29.5.10

The Surangama Sutra

I Just finished up reading the Surangama Sutra. Wow, what a ride!

I was initially turned off from this text because it had quite a bit of colorful expressions.
Not profanity, but just the very fantastic and in my mind at the time, unrealistic use of language.

It took me a while and I found myself kind of slogging through it as I tried to push past my own mental resistance to the style.

But then the rewards started coming! I was able to identify some of the fantastic descriptions in the book with my own states of mind and by the end I was humming along to the tune of the text.

I'd like to recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading one of the foundational texts of Ch'an rendered into Chinese from Sanskrit around 700 AD.

It is quite a shift from most of the Zen texts I'm familiar with and also has quite a different flavor than what I have read from the Pali Cannon.

Yours in practice,
Jordan



4 comments:

Mumon K said...

That's on my list; thanks Jordan!

SlowZen said...

Ah, you are welcome.

Will you give it the treatment you have been giving to some of the other foundational texts?

Mumon K said...

Jordan,
I'll try; I'll take this up way before the Flower Garland Sutra. The Lankavatara is taking far longer than I'd thought. ;-)

SlowZen said...

Mumon,
I've read your post about that. Sounds like fun.

Thanks for looking!