For more than a thousand years, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra has been held in high regard in the Mahāyāna Buddhist countries of East and Southeast Asia and has been as popular as the Lotus, Heart, and Diamond Sūtras. Its wealth of theoretical and practical instruction in living a spiritual life often made it the first major text studied by newly ordained monks, particularly in the Chan tradition.

This Sutra is regarded as a complete and practical manual for spiritual practice that will lead to enlightenment. It provides instruction on understanding one’s own Buddha-nature, the potential within every being for becoming a Buddha. The Sutra explains how and why this nature is hidden and how we can uncover it and recognize it as our own true mind. The Sutra also explains why personal integrity and purity of conduct are prerequisites for spiritual awakening. It presents the principles of meditation, and provides guidelines for discerning correct practices from those which deviate into wrong ones. It explains how our own intentional acts, whether physical, verbal, or mental, result in karmic experiences, including rebirths into various levels of being, both human and non-human.