I love the Diamond Sutra. I read it every few years. To me, it's very funny. how can one read about all the absolutely galactic scale quantity of "merit" to be gained right next to explanations about the illusory nature of words without laughing?
It's layered like an onion. One layer is meant to free people from illbeing. Another layer is for error correction codes and to make the message 'viral'. Another layer opened my eyes to incontrovertible truth about the noisy approximations and lossy signals that comprise the the human experience. So many layers read rather mystically at first, but you can always cut through it and find out it's not magic, it's really the way things are.
From another angle, it's a blob of metadata around a packet that contains instructions to all sentient beings -- in my words: "Relax. Be compassionate to yourself and others. All barriers to compassion are illusions. Tell this to other people. If you need to reformat the content as a listicle to get through to grandma, that's cool."
There's other angles. It's a fascinating document.
I believe the massively intelligent person(s) who composed it had a sincere objective to help all life.
I never considered it as a text that attempts to show how quantity is always a kind of quality, so no matter how much you do something, it won't change how you exist in the world unless you change how you do it. What people are really after with weed and psychedelics is that kind of qualitative change, especially at the level of consciousness. But with dependent origination, changing how you in particular perceive the world does not actually change the world that you are a part of, and therefore doesn't lead to qualitative change of experience. What must be done, instead, is to change the world. True liberation is absolute.
> changing how you in particular perceive the world does not actually change the world that you are a part of
It's impossible to change yourself without changing the world, because those two things are not separate.
Further, much of the world exists only as abstract ideas in my mind. When I change how I relate to and perceive them, I do change them in every way that matters.
If by "you" you mean the totality of the universe that you are a part of, then changing "your" consciousness does change the world, but if you think of yourself as merely an individual subject--not a subject as substance--then nothing you do to "yourself" will lead to liberation, because others inability to find liberation creates a contradiction within your own.
Sure, if you discount the fact that other people exist, are conscious, have their own experiences of the same world and also experience joy, sadness, love, and suffering.
To assert that your perspective is the only thing that matters is to assert that nobody else matters.
its a matter of perspective. if everyone is one, no one indeed matters, nor exists. This is not discounting anyone nor any fact. what does not exist cannot be discounted.
For me the Diamond Sutra is the essence of Mahayana Buddhism.
> To me, it's very funny. how can one read about all the absolutely galactic scale quantity of "merit" to be gained right next to explanations about the illusory nature of words without laughing?
It’s all part of one of the central themes that accumulating merit is for the phenomenal world and ultimately meaningless for the transcendent.
“A bodhisattva does not need to build up virtue and happiness… A boddhisatva gives rise to virtue and happiness but is not caught up in the idea of virtue and happiness.”
> “A bodhisattva does not need to build up virtue and happiness… A boddhisatva gives rise to virtue and happiness but is not caught up in the idea of virtue and happiness.”
collorary: If you wonder if you are a bohisattva you are not.
> It’s all part of one of the central themes that accumulating merit is for the phenomenal world and ultimately meaningless for the transcendent.
I feel confused about something.
Even though you've read the prajnaparamita sutra and words like 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form', you say there is a phenomenal world and a transcendent world. But the phenomenal world can't be impermanent if it is not born and doesn't die. Although possibly apocryphal, the sutra of immeasurable meanings has a sentence like the nature of true reality is that appearance and no appearance not apart from each other. That is to say, it seems that the things like Bodhisattvas referenced in the Lotus Sutra may need to be understood with the background training that transcendent wisdom means that the phenomenal world is the transcendent world. It isn't that they don't exist but that Buddha's enlightenment was explained, as you know, to not have been obtaining anything distinct. I take it to mean that enlightenment needs to be in and about the entirety of real life.
It's been said sometimes to be a waste of time to debate whether a certain thing exists or doesn't exist because, for one, a thing cannot be said to exist to anything else in the universe if it is totally isolated, i.e. not been localized by any other system yet, and cannot be entangled with. A controlled experiment could be said to basically mean "one unknown to vary (hopefully)". But entanglement is a reality.
"Anyone who, for even a moment, gives rise to a pure and clear confidence upon hearing these words of the Tathagata, the Tathagata sees and knows that person, and they will attain immeasurable merit because of this understanding."
"If you are caught up in the idea of a dharma, you are also caught up in the idea of a self, a person, a living being and a life span. If you are caught up in the idea that there is no dharma you are still caught up in the idea of a self, a person, a living being and a life span. That is why we should not be caught up in the idea of dharmas, or in the idea that dharmas do not exist."
The analogy I like to use is that of the waves and the ocean. You can look and see both. You can tell where one wave ends and another begins. You can see the waves forming and dissipating. But can you tell where the ocean ends and the wave begins?
The sutra strikes down the idea of dualism and yet it at the same time it says:
"Do not think that when one gives rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind, one needs to see all objects as non-existent, cut off from life."
I like your summary. I also like Alan Watts' comment, that the mind is like a diamond, totally transparent but also the hardest, durable aspect of our existence.
I don't remember the title now, and it's hard to find them on YouTube these days.. but it's at the start of a section specifically on the diamond sutra. Maybe this one ? I will listen later to check
Same, I’ve had some very fortunate insights because of it. Any preferred translations? I’ve read the Watson one a couple times and just the other day was thinking of re-reading it since it’s been a few years, but maybe a different translation this time. I started looking at the Reeves translation but didn’t connect with it as I didn’t like how he dropped the Sanskrit terms in favor of things westerners would be more familiar with.
It's layered like an onion. One layer is meant to free people from illbeing. Another layer is for error correction codes and to make the message 'viral'. Another layer opened my eyes to incontrovertible truth about the noisy approximations and lossy signals that comprise the the human experience. So many layers read rather mystically at first, but you can always cut through it and find out it's not magic, it's really the way things are.
From another angle, it's a blob of metadata around a packet that contains instructions to all sentient beings -- in my words: "Relax. Be compassionate to yourself and others. All barriers to compassion are illusions. Tell this to other people. If you need to reformat the content as a listicle to get through to grandma, that's cool."
There's other angles. It's a fascinating document.
I believe the massively intelligent person(s) who composed it had a sincere objective to help all life.