It’s 2020 and I want to wish you a productive year ahead, accomplishing whatever you set before yourself as a goal, and that your days be filled with love, health, beauty, and constant tranquillity of mind.
I have been working to organize all the material that I have collected from traditions around the world on their use of inner spontaneous sound as a support for meditation practices, and I have begun to publish it in the “Traditions Speak” section of Tranquillity’s Secret on Medium.
I am also happy to say that there are now over one thousand followers of Tranquillity’s Secret, a huge increase from last March when I first announced that there were a hundred followers. In addition, over the last three months, readers have spent over 53,000 minutes reading the material, averaging 118 readers per day. These are very encouraging numbers.
I recently published approximately 200 pages of the Surangama Sutra in the Traditions section. I am attaching the table of contents for the complete sutra below, with Friend’s links that will allow you to access all the material on Medium in case you are not a paying member.
The Surangama Sutra is important for a number of reasons, but most especially because it gives a detailed presentation of Avalokitasvara Bodhisattva’s Inner Spontaneous Sound Meditation, which the sutra asserts is necessarily used by all Buddhas, and brings all other sincere beings to enlightenment. The sutra gives very clear instructions for an effective meditation practice, as well as presenting clear distinctions between false mind and true mind, the need to integrate the Precepts (there is a blistering critique of how eating meat undermines the attainment of liberation from the cycle of rebirths in the percept about not killing), and very importantly, the dangers of taking any conceptual ideas as being real.
And you may be wondering why I spell this Bodhisattva’s name as I do. If so, the first article from the Traditions section that you might be interested in is: The Name Avalokitasvara (clickable link), because it Illustrates the process by which knowledge is lost or degenerates over time, using this bodhisattva’s name (both his Indian name, as well as her Chinese name, Kuan Yin, and its variants) as an example.
The Surangama Sutra serves as a segue from the three preceding articles in this section, starting with a discussion of Manjushri’s Recommendation (clickable link) in the sutra for the use of Avalokitasvara’s practice method. This is followed by an article, Inner Spontaneous Sound Meditation Practices (clickable link), that explains the connection between the use of inner spontaneous sound and the direct recognition of the nature of Mind. The final article of the three details the Mystery of The Four Elements Sound Practice once found in the practice of Dzogchen, showing clearly how the use of inner spontaneous sound has fallen away as we humans have become more and more distracted and confused, further distancing us from the possibility of recognizing our true nature.
I will be shortly adding detailed material from the Chinese Ch’an Buddhist tradition, including teachings of the enlightened ancestor, Xu Yun, who died in 1959 at the venerable age of 119 years of age. This material serves to clarify, through an exposition of the “Hua T’ou” method that is the heart of Ch’an Buddhist practice, what exactly the Surangama Sutra meant when Avalokitasvara described his practice as “Turning Inward the Hearing to Hear the Self-Nature.” Xu Yun also explains why today’s Hua T’ou practice is nothing like the original — again because we humans today are much more distracted and confused.
I think you will find the combined testimony of the two traditions of Buddhism on the subject of these practices adds a great clarity in how to actually use inner spontaneous sound.
Finally, given recent events — as recent as this past week — I decided to publish an article I had written last year (but held off publishing) explaining what Great Responsiveness (mahākarunā) is, and its relation to Great Love (mahāmaitrī). I present this material as a way for us to move forward in response to what is now referred to as “late capitalism” and its crisis of global ecocide. Great Responsiveness is the fruit of these practices and has been my motivation all along. The article is entitled, For The Good Of All (clickable link).
I’ll leave you with a short poem and the table of contents for the Surangama Sutra. I hope you will find all of this of value.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I wish you all the best.
James
The Prize
Fate is the circumstances of your birth,
Karma is the tendencies of your character,
Luck is the freedoms that you have been blessed with,
Effort is the grateful respect you manifest,
Insights are the roadsigns that you find upon the path,
Love, Benevolence, and Peace are the directions you follow,
Happiness is the gift that your presence brings,
Inspiration is what you leave behind,
These ten are remarkable achievements.
👉 Surangama Sutra
Introduction to the Surangama Sutra
Preface By Dwight Goddard To The Buddhist Bible
The Circumstances Of The Teaching
Chapter One:
Chapter One — False Mind versus True Mind
Questions That Arise in View of the Sole Reality of Essential Mind
Relations of Perceptions to the Four Great Elements
Chapter Two:
Questions By Ananda As To How To Attain Enlightenment
The Defiling Presence Of All Conceptions
Spiritual Experiences Of Highest Bodhisattvas
The Method Of Avalokitasvara Bodhisattva
Importance of Keeping the Precepts