Studying the Śūraṅgama With Master Yuanying.
At sixty-eight, after more than forty years of study, Master Yuanying (圓瑛法師) began writing the commentary he considered the capstone of his life's work — finishing it at seventy-four, the year he died. This page is the entrance for reading his Lecture Notes on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (楞嚴經講義) in English, fascicle by fascicle, alongside Ru-Yi's translation of the bare sūtra text. This translation is now complete across all 24 fascicles.
Why this commentary
Master Yuanying was one of the most prominent Chinese Buddhist monks of the twentieth century — abbot of Tiantong and Qita monasteries, first chairman of the Chinese Buddhist Association, and a lifelong builder of schools and relief institutions. He studied the Śūraṅgama Sūtra for over forty years before writing a single line of this commentary, and regarded it as his life's central teaching project.
As far as we know, this is the first complete English translation of Yuanying's commentary specifically — distinct from the better-known English edition of the sūtra that draws on Master Hsuan Hua's teaching instead.
What each fascicle page includes
- Yuanying's own ten-part outline (十門分別), kept as the page structure rather than replaced with new section divisions.
- Quoted sūtra passages marked Sūtra:, Yuanying's own explanation marked Commentary:, matching the convention already used for the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Śāstra on this site.
- A running glossary shared with the companion bare-sūtra translation project.
Read by Fascicle
Yuanying's fascicles are considerably longer than the sūtra's own ten fascicles. This translation now covers all 24 fascicles in full: the tenfold preliminary analysis, the four categories and seven great elements harmonized with the tathāgatagarbha, Ānanda's verse of gratitude, Pūrṇa's cosmogony questions, the complete teaching of the three aspects of the tathāgatagarbha, the parable of Yajñadatta, the sūtra's practical teaching on the two decisive meanings, the famous six-knotted cloth demonstration, all twenty-five disciples' testimonies to perfect penetration (Avalokiteśvara's own testimony spanning fascicles 15–16), Mañjuśrī's own verse selecting the ear-faculty as best suited to this world, the complete four clear instructions with the elaborate building of the ritual platform, the full account of the Śūraṅgama Mantra's structure, benefits, and protector deities, the complete fifty-five stages of the path from dry wisdom to wondrous enlightenment, the entire seven-destinies teaching, all fifty states of demonic interference across every one of the five aggregates, and the sūtra's own closing teaching on the five layers of false thought underlying them all.
Fascicle 1
The complete tenfold preliminary analysis, the entire preface section (序分), Ānanda's request, Yuanying's fascicle-by-fascicle roadmap of the sūtra, and his own textual-critical argument for relocating the Buddha's naming of the Śūraṅgama samādhi.
Fascicle 2: A Thief Mistaken for a Son
The seven-location search for the mind, and the Buddha's sharper refutation that the very searching mind itself is not the true mind — the two roots of true mind and false mind.
Fascicle 14: Gathering In All Six at Once
Thirteen more testimonies to perfect penetration, through the six consciousnesses and all seven great elements, closing with Mahāsthāmaprāpta's teaching on reciting the Buddha's name with body, speech, and mind gathered into one.
Fascicle 15: The One Who Observes the Observer
The opening of Avalokiteśvara's own testimony — the ancient Buddha's teaching of hearing, reflecting, and cultivating, the six-stage untying of the knot (with Yuanying's own account of his years of Chan practice), the thirty-two manifested bodies, and the fourteen kinds of fearlessness.
Fascicle 16: Turn That Hearing Back Upon Your Own Hearing
The four inconceivable virtues, the Buddha's own light confirming all twenty-five accounts, and Mañjuśrī's full verse of selection — closing the sūtra's entire twenty-five approaches to perfect penetration.
Fascicle 17: A Crooked Cause Brings a Twisted Result
Ānanda's request for a place of practice, the complete four clear instructions against sexual misconduct, killing, stealing, and false claims of attainment, the Śūraṅgama Mantra recommended, and the elaborate, symbol-laden building of the ritual platform for the hundred-day practice.
Fascicle 18: A Thousand Places Entreating, a Thousand Places Answered
The assembly's renewed request to hear the Śūraṅgama Mantra in full, the transformation-buddha's manifestation of light, the mantra's five-part structure, its uses for every buddha and every sentient being, and the closing assembly of deities vowing protection.
Fascicle 19: Two Distortions, and the True Path to Bodhi
The two root distortions of being and world, the twelve categories of birth, the three gradual stages, and all fifty-five stages of the path from dry wisdom to wondrous enlightenment in one continuous sweep — closing the sūtra's entire first major division on the cultivation of samādhi.
Fascicle 20: Ten Habits, Six Crossings, One Wheel of Rebirth
How the ratio of emotion to thought at death decides a being's destiny, the ten habitual causes and six cross-referenced retributions of hell in full clause-by-clause detail, the ten kinds of hungry ghosts, and the animal realm's own long accounting of debts owed and repaid.
Fascicle 21: From Human Debt to the Summit of the Formless Realm
The human destiny's own debts of goods and of life, the ten classes of humans returning from the animal realm, the ten kinds of immortals with the full story of Lü Dongbin and Chan Master Huanglong, all the heavens of the desire, form, and formless realms in exact cosmological detail, and the four kinds of asuras — closing the entire seven-destinies teaching with the declaration that none of it has any real, inherent existence at all.
Fascicle 22: Guest and Host: The Fifty States Begin
The Buddha's own unprompted warning about the fifty states of demonic interference awaiting genuine practitioners, the guest-and-host principle that governs whether any demon can actually cause harm, and the complete, clause-by-clause ten warning states of both the aggregate of form and the aggregate of sensation.
Fascicle 23: Ten Demons, Ten Philosophies
The aggregate of perception's own famous heavenly-demon states, where an actual spirit possesses a nearby person to teach corrupt Dharma, and the aggregate of formations' boundary together with its ten wild philosophical interpretations, each traced to a specific school of non-Buddhist thought.
Fascicle 24: Five Layers, One Falseness
The aggregate of consciousness's own ten deviant final attainments, closing the fifty states of demonic interference; the path from consciousness exhausted straight through to wondrous enlightenment; and Ānanda's final question, answered with the five layers of false thought underlying all five aggregates — closing the sūtra, and this translation of Master Yuanying's commentary, in full.
Translation Notes
Recurring terms and Yuanying's own outline, kept consistent across all 24 fascicles. See also this site's note on translation method.