The Complete Instructions for the Practice of the Buddha’s Secret Path

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There is a text that explains what the Buddha was doing as he sat under the Bodhi tree with the intent to become enlightened. Yes, he was meditating. But do you know how he was meditating? It is important to know this today, because everything, as we all know with complete certainty now, is changing. And Buddha left an explanation for what we need to do now in order to follow his path. When he was asked what this teaching should be called, he gave it the name: The Complete Instructions for the Practice and Realizations of the Buddha’s Secret Path. Today, it is known as the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, which means the “Heroic Progress” Sutra. This name refers to the efficacy of the Buddha’s secret path.

But for over twelve-hundred years, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra has been attacked, denigrated, slandered, and misrepresented as a forgery by those who have put great effort into poisoning the well of profound wisdom that this teaching of Buddha brings. These naysayers have been most effective within Tibetan Buddhism where this sutra has never been taught — until just recently — and you should know why so that your heart cannot be hardened against this sublime and timely teaching of the Buddha.

As Prof. Ron Epstein, who was part of the English translation team at the Buddhist Text Translation Society working under the auspices of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, explains:

For over a thousand years the Shurangama Sutra has been held in great esteem in the Mahayana countries of East Asia. In China the Sutra was ranked in popularity and importance with the Lotus, Avatamsaka and Prajna Paramita Sutras; it was also accorded imperial favor.

Yet, in Tibetan Buddhism, it is unknown, except by scholars, who either dismiss it because they were told it was a forgery, or who actively denigrate it as a forgery because ‘everyone knows it’s a forgery’. But as will become apparent to you, there is very little actual scholarship and much acrimony in these opinions that are held by otherwise bright people. To put it bluntly, these opinions of scholars are based upon a meme that has persisted for over a millennium.

The teaching of Buddha within this sutra is literally the most important tool ever created — because it provides us with the means to actually save ourselves from our most damaging behavior and thinking. It explains in detail how Siddhārtha Gautama became enlightened — necessarily on his own, without the guidance of a teacher — and it takes us step-by-step to a direct understanding of reality and the nature of our mind, while helping us change our most problematic behaviors, which today, have led us to impending global environmental collapse, and perhaps global ecocide.

The sutra also explains exactly how there will be some who will try to control us at this time in order to misdirect our efforts to their benefit, and against our collective-interest. They will specifically do this by leading us away from this teaching.

How did this happen? As I will show you, the Buddha explains in this sutra how we can become confused about his teachings, thinking that all we need to do is listen to his words with reverence, yet not make any effort to put his wisdom into practice in our lives. Many people satisfy themselves in this way, and take pride in their knowledge of Buddhist concepts and names. Even some scholars, who should know better, fall into this ego trap.

But see what this sutra says about that:

One of the main themes of the work is that in itself knowledge of the Dharma, that is the teachings of the Buddha, is worthless unless accompanied by meditational ability, or samadhi power. Also stressed is the importance of moral precepts as a foundation for the Path. These themes are established in the work’s prologue in which the erudite Ananda, who remembered everything the Buddha taught but never bothered to sit down and meditate, succumbs to an evil spell and is on the verge of being seduced by a prostitute, when he is saved by a mantra recited by the Buddha.¹

How this campaign against the truth came to be — by those directly attacked by this sutra — is an interesting story, which I am about to tell. It starts with a lie, and as most good stories go, with an evil villain. Only this one was real, not just another Hollywood creation. He lived in the 8th Century in Tibet, and his name was Langdarma.

Rather than recount the story in sequential order, I am going to frame it as a series of vignettes in response to the things said, and done, by those who, still today, wish to harm the reputation of this most wonderful tool — the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. I call them the Skeptics — those that oppose the truth.

And before you dismiss this story as just a history lesson, and therefore of no interest to you, you should know that there is something new here in this story, something very important, as it is evidence that undermines the slander, lies, and poison used by those who wish to harm this sutra — and those that meekly follow these naysayers by unquestioningly accepting what they say.

This evidence lay forgotten and overlooked for hundreds of years until it was found by someone with a good heart filled with compassion for all beings in the face of what is coming, and who provided that evidence to me. In light of this evidence, which is confirmable by anyone with the desire to see it for themselves, and in light of the complete lack of any justification for what has, and is, passed off as ‘critical scholarship’ that calls into question the authenticity of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, this controversy is over. This conflict is now behind us, except for those most vehemently opposed to the insights and hope it brings us.

These scholars are small in number, but they prey, still today, on the widespread ignorance about this wonderful teaching of Buddha — within Tibetan Buddhism. You can identify them by their incessant slandering of this teaching and the technological help it can give us — you see, it’s not just the text itself that they attack as being inauthentic, it is the meditation practice of all the Buddhas that it contains, and explains at length, that they try to keep from us, for it is that which can help us overcome our worst behaviors, and perhaps, if enough of us follow the Buddha’s true path, actually put an end to our destruction of each other, and of all sentient life on this planet.

These skeptics will not even be able to see the evidence of its veridical nature that this text presents, so they won’t read and verify it, being content to continue repeating their slanderous opinions against this sutra. They are deplorable, yes, but also, they are a sad reminder to us all, that it is easy — especially today — to lose our way thinking that knowledge alone can save us. If only it was that easy! Some examples from the sutra:

When Ānanda saw the Buddha, he bowed and wept in sorrow. He regretted that, since time without beginning, he had devoted himself to erudition but had not fully developed his practice on the Path. Respectfully and repeatedly he asked the Buddha to explain for him the elementary steps that lead to attainment in the wondrous practices of calming the mind, contemplative insight, and meditation in stillness — practices through which the Thus-Come Ones from all ten directions had become fully awakened.

The Buddha said to Ānanda, “the reason why so many practitioners in the world do not succeed in putting an end to outflows and becoming Arhats — though they may have passed through all nine of the successive stages of Samādhi — is that they are attached to distorted mental processes that come into being and then cease to be, and they mistake these processes for what is real. That is why, even though you have become quite learned, you have not become a sage.

(Ānanda said,) Ever since I followed the Buddha and resolved to enter the monastic life, I have relied on the Buddha’s awe-inspiring spirit. I have often thought, “There is no reason for me to toil at spiritual practice,” because I just expected that the Thus-Come One would graciously transfer some of his samādhi to me. I never realized that in fact he simply could not stand in for me, in body or in mind. Thus I abandoned my original resolve, and though my body has indeed entered the monastic life, my mind has not entered the Path. I am like that poor son who ran away from his father. Today I realize that, though I am learned, I might as well not have learned anything if I do not practice, just as someone who only talks of food never gets full.⁠²

Such individuals as these that substitute knowledge for actual attainments are ghosts who will forever wander the confines of their diseased minds, relishing all the ‘beautiful’ things they find there, while being forever blind to what is real.

And they will continue to poison the minds of fools who listen to them. But it is these fools who have accepted what the skeptics have slanderously said about this sutra — without ever seeing if it was true for themselves — that may be saved from their unhappy ignorance, if they can be led to the truth and made to see it. And it is for them, that I have been directed to write this information down and disseminate it.

You may find the word “fool” to be unkind, so allow me to expand on my meaning in using it. First off, I understand that scholars’ work is always built upon the work of other scholars, both contemporary and those that preceded them, and so it would seem that I am being very unkind calling any scholar a fool simply because they never bothered to research the authenticity of the Surangama Sutra themselves — especially given the widespread understanding in Tibetan Buddhism that “everyone knows it is a forgery.”

But here’s the reason why that isn’t acceptable in this case: for while the Surangama Sutra has been believed to be a forgery among scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, the very same sutra “has been held in great esteem in the Mahayana countries of East Asia,” as I quoted above. So, any scholar that pays attention to their field of study should be aware that the esteem and popularity of this text in various other parts of East Asia strongly indicates that there is something amiss in “what everyone knows to be true.”

And yes, I am sure that they are all too busy with other, more important work, to bother to go back and re-examine a question that has been ‘settled’ for so long that no one can even remember what the issues were. Ok, that’s acceptable. But times change and new information comes to light, and a scholar should always keep an open mind, and never, ever, try to suppress information, which is exactly what is happening today — we are moving into a time of extreme suffering, this text specifically talks about a specific meditation practice that will help one and all get through this suffering, and there is a prophetic text that has been discovered in the papers of the most highly respected Tibetan lama of the last century which specifically points to this same meditation practice as a salve for the suffering of this specific period of time, and all of this is being intentionally suppressed by some skeptics, dismissed out-of-hand by others, and doesn’t even hit the radar screen of the rest because it has been suppressed or ignored. This is kindergarten scholarship.

I have spoken elsewhere in this book about how science only advances “one funeral at a time” — which is an infamous quote from Max Plank, the famous 20th Century physicist, which has recently been confirmed to be accurate by scientists. The point is, ‘positions’ on academic subjects are held as firmly as a modern army holds a captured hill, and that is the reason why some scholars are so intent on killing this information. Such behavior does not belong within the study of Tibetan Buddhism because it completely goes against Buddha’s teachings on not holding attachments to things, and certainly goes against Buddha’s prescription to always “see for yourself if this is true, or not.”

So, yes, those who don’t notice the incongruity of a supposedly forged sutra being held in high esteem and being widely studied in related Mahayana schools of Buddhism, and who don’t take the time to examine new information, especially if their refusal is based upon what “everyone knows to be true,” and even go to the extent of suppressing and denigrating work of one of their own most revered lamas, refusing to acknowledge what is at stake, are fools. And fools are leading us to our lemming-lunge to obscurity.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 1: The first claim of the skeptics is that this sutra is a forgery, created in China by Fang Yong, Tang Dynasty Empress Wu Zetian’s former minister, court regulator, and state censor.

The Chinese documentation for this sutra says that it was translated during the Tang Dynasty. The first catalogue that recorded the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was that of Zhisheng, a monk in Tang China. He gave two accounts of its translation: the first, which appeared in The Kaiyuan Era Catalog of the Buddhist Tripitaka, said that the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was translated in 713 CE by Venerable Master Huai Di and an unnamed Indian monk. The second, more detailed record, which appeared in the “Continuation to the History of the Translation of Buddhist Sutras Mural Record,” said the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was translated in May 705 CE by Shramana Paramiti from Central India, edited by Bodhisattva-precepts Disciple Fang Yong of Qing He, who was Empress Wu Zetian’s former minister, court regulator, and state censor, and reviewed by Shramana Meghashikara from Uddiyana, and finally, it was certified by Shramana Huai Di from Nan Luo Monastery on Luo Fu Mountain. “Shramana” (Śramaṇa in Sanskrit) means “one who labours, toils, or exerts themselves for some higher or religious purpose.”

It will be useful to expand on this latter detailed record in order to understand the complexity of the translation process so that we can understand the role that each of the individuals just listed had in the work itself. This will help us understand the roles of the individuals who were responsible for the Tibetan translation of this sutra that we will discuss later in this chapter.

Reviewed by Shramana Meghashikara from Uddiyana:
When Dharma Master Paramiti was conducting the translation task, Shramana Meghashika of Uddiyana was his assistant. Uddiyana was a place in India. It used to be an imperial garden. Meghashika means “Able to Subdue”, which indicates that he could subdue afflictions, demon-obstacles, or anything of the sort. Having left Uddiyana for China, Meghashika revised the translation, paying particular attention to what expressions in Chinese would be used. He was one of the highest Dharma Masters to take part in the work.

Certified by Shramana Huai Di from Nan Luo Monastery on Luo Fu Mountain:
This Dharma Master was extremely well-educated. He concentrated on the study of the teachings of the sutras, so he was very clear about the doctrines contained in them. Because he also understood Sanskrit, he was the Dharma Master appointed to certify the translation.

Since both Dharma Master Paramiti and Dharma Master Meghashika understood Sanskrit thoroughly, why did someone else from China certify the translation? Although these two Dharma Masters had mastered both Sanskrit and Chinese, they had just come to China, and it was feared that they did not completely understand Chinese, so someone from China was called upon to certify the translation. This was Dharma Master Huai Di.

Edited by Bodhisattva-precepts Disciple Fang Yong of Qing He, former Censor of State, concurrently Attendant and Minister, and Court Regulator:
The Bodhisattva precepts should be taken by both monastics and laity. The Sutra that sets forth the Bodhisattva precepts, the Brahma Net Sutra, says, “Whether as king of a country or as a great official, when one is initiated into one’s position, one should take the Bodhisattva precepts.”

Because Fang Yong understood the Buddhadharma, he took the Buddha as his father and the Bodhisattvas as his brothers. The Bodhisattva Precepts consist of Ten Major and Forty-eight Minor Precepts. After Fang Yong took the Bodhisattva Precepts, he referred to himself as a disciple.

In the past, he had been a Censor of State, whose duty was to keep watch of state affairs and criticize any misconduct. “Of State” affirms his official authority. The text says “former,” meaning that at the time he edited the Shurangama Sutra translation, he was no longer in that position.

Concurrently means that he held two positions: Attendant and Minister. These are names from the Prime Minister mansion. As attendant, he looked after the Emperor’s affairs and carried out imperial commands. As minister, he was involved in the government of the country and in that capacity issued his own commands. His duty as Court Regulator was to make sure the affairs of imperial court were in equilibrium.

His family name was Fang; his given name was Yong. Yong means “perfectly fused.” He was from Qing He. “Edited by” means he used his brush to write out the text. He polished the language, making it even more eloquent, so that the style and technical perfection of the writing is of unsurpassed excellence.

Why? Official Fang Yong was a great writer, an extremely well-educated man. That he himself, with his own brush, polished this text makes the Shurangama Sutra text particularly fine. If you wish to study Chinese, you can memorize the Shurangama Sutra; it is a paragon of Chinese composition.⁠³

Take a look at this: There were three dharma masters and one layperson listed. With regard to these four people, we can use the four-steps in translation to explain it:

Translation: This is the initial translation, or the preliminary translation.

Review: This is to correct or modify the translated text.

Refinement: This is to polish the text.

Certification: This is to authenticate the text.

These four steps are consistent with all translation processes, even modern ones. Dharma Master Huai Di was the certifier at the time. It was uncertain that he knew Sanskrit. However, he could certify that the meanings of the translated Chinese text were completely accurate. At that time, Fang Yong was a very well-educated scholar, a high official and a noble person. He had a high social status, he was erudite and he believed in the Buddha. Because of these, he was also willing to join in and investigate the Buddhadharma together. Do you see the point of why Fang Yong was needed to do the text polishing? This refinement was not due to any issue of trust or distrust, accuracy or inaccuracy. Rather, it was Fang Yong’s Buddhist faith, his good educational background, and his status being the same level as other high officials during that time that made him perfect for the job.⁠⁴

It is difficult to understand, or even assert, that Fang Yong alone could have forged this sutra, given the reputations of the three individuals who were responsible for the translation and certification of this text. It is hard to understand how someone, though a follower of Buddha who had taken the Bodhisattva Precepts, which are the rules of discipline that one must adhere to (more on this later) could have forged a document within which such sublime and profound doctrines were recorded. He even referred to himself as a disciple, not a master, and certainly not a realized being, as would be necessarily the case if he authored this document himself.

However, this attribution to Fang Yong is problematic for another reason.

You see, the mention of Fang Yong poses a chronological problem. According to the “Old Book of Tang,” Volume 7, Fang Yong was put in prison in January 705 CE because he was involved in a court struggle. He was then exiled from Luoyang to Guangxi Qinzhou in February, where he died in February. If the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was translated in 705 CE, the cooperation of Fang Yong is doubtful, and his forgery-making impossible, given the sheer size of the text. If the text was translated in 713 CE, Fang Yong had no chance to aid in the translation of the text, nor forge it, since he died in 705.

A possible solution to this problem though is to reflect on the size and complexity of this sutra and realize that it would have taken a significant amount of time to translate, edit, refine, and then certify it. Fang Yong’s fall from grace may have come at the end, rather than the beginning, of the translation effort, so he might have been available for some time in 704 to refine the text. But whether he tried to forge a new version of the text, is beyond doubt impossible simply because Dharma Master Huai Di certified it after Fang Yong’s death, and he would have seen the forgery immediately.

This whole affair is important because a dispute about this text arose later in the 8th century in Japan, so Emperor Kōnin sent Master Tokusei and a group of monks to China, to ask whether this book was a forgery or not. A Chinese upasaka, or layperson — note the lack of authority of this person — who was sweeping the courtyard of the monastery where they traveled to, to learn the truth about the sutra, told the head monk of the Japanese monastic delegation that the sutra had been forged by Fang Yong.

As Khenpo Sodargye of Larung Gar Tibetan Monastery in China related in his teachings on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra in Autumn 2019 — which was the first time in over a millennia that this sutra was taught by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher — the Japanese delegation had not made an appointment with the Abbot of the monastery, and they were not received by him on their arrival. As they were leaving, they met the gardener, and decided to ask him instead. This then became the ‘truth’ upon which the sutra’s apocryphal status as a forgery was first established. Clearly, the gardener’s response was based either upon misinformation, or an outright act of calumny. In any case, anyone who listens to a gardener on such matters is a fool. And yet, at its heart, this was the foundation for all the later slandering of this sutra.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 2: The second claim of the skeptics is that this sutra is not recorded in the Kangyur, that is, it is not canonical.

Here is where the evil one, Langdarma, comes into the story.

But first, I need to repeat what everyone knows is the case: There are two scrolls of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra found in the Tibetan Kangyur: scroll 9 and 10 (out of 10). These are, of course, in the Tibetan language, as the Kangyur (the collected translated texts recounting Buddha’s teachings) contains the Tibetan translations of most of the sutras of Indian Buddhism. The translations in the Kangyur are assumed to have (or had) Sanskrit originals from which they were translated, but there are a certain number of texts that were necessarily translated from other Indic languages and from Chinese translations, when no Indian original was available.

So why is it claimed that the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is not recorded in the Kangyur? Because, as the skeptics claim, the two parts that are there do not have a Sanskrit original, though there are other sutras in the Kangyur, such as the similarly named Śūraṅgama-samādhi Sūtra, that do not have a Sanskrit original, and yet, they are not slandered for being forgeries. You can see that the skeptics position is an effort to mislead us by telling a half-truth in a way that instills doubt and confusion in the minds of listeners.

Furthermore, the Surangama Mantra is there, translated from Sanskrit, and well attested to being authentic, and that accounts for another four scrolls of the 10, but for dubious reasons, it is held apart from the rest of the sutra so that they can slander the teachings contained within the other sections which directly undermine the basis of their authority. I will explain this as we go through the rest of this story.

Now back to Langdarma:

In his monumental text, “The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, Its Fundamentals And History,” Kabje Dudjom Rinpoche, begins his introduction with this short account of the players and what led to what in the Ninth Century:

Songtsen Gampo is revered in Tibet as the father of Tibetan civilization as we know it. He gave his people law and literacy, and improved technology and a new range of occult skills. Most of all, however, he gave them the basis for the growth of the universal religion of the Tathāgata, which reached it’s first fruition during the reign of Songsten Gampo’s descendent Trhisong Detsen. He and his grandson Relpacen generously sponsored the missionary work of Indian, Chinese and Central Asian Buddhist masters, who, in collaboration with a growing Tibetan Buddhist clergy, refined the literary Tibetan language into a precision instrument for the expression of the profound depths of scripture and commentary. Their achievement in translating, with astonishing accuracy, a vast literary corpus into Tibetan is certainly to be ranked among the great intellectual and spiritual monuments of mankind. Moreover, the Tibetan’s were not content to make of their new religion an intellectual exercise alone: yogin, monk and layman alike undertook to realize through meditative experience the perennial truth which the Buddha taught.

These new developments did not, however, meet with the approval of all factions of Tibetan society and a reaction set in. Relpacen was assassinated in 841 CE and his elder brother Langdarma, who detested Buddhism, ascended the throne. The latter persecuted the monastic establishments until, not long after, he himself was assassinated. The ensuing chaos culminated in the final collapse of the dynasty and the end of the Tibetan empire.

Despite the hardships, a few dedicated Tibetan monks did manage to keep their faith alive during that troubled age. Also, married yogins, who lived within the community and had suffered less in the persecutions, preserved all they could of Buddhist learning and law. By the mid-tenth century Buddhism was in an ascendent phase once more: Tibetans in search of the doctrine began to travel to Nepal and India for instructions, and, perhaps encouraged by the eastward spread of Islam and the resurgence of Hinduism in India, Indian Buddhist masters began to journey to Tibet to instruct enthusiastic young disciples, who lived in communities largely supportive of their spiritual endeavors.⁠⁵

As said above, Langdarma was assassinated himself “not long after,” but his damage endured for at least 70 years after his death. He was assassinated by the monk Lhalung Pelgi Dorje, a student of Padmasambhava, who was considered by the Tibetans to be the second historical Buddha because he was a fully realized being. The monk, Lhalung Pelgi Dorje, disguised himself as a Bönpo sorcerer in order to gain access to the evil monarch, who apparently preferred the Bön religion which had preceded Buddhism in Tibet. The monk took it upon himself to prevent the total eradication of Buddhism from Tibet, and by doing so, he saved Langdarma from the terrible karmic stain of having completely destroyed Tibetan Buddhism.

Concealing a bow and arrow underneath his flowing black robe, Dorje rode his white horse, which was smeared in charcoal, into Lhasa. He found his victim contemplating the inscription on a pillar near a temple. Taking aim, Dorje shot Langdarma through the heart and escaped to the riverbank. He reversed his robe so that only its white lining would be visible. Dorje spurred the horse into the river, washing away the charcoal. With this brilliant quick-change act, Dorje evaded capture.

He wasn’t the only one intending to kill Langdarma. But before I get to that, I should warn you that a few scholars today have been attempting to whitewash Langdarma’s actions, usually by relying on spurious translations of histories in order to prove the point that Langdarma was actually a faithful Buddhist.⁠⁶ For me, it is very telling that the monk, Lhalung Pelgi Dorje, disguised himself as a Bönpo sorcerer so that he could get close to Langdarma. Apparently, being a Buddhist monk would not have worked as well, which would be weird if Langdarma was a fervent Buddhist. Also, as stated in “The Treasury of Good Sayings — A Tibetan History of Bon,”

The bodyguards of the divinely born (Lang)Dar-ma were: the Bon-po of Me-nyag, rGyal-sum dPal-legs, and Se-bon Ye-shes-dpal.⁠⁷

So it seems farfetched to try to paint Langdarma as a Buddhist when he is walking around with two Bonpo bodyguards, especially given Lhalung Pelgi Dorje’s decision to disguise himself as a Bonpo sorcerer so that he could get close enough to the king to kill him.

There was another would-be ‘liberator’ of Langdarma who was named Nupcen Sangye Yeshe, and who was also a student of Padmasambhava, and was born in February 832 in the uplands of Dra in the Central Tibetan mountains. He had an immense impact on the survival, under Langdarma, of a major part of Tibetan Buddhism and its followers.

Nup, as he was called, was empowered as a master of secret mantra. During the reign of King Relpacen, Nup had been in the habit of traveling between India and Tibet. But when King Langdarma persecuted the teaching, he asked Nup:

“What power do you have?”

Nup replied: “Behold this power of mine, which comes from the recitation of a mere mantra!”

With his index finger he pointed to the sky, and the king saw a black iron scorpion as large as a yak, sitting nine stories above Nup’s pointed finger.

The king was terrified and said, “By all that is precious, I will not harm this mantric. Go practice your doctrine!”

Then Nup said, “Behold this power yet again!” And with his index finger he hurled a thunderbolt, which pierced the rock of the mountain opposite and smashed it to pieces.

Now the king was extremely terrified and afraid. He said to Nup, “I will harm neither you, nor your attendants.” And then he dismissed him. Thus it was by Nup’s kindness that the mantra adepts who wore the white rob and long, braided hair were unharmed [during Langdarma’s persecution].

Nup would not endure the suppression of the teaching by Langdarma, so, having collected many razor-sharp, wrathful mantras, he resolved to bring him to an end by means of the compassionate application of sorcery. But when the evil king was ‘liberated’ by Lhalung Pelgi Dorje, Nup concealed the wrathful mantras as treasures, lest they be misused.⁠⁸

This is how it came to pass that the teachings of the mantra tradition were saved, while those that fell outside of that tradition were less fortunate, during the persecution of Buddhism in Tibet by Langdarma:

In brief, when the doctrine was persecuted by Langdarma all the dialectical seminaries were destroyed, but the hermitages of the mantra tradition survived somewhat in mountainous ravines, caves, and so forth. For that reason, and in accord with the promise which Langdarma himself made to Nupcen, the mantrins were never harmed at all.⁠⁹

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, employing extensive dialectical (Hetu-vidya logic) and four-fold negation (catuṣkoṭi) in its presentation of the nature of mind, and what isn’t mind, was then obviously lost during the persecutions of Langdarma. This is the reason that it is not wholly contained in the Tibetan Kangyur. There is a full Tibetan translation, however, in the supplement to the “Narthang Kangyur” which is also known as the Peking (Beijing, China) Kangyur.

There is one more thought to add here, one that comes to me because of the nature of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s teachings, which is tantric/tathagatagarbha in its treatment. In the Tibetan history of Bön that I quoted from above in this vignette, it is stated (on page 103) that king Relpacen had forbade the translations of any tantras, except for the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. (And as I will talk about later, Buton, the respected 14th Century Tibetan translator, treated tantra texts as forgeries and thus excluded them from the Kangyur.) It may be the reason why only two scrolls of the sutra are extant today, and not simply because of the persecutions of Relpacen’s brother, Langdarma.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 3: The third claim of the skeptics is that this sutra is ‘too Chinese’

One recently touted academic paper that is presented as being a comprehensive collection of all the proof of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s inauthenticity is nothing of the sort. Instead, from it’s very title, “Another Look at the Pseudo-Śūraṃgama sūtra."⁠¹⁰ its author, James A. Benn, assumes the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is a forgery because ‘everyone knows it is’. “Pseudo” comes from Greek and means “false”. The author then goes on to show the Chinese cultural references that are in the Chinese translation of the sutra — positive proof, he says, that the sutra is of Chinese origin.

Apparently, this critic isn’t aware of the often stated truth that “translation is treason, or at best commentary,” and that in order to translate a text, it is necessary to use culturally relevant language to bring out the original’s intended meaning. We saw this in the story of the first translation of the sutra into Chinese (in Claim 1) where Shramana Meghashika was responsible for revising the translation, while paying particular attention to what expressions in Chinese would be used. Benn even goes so far as to change the wording of a section of the sutra’s text to show just how much the changed version parallels contemporary Chinese cultural ideas at the time of its translation. Which makes little sense if his goal in this paper is to show the Chinese origins of the words in the sutra, since he has to change the words that are actually in the sutra to make his point.

But most importantly, none of these scholars seem to understand that asserting, or refuting the geographic provenance of a sutra shows a complete ignorance of Mahayana Buddhism’s central tenet — that everything that manifests in the world is the activity of Buddha-nature, and this includes the Dharma teachings of Buddha. So when a later enlightened individual originates new teachings as expedient means to convey the Dharma’s meaning, it is still Buddha-Dharma, that is, teachings of Buddha. The Sanskrit word for this is “buddhavacana”which means “Buddha word.”

Unfortunately, there is no empowered authority who determines what is, or isn’t buddhavacana. Who could possibly determine this, unless they themselves were enlightened beings, after all. Scholars? Hardly.

I raise this point, because as we will see, two of the three people involved in the translation of the Surangama Sutra into Tibetan were, in fact, unquestionably enlightened beings.

So the ‘where and when’ provenance of a particular text are preoccupations of those with infirm minds who do not realize that all words are ultimately distractions. The only truth that can be found in them is the Wisdom-intent in their use to point the reader in the right direction, rather than ‘spelling it all out’ for the reader, as scholars seem to believe.

All these Dharma teachings are expedient means to show the way only, not to fill minds up with conceptual ideas that are never realized in practice — in fact, this is a major theme of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, and it is this that moves these skeptics to destroy its reputation.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 4: The fourth claim of the skeptics is that not even a single citation of this text can be found outside of Chinese-based sources, even in the few places among Tibetan writing where it is mentioned.

Who is it that cites a text within another text? Citing is a scholar’s tool for showing their learned ability to find resonances between texts, or outright copying/repetition between texts, or to give credit to other scholars whose own work they find either authoritative, or wrong and needing rebuttal. But sutras are teachings of Buddha. What need to refer to another text? To give himself credit? Read that last sentence again: “To give himself credit?” What self? What him? What credit? So this concern is an academic one only.

The Buddha doesn’t originate the teachings given — they are the manifestation of Buddha-nature. This claim of the skeptics shows their abject poverty of insight into the purpose of all these teachings. No wonder we need academics to tell us what is what, we have become so enamored of the words of teachings that we can no longer see the wisdom intent that gives rise to them, nor put them into practice to confirm their intent ourselves.

And in case my meaning is lost, we are so impressed with our ability to read important texts that we can buy on Amazon, or listen in via Zoom to scholars wax on about their latest translation of some ‘important text’, that we completely lose sight of the teaching — and the teacher, which is Buddha-nature, which is an intrinsic aspect of each of us.

These claims are made by fools who are so lost in the ocean of Dharma that they must try to tame it by tying down its surface waves, missing its profound depths. Or by skeptics who succeed in destroying the Dharma by emptying it of all meaning and replacing it with academic posturing and self pride.

It would be better to burn the texts and listen to the teacher within, if you do not have a competent teacher who can convey the wisdom intent of a text in their ‘own’ words — that is, able to give an enlightened manifestation of the Dharma by Buddha-nature originating as their voice. Otherwise, you are just listening to an academic lecture which you would be better off sleeping through.

And how do I justify these cutting words? Because these fools and mâras (that which puts an end to practice, for that is the effect they have) apparently believe that they are the authorities — not our precious teachers — of the Dharma. Read the public words of one such mâra:

“Right, I could care less about the authority of anyone, tulkus especially. As for Khenpos, the kind of training they receive is not training in text critical methodology. They have a different kind of training.”

That is Malcolm Smith, the critical scholar who I spoke of in the last chapter, discoursing on a public forum⁠¹¹ about his disdain for our precious teachers who are trained in the wisdom intent of the Dharma — and not just the words of the Dharma teachings. This is what Tibetan Buddhism is becoming because of the hubris of these fools and skeptics. Remember what Kabje Dudjom Rinpoche said, which I will quote here again:

Moreover, the Tibetan’s were not content to make of their new religion an intellectual exercise alone: yogin, monk and layman alike undertook to realize through meditative experience the perennial truth which the Buddha taught.

Where has this impulse to realize, through meditative experience, the perennial truth which the Buddha taught gone? It is lost amongst all the conceptual ideas lectured to us by the intellectuals who believe they alone know the truth.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 5: The fifth claim of the skeptics is that, although the text gets a mention by Buton, the respected 14th Century Tibetan translator, he does not state from which language it is translated, so his mention is not proof there was an Indian original of the sutra as some assert.

This is a rather dubious claim, since, as others have stated, the texts in the Kangyur are assumed to have been translated from Sanskrit originals. Buton’s comment that he believed that one of the two still existing scrolls may have been translated from Chinese, clearly accepts the other scroll as translated from Sanskrit, which is the default case of texts in the Kangyur. To believe otherwise is unsupportable nonsense.

Buton who was born in 1290, had many great teachers and became a well-known scholar and translator who established rules for translation efforts for centuries. After years of study,

… he began to teach and, apparently, proselytize. According to his disciple and biographer Rinchen Namgyel (1318–1388), Buton “overcame proponents of false and wicked views, including the Bön, by means of scriptural texts and reasoning, and converted them to Buddhism.” He gave ordination to a number of students, and began to compose his own works, assisted by his two disciples.

Interestingly, he is also well-known to have decided that he was an authority who could determine what is, or isn’t buddhavacana, that is, which were authentic texts, and which were not.

Buton famously excluded from his Kangyur the Nyingma tantras, which he considered to be inauthentic, which is to say, not the words of the Buddha. This claim was based on the inconsistently invoked Tibetan standard by which a purportedly translated scripture was deemed authentic only when an Indic original was attested. Both Tibetan and western scholars have suggested that Buton, working in an era of institutional prejudice against the Nyingma tradition, used the standard selectively.⁠¹²

The Nyingma tantras, of course, are a precious gift to all Tibetan Buddhists today. Luckily Buton’s misguided overreach of his self-recognized ability to discern what were true words of Buddha did not have a permanent effect on the recognition of the authenticity of those important tantras. He was not an enlightened being by any accounts, though he was a superlative scholar. But as we’ve seen, scholarship is not the correct basis for judging the words of a buddha — actual enlightenment is. It takes one, to know one, in other words.

The important point here for our story, though, is that Buton, who was clearly not shy about invoking the Tibetan standard of requiring an Indian original as proof of the authenticity of a text, did not invoke that standard against the two Surangama Sutra scrolls which were in the Kangyur. So instead of listening to skeptics and fools trying to dismiss Buton’s mention of this sutra — because any mention by Buton was otherwise authoritative — we can all rest assured that this sutra had a Sanskrit original.

Hopefully, the false claims and calumny against the Śūraṅgama Sūtra by those critical scholars today who believe they too are authorities of what is and is not authentic buddhavacana, though they are not an enlightened being — and recognized as such — will now and forevermore be dispelled.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 6: The sixth claim of the skeptics is that the Śūraṅgama Sūtra uses language, and says things, that are not found in any other sutra.

This is partially true. But the skeptics’ goal in raising this claim is to obfuscate the truth.

By calling out the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s notable differences from other Dharma teachings, they seek to have you believe that these different presentations are defective at best, or even completely wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is specifically directed to we who, today, are facing the greatest threat to humanity, and because of human’s intrusion into all ecosystems on this planet, to all sentient life on Earth, than ever was encountered before. The needs of our times require suitable means to convey the truth to us today.

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra is quite unique in the clarity of its vigorous denunciation of two problem areas that are pressingly important today, and its uninhibited depiction of the meditation practice of all Buddhas, so that we can change our way of being in the world and perhaps stop the now clearly present danger to all.

The first of its denunciations is its “clear and graphic exposure of wrong practice, wrong views, the wrong use of spiritual powers, and the deceptions of deviant spiritual teachers” (as Ron Epstein summarized it). Note well that this is one reason this sutra is such a threat to deviant teachers and what they teach. I will come back to this point again when I tell the story of how, and by whom, this sutra was translated from its Sanskrit original into Tibetan.

Also, Buddha is quite clear in this sutra that he was teaching compassion, not evasion of responsibility, both in general, but also in the specific case of eating the flesh of sentient beings — no matter the cause of their demise. While other sutras touch on this problematic (for example, the Brahmajala and Lankavatara sutras), in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra Buddha is pointedly clear that if you eat meat, no matter how much progress you make through meditation practice, you will never become enlightened, and you will never be a true follower of the Buddha Dharma:

The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain Samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life, but in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can so control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world’s life. No matter how keen you may be mentally, no matter how much you may be able to practice dhyana, no matter to how high a degree of Samadhi you may attain, unless you have wholly annihilated all tendency to unkindness toward others, you will ultimately fall into the realms of existence where the evil ghosts dwell.

After my Parinirvana in the last kalpa these different kinds of ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment. But how can any faithful follower of the Lord Tathagata kill sentient life and eat the flesh? You of this great assembly ought to appreciate that those human beings who might become enlightened and attain Samadhi, because of eating meat, can only hope to attain the rank of a great Raksha and until the end of their enjoyment of it must sink into the never ceasing round of deaths and rebirths. They are not true disciples of Buddha. If they kill sentient beings and eat the flesh, they will not be able to escape from this triple world.

Pure and earnest bhikshus, if they are true and sincere, will never wear clothing made of silk, nor wear boots made of leather because it involves the taking of life. Neither will they indulge in eating milk or cheese because thereby they are depriving the young animals of that which rightly belongs to them. It is only such true and sincere bhikshus who have repaid their karmic debts of previous lives, who will attain true emancipation, and who will no more be bound to wander to this triple world. To wear anything, or partake of anything for self-comfort, deceiving one’s self as to the suffering it causes others or other sentient life, is to set up an affinity with that lower life which will draw them toward it. So all bhikshus must be very careful to live in all sincerity, refraining from even the appearance of unkindness to other life. It is such true hearted bhikshus who will attain a true emancipation. Even in one’s speech and especially in one’s teaching, one must practice kindness for no teaching that is unkind can be the true teaching of Buddha. Unkindness is the murderer of the life of Wisdom.(Śūraṅgama Sūtra: Importance of Keeping the Precepts)

Obviously, this hard focus on killing and eating other sentient beings, within the greater prohibition of killing in general, upsets those deviants who believe they can be compassionate when it suits them. This is brought into sharp focus when the unique meditation practice of all buddhas is explained in detail by Avalokitasvara, the avatar of Great Responsiveness in this sutra. Great Responsiveness is the fruit of the practice he describes, and which Manjushri asserts is the path followed by all buddhas, and which we, today, must follow. Great Responsiveness is ‘great’ because there is no self-centered focus constraining compassion. So much so, it is no longer compassion, but rather is an all-encompassing and spontaneous responsiveness to the needs of all sentient beings. Excusing one’s weakness of will to not harm others so that you can eat their flesh just screams deviancy from Buddha’s clear instructions and one’s true lack of compassion. This is why this sutra is so hated by skeptics and deviant teachers (see below).

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 7: The seventh claim of the skeptics is that no one has produced any evidence it should be accepted as an Indian text.

This is easy to assert because most of us will not go to the trouble to see if it is true or not — not even those who should know better. However, and for example:

Chai Bing from Inner Mongolia University, Philosophy and Social Sciences, pointed out in March 2014 that in the Qianlong Emperor’s “Foreword to The Royal Translation and Compilation of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra,” in the Tibetan Kangyur (July 25, 1770), the Emperor states:

…because the mantra contained in the Chinese text of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is identical to the mantra in an Indian text. (Since) there is an Indian Sanskrit source text (for the mantra), the entire Śūraṅgama Sūtra must be authentic.

Chai Bing remarks that: “at the very least, we can see the attitude of the Qianlong Emperor and the Third Changkya Khutukhtu (who actually did the translation) that judges the Śūraṅgama Sūtra as definitely not an apocryphal sutra.”

Because of this inconvenient fact, the skeptics have sought to distance the Śūraṅgama Mantra from being seen as a part of the sutra. According to Malcolm Smith, “it (referring to the Śūraṅgama Mantra) is well attested in other sources, and is in fact the White Umbrella dhāraṇi.”⁠¹³ But what he fails to say, misdirection being his aim, is that the mantra is wholly contained in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra text, in which the mantra is not only taught and discussed, it is also used as a “plot-device”(Manjusri saving Ananda while the Buddha recites the mantra to ward off the evil influence of a prostitute).

So the statement about the Śūraṅgama Mantra being the White Umbrella dhāraṇi is an extraordinarily ignorant thing to assert. In fact, in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Buddha gives an alternative name for the sutra as: “The Sutra of the Supreme and Magnificent Dharma-Imprint of the Mantra of the White Canopy, Which Is Spoken above the Crown of the Buddha’s Head, and Which Is the Serene and Pure Oceanic Eye of the Thus-Come Ones of the Ten Directions.”

Malcolm Smith has apparently confused another mantra, with a somewhat similar name that is just some handfuls of lines, or a short form of one line, with the Śūraṅgama Mantra, which is the longest mantra found in Buddhism and takes up to 45 minutes to fully recite. This other mantra does not refer to the “White Canopy,” a luminescence that appears during profound meditation above the third-eye and towards the crown of the head, but rather, is “White Parasol” or “White Umbrella”, also known as “Ushnisha Sitatapatra,” a protector against supernatural danger, quarrels and bad dreams. She is venerated in both the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, and is one of the 21 Taras in the Longchen Nyingtik of Jigme Lingpa.⁠¹⁴

It seems, in other words, that there is a reluctance to acknowledge that there are attestations to the Śūraṅgama Mantra, and thus to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra as a whole. Thus, the Śūraṅgama Mantra must be separated from the Śūraṅgama Sūtra — even though the chosen new identity of the mantra, the “White Umbrella dhāraṇi” doesn’t resemble what is actually in the Śūraṅgama Mantra. This, apparently, is what good scholarship is. It is hard to see it as anything but an ignorant lie — that being the charitable way to color it.

The Qianlong Emperor continued:

(If) we examine the Tibetan language materials, we will discover that within the current Derge Kangyur, Peking (Beijing) Kangyur, Narthang Kangyur (all of the preceding being Tibetan language Buddhist Tripitakas like the Tibetan Kangyur) there are recorded two ancient Tibetan texts (of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra); during the Tubo period, the three great ancient catalogues of sutras (which were compiled prior to King Langdarma’s persecution of Buddhism circa 840–841 CE — therefore the Tibetan Śūraṅgama Sūtra was probably translated circa late eighth to early ninth century) have records of these translations; within Buton Rinchen Drub Rinpoche’s Famous History of Buddhism (in India and Tibet) (written circa 1322) it is also recorded (in the list of sutras)…

And:

When comparing the two ancient Tibetan text with the Chinese text, the author discovered that they are indeed fragmentary texts which corresponds approximately to the Chinese Śūraṅgama Sūtra Scroll 9 and Scroll 10.

Baron A. von Staël–Holstein, in his “The Emperor Ch’ien-Lung and the Larger Śūraṃgama Sūtra,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, April 1936 (1): 137–138 concurs:

The larger fragment (Sakurabe №902) contains a consecutive translation of a part of the ninth chapter and the entire tenth chapter of the larger Śūraṃgama. The smaller fragment (Sakurabe №903) contains numerous passages belonging to the ninth and tenth chapters of the larger Śūraṃgama.

And since a major theme of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is the need to develop meditational insight and samadhi powers, rather than scholastic learning, I feel it is interesting to hear from someone who used the sutra in exactly that way:

… the Shurangama is connected with the enlightenment of the well-known Ming Dynasty Ch’an Master Han-shan Te-ch’ing. According to his autobiography, he used the work to verify his enlightenment. He explains in his autobiography that he had never heard lectures on the Sutra and did not understand its meaning at all. Then, according to his own account, he studied the Sutra using the power of yoga pratyaksa, or direct veridical perception, claiming that it is impossible to grasp the meaning of the work if one gives rise to a even a little bit of discriminating consciousness. After eight months of constant study, he tells us that he came to a total understanding of the work that was devoid of doubt.

In other words, I think we can say that, for Ch’an Master Han-shan, the Sutra was seen as an imprint of a mind in which discriminating consciousness had been totally eliminated. Of course, Han-shan did not ascribe to prevalent modern Western scholarly ideas about the historical development of Buddhist texts and believed the Sutra had come directly from Sakyamuni Buddha himself, but that is not the point. What is important here is that Han-shan’s experiential verification that the text is written on the level of non-discriminative awareness reinforced his belief in the genuineness of the text. Such a criterion lies beyond the narrow band of historical and philological issues that have so far dominated modern scholarly studies of textual authenticity. It seems to me that further study of traditional criteria, such as this, on their own terms must be a prerequisite for evaluation of their relevancy, or lack of it, in terms of the methodology and goals of modern Buddhalogical research.⁠¹⁵

The above quotations are evidential testimony to the authenticity of the sutra. While only dealing with the mantra sections and the last two sections of the sutra, except for the last testimonial which was based on the Chinese translation of the full sutra, these testimonies are not possible to call into question now. But they still leave open the question of whether or not there was ever a Sanskrit original of the sutra — that being the last reprise of the skeptics’ calumny.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Claim 8: The eighth claim of the skeptics is that this sutra was not translated from an Indian (Sanskrit) text.

In the Mongolian Kanjur (note spelling difference), which was directly imported and translated from the Tibetan Kangyur, there is a note relating to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. It says:

Jinamitra, Shilendre Bodhi and great translator Pandita Yeshen SeDe translated from the Sanskrit Language. Based on Manjusri Kunga-Ochir, honjin Erdene translated into the Mongolian language.

While this statement is absolute proof of the Indian origins of this sutra, it is also a stunning listing of its impeccable credentials.

This is the evidence that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It directly undermines the slander, lies, and poison used by those who wish to harm this sutra in order to lead us astray.

So I want to explain to you who each of the individuals mentioned in that note are. But first, I must explain how I know this quote exists in the Mongolian Kanjur.

As I mentioned in the chapter “Is the Surangama Sutra Authentic?,” in January of 2020, I became aware of a highly respected lama in the Tibetan Nyingma Lineage — Khenpo Sodargye of the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy in the Larung valley of Sichuan — who had started teaching the Śūraṅgama Sūtra in September, 2019. I myself had learned of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra in 2014, and after studying it I began using quotes from it in my writing, because it contained the description of Avalokitasvara’s and all Buddhas’ meditation practice which very closely matched my own spontaneous lifetime practice, and so, I felt, bolstered my arguments in this book.

So in early 2017 I started looking for a lineage teacher from whom I could receive teachings on this sutra. At exactly the same time, as Khenpo Sodargye explains in his introduction to his sutra teachings, he was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had to teach the Śūraṅgama Sūtra — saying it was almost like he “was ill and and was looking for a cure.”

In the Fall of 2019, I decided to transcribe a large part of the sutra and make it part of this work in order to ensure its easy access for those reading this book. After I finished publishing its chapters online, I sent out an announcement on the 24th of November to all of my contacts. There was no response.

In January 2020, after having discovered that Khenpo Sodargye had started teaching the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, I sent out another email on the 12th excitedly announcing his teachings, which were available on Youtube. And as I explained in the previous chapter, John Canti, the head of Padmakara Translation Group, had responded to my announcement and amicably suggested to me that my references to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was probably an error and suggested that I must have meant the “Śūraṅgama-samādhi” Sūtra. The gist of his message was that Khenpo Sodargye would never be teaching the Śūraṅgama Sūtra! That both surprised and deeply troubled me, throwing my whole project into doubt.

His email motivated me to write the article mentioned above on the question of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s authenticity, spending five days researching both sides of the controversy. John and I never got to speak further about the issue, but interestingly, he informed me in that same email that Khenpo Sodargye was going to visit our small village here in France that very year (2020). Unfortunately, that visit never happened because of the Covid-19 pandemic, so I never had the opportunity to meet and discuss this matter with Khenpo Sodargye directly.

However, on December 2nd 2020, completely out-of-the-blue, I received an email asking me to peer-review a paper about the two chapters of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra found in the Mongolian Kanjur, which had been translated from the Tibetan version in the Tibetan Kangyur, which itself had been translated from a Sanskrit original text by the illustrious group named in the quote above.

It is important to note that if John Canti had never written that email to me, in which he pointed out that the Śūraṅgama Sūtra was known to be a forgery, and implying that Khenpo Sodargye would never be found teaching it, I would not have researched this campaign against this sutra by the skeptics and written a chapter, published online and easily found in internet searches, the Chinese journal would never have sent me a request to peer-review the paper in which the above quote is found. But he did send that email, and here we are — finally — at the end of Twelve-hundred years of calumny. It is for this reason that I have a deep appreciation for John’s positive contribution to my path.

So I need to show you just how important that note in the Mongolian Kanjur is.

The Mongolian Kanjur was created after Altan Khan of Tümed (1507–1582) invited the 3rd Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, to bring Buddhism to Mongolia. Sonam Gyatso went to Tümed in 1577. The first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia, Thegchen Chonkhor, was built at their meeting place. Altan Khan gave Sonam Gyatso the designation “Dalai” which was the Mongolian translation of his name “Gyatso” which means ocean. Sonam Gyatso, then, became the “Dalai Lama.” Although he was the first to carry that title, his two previous incarnations, Gendun Drup and Gendun Gyatso were posthumously given the title too, making Sonam Gyatso the 3rd Dalai Lama.

A massive effort was undertaken at Tümed to translate the Tibetan Kangyur into Mongolian. It was written, it is said, in letters drawn in silver and gold and paid for by the Dalai Lama’s Mongolian devotees.

It was a short paper whose intent was to point out that in the Mongolian Kanjur the two chapters were reversed, with the 10th chapter coming before the 9th chapter, and also that those two chapters were “literally the same” as a later Mongolian translation of the full sutra made in 1762 by the order of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing dynasty, which was overseen by the state tutor, Jangkya Khutugtu Rölpé Dorjé. “Jangkya Khutugtu” was the title held by the spiritual head of the Gelug lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia during the Qing dynasty.⁠¹⁶

Jangkya Khutugtu Rölpé Dorjé (1717–1786) was a principal Tibetan Buddhist teacher in the Qing court, a close associate of the Qianlong Emperor of China, and an important intermediary between the imperial court and Inner Asia. He oversaw the translation of the Tibetan Buddhist canon into Classical Mongolian and Manchu. He was involved in the compilation of a quadralingual set (Chinese, Manchurian, Mongolian, and Tibetan) and supervised the translation from Chinese into Manchurian, Mongolian and Tibetan of the entire Śūraṅgama Sūtra completed in 1763; the Tibetan translation is currently preserved in a supplement to the Narthang Kangyur (also known as the Peking (Beijing, China) Kangyur).⁠¹⁷

The quoted note from the Mongolian Kanjur, that I reprinted above, was seemingly an off-hand comment not related to the paper’s main purpose.

It was only now, in August of 2022, after watching the antics of a reputedly fine scholar of Tibetan Buddhism on a public forum in July, described in the next chapter, that I realized the significance of that quote.

I can only marvel at the obvious synchronicities between my search for a teacher of this sutra and Khenpo Sodargye’s felt need to teach it — including his scheduled visit to my village in France soon after — and my turmoil of doubt that was sowed by the ongoing calumny against this sutra, and this paper to be reviewed arriving in my inbox — even though I did not realize its significance until now. The thing is, I didn’t remember the paper, and wasn’t looking for it, when I ran across it after writing the prior chapter about the ‘scholarly’ antics that are clear evidence that this sublime sutra is held in disdain. It was as if this forgotten paper was handed to me as something I needed to pay attention to. And so it was.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

So who were these illustrious people involved in the translation of the Tibetan into Mongolian?

Jinamitra was an Indian paṇḍita (a learned teacher) who was active as a teacher and translator in Tibet during the ninth century. He was from Kashmir. He worked at Samyé Monastery, under the auspices of the Tibetan king Relpacen (821–836), who invited him to Tibet.

He translated several core Vinaya texts, including the Prātimokṣa-sūtra and the Bhikṣuṇī-prātimokṣa-sūtra, which present the Buddhist monastic code of discipline, a corpus of disciplinary rules to be observed by the monastic community that signifies the exemplary standard of pure conduct to be observed by the community (sangha) as the foundation for achieving liberation. Overall, he translated eighty-six sūtras, such as the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra, as well as the Aksobhyatathāgatasyavyūha sūtra in collaboration with Surendrabodhi and Yeshe De (ye shes sde). He also collaborated on the translation of seven texts in the tantra section of the Kangyur, and nineteen in the dhāraṇī section.

Jinamitra is also credited with the translation of fifty-one texts in the Tengyur, most of which are in the Vinaya, Cittamatra, Madhyamaka, and Abhidharma sections. These include Śāntideva’s Śikṣāsamuccaya and works by Vasubhandu, Nagārjuna, Asaṅga, and Guṇaprabha, as well as works by his contemporaries in Tibet, Vimalamitra and Kamalaśīla.

He is said to have been a teacher to the Indian masters Siṃhamukha and Lotsāwa Candra (“lotsāwa” means a translator). His Tibetan students included Kawa Peltsek and Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje — the monk who later ‘liberated’ Langdarma.⁠¹⁸

Note that the Tibetan Buddhist Canon is divided into the words and teachings of the Buddha, contained within the 108 volumes of the Kangyur (the translated words), and treatises and commentaries composed by learned and accomplished masters of India, which are contained within the 224 volumes of the Tengyur (the translated treatises).

Interestingly, one reason for the invitation to come to Tibet was to revise old translations in order to introduce into them a uniformity of language so as to make them easy to understand.⁠¹⁹ This is an important point that I touched upon while discussing the 4th Claim of the skeptics, above. As king Relpacen explained, this uniformity of language was sought by him because:

Formally, when the doctrine was translated by scholars and translators in the time of my paternal ancestors, many terms were used which were unknown to the Tibetan language. Replace those terms among them which contradict the text of the doctrine and grammatical usage, as well as those which are hard to understand, by searching [for alternatives] among the familiar terms of the colloquial language.

Once again, I want to point out that when translating texts — if they are to be usable by non-scholars — they must make use of the colloquial language the texts are being translated into. Otherwise, you end up with a text with a very large amount of unreadable gibberish, with twice as many footnotes as actual text. They are a monument to scholarship and useless for their original purpose — to guide students along the correct path.

The result of that effort initiated by King Trhisong and King Relpacen is called the Mahavyuttpati: the Sanskrit-Tibetan concordance (of word meanings) that was intended to regulate the translation of Sanskrit texts into Tibetan.

Yet, there is something else to note here. The individuals who were invited were selected for their usefulness to the kings’ project. The king offered housing and material support, perhaps for a lifetime, so it is to be understood that he was inviting specific individuals with specific interests and capabilities to come work on the project. The primary reason for the invitation to Jinamitra was because of his expertise in the Vinaya — the rules of discipline that serves as the foundation for achieving liberation. Nowadays, we think of rules as a means of limiting the freedom of individuals so that they can live together in some form of harmony. Our modern laws are like this. But the Vinaya is different.

Rather than being a restraint on the freedom of each person, the Vinaya precepts are a means of ensuring that each sangha member remains free of attachments to earthly and egoic concerns and ‘outflows’. This is why each precept in the Vinaya records is based upon a specific event that occurred to which the precept responds. This is how Buddha taught.

The word Vinaya is derived from a Sanskrit verb that can mean to lead, take away, train, tame, or guide, or alternately to educate or teach. It is often translated as “discipline,” with “Dhamma-vinaya,” (doctrine and discipline) having been used by the Buddha to refer to his complete teachings, which shows that discipline is inseparable in Buddhist practice from the doctrinal teachings.

Why is this? Because they are not so much rules, as we understand them today, but rather, they are teachings, and this is why the Śūraṅgama Sūtra spends so much time on them and the need to follow them, and as well, on the states of (demonic) mind that gives rise to them.

So an unenlightened commentator may see them simply as rules governing human behavior, just as political laws are. But they are not the same things at all. They are discipline in the sense of being a vehicle of practice, and so the goal is to train one’s mind in relation to behavior, not simply to control one’s actions (although obviously a trained mind results in different ways of being and acting in the world, during one’s life). It’s not discipline in the sense of punishing bad behavior, it’s discipline in the sense of consistency of practice.

The precepts are a matter of consistent focus and concentration, notwithstanding that the visible results may be coherent with lawful behavior. Because, as we all know, being forced to behave a certain way because others make us do it, is a far-cry from emptying ourselves of the impulses that are the seeds of unwanted behavior, and which remain within us even though we follow the law and suppress these impulses. Within a system of laws, there must always be a resort to punishment to ensure compliance. Within the practice of the Vinaya, failure is a learning opportunity.

And one of the most important lessons is the (demonic) states of mind that give rise to certain behaviors and how they act as mâra to an otherwise disciplined meditation practice. In other words, a mâra undermines discipline, and without discipline, practice fails.

For example, someone who takes pride in meditational accomplishments misses the goal of mind-training completely. Someone who, in practicing meditation, notes their attainment of certain states with the thought “now, I have reached this state, and so I must now do this” (that is, whatever is necessary to reach the next level of samadhi) is succeeding. Someone who instead thinks, “now I am a stream-enterer” or “now I am enlightened,” is missing the point entirely.

This, for example, is why you can accomplish advanced states of meditative absorption and still remain unenlightened, so in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra Buddha points out that even a thought of cruelty to others, such as a desire to eat meat, means you are not enlightened, no matter what state of meditative absorption you have attained.

So, in summary: The role of a political leader is to rule, not to teach; the role of a lama is to teach, not to rule. And the opposite of a bodhisattva is a narcissist. Unfortunately, all too many scholars today are narcissists, rather than bodhisattvas, as they see themselves.

This, then, was the role and importance of the Kashmiri pandita Jinamitra in the translation of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. As well, his focus on dhāraṇī (mantras and prayers) was very useful in the translation of the Śūraṅgama mantra, which is integral, not just to the Śūraṅgama Sūtra text, but to the teachings that the text contains. That is, the mantra is not something that was just slapped onto the sutra text, as those who insist on separating it from the sutra hope to convince us was the case.

The rest of the translation team were harder to find, because of the differing spelling of the names in the note in the Mongolian Kanjur, until I ran across the list of sutras that Jinamitra worked on, and I saw that he frequently worked with “Yeshe De” (ye shes sde), and “Surendrabodhi.” After much effort and research, I assured myself that “Yeshen SeDe,” as well as “Yeshe De,” was Yeshé Dé; and “Shilendre Bodhi,” as well as “Surendrabodhi, was Śīlendrabodhi. These three worked closely together on the translation work at Samye monastery.

Yeshé Dé was the chief editor of the translation program based in Samyé Monastery from the late eighth to early ninth century in Tibet. He was from the Nanam clan, and so is often called Nanam Zhang Yeshé Dé.”⁠²⁰ He became one of the three foremost translators of the Tibetan imperial era. He is also counted among the twenty-five disciples of Padmasambhava, known as “Guru Rinpoche” in the Nyingma tradition. According to Nyingma legend, he was a master of the Vajrakīlaya tantra, and is said to have realized the illusory nature of phenomena and cut the cord of mind-made karmic conditioning, which left him free to soar in the sky like a bird,²¹ and is frequently seen depicted in artwork flying above the seated Padmasambhava.

As a young monk his scholarship earned him the title of ‘bande’ (teacher). He was perhaps the most prolific Tibetan translator in history, with hundreds of translations. Scholar Sherab Rhaldi lists 347 translations in collaboration with fifteen Indian panditas. He is also credited with translating the Nyingma tantras.

He is said to have taught the Abhidharma to Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje [again, the monk who was Jinamitra’s student as well, who later liberated Langdarma²²].⁠

Yeshé Dé and Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje were both counted among the Twenty-Five students of Padmasambhava.

Neither Yeshé Dé nor Jinamitra are specified to have lived beyond the end of Ralpachen’s reign in 824 CE (after which Langdarma reigned). Yeshé Dé’s remains are said to be interred within a stupa on Hepori Hill next to Samye Monastery, where he worked on so many translations.⁠²³

“Śīlendrabodhi was an Indian translator active in the eighth century. Nothing is known of his life save for the titles of texts he translated, such as Vasubhandu’s “Treasury of the Abhidharma” and the “Twenty Verses,” the Vajraccedikā sūtra, the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra, and the Ghanavyūha sūtra.

He collaborated at Samyé Monastery with the Indians Jñānasiddhi, Śākyaprabha, Dānaśīla, Jinamitra, and others, and the Tibetans Yeshé Dé and Kawa Peltsek.⁠²⁴

Śīlendrabodhi is mentioned as being an Indian preceptor, according to the Gaganagañjaparipṛcchā, which is the eighth chapter of the Mahāsaṃnipāta (a collection of Mahāyāna Buddhist Sūtras): It says, “The Exalted Discourse of the Great Vehicle entitled The Questions of Gaganagañja is completed. Translated, rendered into the new terminology, and finalized by the Indian preceptor Vijayaśīla, Śīlendrabodhi, and the chief editor-cum-translator, Ye shes sde”.⁠²⁵

A preceptor is a monk qualified to teach other monks.

These three, then, are indicative of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s irreproachable pedigree in Tibetan Buddhism.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

I will speak a little bit more of them, below, but first, this vignette would not be complete, without my finishing the presentation of the translation comment in the Mongolian Kanjur, because this will bring to light something very important in this sad saga of the immoral penury of the skeptics who direct their efforts at destroying the reputation of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. So, the second line of the quoted note says:

Based on Manjusri Kunga-Ochir, honjin Erdene translated into the Mongolian language.

“Honjin” means translator according to a footnote in the paper, and Erdene was his name. I can find nothing about this person other than that he worked with “Kunga-Ochir.” My research led me to the proper spelling of this name: Künga Özer

Künga Özer⁠²⁶ was a reincarnation of Lhalung Palgyi Dorje⁠,²⁷ the student of Padmasambhava and liberator of Langdarma that I’ve mentioned a number of times now. Together, these two form a part of the Zurmang Trungpa lineage, which is one of several incarnation lineages based at Zurmang Dutsitil Monastery in Kham. The Eleventh Trungpa, Chokyi Gyatso, was one of the leading proponents of Tibetan Buddhism in Europe and America.⁠²⁸ His more familiar name was Chogyam Trungpa, and he was the founder of Shambhala Buddhism.

Künga Özer is considered to be the Third Trungpa Tulku. A Tulku is a reincarnate custodian of a specific lineage of teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, who is given empowerments and trained from a young age by students of his or her predecessor. Lhalung Palgyi Dorje is the reincarnation of the Indian Atiyoga teacher Śrī Siṃha. Atiyoga is another name for the Vajrayana tradition more commonly known as Dzogchen. According to the colophon of a short commentary that Śrī Siṃha wrote, called “Unravelling Mantra’s Meaning in The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra” (Tōh. 4353), on the secret mantra or tantric meaning of the famous Heart Sūtra.” He gave this explanation to his disciple Vairocana, who put it into writing and taught it to King Trhisong Detsen. Thus, the connection of the three who translated the Śūraṅgama Sūtra from Sanskrit into Tibetan, and Künga Özer who later oversaw the translation of the sutra into Mongolian, is the members of the Zurmang Trungpa lineage, appearing initially in our story as Lhalung Palgyi Dorje.

That Lhalung Palgyi Dorje was an enlightened being is indisputable. If he hadn’t been, his liberation of Langdarma would have been murder. Pelgyi Dorje practiced in Dribki Karmo valley, where he is said to have attained the ability to pass freely through rocks, and fly from mountain to mountain. He is frequently depicted that way in art. He is said to have retired to Amdo, after a long life spent in solitude. And when he passed away, he did so displaying the rainbow body, the sign of the ultimate accomplishment of the Dzogchen path.

So, now, we see that the eighth claim of the skeptics, that this sutra was not translated from an Indian (Sanskrit) text, is completely and utterly false. But even more, those who were directly involved in the translation of this sutra text were of the highest possible character and accomplishments. Surely, there is no one arrogant enough in this world, to charge any of them with forgery, or even incompetence.

I would like to return back and share with you the comments of Kabje Dudjom Rinpoche, and the Mahapandita, Rongsom Chokyi Zangpo, which Dudjom Rinpoche shared while explaining the superiority of these ancient translations, and responding to criticisms, even then, as to the authenticity of the various tantras and other texts, which includes also the Śūraṅgama Sūtra-Tantra.

There was a multitude of utterly profound Tantrapitaka which arose in Tibet, in proportion to the authentic merits of those to be trained in that glacial land. They did so because of the extraordinary enlightened aspiration of Trhisong Detsen, the divine king of the Land of Snows who was an emanation of sublime Manjusri-ghosa, and due to the blessings of the great accomplished master Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra and others… Therefore, those [teachings] are worthy of approval, and the biographies of the ancient religious kings and of the great emanational translators and scholars ought to be respected…

They translated an oceanic corpus of doctrine belonging to the Tripitaka and to the secret mantra. They collected fragments, corrected defective texts, established the ground, experientially mastered the path, and caused [the doctrine] to spread throughout the kingdom by means of study, exegesis, and meditation. This opportunity to practice freely the path to liberation and omniscience was due to the kindness of the ancient preceptor [Santaraksita], the master [Padmasambhava], the religious king [Trhisong Detsen], and the emanational translators and scholars.

For this reason it is no wonder that the learned proponents of philosophical systems and the translators of the later period also managed to follow, without difficulty, the path whose tradition had been established by those great ones of the past, and to contribute to it by means of their own intellects. Nonetheless, some jealous persons created discord by, for example, declaring that certain of the ancient tantras had been composed in Tibet because they did not exist in India. However, the non-existence of those tantras in India did not prove them to be inauthentic. Even the tantras which did exist in India did not originate there: they were brought forth by great accomplished masters from the domains of the gods, nagas, yaksas, dakinis and so on, as well as from various great places of pilgrimage including the Sahor and Shambhala regions of Jambudvipa, Mount Malaya in Lanka, Oddiyana, and the Dravida country; and later they were introduced to India. Therefore, tantras are not inauthentic by definition merely because they did not exist in India.⁠²⁹

Concerning the distinctions of the translators: Those doctrines were translated by emanational translators, the translators of the past such as Vairocana, Kawa Peltsek, Cokro Lui Gyeltsen, Zhang Yeshe De, Ma Rincen-chok, and Nyak Jnanakumara…

When the doctrine of the Buddha was at its zenith, the emanational translators established [the text of] the transmitted precepts without error. Then, they adorn those doctrines in many ways which serve to complete them, and which establish the actual condition of the knowable. But the charlatan translators of the present-day made various reforms in the ancient translations, saying, “I am the better translator. My sources are more venerable!” And so, misrepresenting the transmitted precepts of the Buddha and the teachings of the gurus, they all compose their own doctrines. They heap abuse upon one another for their faults. Their doctrines are such that those of the father do not suit the son. [In all of this] they are unlike [the ancient translations³⁰].⁠

So, as is plainly evident in the comments of the omniscient Rongzompa, little has changed since his time.

I hope that these voluminous words on this subject has not just convinced you of the authenticity of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, but even more importantly, convinced you of its sublime origin as a true manifestation of Buddhavacana, and its translations done by the wisdom-hearts of truly enlightened beings, so that you will never doubt its usefulness to you and your relations, that you will never underestimate your own heart-felt connection to it, and that you will never, ever, falter on your path, no matter what mâras you cross-paths with.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Why is the Śūraṅgama Sūtra so objectionable to some scholars and translators? What is it about the Sutra the draws their ire?

Unlike a living teacher, the words of a text cannot tell you that you are focusing on the wrong thing. The words of a true spiritual text are meant to point you in the right direction, not to be an end in themselves. This is why the skeptics that I speak of are mâras for us — they push us towards academic scholarship about words and texts. But by focusing on the study of texts, focusing on the words, focusing on the ‘correct’ conceptual meaning of the words, focusing on the ‘correct’ translation of the words between languages, without having any direct meditative insight of the wisdom intent behind the words — that is, without the mediation of concepts — the wrong path is chosen and our correct practice is ended.

To the faults of wrong practices, wrong views, the wrong use of spiritual powers, and the deceptions of deviant spiritual teachers, which are marks of the dissolution of the Dharma which the Śūraṅgama Sūtra speaks of, we must add the dissolution of the Sangha — in the sense of dissolving its solidarity through holding partisan views, as well as the greed, dissipation, and debauchery of its members, as was witnessed in Tibet with both the Bönpo and Buddhist sanghas repeatedly — leading to the civil authority to favor first one, then the other, and then back again, for several rounds — until the discipline of the Vinaya was adopted.

The Sutra’s particularly clear and graphic exposure of wrong practice, wrong views, the wrong use of spiritual powers, and the deceptions of deviant spiritual teachers is probably one of the major factors involved in the perennial attacks on its authenticity. It is clear that the types of people it criticizes have certainly been threatened by it, and in order to preserve their own authority and views have attacked the Sutra. Unfortunately this primary motivation for discrediting the Sutra has been ignored by the modern Buddhist scholarly community. It is not, however, difficult to see why this is the case.⁠³¹

But more than all those concerns, it is the loss of our ability to have a visceral recognition of Buddha-nature as the Responsive Naturing that is always present in our lives — which encompasses the perfect meaning of the Tathāgatagarbha — which is the unique gift of this sublime teaching of Buddha.

The Buddha understood that this would happen, and left us a teaching, a meditative practice, and a powerful protective mantra for the time that he knew would come, when his Dharma teachings would be so misunderstood that his words would be worshipped, but like Ananda who never put his teachings into practice, we would not know how to use his teachings, and mâras would swoop in to assure us that all is well. This is why the disappearance of this teaching of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra is said to be the mark of the final disappearance of the Dharma:

When the Dharma is about to disappear, women will become vigorous and will at all times do deeds of virtue. Men will grow lax and will no longer speak the Dharma. Those who are genuine shramanas will be looked upon as dung and no one will have faith in them. When the Dharma is about to perish, all the gods will begin to weep. Rivers will dry up and the five grains will not ripen. Pestilences will frequently take millions of lives. The masses will toil and suffer while the local officials will plot and scheme. No one will adhere to principles. Instead, the human race will multiply, becoming like the sands of the ocean-bed. Good persons will be hard to find; at most there will be one or two. As the eon comes to a close, the revolutions of the sun and the moon will grow short and the lifespan of people will decrease. Their hair will turn white by the time they are forty. Because of excessive licentious behavior they will quickly exhaust their seminal fluids and will die at a young age, usually before sixty years. As the lifespan of males decreases, that of females will increase to seventy, eighty, ninety, or one hundred years.

The mighty rivers will flood and lose harmony with their natural cycles, yet people will not take notice or feel concern. Extremes of climate will soon be taken for granted…

Even then Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats will gather together in an unprecedented assembly because they will all have been harried and pursued by the hordes of demons. They will no longer dwell in the assemblies but the Three Vehicles will retreat to the wilderness. In a tranquil place they will find shelter, happiness, and long life. Gods will protect them and the moon will shine down upon them. The Three Vehicles will have an opportunity to meet together and the Way will flourish. However, within fifty-two years the Shurangama Sutra and the Pratyutpanna [Standing Buddha] Samadhi, will be the first to change and then to disappear. The twelve divisions of the canon will gradually follow until they vanish completely, never to appear again. Its words and texts will be totally unknown ever after. The precept sashes of shramanas will turn white of themselves. When my Dharma disappears it will be just like an oil lamp that flares brightly for an instant just before it goes out. So too, will the Dharma flare and die. After this time it is difficult to speak with certainty of what will follow.⁠³²

As Buddha points out again and again in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, if you only study the words of the Buddha you will never become enlightened. You must put the words into practice because they are only pointers to the path you must follow. They are not the end, they are not even the means, they are just a finger pointing in the correct direction. You must meditate. You must follow the precepts. You must train your mind. And you must let all conceptual understandings go. As the famous Buddhist proverb says: when you use a boat to cross a river, you do not continue to carry the boat with you the rest of the way along your journey — you leave it on the shore behind.

Unfortunately, our most vociferous skeptics of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra’s standing, those great scholars that I adorn with the title Mâra, seem not to have heard Longchenpa’s admonition that:

Those with great learning are seduced by the mâra of erudition.³³

And to quote Kabje Dudjom Rinpoche a third, and final time:

Moreover, the Tibetan’s were not content to make of their new religion an intellectual exercise alone: yogin, monk and layman alike undertook to realize through meditative experience the perennial truth which the Buddha taught.

This is a lesson that we can all benefit from, that we need to take to heart if we are to survive the present.

To trust in academic theorizing will bring no certainty.
It’s inconclusive, pitiful, and it obscures the issue.
To trust in this is to rely on children!⁠³⁴

There is a prophetic teaching which was compiled by Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, who, like King Trhisong Detsen, was the emanation of Manjusri — that is the wisdom connection between the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Chökyi Lodrö’s prophetic teaching. It is entitled, “The Light That Makes Things Clear: A Prophecy of Things to Come,” (“ma ‘ongs lung bstan gsal byed sgron me zhes bya ba bzhugs so”), and it is notable for its inclusion of a specific named practice — that which was used, and described by Avalokitasvara in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra.

In the prophetic teaching, Buddha prescribes this practice for everyone, saying that it will enable one and all to overcome the tragedies and difficult events that are foretold in the prophecy. The prophecy gives dates, 2026–2032, and according to the translator of the prophecy, Stephen B. Aldridge (1948–2018), it is primarily focused on the approaching “collapse of the Earth’s biosphere and the terrible disruptions that will accompany this collapse.” This is why the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and its wisdom teaching is indispensable today.

What do the skeptics say about it? Here is what the ‘scholar’ Malcolm Smith said about the Manjusri-emanation’s prophetic text:

This text is the Tibetan equivalent of a chain letter.⁠³⁵

Noted.

So beware of those who wish to mislead you and fill your mind with doubts. They will smile at you, and tell you of their wondrous merit and accomplishments, all while ensuring that you will fail in your practice — for their merit and accomplishments are the illusions of a sick mind that is chock-a-block with erudition, so that there is no room for wisdom.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

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