Part Six · The Śūraṅgama · A Great Samādhi Complete from the First
The Great-Crown Śūraṅgama-sūtra begins from a peril.
The Venerable Ānanda had gone out alone for alms and, on the way, was caught by Mātaṅga's daughter through the power of a spell—he came close to destroying his precept-substance. The Buddha sent forth light and proclaimed the mantra, charging Mañjuśrī to carry the mantra to his protection and lead Ānanda back. Ānanda, seeing the Buddha, bowed at His feet and wept in grief, reproaching himself that from time without beginning he had been "ever rich in learning, his power-in-the-Way not yet complete"—so much of the teaching heard, and yet when the moment came and the situation stood before him, not an ounce of it could be brought to bear. And so he earnestly made his request: the wondrous śamatha, samādhi, and dhyāna by which the Tathāgatas of the ten directions came to bodhi—the foremost expedient.
The whole of the Śūraṅgama is the answer to that one question. What it has to teach is a great samādhi not built by cultivation, complete in itself from the first—the great Śūraṅgama samādhi; and, along the road that leads to it, the light of every step and the fork at every turn.
The three chapters of Part Six are exactly the three things this sūtra has laid up for the concentration gate. Chapter one, the gate—where is the entrance to the great samādhi set? The answer is unexpected: in the precept. Gathering in the mind is the precept; from the precept concentration is born. Chapter two, the path—the gate once entered, how is the mind to be gathered in? Twenty-five sages each recount their point of entry, and Mañjuśrī picks out the gate most adept for this world: turning the hearing back to hear its own nature. Chapter three, the map—on the road of gathering in, what states will appear, and by what standard are they adjudged good or demonic? The Buddha, at the point of leaving His seat, turned back and gravely added the teaching of the fifty skandha-māras.
Gate, path, map—the three together compose one complete terrain. We begin with the brick handed over from the precept gate.