Found in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Buddhist Text Translation Society), these practices are shared by 25 Bodhisattvas and Arhats after Ananda asks the Buddha to share the śūraṅgama samādhi teaching. Each shares the practice they used to break through to awakening. The principle of ‘following experiencing back to what experiences’ runs through each of the methods listed below.
Practicing using one of the 25 methods
- Select a method you would like to try or that resonates with you. (Example: the experience of body and touch)
- Directly experience the selected method by continuously placing awareness on it.
- Whenever un-willed thoughts arise, simply let them go by in the background.
- If the mind gets caught by or immersed in a thought, simply release it, and return to directly experiencing the meditation method.
- Stay with the method diligently and follow it to what experiences.
The 25 methods
- I attained arhatship by means of sound (Kaundinya)
- It was through the appearance of form that I became an Arhat (Upanisad)
- I attained arhatship by means of contemplating fragrance (Fragrance adorned)
- Awakening by means of discriminating the cause of flavors (Bhaisajya-rāja and Bhaisayja-samudgata)
- Awakening to wonderful touch (Bhadarapāla)
- I contemplated that the world’s six sense-objects change and decay; they are but empty stillness. Based on this, I cultivated extinction. (Mahākāsypa)
- Turning seeing back to its source (Aniruddha)
- I contemplated my breath thoroughly to the subtle point in which arising, dwelling, change, and extinction happen in every kshana (Ksudrapanthaka)
- Turning of taste back to its knower (Gavāmpati)
- I was reflecting on this Dharma-door and did not notice a poisonous thorn on the road until it had pricked my foot. My entire body experienced physical pain, but my mind also had an awareness: though it was aware of strong pain and recognized the feeling of pain, I knew that in my pure heart, there was neither pain nor awareness of pain (Pilindavatsa)
- All appearances enter into nothingness; nothingness and what becomes nothingness both disappear. Turning dharmas back to the void (Subhūti)
- Illuminating knowledge by means of the minds radiant sight (Śāriputra)
- Hearing with the mind (Samantabhadra)
- Perceiving breath with the mind (Sundarananda)
- Employing the dharma voice (Pūrnamaitrāyanīputra)
- Upholding of the precepts and genuine cultivation of them (Upāli)
- Returning to stillness to allow the light of the mind to appear just as settling muddy water (Mahā-Maudgalyāyana)
- I used attentive contemplation of the effects of heat in my body and mind, until it became unobstructed and penetrating and all my outflows were consumed (Usschusma)
- I saw that the particles of earth composing my own body were no different from all the particles of earth that made up the world (Dharanimdhara)
- I saw that the water in my body was not at all different from that in the world outside (Candraprabha)
- Looking into the power of the element of wind which has nothing real in which to rely (Crystal light)
- Contemplating space in detail; how the four elements lack anything to return to; how the production and extinction of false thoughts is no different from emptiness (Ākāsagarbha)
- Close examination into all appearances which are created by consciousness only (Maitreya)
- Thinking exclusively of Amitabha Buddha, gathering in the six organs through continuous pure mindfulness to obtain samadhi (Mahāsthāma)
- I began with a practice based on the enlightened nature of hearing. First I redirected my hearing inward in order to enter the current of the sages. Then external sounds disappeared. With the direction of my hearing reversed and with sounds stilled, both sounds and silence ceased to arise. So it was that, as I gradually progressed, what I heard and my awareness of what I heard came to an end. Even when that state of mind in which everything had come to an end disappeared, I did not rest. My awareness and the objects of my awareness were emptied, and when that process of emptying my awareness was wholly complete, then even that emptying and what had been emptied vanished. Coming into being and ceasing to be themselves ceased to be. Then the ultimate stillness was revealed. (Avalokitesvara)
- Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Hsuan Hua)
- Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Charles Luk)