Meditation practice often runs into familiar roadblocks—what the Surangama Sūtra lays out with razor-sharp clarity. Rather than sugarcoat things, this classic text zeroes in on the mind’s own tricks and snares, grouping them into three headline-grabbing categories:

1. Five Turbidities (Afflictive and Cognitive Obscurations)
   • Greed, hatred, ignorance, pride and doubt crowd the heart, muddying awareness.
   • Subtle distortions of perception—misreading reality, clinging to appearances—keep insight just out of reach.

2. Eight Major Illusions
   • Mistaking the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, volition, consciousness) for a solid self.
   • Confusing the twelve sense-fields (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind plus their objects) with independent phenomena.
   • Photographing mind as separate from form, or assuming karmic seeds sprout only in some conditions.
   • Believing in a fixed “owner” of experiences, instead of seeing events as interwoven processes.

3. Twenty Karmic and Cognitive Interferences
   • From sluggish torpor to jittery restlessness, from craving after sights and sounds to the nagging “what-ifs” of doubt.
   • Mental chatter and compulsive thinking—often dubbed “monkey mind”—keep one bouncing from one stimulus to the next.

These obstacles aren’t ancient museum pieces. In a world buzzing with social-media pings and pandemic-fueled anxieties, they echo in endless scrolls, sleep-deprived Zoom meetings and the FOMO mindset. Every notification tugging on attention is a modern incarnation of aversion or desire, and each mindless binge-watch can mirror the torpor the Sūtra warns against.

Recognizing these patterns—greed’s lure, hatred’s burn, ignorance’s fog—takes more than wishful thinking. The remedy lies in steady attention, present-moment awareness and the bravery to watch thoughts without jumping on their bandwagon. That’s when the Sutra’s age-old wisdom feels fresh again, guiding toward a mind that’s clear as a mountain spring rather than cluttered like a digital junk drawer.