Charles Luk On The Surangama Sutra.
Mar 11, 2012 12:03:12 GMT 1
Post by Shi Da Dao on Mar 11, 2012 12:03:12 GMT 1
The following is quoted from the first page of the Preface to Charles Luk's English translation of the Surangama Sutra (LengYenJing). Charles Luk succinctly explains the purpose of this sutra, in such a way that is designed to remove unnecessary 'doubt' in the reader's mind. Interestingly, Charles Luk writes that master Xu Yun taught that every student should study this sutra before embarking upon their meditative practice. The full Preface and the translation of this sutra can be found in PDF at the bottom of this post:
'This important sermon contains the essence of the Buddha's teaching and, as foretold by Him, will be the first sutra to disappear in the Dharma ending age. It reveals the law of casuality relating to both delusion and enlightenment and teaches the methods of practice and realisation to destroy for ever the roots of birth and death. It aims at breaking up the alaya, the store consciousness, whose three characteristic are: self-evidencing, perception and form, by means of the three meditative studies of noumenon which is immaterial, of phenomenon which is unreal and of the "Mean" which is inclusive of both, and leads to the all-embracing Surangama samadhi which is the gateway to Perfect Enlightenment and reveals the nature of the Tathagata store of One Reality.
In the practice of the Surangama samadhi to wipe out the store consciousness. We should know that the latter has been under delusion for a very long time and that it is very difficult to transmute it into the Great Mirror Wisdom. Hence the Buddha uses two of its characteristics, perception and form, to explain the falseness of both so that we can relinquish out attachment to them and break its first characteristic, self-evidencing. The illusion of form which includes the body and mind made of the five aggregates and the visible world is tackled first by returning each of its aspects to where it arises to prove its unreality. Then the illusion of perception is wiped out by revealing its essence, or alaya, which is like a second moon is also an illusionary creation. Hence the Buddha says: "When the seeing (perceives) seeing, seeing is not seeing (for) seeing strays from seeing; seeing cannot reach it," which Han Shan ably interprets thus: "When the absolute seeing peceives the essence of seeing, the former is not the latter which still differs from it; how then can false seeing reach that absolute seeing?" '
Charles Luk's Surangama Sutra
www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/surangama.pdf
'This important sermon contains the essence of the Buddha's teaching and, as foretold by Him, will be the first sutra to disappear in the Dharma ending age. It reveals the law of casuality relating to both delusion and enlightenment and teaches the methods of practice and realisation to destroy for ever the roots of birth and death. It aims at breaking up the alaya, the store consciousness, whose three characteristic are: self-evidencing, perception and form, by means of the three meditative studies of noumenon which is immaterial, of phenomenon which is unreal and of the "Mean" which is inclusive of both, and leads to the all-embracing Surangama samadhi which is the gateway to Perfect Enlightenment and reveals the nature of the Tathagata store of One Reality.
In the practice of the Surangama samadhi to wipe out the store consciousness. We should know that the latter has been under delusion for a very long time and that it is very difficult to transmute it into the Great Mirror Wisdom. Hence the Buddha uses two of its characteristics, perception and form, to explain the falseness of both so that we can relinquish out attachment to them and break its first characteristic, self-evidencing. The illusion of form which includes the body and mind made of the five aggregates and the visible world is tackled first by returning each of its aspects to where it arises to prove its unreality. Then the illusion of perception is wiped out by revealing its essence, or alaya, which is like a second moon is also an illusionary creation. Hence the Buddha says: "When the seeing (perceives) seeing, seeing is not seeing (for) seeing strays from seeing; seeing cannot reach it," which Han Shan ably interprets thus: "When the absolute seeing peceives the essence of seeing, the former is not the latter which still differs from it; how then can false seeing reach that absolute seeing?" '
Charles Luk's Surangama Sutra
www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/surangama.pdf