47. Surangama Sutra Sextet Coda: Fifty False States

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Warning, practicers:
Spawn of the Five Aggregates —
Don’t be fooled again!

The original plan for this podcast series comprised a condensed commentary in six segments. This turned out to be impossible, given the scope and importance of the teachings therein. I decided to add a coda, as is often done in musical composition, to include the appendix on Buddha’s warnings to practitioners, or “practicers.” I find them compelling and affirming, in terms of my own experience in zazen. The last section boasts the cheerful title, “Fifty Demonic States of Mind,” with a similarly comforting subtitle, “Dangers May Arise with Advanced Practice.”

Here we are, trying to encourage people to practice meditation, and suddenly we have graphic content alerts. Buddha himself cautions that you may find these experiences unsettling, and your interpretation of them can lead to disaster. The fifty mainly warn you to avoid getting stuck, thinking are enlightened.

This puts me in mind of Carl Bielefeldt’s “Dogen’s Manuals of Meditation,” a line-by-line comparison of the two extant versions of Fukanzazengi, and the Chinese version from which he adapted the text. One line he chose not to use in his translation for his Japanese students says something like “As the path grows higher, demons flourish.” Bielefeldt speculates that Master Dogen wanted to accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative. To say nothing about mister in-between.

Finally we get to the good stuff, Buddha’s descriptions of various experiences that may occur at the far reaches of meditation, when the barriers of discriminating sense faculties he has been detailing begin to break down. These are grouped as Ten Demonic States of Mind associated with each Aggregate, namely Form, Sense-Perception, Cognition, Mental Formations, and the Aggregate of Consciousness. In conclusion, he reminds us once again that all five arise from delusion.

We will not be able to go into all fifty of these demonic states of mind. But I would like to touch on a few that caught my attention many years ago. When I first read the Surangama Sutra, I was gobsmacked by its direct relevance to zazen, and its descriptive power, illustrating the analogy of the Zen Mind to the limitations of one-sided interpretation of the nature of the senses. When I came to the fifty warnings, however, I could see that several of them dealt with issues that had arisen for me in my practice of Zen, and that have since come up with many of my students, in dharma dialog. This section features an unusual description of Buddha’s behavior at the beginning. Buddha rises from his seat, seeming ready to bring the dialog to a close, but then apparently changes his mind and reseats himself, saying:

You who still need instruction, you Hearers of the Teaching and you Solitary Sages, have now dedicated yourselves to attaining a great awakening — the supreme and wondrous enlightenment. I have now taught you the right method for practice. But you are still not aware of the subtle demonic events that can occur when you undertake the practices of calming the mind and contemplative insight. If you do not purify your mind, you will not be able to recognize demonic states as they arise. You will not find the right path, and you will fall into the error of wrong views.

He points out that “Demons may arise within you from the five aggregates. If your mind is not clear when this happens, you may well take a burglar to be your own child. Or you may feel satisfied with a small accomplishment, as did that monk who was ignorant of the Dharma. Having only reached the level of the fourth dhyāna, he made the false claim that he had become a sage. When his reward of celestial life had run its course and the signs of decay had appeared, he vilified the Arhats’ enlightenment, and so he was reborn in the Unrelenting Hell.” So the stakes could not be higher.

Buddha insures Ananda and the others that the demons have limited power, and cannot harm you unless you let them. The power of your meditation will protect you from possession. Then he takes us through the five Aggregates in order, outlining 10 such demonic episodes that may occur in each. The first, in Form, is that you may have an out-of-body experience. Then he issues a boilerplate admonition:

This state is called “the essential awareness being able to emerge into one's surroundings.” What the practitioner has gained is temporary. It does not indicate that he has become a sage. There is nothing unwholesome about his state unless he thinks that he is now a sage. If he does think he is a sage, he will be open to a host of deviant influences.

This introduces the essential warning: Don’t be fooled. You are not done yet. Keep on keepin’ on. He goes on to cover such events as hearing voices preaching the Dharma, cosmic visions of all sorts, seeing in the dark, the cessation of all sensation, clairvoyance and clairaudience at great distances, visions of oneself as a “good and wise teacher,” and a chameleon-like ability to change form and appearance. And all this, just in the Skandha of Form.

Next, transcendence of the skandha of Sense-Perception elicits depressive and manic reactions, confusion, the superiority complex, and/or becoming overjoyed and arrogant, sometimes arising simultaneously. Unchecked, these inevitably lead to erroneous and extreme behaviors. Such views as illusory infinite serenity, that there is no existence after death, and license to indulge all levels of satisfaction of desires may follow, along with indulging in the power to sway others. All end badly.

In Cognition, the litany of afflicted states continues, with dire consequences, even though one is now free of harmful anxiety, which brings about a state of wonder. It is as if Buddha is reporting recent scandals in televangelism, and misguided leadership of various sects and cults, including some Zen lineages. In every case, gravely misinterpreting implications of meditative states leads to reckless and lawless behavior. Misidentification of self or others as Bodhisattvas or Buddhas appearing in the world is familiar, as in the false prophets of other religions. Claims to enlightenment, and guaranteeing success or salvation to others, at a price, are contemporary examples. Buddha faults the power of wielding mass hypnosis, owing to delusional charisma, or gravitas, stemming from deep meditation.

Various paranormal powers, siddhis in Sanskrit, such as reading minds, knowing previous lives, levitating, walking on water, passing through walls, performing magic or miracles, etc., may indeed be achievable in meditation, but they are not to be valued or pursued. They are no more miraculous than the ordinary senses, and may lead to severe psychic dysfunction, including overweening infatuation for one’s teacher, and visions of living together in a better world. Think David Koresh, or Jim Jones.

Introducing Mental Formations, Buddha makes a startling statement:

Ānanda, when a good person who has been practicing samādhi has reached the end of the aggregate of cognition, the usual cognitive processes involved in dreaming will disappear from his mind. For him there will no longer be any difference between waking and sleeping… He will view all the phenomena in the world — the mountains, the rivers, and everything else — as mere reflections that briefly appear in a clear mirror… Only the true essence of consciousness remains.”

This resonates throughout the teachings of Zen, as in Dongshan’s Precious Mirror Samadhi, wherein “Form and reflection behold each other.” This section also gets into first causes of existence and life, and the ending of life; falling into the mistake of non-causality; denying the principles of rebirth and evolution across species; or that the mind and experience are everlasting, eternal. Or conversely, that all comes to a permanent end. Or that some entities are permanent, others impermanent, e.g. that your mind is permanent and everlasting but the beings within it are not. The same delusion applies to whole worlds. After confusing eternity versus impermanence, comes infinity versus finiteness, e.g. of one’s own mind. Such speculations regarding spacetime rarely result in anything positive. As Master Dogen says in Genjokoan:

Similarly, if you examine the myriad things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self.

Forewarned is forearmed. The special confusion that may arise in wannabe sages is: “If someone seeking to learn his methods should come to ask him about his theories, he will reply: ‘I both come into being and cease to be. I exist and yet do not exist. I both grow and diminish.’ What he says is so confusing that no one can understand what he means.” Matsuoka Roshi once commented, with great irony, that, “There are people who can talk themselves out of existence.”

The good news is that we have the capacity to penetrate to this inner sanctum of reality; the bad news is that we can misinterpret it based upon self-striving desires. Buddha becomes minutely descriptive:

… he will be able to perceive the origin that is common to all lives. This origin will appear to him as a subtle, glimmering, vibrating mirage. This is the ultimate point, the pivotal point, at which the faculties and their objects meet… He will have reached the end of the aggregate of mental formations. He will be able to transcend the turbidity of individual beings… None of the ten kinds of celestial demons will have any chance to influence him.

Master Dogen points to this same inflection point in Jijuyu Zammai; Self-Fulfilling Samadhi: “In stillness, mind and object merge in realization and go beyond enlightenment.” Mental Formations also representing the underlying motives, intent and desire impelling our behavior, at this point one sits in zazen with no identifiable reason for doing so. It is the “…making effort without aiming at it… sitting without relying on anything” of Master Dogen’s Zazenshin, Lancet for Zazen. This being liberated from our demons is what is meant by becoming “unassailable” in Zen.

However, even at this point the practitioner may be assailed by internal confusions, such as denying causation, for example that of all beings coming and going, or for the ending of life, or distortions of the principle of rebirth, all of which are clarified in full awakening. And on again reprising confusions that yet may arise regarding the Four Elements, as well as the sixth, seventh and eighth consciousnesses, the 10 dhyanas, entering nirvana, etc. Terminal confusion. Again, too soon. Going to hell.

Finally transcending Mental Formations, our intrepid explorer enters the aggregate of Consciousness, or consciousness only, having left the other four skandhas far behind:

… when a good person who has been practicing samādhi has reached the end of the aggregate of mental formations, he may observe, within the clear light in the deep recesses of his mind, the vibrations which are the shared foundation of the nature of all beings in the world. Then suddenly the tiny hidden knot that holds together the intricate net of karma of his individual being during his many lifetimes will burst open, and he will lose his connection to the vibrating resonances of that karmic net.

Free at last, free at last! Sounds a bit like string theory, those “vibrating resonances,” the foundation of all beings. Then Buddha describes the shift in awareness in no uncertain terms:

He will now be on the verge of experiencing a great illumination in the sky of nirvana. It is as if he is gazing at the pale light of dawn in the eastern sky just as the rooster has finished crowing… The duality of observer and observed will have ceased… The pale light that he observed will not fade, and it will illuminate what has heretofore been hidden. This is the region of the aggregate of consciousness.

This recalls Master Dogen’s later expression in Jijuyu Zammai, that “When even for a moment you express the Buddha’s seal in the three actions by sitting upright in Samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha’s seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment.” Note that here we finally witness the “tiny hidden knot” of the net of karma bursting open, liberating us from entanglement. “The pale light that [s]he observed will not fade, and it will illuminate what has heretofore been hidden. This is the aggregate of consciousness.” We know that Dogen read the Surangama, but suspect that his effusive description, so similar to Buddha’s, is based on his own direct experience, not mere parroting.

The last about illuminating what has been hidden reminds me of an odd statement by Matsuoka Roshi, that “The light by which you see things comes from you.” This internal light pops up from time to time in the literature, but never as explicitly described as in the original mention here by Buddha himself. But wait, there’s still more:

At this point, although he has already done away with the coming into being and perishing of mental formations, he has not yet completed the journey to the wonder of his essential nature, which is nirvana. However, he will be able to merge his perceptual faculties so that they can function as one or function interchangeably.

This claim is attested to by a stanza in Sekito Kisen’s Sandokai, Harmony of Sameness and Difference. “All the objects of the senses transpose and do not transpose. Transposing they are linked together; not transposing each keeps its place.” It is as if the senses overlap like a Venn diagram, and we are all syntesthetes at base.

But alas, even at this point the advanced practitioner can fall into insidious beliefs leading to rebirth, for example that his consciousness is immortal, becoming “one of the adherents of the doctrines of the god Ishvara,” which I take to be the equivalent of some theism’s notion of the immortal soul. Or that awareness is universal, or that the elements are the source of existence, and thus appropriate to make “ritual offerings to water and to fire.” These beliefs were apparently touted by other teachers of the day.

Running down another litany of such erroneous interpretations of the teachings, Buddha mentions one that may apply most directly to us today, which is mistaking realization of the cessation of suffering as the end goal, missing the whole point of the Bodhisattva Path. “His companions will be ignorant members of the Sangha and supremely arrogant practitioners.” We have been witness to this effect, in the propagation of Zen to America. This is one form of Trungpa Rinpoche’s “spiritual materialism.”

Then following reassurances that in spite of all these barriers to overcome, everybody has the capability of transcending them, Buddha once again recommends the Surangama Mantra, and a cautionary tale:

If they cannot learn to recite it from memory, teach them to write it out and to place it in their meditation halls or else to wear it close to their bodies. Then no demon will be able to disturb them… You should hold in the greatest reverence all the teachings of the Thus-Come Ones of the ten directions. These are my final instructions.

Final instructions? Ananda summarizes briefly his eidetic memory, and Buddha recapitulates much of what has gone before, including detailing the delusory nature of each of the Five Aggregates in turn:

The Five Aggregates Arise from Delusion… In the subtle, true, wondrous understanding, in the fundamental, awakened, perfect purity, no death or rebirth remains, nor any defilement, not even space itself. All these arise out of deluded mental activity… The notion that things come into being due to causes and conditions and the notion that they come into being on their own are mere speculations born of beings' deluded minds.

Finally, finally, Buddha closes with “The Merit of Teaching the Śūraṅgama Dharma,” similar to plugging the Surangama Mantra earlier in the program. In sum, the merit is incalculable.

Perhaps one of the most directly relevant implications to contemporary Zen practitioners, as outlined in the Surangama Sutra, is that the process of zazen progresses through the aggregates one at a time, leaving behind the prior, which “have already ceased functioning.” It suggests that we segue from sitting in the realm of Form to that of Sensation, then Sensation-only, leaving Form behind. Then on through Perception and Formations until we find ourselves sitting in Consciousness only, transcending the prior four. You could say that Consciousness is the uber-aggregate, subsuming the others, in that we are conscious of Form, conscious of Sense-Perception, of Cognition, Mental Formations, and ultimately conscious of consciousness itself. But there comes a turning point in which even consciousness no longer obtains.

In the original translation of the Hannya Shingyo into English that we used at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, was the concluding line at the end of the long list of “given emptiness,” no this, no that, which said “… until we come to no consciousness also.” This is the singularity of Zen practice, that end-state that is not at all a state, but entry into the inconceivable. The point of awareness in which we cross the even horizon, and all known laws of reality collapse inward of their own mass. At this point, all such words as “awareness” and “inward” require quotation marks. The Way is beyond language, as well as concept. Please allow your mind to surrender to this possibility, especially when you are in meditation.