Surangama Sutra Exposition
by Living Buddha Lian Sheng, Grandmaster Sheng-Yen Lu
The Buddha teaches us not to rely on the eyes for seeing, but to go beyond darkness and light; not to rely on the ears for hearing, but to go beyond motion and stillness; and not to rely on the nose for smelling, but to go beyond fragrance and stench. He also teaches us how to enter meditation, observe the inner light, and hear the inner sound.
“Ananda, these six roots, because of that lucid awareness, possess a clarity that seeks to illuminate—yet losing that subtle essence, they adhere to falsehoods and emit light. Therefore, now, apart from darkness and light, you have no seeing-substance.
“Apart from motion and stillness, there is originally no hearing-substance. Without passage and obstruction, the olfactory nature does not arise.”
The wondrous luminous true mind, like the clear blue sky, has always been there. Due to a deluded thought, it produces the six roots together with all their functions: the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the nose to smell, and so on. These delusions adhere to the wondrous luminous true mind, obscuring and enshrouding it like clouds floating on the sky.
Originally, the bright wondrous luminous true mind was the master, yet the deluded mind mistakes external luminosity as the false master.
The Buddha states that without brightness and darkness the eyes have no function; without movement of the sound wave, the ears have no function; when the nose is neither open nor blocked, there is no sense of smell.
The Buddha teaches us that by closing off the eyes, ears, nose, and all the six roots, one closes off external stimuli. In this way, one can focus inwardly.
First, one trains in one-pointedness, by either focusing on a single point, such as the red tip of an incense stick, listening to a single sound such as mantra chanting or flowing water, or the scent of incense and so on. Then, from one-pointedness, one gradually trains to enter the state of “zero,” where the activities of all six roots cease. Only this is true meditation. Then buddhanature, or the wondrous luminous true mind, will manifest itself.
Meditation is a state between wakefulness and sleep. The Buddha teaches us to detach ourselves from our senses, to close off all external sensations and perceptions, and instead, to observe the inner light and hear the inner sound.
Chinese YouTube