamental definition of repentance and attaining samadhi.
In Master Zhizhe’s Repentance Ritual Manual of Dharma Flower Samadhi, there is a section that says:
All merits and offenses that were accumulated from the action of our false thinking and inversion arise from the mind. Apart from the mind, there are no offenses, merits, or phenomena. If we contemplate the mind as being an empty, then there is no subject that creates offenses or merits. Since offenses and merits are empty, then all phenomena are empty in nature. By contemplating in this way, we can destroy all negative karma of birth and death, inversion, the three poisons, and false thinking, but at the same time, there is nothing that is destroyed. The mind and body are pure, and in thought after thought, one illumines all dharmas without being subject to them or having any attachments to even the most subtle skandha states. For this reason, one becomes in accord with samadhi.
Our minds are replete with all phenomena. This means that the mind contains wholesome and unwholesome dharmas at the same time, and whether we do good or evil all depends on the thought of the mind. The mind has both sides of purity and defilement. The defiled side is false thinking, and the pure side is the Bodhi resolve. Creating evil and cultivating goodness are never apart from a single thought. If we understand that the mind is replete with all phenomena, we can practice observing our thoughts to see whether the thought is defiled or pure. The verse says: “Offenses arise from the mind, and so from the mind repentance must begin.” By relying on the power of repentance, we can eradicate seeds of unwholesome thoughts; only then can we eliminate the suffering of karma that is created in confusion, attain ultimate purity, and leave inversion and transmigration behind. If we can truly practice the dharma door of observing our thoughts and so come to the understanding that the nature of offenses and blessings are inherently empty, Master Zhizhe believed that only this can be regarded as true repentance and help us become in accord with samadhi.
Repentance is divided into two kinds: repentance through activities and repentance through principle of universal truth. For beginners or for people who have duller faculties, practicing repentance and making vows according to repentance ritual manuals can help them reach the objective of eradicating offenses. This is called repentance through activities. As for people who have more experience in cultivation or those who have sharper faculties, they can observe the true characteristics of all phenomena in their meditation and understand that the nature of offenses is inherently empty. This is repentance through understanding the principle of universal truth. They understand the principle that all phenomena are the product of the rise and fall of causes and conditions and are inherently empty. However, most people do not have such sharp faculties and are unable to attain such a level of understanding, so they should be led to practice repentance through activities. For people who have cultivated longer or have sharper faculties, they can observe their own thoughts while in meditation to understand that the nature of offenses and merits is inherently empty. They will be able to use this contemplation to successfully practice repentance through universal truth, and return to purity.
In other words, the ceremonies and texts included in repentance ritual manuals are used to help cultivators attain the level of repentance through universal truth, and were designed for beginners and people with duller faculties. The objective of repentance ritual manuals is to help cultivators attain samadhi and understand the inherent emptiness of offenses. This is the defining property of repentance through universal truth. Therefore, a single repentance ritual manual has includes both repentance through activities and repentance through universal truth, and is suited for both people who have duller faculties or are new to cultivation, and for people who have sharper faculties or are experience in cultivation.
We mentioned that Master Zhizhe incorporated mantras into the repentances he wrote. This was a new practice at the time. Other than mantras, he also included some practices that were unique to the esoteric school. Out of the repentance ritual manuals that he composed, the most famous on was the Repentance Ritual Manual of Dharma Flower Samadhi. This manual was very popular in Jiangnan province during his time. Yet later, during the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties period in Chinese history, the fate of Chinese Buddhism experienced many changes. The first was that during the reign of Emperor Wu of Tang, around the ninth century, he put into place a series of policies for the purpose of cracking down on Buddhism. This was because Emperor Wu of Tang was a proponent of Daoism and did not wish for Buddhism to flourish in China, so he harshly oppressed Buddhism. This occurred during the Huichang period, so it was called the “disaster that befell the Dharma during Huichang.” This is one of the notable calamities encountered by Chinese Buddhism throughout history. During the reign of the following Five Dynasties and ten ruling states, the political situation was very unstable, and the existence and progress of Buddhism was greatly affected and hindered by the negative circumstances.
During the Song Dynasty, the great masters of the Huayan and Tiantai schools all endeavored to reorganize Buddhism and enable it to flourish once more. They studied the methods of cultivation of past sages and worthies, and wished to return to the practices and rituals that were used by high Sanghans in the past, so they edited Master Zhizhe’s repentance ritual manuals and used this format to compose new repentance ritual manuals for people to use, in order to stimulate Buddhism at the time. It turned out that the Dharma door of repentance is welcomed by most people, and as a result, the practice of repentances was received with great enthusiasm in many monasteries during that era.
What repentances have all of you done so far? [Audience: Great Compassion Repentance, Avatamsaka Repentance, Water Repentance, Medicine Master Repentance, Ten Thousand Buddhas Repentance, and Earth Store Repentance.] If we look at these repentances carefully, the format that they follow is very similar, with main differences lying in the sutra that they are based on and the principles that are contained in them. For the most part, the repentances that have lasted till today and are held at Chinese Buddhist temples originate from this period in history. They began from the repentance ritual manuals first compiled by Master Zhizhe, and continued to develop during the Tang and Song periods, during which the conditions of the times caused repentances to undergo major changes. This is a brief investigation of the origins of the Shurangama Repentance.
