In the late Ming Dynasty, the Surangama Sutra was very popular. Many monks and lay Buddhists wrote commentaries on the Sutra. At that time, the best known annotation was the Combined Commentaries (huijie 會解), which promotes the thought of the Tiantai school. Then, Jiaoguang Zhenjian (交光真鑑) disagreed with it, and wrote the Text-based Commentary (zhengmai shu 正脈疏), which was both famous and controversial. Youxi Chuandeng (幽溪傳燈), a monk of the Tiantai school, wrote the Enlightenment-based Commentary (yuantong shu 圓通疏) to oppose to Jiaoguang’s opinion. Afterwards, in the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, one of the leading literati, Qian Qian-yi (錢謙益, 1582-1664), spent many years to complete his Inquiring Commentary (shujie mengchao 疏解蒙鈔) on the sutra. The reason for doing so was that he hoped to reconcile the dispute over the interpretation of the sutra, and to practice his idea of advocating the reading of Buddhist texts. Thus, this Commentary was important for understanding both the history of the sutra’s annotations and Qian’s ideas on Buddhism. However, it hasn’t been thoroughly looked into in previous studies. This paper first investigate why Qian wrote this commentary, how he did this, and how many editions have been published. Then, Qian’s views on annotation will be discussed. The “Commentaries of the Past and Present” (gujin shujie pinmu 古今疏解 品目) chapter shows Qian’s knowledge of a large number of commentaries on the sutra. He analyzes how the commentaries relate to each other, and gives evaluation to each one. He disagrees with how Tiantai disciples interpreted the sutra, and decides to compose his work based on the commentary by Changshui (長水), which he considers to be the best among all. He goes on to conclude that, overall, Commentaries of the past are better than those of the present, and should be adopted first. On the issue of classifying the teaching of this sutra, people from different schools contradict each other. Qian chooses to discuss “when the sutra was said” and “how its teaching should be classified” separately. His conclusion doesn’t fit with any school’s division, but is based completely on the sutra itself. As for the main ideas of Qian’s Commentary, this paper focuses mainly on the chapter of “Counseling to Resolve Ten Doubts” (Zijue Yiyi Shike 諮決疑義十科). Qian’s response to Tiantai and Jiaoguang’s commentaries is mainly expressed in the idea of “General and particular doctrines” (famen zongbie 法門總別). He argues that in this sutra, the “general doctrine” is the “Supreme Surangama Samadhi”, while the “elementary steps that lead to attainment” is “Samatha.” His view differs from Tiantai disciples and Jiaoguang—they both emphasize the explanation of “samatha, samapatti and dhyana.” Qian’s view on Buddhism is shown in his discussion of the “Meditation on the organ of hearing.” He explains that, because the organ of hearing can accept vocal teaching, it’s the basis of all other ways of meditation. Thus, the vocal teaching and written texts should be valued. He also claims that this way of meditation is not for everyman, who should start with the “Three Gradual St
