About Shurangama Sutra and Mantra?
Shurangama Mantra & Mantra
BY VEN. HENG SURE
For over a thousand years, the Shurangama Sutra has been held in great esteem in the Mahayana Buddhist countries of East and Southeast Asia.
More specifically, the Shurangama Sutra has traditionally been regarded as a complete and practical manual for spiritual practice that will eventually lead to enlightenment. It gives practical and insightful guidance in:
- the correct understanding of the Buddha-nature, which is the potential within all beings for becoming a Buddha.
- how and why this true nature is hidden within our ordinary experience of ourselves and of the world, and
- how we can uncover this nature and recognize that it is our own true mind.
- how personal integrity and purity of conduct are essential prerequisites for spiritual awakening.
- general principles of Buddhist meditation, introduces several specific meditation methods, and recommends which methods
are the most effective and the easiest to practice. - discerning what understandings and practices are correct and which deviate into wrong ones.
- how our own intentional acts, whether physical, verbal, or mental, directly result in our experiences, including our
future rebirths at various levels of being, both human and non-human. - how correct action can also lead to initial awakenings and eventually to the perfect enlightenment of the Buddhas.
Ananda’s Story
Much of the Sutra is devoted to the Buddha Shakyamuni’s instructions to the young monk Ananda, whose personal story provides a narrative frame for the entire discourse. Joined by several of his enlightened disciples, the Buddha, shows Ananda how to turn the attention of his sense-faculties inward in order to achieve a deeply focused state of meditation known as samadhi.
He tells Ananda that by practicing a particular form of samadhi, the Shurangama Samadhi, he and anyone else who also maintains purity of conduct and develops right understanding can gain an awakening that is identical to the minds of all Buddhas.
About The Mantra
At the heart of the Sutra is the Shurangama Mantra.
The Sutra promises that the practice of reciting this mantra, in the context of the other practices taught in the Sutra, can succeed in eliminating whatever internal or external obstacles may lie in the way of spiritual progress.
To this day, monks and nuns in the Chinese Buddhist tradition, as well as many practitioners among the laity, recite the mantra every morning as an essential aspect of daily practice.
How may Shurangama Sutra help develop my wisdom?
All Sutras (teachings of the Buddha recorded in writing) and the principles within them are all related. One of the most important Sutras is the Shurangama Sutra because:
- The Shurangama Sutra is for bringing forth great wisdom. If you want to have right knowledge, right views and open great wisdom, the Shurangama Sutra is a very good starting point.
- The Shurangama Sutra is the essence of all Sutras. The existence of the Buddhadharma (teachings of the Buddha) depends on the existence of the Shurangama Sutra.
Over the years, when I have needed advice in cultivation, I have referred to the Shurangama Sutra for authoritative information. I go to the “Fifty Demonic States of Mind” (part 10) to check on strange states in meditation. I go to the “Twenty-Five Sages” (part 6) for encouragement on the path from the voices of Bodhisattvas. I go to the “Four Clear and Definitive Instructions on Purity” (part 7) for clarity on interaction with the world; for example, there I find the Buddha’s reasons for advocating a harmless, plant-based diet.
—Reverend Heng Sure, President of Dharma Realm Buddhist Association and Director of Berkeley Buddhist Monastery
“Shurangama Mantra
The purity of your mind is what really dispels calamities”
Ven. Master Hsuan Hua
