Blog » Symposiums And Lectures » Shurangama Sutra » The Many Levels of Learning Provided by the Shurangama Sutra
The Many Levels of Learning Provided by the Shurangama Sutra2013-01-10
On a day in 1968, the Master ascends the high seat and begins: Da Fo Ding Ru Lai Mi Yin Xiu Zheng Liao Yi Zhu Pu Sa Wan Heng Shou Leng Yan Jing and with that, the Shurangama Sutra becomes a focal point. All else fades in importance.
I , who know nothing of Chinese or Buddhism, am captivated. I hear the Master`s slow recital of the text passage and listen to his animated explanation of its meaning. The dynamics of the Master`s delivery in Chinese communicate serious intent, gentle compassion, unexpected humor, and keen awareness of his audience. Those qualities transcend the language barrier.
But it is not until the English translation commences that I gain intellectual comprehension, as the sounds I`ve just heard take on meaning and resonate with underlying wisdom. I carefully record in my notebook: A Scripture Explaining the Great Shurangama Above the Buddha's Head, the Full Meaning of the Tathagata’s Cultivation and Attainment of the Hidden Cause, and the Bodhisattvas' Myriad Practices.
That's how the Master began to teach us Westerners Buddhism. He took the bull by the horns and chose to initiate us with a profound Mahayana sutra. His lecture approach was positive, powerful, and relentless. His broad assumptions were that we were quite capable of learning the Chinese language—both the classical Buddhist texts and his modern spoken commentary—and that we were perfectly able to understand and put into practice the principles that Shakyamuni Buddha imparted in the passages of this unique sutra. For instance, during this time some of the participants immediately became vegetarians; some began eating one meal at midday. I was one who did both. It wasn't easy to suddenly change the patterns of eating that had been habitual to me as an American. The Venerable Master's example and encouragement and the Shurangama Sutra's clear principles provided the strength that helped us accept and embody practices that enabled us to develop purer and more disciplined lifestyles.
Not only did the Master expect these things of us, we came to expect them of ourselves. By the time we heard ru ren yi biao. biao wei zhong shi. dong kan zai xi. nan guan cheng bei. Biao ti ji hun. xin ying za luan, those like me who had no knowledge of Chinese to begin with were able to recognize the simple characters like 人(person) and 中 (middle), which spurred us on to heckle the scholar-disciples who guided the daily hour of review with more and more questions about how the English translation matched the Chinese text—word for word if possible; about how to use a Chinese-English dictionary; about which characters were special Buddhist terms; and, of course, about what the entire phrase meant.
In this case, the meaning of the passage was:
Suppose that someone were to place a marker to indicate the location of a middle.
Seen from the east, it would be in the west; seen from the south, it would lie to the north. Such a marker is indefinite, and in the same way, it is unclear what it might mean for the mind to be located in a ‘middle’.”
From this passage and the Master’s explanation, we not only learned a new character: biao 表, meaning `marker` as a noun and `indicate` as a verb, but found out that our mind, which we always assumed was in our body, could not be settled into such a convenient location, much as we might hope it could.
When the Master came to the passage:
fo yan: da wong, ru mian sui zhou, erci jian jing, xing wei seng zhou. Zhou je wei bian. Bu zhou fei bian. Bian je shou mieh. Bi bu bian je. Yuan wu sheng mieh. Yun he yu zhong. Shou ru sheng si,
we, along with King Prasenajit, learned the important lesson that our inherent nature transcends birth and death. The English translation brought that meaning out well: The Buddha said, ``Great king, your face is in wrinkles, but the essential nature of your seeing will not wrinkle. What wrinkles is subject to change. What does not wrinkle does not change. What changes will become extinct, but what does not change is fundamentally free of coming into being and ceasing to be. How can it be subject to your birth and death？
What is more, we could follow the characters of the text with our finger as the Master spoke them and were delighted to recognize more simple ones, like 言 (said) and大王 (Great King) and 生死 (birth and death).
Oh, I remember the day the Master spoke the passage ruo jian shi wu. Je ru yi ke jian wu zhi jian. Ruo tong jian je. Ming wei jian wu; wu bu jian shi. He bu jian wu be jian zhi chu. Ruo jian bu jian. Zi ran fei be bu jian zhi xiang; ruo bu jian wu bu jian zhi di. Zi ran fei wu. Yun he fei ru.
My fingers fairly flew down the vertical lines of characters as I recognized 12 見 `to see` as a verb and `seeing`as a noun; 5 吾, a classical character meaning `I, me, my, mine`; and 2 汝, the classical form of `you, yours.`
However, as to the meaning of that passage, the English translation didn`t help much, except to inspire me to pursue the Chinese language with even greater diligence.
A more recent translation of this passage is:
If visual awareness were a perceived object like other perceived objects,then wouldn’t you be able to see my visual awareness as an object?
You may argue that you do see my visual awareness at the moment when we are both looking at the same thing; but when I am no longer looking at that thing, why wouldn’t you see my visual awareness then? And even if you could see my awareness when I am no longer looking at something, clearly you cannot be seeing my awareness at the point where I am no longer looking. And since you cannot see my awareness at that point where I am no longer looking, then clearly my visual awareness cannot be an object at all. Therefore, how could your own visual awareness not be what is fundamentally you?
Thus it was that the three months of the Shurangama summer session passed swiftly as we focused on the Master`s daily explications of the sutra, and then reviewed them, ‘on the road, on the pot, and on the pillow’. We delved into the principles, became familiar with the terminology, gained new insights, began trying to put what we learned into practice, meditated and inquired, and last but by far not least, gradually, character by character, became familiar with Chinese Buddhist language.
By the time the summer drew to an end and the Master was nearly finished explaining the text, we truly realized what a great gift of Dharma the Shurangama Sutra is. It gives clear and decisive answers to the questions of who we are, how we got here, what we should do now, why we should practice, where we are going, and when all this began and will end.
The final section of the sutra was spoken without request, because Shakyamuni Buddha knew that none of his audience would know to ask.
It is an unprecedented manual for meditation, in which the Buddha describes in great detail various states that we may experience and advises us how to avoid the pitfalls of our ego as we progress in our practice.
In the general conclusion of that section, the Buddha says:
Ananda, you wanted to know the depth and scope of the realms of the five skandhas. Form and emptiness arethe boundaries of form. Contact and separation are the boundaries of feeling. Remembering and forgetting are the boundaries of thinking. Coming into being and ceasing to be are the boundaries of formations.Deep purity entering to unite with deep purity belongs to the boundaries of consciousness.
At their source, these five skandhas arise in layers. Their arising is due to consciousness, while their cessation begins with the elimination of form.
You may have a sudden awakening to principle, at which point they all simultaneously vanish. But in terms of the specifics, they are eliminated not all at once, but in sequence.
Decades have passed since the Master explained the Shurangama Sutra. In this Chinese edition, the Master’s commentary has been carefully transcribed and edited to give readers an accurate and precise record of how the Master chose to teach us this sutra’s profound principles; how he communicated the importance of continually studying this sutra and practicing according to its guidance; and how he exhorted us to preserve and propagate this vitally important teaching of the Buddha.
Over the years, bearing in mind the Master’s emphasis on the Shurangama Sutra, his disciples have memorized it, translated it, lectured it, practiced it, lived it, and shared it. Some may have suddenly awakened to principle; but all of us gradually cultivate the specifics.
By allowing our initiation into Buddhism to begin with the Shurangama Sutra, the Master gave us not only the gift of Dharma but also the gift of fearlessness. He believed in his disciples` ability and that, more than anything else, inspired us to go forward with courage and try our best.
