Surangama Sutra Exposition
by Living Buddha Lian Sheng, Grandmaster Sheng-Yen Lu
The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind are indeed the wondrous luminous true mind, and the wondrous luminous true mind is likewise the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. These six sense faculties can be used either for spiritual cultivation or for continuing the cycle of rebirth. The choice is yours!
To attain purity and realization, one must select a sense faculty that best enables the calming of the mind, so that one may enter meditation more easily.
“Ananda! You now wish to go against the current of the desires of birth and death, trace back to the source of that flow, and arrive at the unborn and undying.
“You should examine these six faculties of reception and functioning: which unite and which separate, which are deep and which are shallow, which are perfect and penetrating, and which are not complete.
“If, within these, you can awaken to the perfectly penetrating faculty, you will reverse the beginningless flow of false karmic entanglement and follow this perfect realization. Compared with those faculties that are not perfect, the difference is as great as that between a day and an eon.
“Now I have clearly revealed the six pure, perfectly luminous faculties and the merits originally inherent in them; their quantities are as described. You may carefully choose whichever is suitable for entry. I will then explain it for you, enabling you to advance.
Human beings are subject to birth and death. If one wishes to transcend birth and death, one must not be distracted by ordinary desires. We often chase after wealth, sensual pleasures, fame, food, and sleep. These desires, along with greed, anger, and delusion, bind us to worldly existence and the rebirth cycle. For true purity, one must change and trace back to the root, using the six sense faculties to cultivate spiritually and return to the state beyond birth and death—the realm of the buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Each person has six roots (sense faculties)—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. To make spiritual progress, one should examine which sense is strongest and easiest for calming the mind and entering into meditation. Find the sense that helps you be mindful of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and focus on it in your spiritual cultivation. Reaching purity through the preferred faculty will allow all the others to be purified as well, allowing faster progress.
For example, the primary sense faculty in Sukhavati is hearing. Upon hearing the beautiful music there, beings immediately become mindful of the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and naturally cultivate the Thirty-Seven Aids to Enlightenment.
In the Buddhaverse of Fragrance Accumulation, where the rice is supremely fragrant, the primary sense faculty is taste. Consuming even a single grain of rice calms the mind and allows one to enter samadhi easily. It fills the body with fragrance, allowing the qi, channels, and lightdrops within the body to flow freely so that the divine inner-light can manifest.
Another example of spiritual cultivation through the sense of taste, or the tongue faculty, is the Tibetan nectar pills, which contain medicinal herbs and sacred substances blessed by spiritual teachers. Consuming them brings many benefits.
In films set in ancient China, there are often people meditating or playing the lute or flute while incense burns nearby. The scent of the incense helps calm the mind. This is an example of cultivation through the sense of smell, or the nose root.
When one lights incense and gazes at its glowing red tip, one is using the sense of sight, or the eye root. Concentrating on a single point helps train and calm the mind through the eyes.
Another example is cultivation through the sense of touch, or the body root. In ancient India, people applied dark greenish ash to their skin, believing it was good for their skin and health. After applying it, they would meditate. Similarly, after bathing in cool water on a hot day or soaking in hot springs, one would feel energetic or sleep very well. These are bodily sensations.
We rely on the six roots to reverse the course [of human tendencies] and cultivate to attain complete purity. However, if we don’t cultivate, the same six roots can also trap us in the rebirth cycle. Each individual differs in their six faculties; therefore, one must choose carefully which root is most suitable for cultivation—the one that best leads to a state of purity and samadhi, and eventually attaining fruition.
The truth is that the wondrous luminous true mind is in fact the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind, and vice versa. Earlier Buddhist masters said that the six roots and the wondrous luminous true mind are “of one taste but not of one body.”
The wondrous luminous true mind does not produce or distinguish among the six roots [so they are of one taste]. Yet from beginningless time, each faculty has developed its own function and cannot be regarded as a single unified whole. For example, one cannot use the ears to see or the tongue to hear. They are not the same “body,” yet they all are the wondrous luminous true mind.