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| The Diamond Sutra (translated into chinese) |
The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:-
The Diamond Sūtra (Sanskrit: Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra), is a short and well-known Mahāyāna sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or "Perfection of Wisdom" genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment. Note that the title properly translated is the Diamond Cutter of Perfect Wisdom although it is popular to refer to it as the Diamond Sūtra.From my understanding, The Diamond Sutra is about the essential teaching of Buddhism, that of non-duality. That is the fact that there are actually no individual existences in this world.
IMHO, while I am certainly no expert, I believe the Diamond Sutra tells us what we now know via Quantum Physics. That all is an illusion and we just think we exist as individuals but we actually don't. Everything in our physical world can be broken down to atoms and atoms can be further broken down into empty space and even finer particles (with more space than anything else). In fact, while the "tangible" physical world is a world of duality i.e. hot vs cold, good vs bad, etc, at the tiniest level, it is actually just empty space i.e. just an illusion. So in actual terms, there is no in here and out there. We're actually interconnected in a massive energy field. So essentially we're in a state of complete non-duality: there are no individuals, no sentient beings. So the elderly Subhuti asks these questions of the Buddha and the Buddha explains and so the Sutra explains this essential teaching of Buddhism.
There are many "chapters" to the Diamond Sutra. It also mentions four marks in which we, humans, are caught. And if we cannot liberate ourself from those four notions then we are not an authentic bodhisattva.
Take this for an example: if we look at say a pen. In our mind, there is an appearance of say, a mark or ink if you prefer. Our minds captures this appearance and we have sort of an idea or rather a perception of the mark (ink) and vice versa. The subject and object depends on each other to co-exist. One makes the other and the other is made by the other.. get it? That mark (or ink mark) results in us having concepts, perceptions and even notions about them of how things are etc etc. So, the appearance helps the mind to form perceptions and notions and the mind catches the appearance of the ink mark to make a concept. So both are responsible. However, most of the time, our perceptions and notions are not entirely correct.
The best example to illustrate this is marriage. When two person fall in love are they really falling in love with each other or their perception of each other? She's beautiful, she is graceful, she is this and that. He is soooo handsome, strong, manly... etc etc. So in each other's mind, they see some concept (perception) of the other which may not be real. It was the concept/perception that they've attached to that person. And this perception/concept feeds on each other. And our loving mind is then created with the help of the appearance of the other. This loving mind grasps at the appearances to form a notion, a perception about the other person. And the object of our love is the appearance of the other person, which we have created in our mind. It is the meaning that we attached to an image created in our mind. the image is but an illusion. After marriage, that illusion falls apart when the other "parts" of both individuals are noticed" for the first time. Actually, those traits were there all along, we chose not to see it. So, a new form of illusion then starts to take hold and the process repeats but this time negatively.
Whew... I'll go into more later. Very taxing.
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