Most of the Śūraṅgama (Shurangama) Sutra consists of a dialogue between Buddha and his disciple Ananda before an assembly of bhikkhus (monks), arhats, and bodhisattvas. The Buddha's teachings in the sutra include discourses on the illusory nature of phenomena, the unreality of the self, the sources of misconceptions about the nature of reality, and the path to enlightenment.
The Buddha explains that all phenomena are manifestations of mind, and that they have no inherent existence. They do not exist inherently because they are not self-caused or self-existent. All phenomena depend on causes and conditions of existence, and they are therefore empty of self-existence. They appear to exist inherently, but their appearance is illusory. The way they appear to us is not the way they are in true reality.
Emptiness (sūnyatā) is the true nature of all things. Emptiness (voidness) is also a door to liberation. It is the realization of the illusory nature of all existence, and the realization that all things are empty of inherent existence and self-nature.
All phenomena (things, dharmas) arise from conditions and cease because of conditions. Thus, they are devoid of self-nature, and they lack any real, permanent, or essential attributes that would distinguish them from other phenomena. They do not exist on their own, and they are all interdependent.
All phenomena are actually like flowers in the sky, illusory appearances that we misperceive because of our ignorance,
The three meditative studies (or expedient practices) that lead all Buddhas in the ten directions1 to enlightenment are śamatha (the meditative study of all as void or immaterial), samāpatti (the meditative study of all as unreal), and dhyāna (the meditative study of the mean between delusion and enlightenment). This threefold study aims to remove ignorance, and its most suitable point of departure is the One Mind (which is the source of both delusion and enlightenment).2
Meditation (dhyāna) is also one of the six pāramitās (perfections). The six pāramitās are generosity (dāna), moral conduct (sīla), patience (kṣānti), perseverance (viriya), meditation (dhyāna), and wisdom (prajñā).
The six perfections are practiced in order to cross over from the shore of mortality (saṃsāra, the karmic cycle, the cycle of birth and death) to the other shore (nirvāṇa, the cessation of saṃsāra).3 Nirvāṇa (the cessation of desire or craving) is also the extinction of the three poisons or unwholesome roots: rāga (greed or sensuality), dvesha (hatred or aversion), and avidya (ignorance or delusion).4
When we cling to the illusory body and mind made up of the five aggregates, we fail to know the One Mind or True Mind. The five aggregates are form (rūpa), sensations or feelings (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), mental formations (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijñāna).
The five aggregates form the illusory self or ego, and they include everything that we experience in the mental and physical world. Each of them may be an object of clinging, and each may also be a source of falsehood and delusion. While clinging to them causes suffering, dissolving them leads to enlightenment.
Clinging or attachment to the illusory self or ego may be coarse (when it arises from discrimination related to the sixth and seventh consciousnesses) or subtle (when it arises from the store of previous experiences that give rise to the illusory perception of an ego).5
The eight consciousnesses are the six sense consciousnesses (the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental consciousnesses), the deluded consciousness (kliṣṭamanovijñāna), and the storehouse consciousness (ālāyavijñāna), which is the basis of the other seven.
Wrong views, such as belief in the reality of the self or ego, belief in permanence and annihilation, and denial of the law of causality are causes of suffering (dukkha). The four mistakes or misapprehensions are mistaking impermanence for permanence, mistaking suffering for happiness, mistaking something having no identity for something having an identity. and mistaking something impure for something pure.
The two inversions are (1) the wrong use of a clinging mind, which people mistake for their own nature, and (2) attachment to causal conditions, which screen the basically bright essence of consciousness. The non-rising of these inversions is the Tathāgata's (The Enlightened One's) true state of samādhi (meditative absorption or concentration).6
Delusion can be caused by mistaking birth and death, arising and ceasing, beginning and ending for reality. Thus, delusion leads to transmigration through illusory realms of existence. When the discriminating mind is mistaken for self-nature, the true mind of enlightenment is screened and obscured by delusion.7
The Eternal Mind is beyond birth and death, and it is the common source of all Buddhas and all living beings.8 It transcends all dualities and all discriminations regarding the appearances of things. Thus, the subject and the object, the self and the nonself, "is" and "is not," being and nonbeing, existence and non-existence, thisness and thatness are all unreal and illusory.
The Buddha ties six knots in a flowered cloth, symbolizing the obstructions that can block the path to enlightenment, and he explains that both tying and untying the knots (delusion and liberation) come from the same cause, the mind.9 The six knots represent the six sense organs (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and mind) that can be sources of illusion. The six entrances of illusions into the mind are the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the intellect. If we disengage the sense organs and disentangle the knots that obstruct our path to enlightenment, then we realize that all phenomena are void.10
Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings) remain in harmony with all beings in the ten directions. They work for the welfare of all living beings, and before their own liberation, they set their mind on freeing others. Their own enlightenment and their enlightenment of others are therefore free from contradiction. Their preaching is free from all clinging (upādāna), and their teaching reveals the non-duality of all Dharma doors.11
Of the ten highest stages of bodhisattva attainment, the last stage is that in which the bodhisattva provides sheltering clouds of compassion for all those who are suffering and are seeking nirvāṇa. This is the stage of Dharma clouds (Dharmamegha).12
The Buddha always responds to the needs of others, like the tide that never fails to rise and fall.13 Thus, he rescues others from suffering, ensuring their liberation and attainment of enlighenment.
FOOTNOTES
1The ten directions are north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, up (above), and down (below).
2The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, with commentary (abridged) by Chan Master Han Shan, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) (London: Rider & Company, 1966), pp. 3, 116.
3Ibid., p. 242.
4 Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014).
5The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, translated by Upāsaka Lu K'uan Yu, pp. xviii-xix.
6Ibid., pp. 13-14.
7Ibid., p. 14.
8Ibid., p. 19.
9Ibid., p. 117.
10Ibid., p. 121.
11 Ibid., pp. 168-169.
12Ibid., p. 172.
13Ibid., pp. 146-147.
