The Sūtra of the Search for the Mind.
Ānanda, the Buddha's most learned disciple, falls to a sorceress's spell through nothing but a moment's carelessness — and returns undone, admitting that learning alone was never enough. What follows is one of the most searching interrogations in the whole Buddhist canon: where, exactly, is the mind? This page is the entrance for reading the sūtra fascicle by fascicle — all ten of them, each through the passages that carry its argument.
How to read this collection
The sūtra unfolds as a single long conversation: Ānanda's confession, the Buddha's questions, and — across the ten fascicles — the gradual dismantling of every mistaken idea of what "mind" and "self" could be, replaced with a direct pointing at the nature of seeing itself.
A companion project translates Master Yuanying's (圓瑛法師) classical commentary on this same sūtra, fascicle by fascicle — see the Jiǎngyì project for the traditional exegesis alongside this bare translation.
What each fascicle page includes
- The Chinese source text beside our English translation.
- Reading notes explaining the sūtra's teaching devices — such as the "seven locations" search for the mind.
- A running glossary so terminology stays consistent from fascicle 1 to fascicle 10, and with the companion commentary project.
Read by Fascicle
Use this as the table of contents for the sūtra — all ten fascicles are covered. Each fascicle’s page quotes the passages it turns on and translates every quoted line in full; across the ten, 16,500 of the sūtra’s 70,700 Chinese characters are set out beside the English, with the rest carried by the commentary between them.
Fascicle 1
Ānanda's fall to Mātaṅgī's spell, the Buddha's rescue, and the "seven locations" search for the mind — ending with the analogy of the fist and the blind man's lamp.
Fascicle 6: The Best Door
Avalokiteśvara's ear-faculty method, Mañjuśrī's verse selecting it as best for this world, and the four clear instructions on precepts that ground all practice.
Fascicle 7: Building the Ground
Setting up a physical place of practice, the Śūraṅgama Mantra and its protective power, and the twelve categories that account for every kind of birth.
Fascicle 8: The Roots of the Six Destinies
The three gradual stages of practice, the fifty-five stages of the bodhisattva path, and why emotion and thought alone determine hell, hungry ghosts, animals, immortals, and the heavens.
Fascicle 9: The Fifty States of Interference
The form and formless heavens, the four kinds of asuras, and the opening of the sūtra's warning about demonic states in meditation — the aggregates of form and sensation in full, and the ten heavenly-demon states of perception.
Fascicle 10: The Final Twenty States
Ten deviant philosophies in the aggregate of formations, ten deviant final attainments in the aggregate of consciousness, the five layers of false thought behind all fifty states, and the sūtra's closing teaching.
Translation Notes
Recurring terms, kept consistent from fascicle 1 through fascicle 10. See also this site's note on translation method.