What is Samadhi?

Samadhi is when one is not being turned around by external experience, but being able to turn everything around. If you can turn things around, then you are the same as the Thus Come One, the Buddha. For instance, if you encounter a happy situation and you get carried away, you have no samadhi. If you are faced with a displeasing experience and you become angry, you also do not have samadhi.

Similarly, if a man truly has samadhi-power, when he sees a woman, no matter how pretty she is, he can refrain from moving his mind. He can avoid giving rise to emotional desire. If as soon as he sees a woman he becomes unsteady and start to shake and a hand suddenly grows right out of his throat, that’s a lack of samadhi-power. The same for women when they see men. They should remain in a state of unmoving suchness, and if they are able to remain unturned by their emotional desire, they have samadhi-power. That’s just the first step. It is to gain the ability of not being turn around by emotional desire. It is seeing as if not seeing. You face situations without a mind. You are confronted with the experience and still haven’t the mind. That’s samadhi-power.

If you have that kind of samadhi-power, you certainly can cultivate and develop a vajra indestructible body. If you lack that samadhi-power, what’s to be done? Don’t be satisfied with the status quo, saying, “I haven’t got that much of samadhi-power, so forget it, I’m not going to cultivate.” That’s useless. You’re just riding for a fall. The less samadhi-power you have, the more you should cultivate. For instance, “I sit in meditation and the pain comes. The more pain there is, the more I want to sit. I’ll force myself to do what is difficult.” That’s also samadhi-power.

“Why is Samadhi important in Buddhism?”

By cultivating samadhi, you can open your wisdom. If you have no samadhi-power then you have no wisdom-power. Without the strength of wisdom, how can you study, investigate and practice the Buddhadharma? If you have samadhi-power, you won’t be turned by the demon-states. You will be “thus, thus unmoving”.

Ananda was very learned, he read a lot and knew a lot. He followed the Buddha for several decades and could remember the Dharma spoken at every Dharma assembly. His memory was so keen that once he heard something, he never forgot it. Ananda didn’t have to force himself to remember, it came naturally. He relied on it too much that he neglected developing his samadhi-power. “I know a lot of things and have wisdom. That’s sufficient. Samadhi-power isn’t important. It is said that through samadhi one develops wisdom, but I already have wisdom.” So, he forgot about samadhi.

One day, as the Shurangama Sutra relates, Ananda went out begging for food by himself. While alone on the road, he encountered the daughter of Matangi. Ananda was particularly handsome, and when Matangi’s daughter saw him, she was immediately attracted to him. She went back to her mother and said, “You absolutely must get Ananda to marry me. If you don’t, I’ll die.” The mother, Matangi, belonged to the religion of the Kapilas, and she cultivated this religion’s mantras and dharma-devices, which were extremely effective. Since Matangi really loved her daughter, she used a mantra of her sect to confuse Ananda. Ananda didn’t have any samadhi-power, so he couldn’t control himself. He followed the mantra and went to Matangi’s daughter’s house, where he was on the verge of breaking the precepts, the precept against sexual misconduct. The Buddha knew about it as it was happening. Realising his cousin was in trouble, he quickly spoke the Shurangama Mantra to break up the mantra of the Kapila religion. The power of the Shurangama Mantra woke Ananda up from his confusion. Ananda returned and knelt before the Buddha and cried out in distress. “I have relied exclusively on erudition and have not perfected any strength in the Way. I haven’t any samadhi-power. Please, Buddha, tell me how the Buddhas of the ten directions have cultivated so they were able to obtain the samadhi-power.” In reply, the Buddha spoke the Shurangama Sutra.

“Where do samadhi-power come from?”

They come from practising meditation and observing precepts. Everyday you must protect the precepts, keep the precepts, until eventually there comes to be a mutual response between the Dharma and your cultivation of it. When you are in mutual response with the Dharma, you can obtain the nourishment of the Dharma-water. The Shurangama Sutra was spoken precisely for Ananda’s sake because he hasn’t done the work of meditation required to develop samadhi-power.

(Extracted from the Shurangama Sutra with Commentary)