If you want to understand the philosophy of the Tathagatagarbha School there are better texts than the Surangama Sutra; if you want experience the Nature of Mind this is the text for you. The Surangama Sutra is first and foremost a practice text. Its aim is not to provide answers, but rather to teach us to ask the right questions. The basic thesis is that enlightenment eludes us because we don't know how to inquire properly. We approach enlightened knowledge the same way we approach any other form of knowledge; after all, how else can we approach it? We are common people whose minds are conditioned to think in a particular way. This is the way we have gained knowledge of our world and the people in it life after life, and unfortunately we know no other way of thinking. The Surangama Sutra aims to introduce us to a new way of thinking that will open doors that have been locked for many lifetimes.
The Surangama Sutra is not a text for the arm-chair bodhisattva. It is a no-holds-barred how to text for attaining self-realization. Its form is so conceptually simple that unless we put the words into actual practice we may never realize its intention. As an intellectual undertaking it is a walk in the park; the difficulty lies in its application; which can take years if not lifetimes to master. It is therefore a text more for serious practitioners than scholars.
The Surangama Sutra is a manual of meditation for all levels of understanding. If you have been meditating for decades and have considerable skill, it will do two things for you. One, it will help you go deeper. No matter what form of meditation you practice, the wisdom of the Surangama can easily be woven into it. Two, and this is very important, it can help us avoid meditative self deception, which causes us to grasp and become attached to meditative states, thereby turning wholesome states into unwholesome ones.
If you are a novice, and bewildered by a path that seems so vast as to lack an entrance, the Surangama's simplicity will bring you comfort by providing a beginning, something you can sink your teeth into and do. You can begin right away meditating correctly, what you achieve will depend entirely on your own sincerity and effort.
This particular translation of the Surangama Sutra, published by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, is the best available for several reasons. First and foremost it was done by a committee of translators, some of whom had the good fortune to listen to a multi-year daily lecture of the Sutra by the Tripitika Master Hsuan Hua, an enlightened master who until his passing was head of the Chan lineage of Chinese Buddhism and himself a master of the Sutra. Hearing the entire text, with the Master's commentary, was of great benefit to the translators, one that is passed on to us as readers. Moreover, the principle translators are themselves lifelong Buddhists and practitioners of the Sutra. One person on the committee of translators has memorized the entire Sutra. Another holds a Phd in Buddhist studies and taught Asian Philosophy for thirty years at San Francisco State University. In short, all on the committee of translators are themselves, individually, qualified to translate this Sutra, all the more so as a team working to honor the Sutra by producing a translation that accurately conveys the meaning and is therefore a reliable practice text.
