http://www.chan1.org/ddp/channews/12-1995.htmlA talk on the Surangama Sutra given by Master Sheng-yen on Dec. 19, 1993, and edited by Linda Peer and Harry Miller.
We have been studying the section of the Surangama Sutra called "The Twenty-five Kinds of Perfect Penetration." Perfect Penetration is the state of thorough, ultimate enlightenment, and twenty-five methods of attaining such enlightenment are described. There are actually infinite numbers of methods of practice through which we can attain enlightenment. These twenty-five are simply used as examples.
We have already studied the section of the sutra concerning the methods of practice which employ the six sense organs. Today we will look at one of the methods which employ the six consciousnesses (of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind). In the sutra, Sariputra, the wisest of the Buddha's disciples, describes perfect penetration through "eye consciousness." The beginning of this paragraph, which I have discussed, reads:
Sariputra then rose from his seat, prostrated himself with his head at the feet of the Buddha and declared: 'In former eons, the sight-perception of my mind was already pure and clean, and in my subsequent incarnations as countless as the sands in the Ganges, I could see without hindrance through all things either on a worldly or supra-mundane plane. (One day), I met on the road the two brothers Kasyapa who were both preaching the doctrine of causality, and after listening to them my mind awakened to the Truth and thereby became extensive and boundless.