Obstacles

What are the obstacles? I'm reading the 21 praises of Green Tara and thinking about obstacles.

One hundred full autumn moons gathered together,

Blazing with the expanding light

Of a thousand stars assembled.

Everyone is different, but are they outside you, or inside you?

I would argue they're inside you. Removing your obstacles on the path is perfect. What is blocking you? 

Each Tathagata has a different take on obstacles.

Padmasambhava asks what are your demons, and can you look at them?

Amitabha asks what are your obstacles to love?

Avalokiteshvara asks what are your blocks to compassion?

Manjushri asks what are your obstacles to wisdom?

Amoghasiddhi asks what are your obstacles to courage? Avoiding envy?

Vairocana asks what prevents you from living in the Dharmakaya?

Ratnasambhava asks what prevents you from having equanimity, non-dualistic wisdom?

Akshobhya asks what prevents you from having fortitude and mirror like wisdom? Humility? This is the antidote for narcissism and grandiosity. Green Tara is supposed to be the consort to this Tathagata. 

Reading up on the Tathagatas, I want to read the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. The sutra comes from India, filters through China and then goes back to Tibet, losing and gaining with each transition in geography and language. Another name for it is "The Sutra of the Foremost Shurangama at the Great Buddha’s Summit Concerning the Tathagata's Secret Cause of Cultivation His Certification to the Complete Meaning and Bodhisattvas' Myriad Practices"

"Some of the main themes of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra are the worthlessness of the Dharma when unaccompanied by samādhi power, and the importance of moral precepts as a foundation for the Buddhist practice."

This also leads to the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra.

Dharmas are endless, I shall master them.

The outflow precepts:

One Must Cut Off Killing

One Must Cut Off Stealing

One Must Cut Off Lust

One Must Cut Off False Speech

One Must Cut Off Drinking

Charles Luk translation of Surangama Sutra. From Goodreads, "Mr Luk translates Sunyata to voidness instead of the more current emptiness. I think voidness points more to the absence of something than the actual meaning of no separate existence."

Read Sangharakshita: “Sürängama Sutra known in Chinese as "The Buddha's Great Crown Sütra', which though traditionally regarded as having been translated from a Sanskrit original by Paramärtha in the eighth century, is now generally acknowledged to be a native Chinese production. An attractive literary composition, it teaches a form of 'Absolute Idealism', and lists twenty-five methods of controlling the mind by meditation on the six sense-objects, the six sense-organs, six consciousnesses and seven elements. Each of these methods is expounded, on the basis of his own experience, by an Arhant or great Bodhisattva.” (Eternal Legacy)

And reading leads to meditation.