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The Shurangama Sutra: The Fifty Skandha-Demon States--Based on the Translation into Chinese by Dharma Master Paramiti: A Simple Explanation

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The Shurangama Sutra is famous for its ability to expose improper forms of behavior and attitude. This book comprises the eighth and final volume of this series. Its warns those meditators who are about to break through the 5 skandhas - form, feeling, thought, formations, and consciousness- of the dangers that might confront them. For each skandha, the book discusses 10 deviant states that meditators might face. Although these 50 deviant states are not exhaustive, they provide a standard for evaluating spiritual attainment. The book describes the characteristics of each state so that meditators may recognize and avoid them. The most important message is that these improper states arise because of the failure to behave properly in actions, speech, and thoughts.

Xu Yun, in my opinion, the most remarkable of a number of exceptional Buddhist exemplar of recent times, said that reading the Surangama Sutra was the most important experience of his life (120 years) and the turning point in his practice. One can see why. The concluding two chapters of the Sutra, represented here, present the most detailed step-by-step guide to the experience of meditative practice and the development of purified consciousness. We are told specifically what to avoid, thus how to clear our consciousness of defilement, and why. Unfortunately, very few have reached the state where they can definitively comment on it, and, most certainly, I am not one of those, but rather inhabit various of the 50 Demon states of consciousness described throughout the text. What I can attest to is the power of The Sutra, and my conviction that it would be a better world if everyone read this text and took it to heart. The greatest strength, however, is necessary if we are to cultivate the persistence and vigilance in order to attain the ends indicated here. Few are capable of this sort of sustained effort and undivided focus in these Dharma Ending Days.
The work is a product of late Mahayana Buddhism, and once we acquiesce to acceptance of the substantialist framework of the terminology presented, initially somewhat foreign to the Western mindset, the imagery is quite expressive and powerful. The language is derived in great measure from the synthesis of the ancestral tradition of indigenous Chinese religion and Buddhism as it was introduced in China in the early centuries A.D. This form of Buddhism became known as Ch'an and formed the matrix from which Dogen, Rinzai, and others developed the Zen which we most commonly associate with Buddhism in America nowadays. Thus, the Surangama Sutra is a pivotal work in the history of the development of the Sangha as well as being the immeasurably valuable spiritual guide which we know it as.
I prefer this text from the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, because of the commentary of Hsuan Hua, who was a student of Xu Yun and others. The text and commentary is the final volume from the 8 volume version of text and commentary also in publication.