carry oneself out away from that beautiful light out there. Well today we're going to finally finish this sutra. It's funny this morning actually at home I actually finally started working on the introduction. Actually starting to think about this sutra as a whole after a while you get into the forest all you see are trees. somehow I can look at all these chapters of the Diamond Sutra but looking at it as a whole is very different. But today I thought we would, well anyway, we'll finish the last three of these chapters. We got through 29 last time and so today we'll go through 30 and 31 and 32 and then talk about the whole sutra. Does anybody have any questions left over, sort of, from last time or something that seems like it'd be better to ask now.

[01:02]

I'll just go through these chapters and then I'm sure something will occur to you. So the Buddha's been leading us to his Dharma body and chapter 30 begins, Sabuddhi, if a good son or daughter took as many worlds as there are specks of dust in a billion world universe and by an expenditure of limitless energy ground them into a multitude of atoms, Sabuddhi, what do you think? Would there be a great multitude of atoms? Sabuddhi replied, so there would, Bhagavan, so there would, Sugata. There would be a great multitude of atoms. So the Buddha sort of summarizing what has been the theme of this sutra now, that is the perception and the understanding of what an entity is, any entity, whether it's a ball of rice or a self, a being, or the body of the Buddha.

[02:06]

And so he looks at it from the point of view of the material universe. So there would, Bhagavan, so there would, Sugata, there would be a great multitude of atoms. And why? If a great multitude of atoms existed, Bhagavan, the Tathagata would not have spoken of a multitude of atoms. This logic, the Buddha himself introduced a few chapters earlier, that he only talks about things that don't exist, which is the point of dharmas. which we'll talk about in just a minute. I'll finish this though. And why, Bhagavan, this multitude of atoms of which the Tathagata speaks is said by the Tathagata to be no multitude. Thus is it called a multitude of atoms. Also, so the smallest entity of the universe doesn't exist. Also, Bhagavan, this billion world universe of which the Tathagata speaks is said by the Tathagata to be no universe. Thus is it called a billion world universe. And how so?

[03:10]

Bhagavan, if a universe existed, just as up above he said if a multitude of atoms existed, if a universe existed, attachment to an entity would exist. but whenever the Tathagata speaks of attachment to an entity, the Tathagata speaks of it as no attachment, thus is it called attachment to an entity. So Bodhi himself finally sees what the Buddha has been driving at and that he's been talking about entities, again, any entity, and even a universe is just another entity, and it doesn't really exist. The reason it doesn't exist is because the Buddha talks about it and neither does an attachment to an entity exist either. So it's sort of like all of our attachment, the entity itself is an illusion. It's our illusory perception, a misperception of reality and our attachment to it is

[04:16]

a delusion, something made of our own making. So it's sort of like an attachment to an entity is a delusion of an illusion and that's why when the Tathagata speaks of an attachment to an entity the Tathagata speaks of it as no attachment because it's just a delusion. The Buddha said, I keep changing these words here so I forgot what I put on the sutra when I handed this out. Now I have an attachment to an entity is inexplainable and inexpressible and it's hard to find the right words for this but it's just incomprehensible, inexplainable. The Sanskrit is a word that just means can't be put into words. and thus inexpressible basically says the same thing. So he's using two words here. One means you can't put it into a word and the first phrase, the first word means you can't even explain it with a series of words.

[05:24]

For it is neither a dharma nor no dharma. foolish people though are attached and of course this foolish people are attached refers to when he talks about if an attachment to an entity existed then the Bhagavan would not speak of an attachment to an entity but foolish people people who are deluded don't see that their attachments are simply delusions. So I have a little introductory remark on this chapter i thought i agreed all things big and small are locked in an endless sleight of hand in which each negates the reality of the other because if if the universe is based upon i think we went over this before that if if if an entity is based upon the being constituted by other smaller parts then it itself is dependent on those parts and doesn't have any reality outside of its dependence on those parts so the entity as a whole does not exist in terms of having a self-nature.

[06:31]

The same can be true of the parts. If the parts make up this larger whole then they don't have any reality either other than their existence is constituting that larger whole. And yet we look We all look for something to grab. Sometimes we grab the biggest thing we can find. Sometimes we grab the smallest. The Buddha returned from his daily round with a ball of rice in his begging bowl. Was the ball of rice real or were the grains of rice real? The Buddha ate the ball of rice. So too do Zen masters swallow the world and all its mountains and rivers and atoms of dust and water. And the reason they can do this is because mountains and rivers do not themselves exist, but are simply names we give to momentary combinations of causes and conditions. But everything changes. If they did not, we would be in trouble. We would have no hope of liberation. But because nothing exists as an independent or permanent entity, there are no obstructions on the path to enlightenment.

[07:35]

Foolish people, though, refuse to walk this path. They see nothing but obstructions. So these final three chapters, the Buddha is definitely summarizing his whole teaching and Subuddhi is also summarizing his understanding of it. And it was apparently after this instruction that Subuddhi fully understood this teaching to such an extent that in the other sutras that make up the Prajnaparamita scriptures, Subuddhi speaks on the Buddha's behalf in instructing the gods about this sutra or this teaching. So Bodhi apparently finally understands the teaching now, or at least he's able to express it. Do you have any questions about this? Yes? Okay, somehow my mind just wrapped properly.

[08:38]

So attachment is neither a dharma nor an ajna. Right. Attachment? Okay, attachment is neither dharma nor no dharma. Oh yeah, well, this idea, the Buddha has been actually, I said that the whole sutra is about the concept of an entity. The entity, of course, he's talking about is the word dharma. And of course, the ultimate dharma is the Buddha's body, the dharma body, which is the only body we can't break down into pieces. It doesn't have any spatial, temporal, or even conceptual reality, but we speak of dharmas even though the thing that we we know does not exist, we speak of things as existing. The Buddha uses the word dharma as if something existed, knowing full well it doesn't exist.

[09:39]

As he says, and Subuddhi says above, it's because if there were a great multitude of atoms, the Tathagata wouldn't have talked about them. That's why it's neither. And it's not no dharma either, because the Tathagata talks about something. And of course, it all gets back to the original point of the sutra, which is that the liberation of all beings again, and if you end up with the no-dharma, then you don't go anywhere. That's the path, it's the arhat path basically, just the negation of anything, which leads to freedom from passion, but also freedom from compassion. And I guess that's the difference between no dharma and dharma. No dharma is the teaching of those who seek liberation from passion, and dharma is the teaching of those who seek to use compassion, to use something. But it's sort of like, the Buddha has these different medicines, and so the dharma is just a generic, that's his generic term for medicines.

[10:44]

And that's how it, yes? I mean, I can see what he's driving at, but it's, you know, I think it's interesting, but it's sort of, I don't know, it strikes me as unusual. Oh, that he would refer to attachment to an entity? Well, in the previous chapters, he's been talking very clearly about the Buddha's body, about the nirmanakaya, because he's been saying there's nobody who teaches this dharma and there's nobody who realizes, there's nothing realized, so there's no reward body either.

[11:46]

and there's no teaching, we can't get hold of the teaching either, which is the Dharma body. So he's been talking about these different aspects of reality in terms of bodies, the whole sutra. And finally at the very end he uses this word entity. Now I've translated it, this word entity, the Sanskrit word is pinda. And you'll remember in the very first chapter of the sutra, the Buddha goes to town for pinda. Pinda means a ball of rice. Pinda means specifically a ball of rice that is an offering. So all the entities in the universe are offerings. And that's why he uses this word, I translate it as entity. That's why he brings it up at the end of the sutra too. The whole sutra's been about this ball of rice that he just went to town for and just came back and ate it. It says in the first chapter that the Buddha sits down, crosses his legs, straightens his back, and then focuses his attention on what was before him.

[12:55]

He uses this term smrti-upasana. The Buddhists talk about four smrti-upasanas. Smrti means awareness and upasana means sort of to focus oneself. And usually smrti-upasana, it's sort of a noun-verb combination, is usually translated just as mindfulness, as sort of this one concept of mindfulness. And the Buddhists talk about four. subjects of mindfulness. There's the mindfulness of the body and then of sensation and then of thought and then of dharmas. And of course this whole sutra actually talks about all four but it's really a whole meditation on the body on the first of the Smriti Upasthanas. That's why in the first chapter he actually uses the phrase on what was before him. So he doesn't specify body, thoughts, sensations, or dharmas, just all of it.

[14:01]

He doesn't want to divide it into these different four categories of mindfulness. So this whole sutra has been sort of this meditation on the concept of an entity, on a pinda. And especially, as you can see, if you look at these little, what normally in most translations appear to be these abysses, these glips, these little blips where suddenly the Buddha's talking about renouncing one's self-existence and then about if a man or a woman had a big body, And I've been translating that as if that's the word he uses there is Purusha. If a Purusha had this big body and Purusha as I've been telling you is this original cosmic being who sacrificed his body and offered it to create the world out of the body. So the whole sutra, it becomes very coherent and of a piece if you think of it as this meditation on Pinda, on this entity, but it's this,

[15:08]

entity that is, in fact, an offering, which is the offering of the universe. And it's sort of like, instead of it actually being this body of Purusha, it, in fact, is the Dharma body. The universe that we see and perceive and divide up into pieces is all the Dharma body. And so maybe I need to look at the translation of the word entity here in a way that can... In my notes, I've gone into this concept, but sometimes in a translation, you don't pick up on those things. That's why you really need a commentary to pick up on the... Some of the continuity can be lost in a translation. That's why when I started translating this, I compared all the six Chinese versions and I didn't pick up any of this. because they had already left the Sanskrit behind and chosen words that didn't have the resonances that you need to pick up the connections and that you can only see in the Sanskrit.

[16:13]

And it was just sort of by accident that I started myself seeing these resonances, these connections. Because you'll read other translations from Sanskrit and they won't be saying what I'm saying. Simply because you have your options, every word, you have three or four different choices. I've made mine because I always think of things as... I always try to make things simple and put them all together like a puzzle so they all fit together in jewels on a string to make a necklace. They all make sense if you think of this entity as an offering and sort of as the dharma body. We're attached. It's sort of like there's this... The analogy you've probably heard of a bunch of blind men trying to describe an elephant, and that's what this attachment to an entity is. We're all attached to different parts of the Dharma body, which in fact is this offering that's just sitting there in our bowls.

[17:15]

Yes? Yeah, you're probably wrapped around back and answered my question, but let me just throw it out. So when you started out saying the Buddha's body is Dharma, I think you said something about you can't break it down, and what I get out of that is that if it had parts, then it wouldn't be whole. Yes. Right, then it would be dependent on the parts. And as he said, in fact, that's why, that's the intent of this particular chapter, to say, well, maybe now the Buddha thinks, well, maybe now some of you are thinking this Dharma body is a whole that is made of parts. And so he gives the example of the universe. which is maybe the nearest that he thinks his audience can come to comprehending what he means by the Dharma body, which is not the universe, but yet the same logic would apply to the Dharma body. And again, that's what this sutra's been about.

[18:20]

And that's my interpretation of why people started calling it the Diamond Sutra. It's the diamond body of the Buddha. That's what the word diamond means. It's the diamond body. indestructible, indivisible, and radiant. Any other questions on this particular chapter? Well, I'll go right on to the next one then. Chapter 31. And how so, Subodhi? Of course, he's been saying foolish people, though, are attached to this entity. And how so, the Buddha says, Subuddhi, if someone should claim that the Tathagata speaks of a view of a self, again, these are these entities, and he's giving us some examples of what we might perceive as being real, or that the Tathagata speaks of a view of a being, a view of a life, or a view of a soul, and I think I may have made some changes to my translation in this verse since I typed it up the first time.

[19:30]

Subuddhi would such a claim be true? Subuddhi said, no indeed, Bhagavan, no indeed, Sugata, such a claim would not be true. Why not? Bhagavan, when the Tathagata speaks of a view of a self, the Tathagata speaks of it as no view. Thus is it called a view of a self. So this is sort of the original impetus of the whole sutra. He's coming back just to talk about the self. And that's why the Buddha says he's created this path whereby we've resolved to liberate all beings. It's his little trick for helping us become unattached to the self, because if you're concerned about others, you won't think about yourself. And so at the very end of the sutra, he comes back to this, thinking that now he's provided subhuti with the tools, with the dharma armor to be able to look at the self without being terrified or without becoming attached to it. And thus he says, thus is it called a view of the self.

[20:34]

The Buddha said, indeed subhuti, so it is. Those who set forth on the Bodhisattva path I've changed, I think, the words here. I used to think I used to have understand, view, and cultivate. I think now I have know, see, and trust. And the reason I did it because I noticed, again, the continuity of language here and you'll notice that earlier in the sutra whenever he's talking about this body of merit, The Buddha says, I'll know you. I shall know you by means of my Buddha knowledge, and I'll see you by means of my Buddha vision. Now he uses the exact same words here. And he says, those who set forth on the Bodhisattva path shall know, shall see. And then he adds this last thing, because they're not Buddhas and they're Bodhisattvas, and trust. all dharmas they'll know see and trust all dharmas but they'll know see and trust without being attached to the idea of a dharma and of course this is this no see and trust all dharmas has to do with the dharma raft with the with the first we sort of know that dharmas can be used um as rafts and then we see them

[21:50]

a particular dharma that we can use as a raft, and then we trust it. We make use of that dharma to cross the sea of suffering, but in doing so we remain, we no see and trust it without being attached to it, to the idea of a dharma. And why not? The idea of a dharma, said Bodhi, the idea of a dharma, said by the Tathagata, to be no idea. Thus is it called the idea of a dharma. And again, since we have time today, I'll read again this little introductory remark I have. From the Buddha's begging bowl universe, we come back to the belief that prevents a true perception of a ball of rice or anything else we conceive as separate or permanent. The belief in the existence of a self. from which our beliefs in a being, a life, and a soul are derived. The Buddha tells us that to understand the true nature of any entity, whether that entity is a self, a Dharma, or even a Buddha, we must not be blinded by our own conception of it.

[22:52]

It is not the myriad atoms of dust. or the billion-world universe that prevents us from attaining enlightenment, but are mistaken views of such things as separate, or permanent, or somehow real. But on closer examination, these entities turn out to be rather arbitrary views of reality, founded on nothing more than linguistic conventions, which are themselves the detritus of previously established arbitrary views. all of these views can be traced back to our view of the self. Thus the Buddha returns to the view that began the sutra setting forth on our daily round with an empty bowl and bestowing this teaching on all those we meet. So any questions on this one? Again, he comes back to the self as being the ultimate entity that he's been sort of pussyfooting around, in a sense, to try to get Subodhi to the point that he can confront this idea of the self. Yeah?

[23:58]

I don't know if these passages really emphasize, I think what you just read does say that it's not Dharmas themselves, or the emptiness of Dharmas, it's the views and systems of thought, it seems to me that that may be really important to all this intricate logic which tends to undermine views and concepts. It seems to me that what it's pointing to, although this little verse does say it, you body, who seeks me in a voice, indulges in wasted effort, such people see me not.

[25:17]

The views, the concepts that somehow keep one involved intellectually without understanding the renal nature of this deeper understanding. I mean, it seems that it's pointing to, that the conviction here is this sutra, which asks us to understand it. And yet, that it's a lot of work. But earlier, a couple of chapters ago, remember the Buddha said that you get this big body of merit, but you don't get it.

[26:47]

And then Subuddhi said, oh, but surely you obtain this big body of merit. And the Buddha says, you do, but you don't grasp it. And so it is a contradiction, but the essence is non-attachment to the ball of rice in your begging bowl, that everything you do, you sort of automatically receive a full bowl of rice, because the world just offers it to you. But it's with the entity, That's right. A big pile of merit accumulated as a kind of real thing that you would try to do and therefore make big offerings and expensive things and all the precious day jewels, gold, and all those things.

[28:03]

And he's saying that's not worth anything. Mm-hmm. The teaching, which relates to the Dharma body, the teaching involves the Dharma body. It's not the other kind of merit. It's an inexplicable kind of merit that has to do with trying to understand and be pointed in the right, in the direction, away from a materialistic kind of grasping, trying to hold on to even ideas and concepts and even to frame it for yourself. Well, the whole sutra began when Subuddhi saw the Buddha go to town on his daily begging rounds and come back, eat a ball of rice and that's why he asked the questions that began the sutra.

[29:07]

He saw something. And so the Buddha, the whole sutra is sort of a test. What did you see? And that's why as soon as he's taught the teaching of liberating all beings without being attached to all beings, and you get this big body of merit, the next thing the Buddha says, so can you see me? Can you see the Tathagata? And so it has been all about, what did you see exactly? He wants to know. And he sort of says, well, did you see anything? Did you see my real body when I went to town? And it is all about, and here at the very end, it's about seeing. What do you see? Yeah, without views, without being attached to views. But he also says the Bodhisattva does view, knows views, entrusts dharmas. So we do view, he doesn't deny views, he just denies the attachment to views, that's all. At the beginning of the... Right.

[30:13]

That does seem to be, you know, a really, you know, kind of mountain of difficulty. Views of what is right. Well, it is. It's the beginning of the first step on the path, on the Eightfold Noble Path. That's why... That seems to be maybe the most difficult in a way. Certainly, yeah. And that's why you can't trust the path unless you see it properly. You won't... you'll fall off the edge or you won't have the confidence in it. Possibly here is there some allusion to not looking at dharma as dogma, in other words, not seeing it, you know, it's not cast in concrete. Right. Yeah. In fact, you know, it's funny, you know, And looking back at the sutra now, it's really hard to find any teaching in it. Really, something that you could call a dogma. If you look in the sutra and it's all about how the Buddhas come from this teaching and this teaching, this teaching that, you know.

[31:19]

Did I realize this teaching? Do I teach this teaching? But what is this teaching? And you look at the sutra and it's hard to find. It's sort of like it's not something you find. The only thing you can really say about this sutra in terms of actual teaching is the resolve to liberate all beings. It's the only real teaching in the sutra that would be, that you could say is different from this sutra, this other sutra, and sort of that motivates the whole thing. But he says that in other sutras too. So this sutra's all about a dogma that's never really stated. If it isn't a dogma, but if it was to be called a dogma, it's the dogma that's not a dogma. A cat-ma, I guess. Yes, Dan. I was thinking that it seems like part of the teaching is just this, I mean, obviously this idea

[32:21]

very, like what does that really mean to use it to sort of use it and not be attached to it? And it seems like it's something that goes on inside your mind at a really subtle level of some kind of detachment from things while using, that it's not just things, it's like concepts. So, I mean, I guess I'm trying to I'm just trying to understand. What's being taught there? What is that? Well, the last half of the sutra is ... the first half is about prajna, about this perfection of wisdom, and the last half is about upaya, the skillful means, and it sort of applies the skillful means to the concept of dharmas. So what you have in the sutra are these three ... there are really three teachings taught, or these three perfections.

[33:38]

It's the perfection of wisdom, prajna paramita, and then there's the perfection of charity, the dana paramita and then the kshanti paramita, the perfection of forbearance. And sort of like the perfection of wisdom doesn't really exist. It isn't practiced except by practicing one or more of these other perfections. It's sort of the attitude with which we practice these other perfections of charity and forbearance. That's all the sutra really talks about is charity and forbearance. And one way you might look at these as dharmas is that, well, if someone, say, suffers overly from delusion, you know, the Buddhists talk about the three poisons, you know, delusion, anger, and desire as these three poisons that turn the wheel of life and death, endless rebirth. So if someone's sort of karmic propensity or their disease, their karmic disease is delusion, you teach dharmas of prajna, wisdom.

[34:48]

And if they're especially greedy, suffering from desire, you teach them charity. And if anger, then forbearance. And so these three perfections that are taught in this sutra are all aimed as dharmas to counteract the three poisons. And that's why he only mentions these three here. This is sort of a, he's being extremely simple in this sutra and very straightforward in treating these perfections as dharmas to counteract the three poisons of delusion, anger, and greed. And that's why charity counteracts greed, and forbearance, anger, and then prajna, wisdom, delusion. Yes? Well, since we seem to be launching into a discussion about the siddhis, I'll just put it... Well, yeah, no, yeah, this is... We've got the whole day. away.

[36:27]

So there's this, on the one side there's, you know, I vowed to liberate all beings, on the other side there are no beings to liberate. That's sort of like Yeah, that's because it's selfless merit, and it's still karmic, but that's why when the Buddhists started talking about all these different bodies that the Buddha has, they had to admit that, well, that the Buddhist nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya were subject to causation. that they are the realization of enlightenment and the teaching of enlightenment are there are karmic but only through only only through selfless karma.

[37:34]

which is a very different kind of karma, because it's sort of expansive rather than contraction. It doesn't form around a seed, like the seed of the ego. Like giving gifts? Yeah, yeah. Then there's giving gifts and then there's also giving gifts. Yeah, and that's why the sutra always compares these two. Give a ton of jewels or give a little teeny poem. poem of about this teaching and that's why Just one little poem and you can basically fill the universe with your merit But it is it is cause it cause caused yes Selflessness I've got a whole bunch of streams of things, and this is one that is coming out right now, which is about selfless versus selfish. If I am giving anything, there's an I in there, which is not selfish.

[38:37]

Even if you're giving a small birth, that's a good birth. That's very selfless. If you're thinking that you're giving anything, you're not being selfish. Right. And that's why from the very beginning of the sutra, the very beginning, as soon as the Buddha says, well, this is how you should practice the Bodhisattva path. You should vow to liberate all beings without liberating any beings. But if you have any concept of self or being, you're not a Bodhisattva. So what about being unselfconscious? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, yeah. And if you find a self, then give it away. I suppose. Yeah. But it is. Well, yeah, the Buddhist path is a contradiction in terms. And nobody seems to have a linguistic way of answering that contradiction. There is this idea floating around here and there that the Buddhists, you know, the teachings that we have deal with our only skillful beings

[39:46]

there's no like you've been talking about earlier there's no there's nothing to get a hold of in the sutra about you know some truth it's really being taught to us simply as a way to liberate us right yeah it is it's a path that we we can't even we don't even know where the path begins or ends but it's odd you know how the whole sutra sort of instead of looking for the future toward the future Like, if we practice this way, we're going to get enlightened, which is what Subuddhi is doing, or the arhants there. Well, if we do this, then there's this causation, and then we get that goal over there. Well, in the sutra, the Buddha is looking the other way. The sutra is directed toward the past. The Buddha, the ultimate realization of the Bodhisattva is that nothing comes into being. Nothing was there in the first place. And so the sutra is, Lao Tzu says, the Tao moves the other way.

[40:52]

And this is the sort of the teaching of the sutra, is it's going backwards, back to the beginning of the universe, your original face. So it's not about, it's sort of oblivious to the idea of whether anything's caused or uncaused, because it's saying, well, let's go back to the beginning of the first cause. That's why this concept of forbearance has been built up in the sutra gradually and finally at the end we see the birthlessness of all dharmas as being the ultimate experience that a bodhisattva has to realize and also withstand or bear the burden of that realization. that there's no past. There's nothing that was ever, ever created. And therefore, there is no, there are no causes. But again, that's easy to talk about. But that's what the sutra. But that's what the sutra is getting at, it's getting at no past rather than no future, taking the rug out from under us and that's why it directs itself towards other beings rather than ourselves as being, again, these are all just tricks in a sense, but they're tricks that have effect, they're dharmas.

[42:11]

They tend to be useful. They've worked in the past. I really should have bought these books when I was in Taiwan, but there were these two books on the bookshelf in this Buddhist library book store, and together they had about 500 cases of people being enlightened while reading the sutra. And they all read different passages and somebody else's different translations of it. You never know what's going to work in here and how it's going to work. I really should have bought those books. that there's no concept or framework that we can have that's really accurate in this path. That, you know, you're walking around in a state of, you know, sort of delusion, but if you read the things, look into the past even,

[43:17]

It's just, it's not the ordinary frame of mind that we can walk around in the world. And I remember hearing a story about a physicist, I think it's not a real story, but when he really realized the atomic energy and empty, emptiness and energy within Adam. And then he started walking around with a big goose on him. He was afraid. And he's crawling through the holes. Crawling through the holes. Crawling into the space. And, you know, he was a little delusional, perhaps because he was so involved with, he had fully realized that Well, the sutra has been unique in terms of emphasizing the emotional impact as bringing you closer to the realization or the experience of the teaching rather than through the logic.

[45:02]

The logic just sort of is meant to disarm us. Because if you get sort of what happened, that I don't exist. I don't exist. Yeah. Well, it's a big moment in any case. Well, that's why this sutra is such a unique ... it is the teacher. That's why the Buddha says that this ... I came from this sutra. This is the mother of Buddhas and that's why it's great. You can fold this up and stick it in your pocket, carry it around and take it out.

[46:06]

It's a very unique sutra because it has, without having any specific teaching, it has many teachings in it and yet it's quite compact. So I always think of it like the Swiss Army knife of sutras. You can, you can stick it in your pocket and take it out and it can do all kinds of things. Whenever you're in trouble, you can take out the Diamond Sutra. Whereas the Lotus Sutra, a lot of the other sutras that are quite good too are just a bit too long somehow to comprehend. You can actually, once you read this through a few times, you can start to get a real handle on it and realize it's not all that long. That's why it's very, you know, most temples, monasteries, they chant it every day and regularly. It only takes maybe, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes probably to chant the whole thing. Yeah. What's left? No, well, chapter 32, actually, is left.

[47:30]

And so let me read 32. We can take a pause, let's see. So, furthermore subhuti, so after all there's non-attachment to dharmas and ideas of dharmas. Furthermore subhuti, if a fearless bodhisattva, and at the very end of the sutra the Buddha comes back to this theme that is run throughout the sutra, and that's why it is so important to realize that this is an important concept. sort of how we are involved in this teaching. If a fearless bodhisattva, and again, fearless is really important, filled measureless infinite worlds with the seven jewels and gave them as a gift to the Tathagatas, the Arhats, the fully enlightened ones. Now, in this last chapter, he turns the tables on the whole sutra. He's been talking about the whole sutra about if this man or woman gave all these jewels, but if a bodhisattva, gave this little teaching, well, how much bigger body of merit would you have?

[48:35]

Well, here at the very end, he puts, he makes the bodhisattva into a straw man. Yeah, if a fearless bodhisattva, not a good man or woman, but if a fearless bodhisattva filled all these worlds with the seven jewels and gave them to the Tathagatas, and a good son or daughter, on the other hand, understood but a not a bodhisattva mind you but just a good son or daughter understood but a single four-line god of this dharma teaching of the perfection of wisdom and memorized it discussed it recited it mastered it and explained it in detail to others the body of merit produced as a result would be immeasurably infinitely greater so at the very end of the sutra the bodhisattva is is demoted in a sense and the Buddha is pointing to Subodhi and says, just because you think you're a bodhisattva, you're not through the woods yet. You still could end up attached to concepts of material merit or actually accruing merit

[49:36]

Whereas if there's just simply this good son or daughter, this lay person was able just to recite this sutra, a four-line gatha from this sutra, then their body of merit, and again the body of merit is this reward body of the Buddha. So a bodhisattva is not as close to being a Buddha as a good son or daughter if they just read this teaching and explain it to others which is of course the crucial element here too because that's where the teaching tells us to liberate all other beings and that's how we liberate them is by explaining this teaching to others. So the teaching is sort of self-perpetuating. And how should they explain it? And of course, they have this little poem. Now, in the Chinese versions, there's only six metaphors, and in all the Sanskrit versions, there's nine. Actually, in all the Chinese versions, there's also nine, but in Kumara Jiva's Chinese version, there's only six. The first three metaphors don't appear in Kumarajiva's Chinese version, so this may sound just a little bit differently.

[50:47]

Plus, Kumarajiva puts the last line first, and the Sanskrit has it last, so I keep it there. So, how should they explain this teaching as a lamp? as a cataract, as a star in space, an illusion, a dew drop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning, view created things like this. If they explain it like this, it is called explaining. And so that's the end of the sutra as far as Ananda's recollection of it. And then it says, all of this was spoken by the Buddha to the joy of the elder Sabuddhi, the monks and nuns. And of course, we don't have nuns at the beginning of the sutra, but they're definitely here at the end of the sutra. So we can assume that the reason they're not at the beginning of the sutra is because the monks are the foil that the Buddha wants to work with in this sutra. and the laymen and laywomen who also aren't mentioned in the sutra because this sutra is really directed to Subuddhi and his fellow monks to try to cure them of their attachment to nirvana, emptiness, and the freedom from passion.

[52:01]

So all these other people are there, laymen and laywomen, bodhisattvas, the devas, humans, asuras, and Gandharvas are also there. They're another special spirit that live in these illusory worlds. and all of whom were greatly pleased with what the Buddha said. The reason the other beings aren't mentioned is because they can't understand a teaching like this. Animals can't understand a teaching like this. Either can the beings in hell or the hungry ghosts. That's why they're not mentioned in any of these contexts when beings are mentioned in the sutra. And so I'll read my little thing here. So this sutra began with Subuddhi and other members of the assembly thanking the Buddha for the example of his daily life and asking how they might attain such liberation. The Buddha told his audience they must cultivate both wisdom and compassion by vowing to liberate all beings while not being attached to any idea of a being, any idea of a self or any idea of liberation.

[53:05]

In this final gatha, the Buddha sums up this teaching. All dharmas are no dharmas, and yet this teaching is the dharma that is no dharma. This is the teaching of wisdom. The teaching of compassion is to explain this teaching of wisdom to others. Whoever reads or hears this gatha and masters it and explains it to others does what the Buddha does. This is why the Buddha gets up in the morning and goes to town. This is the way to Buddhahood and the way of Buddhahood. This is the magic seed that bears the magic fruit, the punya skanda, the body of merit, infinitely greater than anything we can conceive of. This is the diamond body. Well, I also thought I'd bring off a little thing about this series of metaphors here about the lamp, cataract, star in space, illusion, dew drop, bubble, dream, cloud, flash of lightning. So whenever we see something, we should view them like this and explain the things to other people in this regard. And so in terms of their meaning, a lamp shines bright but can be extinguished by something as unsubstantial as the wind.

[54:14]

A cataract presents images of flowers and other objects that turn out to be defects of vision. A star in the sky appears at dusk, only to disappear again at dawn. An illusion is nothing but a conjurer's trick. A dewdrop seems such a perfect jewel, but vanishes as soon as the sun appears. A bubble turns out to contain nothing. A dream enthralls us so completely and it scenes until we wake up and wonder where it came from and where it went. A cloud forms out of thin air, never stops changing shape and vanishes into nothing. And a flash of lightning stuns us with its brilliant light but reminds us of the brevity of what appears to be real. And of course, we should view created things like this. The word created is samskrita. Of course, the word Sanskrit also comes from samskrita. It's a created language. and we should view created things like this. Earlier, the Buddha said, Subuddhi says, Buddhas come from the uncreated, the asamskrita, which is, again, turned out to be just a half-truth, and thus no truth at all, because Buddha's, as he says later on in the next sutra, the Sutra Prajnaparamita in 8,000 Lines, he says, Buddhas don't come from the created or the uncreated.

[55:37]

But in any case, this is how we should explain things, just as illusions. Yes? I'm a little unsatisfied with this level of explaining. Because it just refers to created things. We've spent several pages talking about how nothing was born. Nothing's been created in the first place. Right. So it seems like in terms of explaining or saying how a suture should be explained. Well, I suppose, see this is, I guess the Buddha is telling us this is how we should explain it. This isn't how he explains it. This is sort of like the Buddha saying, well, this is an explanation for those who don't understand this teaching, who sort of need the front door, a doorway to get into this teaching. That you begin by telling people that the things that they think are real and so beautiful in the world

[56:41]

things that they're attached to without knowing they're attached to them those things are unreal and as soon as they realize they're unreal they'll also realize they're attached to them and and the buddha sort of just sort of giving us basic Buddhism 101, and I think that's what this has meant. And I think the earlier Gatha is much more profound about not seeing the Buddha. I think that's sort of what the Buddha's teaching is for the advanced second-year Buddhism, Bodhisattva. At the very end of the sutra, this is how a good son or daughter should explain the sutra. And so they're explaining it in very rudimentary terms, but in terms that they can talk about at home, with their friends at school and at work and so forth, rather than these highfalutin entities that the bodhisattva would want to talk with his fellow or her fellow bodhisattvas.

[57:49]

So yeah, that's why it often bothered me too, that at the end of the sutra, we get back to these simple illusions, where the sutra seemed to be going in a much more profound direction, but that it ends leaving us with something that's very handy though, but I think meant for laypeople. But then again, the simple path, the simple mind, is the everyday mind is the Buddha mind too. In a way is this a corollary at all to the short Gatha in 26 where it's actually talking about who looks for me in a body, who sees me in a voice? Yes. Yes. Right. This is a teaching you could apply to everyday at home and you could also it is a corollary to the Buddha body if you think the Buddha Right. And so, you should not only view created things like this, but the earlier Gatha would be, you should also view uncreated things like this.

[59:00]

So, which was what Subuddhi thought. Subuddhi thought the Buddha was uncreated, came from the uncreated. That was sort of a more profound teaching. So at the very end, the Buddha gives us a teaching maybe within which we can use to pry our way into the other teaching maybe. And again, I think he means this at the very end as something for all the lay people to use too, who are suddenly present, where they haven't been mentioned earlier, they're present at the very end. And I think that's why he makes it so simple, elementary Buddhism, but sometimes that's the best kind. Let's take a break and then we'll come and talk about the real teaching in just a minute. Tell us a little bit about that.

[60:14]

Well, there are a few Chinese ones who have, but the only person who I know who shares this idea of the bodies of the Buddha and the merit body being the equivalent to the reward body is Asanga. Asanga was this Indian pundit who lived, I don't know, maybe 200 AD. I'm not even sure of his dates. He and his brother Vasubandhu, Vasubandhu is also very famous for all kinds of huge voluminous works on consciousness only, on the Yogacara teachings and so forth. Asanga converted his brother Vasubandhu Or was it the other way around? I never remember. But anyway, Asanga wrote a series of 77 verses, four-line verses on the Diamond Sutra. And to my knowledge, that's the only early commentary which seems to have got the same sort of impression on this, the focus of the sutra on bodies.

[61:30]

And his brother wrote a commentary on Asanga's verses. And so there's a commentary as well. In fact, there's two of them. And the Sanskrit still exists for most of the verses, but maybe 80, 90% of it still exists for the verses, and the commentary largely only in Chinese translations. The verses were translated twice by two different Chinese masters, both of whom did Diamond Sutra translations, and the commentary was also translated into Chinese, and largely what we know about his verses comes from the Chinese. There was also a Tibetan version, but it was based on the Chinese version, the first Chinese version. So it doesn't give us a lot more either. But I'd say that's the main one. And whenever I run into a Chinese commentator who also shares this idea, sooner or later they quote a sangha.

[62:39]

So I know they've been reading a sangha. Because again, there were two Chinese versions of his verses. And sometimes, I've translated all the verses. They were translated from the Chinese and Sanskrit by Jesse P. Tucci back in, I think, maybe the 30s or 40s. I'm not sure exactly when he did his work. But it's not a very coherent translation. And usually he ends up translating the commentary instead of the verse. And so what I've done is I've translated the verses and then along with the comments, selected comments, because sometimes I don't understand what they're saying, what the comments are saying. So I've... Is that going to be in your commentary attached to the sutra? Oh yes, well what I've done is this, see, I've taken, the front of this book will have the sutra at the very beginning, you know, 15 pages, and then it'll have an introduction of about five pages, which I'm writing now, and then it'll have the whole sutra broken down, where, for example, in chapter one, you turn the page and there'll be chapter, the whole thing, which is only a paragraph or two paragraphs, and then I'll take it and break it down line by line,

[63:56]

and right after each line I have commentary. I have my comments and then I translate all the comments of the Sixth Patriarch and all of Asanga and Vasubandhu's, at least all of Asanga's verses. And then I have selected, I have 40 different commentaries from Chinese that I've made selections from. So if anybody, like Hanshan Deqing, the Ming Dynasty monk, I have a lot of his commentary. There's a monk who lives in Hong Kong on Lantau Island who is probably the best modern commentator. I've used a lot of his comments. His name is Sheng Yi. I'm used to about, oh, 40, about 40 different monks have commentaries that I've collected and I make little selections. So that's why it's 300 pages of commentary, or the 300 page, it'll be at least a 300 page book, because there's so much in the way of commentary. So I have Asanga's verses and Vasubandhu's commentaries on his verses, but that makes up a really small part of it.

[65:02]

When I, about four years ago, I published a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and my solution for the Tao Te Ching was I compared, there were about 20 or 30 different versions of the Tao Te Ching, and I compared them all and created a composite, thinking that the Tao is what's important, and so I figured whatever I could understand as the Tao, I'd do a composite version, using all the earliest editions and then what I did I had again about 30 or 40 different commentaries and then I would put these commentaries after each verse of the Tao Te Ching and so I thought when I do the Diamond Sutra I do the same thing because it was very successful people appreciate that because when the Chinese read these classical texts they never except during a temple ceremony, do they read the text by itself. They always read it with a commentary. No one would read the Tao Te Ching without a commentary. The same with the Diamond Sutra. You never would expect anybody to understand it without a commentary.

[66:04]

So that's why I've put so much commentarial material in it. And maybe, you know, 20, 30% of the commentary is, is also maybe about 10% is taken up by textual notes. I list all the variants. Because there's six different Chinese versions, there's the Tibetan version, there's a Khotanese version, there's the two that were found in Central Asia, the partial ones in Gilgit and also by Oral Stein. And then there's Max Muller has an edited version and Edward Kanzi has an edited version. So I compare all the different versions and mention any variance in the textual note so that people can, if they don't like my choice, they at least know what the other choices are. So I've included all that material. Then of the actual commentary, about 50% has become my own commentary. When I did the Tao Te Ching, about 5% was. And I thought I could pull off the same sort of thing here, that I would just translate the words of others.

[67:09]

I feel much more comfortable doing that. I didn't realize I would have to do this myself so much, but it's mostly my own commentary now. And then with the commentaries of all these other Chinese masters, some of whom may not have understood, shared the same understanding as I have for the whole sutra, but for given phrases or lines or chapters, they really have something good to say. And so I've translated anybody who had anything that I could understand. Sometimes, even though I've been studying Chinese for almost 30 years now, I'm always running into Chinese I don't understand. But if I understood it and it was good, I translated it. And I've read, again, about 30 or 40 commentaries that I've made these selections from. Oh, I began in July, what was it, July of 98. So just a little bit, just two and a half years. It'll be about two and a half years when I'm done.

[68:10]

I thought it was gonna be about a six month thing. Because it should have been. When I was going to Columbia, I had a fellow graduate student. In fact, he's the fellow who told me about Taiwan and gave me this address of a monastery in Taiwan. He was this German graduate student. And as an exercise, he translated the Diamond Sutra one week. So I thought, well, if he did it in a week, and I've been studying Chinese 20 years now, or 30 years, I should be able to finish it off with some nice little commentary in six months. Well, but there are all these background, all these other versions and translations. Well, but you see... And all that's huge. Well, not really. The Diamond Sutra is still so short. It's only a dozen or more pages. And so I figured I didn't have to pay any attention to the Sanskrit stuff because I'm a Chinese specialist. And I can read the Chinese fine. And I thought, well, I'll just compare the six Chinese versions and choose this line from that version and this line from that version and come up with a coherent composite.

[69:18]

And I made a translation in about two months, a composite translation. And then I went to Taiwan to spend about six months teaching my daughter the ABCs of English. I wanted to prepare for coming to America. While I was there, I needed some money, so I started working on a work-for-hire. I was translating this book by this Taiwanese master, Buddhist master named In Shun, very famous master in Taiwan. And I went to their foundation headquarters, and while I was just waiting to see somebody there on a shelf, I saw this set of books, and there were five books, and they all said the same thing, Diamond Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and then they had all this Sanskrit on them. And I took him out and found out, wow, this is all, this Chinese scholar has done a five-volume study of every word in the Diamond Sutra, all the Sanskrit, and he's translated it all into Chinese, with an entire grammatical analysis, and he had everything that any Japanese scholar had ever said on the Diamond Sutra, he translated that into Chinese.

[70:23]

He had this just incredible five-volume set of everything I'd ever would want to read about the Diamond Sutra in Chinese. And he only printed 250 copies of this set, but about a week later, I tracked down him and I got a set of these books, which are very expensive. They're like $200, and that was a lot of money. But as soon as I opened them and I started reading, I went right to the places where I had been having trouble, because I wasn't satisfied with the composite translation, and the Sanskrit just blew me away. I ran into these words like pinda, And then I realized how the whole sutra just comes together if you see the Sanskrit. Whereas if I was reading the Chinese, I was getting all the words right, but I was very dissatisfied with, you know, I felt sort of like Kanzi, that this is a patchwork of... So this work of this, what was it, Japanese scholar? A Chinese scholar. Well, yes and no.

[71:26]

He still had nothing to say about Pinda or any of this other stuff about the Buddha, but he put all the drop material right in front of me so I could read it. In Chinese, I could see everything that's going on in the Sanskrit, whether something's a noun or a verb and how that phrase is structured and that phrase is structured. And plus he had all the comments of all these Japanese scholars too, and I don't read Japanese, and they're great Buddhist scholars in Japan. And suddenly I could read all these great Buddhist commentaries by modern scholars who tend to be very, you know, modern scholars, they're very critical. But that can be good if you don't swallow it whole, but it could be useful. And so I was able to read a lot of materials that I otherwise couldn't get hold of. On the other hand, when you're reciting it every day, it's important that it has some kind of flow and certain words work better than others.

[73:15]

Well, you know, when the Chinese translated it, when there were these six Chinese translations of it, the first one was by Kumara Jiva. And if you look at the other five, you can see how much stuff he left out of it. But everybody loves Kumara Jiva's version because it's so musical. It's just beautiful Chinese. He wasn't a Chinese. He was from Central Asia, from the kingdom of Kucha. But he was held captive for 17 years just inside the Chinese border of the Silk Road. And he learned beautiful Chinese. And so when he wrote his translation, it just was wonderful Chinese. And so to this day, Even, for example, the great Chinese traveler, Xuanzang, this guy, the one who went to India, brought all the manuscripts back. Well, he did the Diamond Sutra, too, and his translation is what you would say more accurate, more complete, but everybody ignores it because it doesn't have the music in it. There is this problem in translation, but having spent a lot of time translating, I always know that if my translation doesn't sound good, it's not a good translation.

[74:29]

It's not accurate. There is no such thing as accurate. That's sort of something that somebody who doesn't translate thinks that there's literal and liberal. There's these two, but when you start translating, there's just good and bad. And to me, if you're going to translate a sutra, well, the words are irrelevant, in a sense. I mean, the sutra is all about the... If it's the diamond body of the Buddha, then it's the diamond tongue of the Buddha. If it's not musical, if you can't chant it, then it's a bad body. It's sort of... That's my theory. But Buddhism has just come to America, so there's bound to be tons of different translations and competing versions and everything. All the dust will settle, I figure. This is good. But I know it must be disconcerting when you're a practicing community to be reading a liturgy that then, if you go over across the bay, they have a different... Well, that's the burden of transmitting the Dharma in America, or in the West in general, because we are democratic societies.

[75:59]

Whereas before, usually these people who are translated, like Kumarajiva, all of those translations were imperially sponsored. And so, as soon as they were translated, the seal went on it and that was it. And of course, there were different translations done, but they were still every 50 or 100 years. So for 50 or 100 years, you know, Everybody translated a particular version. But Komorjiva stuck because it was better music, better poetry. And so I think in the long run, whatever is better poetry will stick. That's why whenever I'm translating, I'm always very cognizant of how it reads. I'm not a good chanter, so I don't really chant, but I do read it as poetry. I've translated a lot of poetry, so I've developed a certain voice. That was the biggest thing to learn in translating, the acquisition of a voice.

[77:04]

Because normally you think of translating, well, you just get the words. But that's not it at all. It's like telling a joke and nobody laughs. That you said perfectly, you thought. I've often thought, maybe just to summarize this, these comments, that the work that I'm working from, say the Diamond Sutra in Chinese, is not the original. And that my translation has just as much status as the work I'm working from, that the Diamond Sutra came from something else. That's what I always think. I keep that in the back of my mind, that the Tao Te Ching or some Cold Mountain poems or whatever, these aren't the originals. This just happened to be what they ended up with. Well, I was to lead off on Peter's question about the internal study and then the chanting, also our practice is an expression of the sutra.

[78:05]

And I'm wondering about your life, how your practice, the meditation, things that you do and how you live your life is informed from the sutra. that maybe from experience that you've had, that maybe it doesn't flow as much or it's not as musical, but actually it hits something really in your heart where you actually experience something and how all that kind of works out in the final draft. Well, again, I think it's maybe a poetic sensibility. I don't really usually think of it in terms of my own experiences, but I do have to understand it. And that's why I insisted that the Diamond Sutra make sense. And that's why as soon as I saw the Sanskrit possibilities, I realized that I don't even look at the Chinese anymore. And I haven't looked at it for about two years now, a year and a half. I just look at the Sanskrit, because I know that's where the music is. That's where the truths of the Sutra are in the Sanskrit. And the Chinese sort of missed out a lot of that.

[79:07]

And it was by accident bad poetry that they ended up with. But very often that's a very telling sign. Would you go back again about the Sanskrit? Because I thought you said the original, the Sanskrit version, the Indian Sanskrit version, No, well, the Buddha never spoke Sanskrit, but the Buddha spoke a dialect. In fact, there were several times his disciples asked him, you know, can't you just speak in Sanskrit? And he said, no way. But we have these, there have been copies of the Diamond Sutra floating around in Sanskrit for 2000 years or for at least 1500 years that we know of. There have been copies in Sanskrit of the Diamond Sutra. The copies that Muller and Kanzi studied, when they started going to this library and that library looking for some Sanskrit, the earliest that they could get would be about three or four hundred years.

[80:12]

Some of these copies were a hundred years old, but they found copies that were three and four hundred years old, and they were able to compare this manuscript with that manuscript and very often those manuscripts had little missing pages or little missing parts with it. From now, from now. So only going back around three or four hundred years because there were pieces of paper and paper rots relatively easily. Then they, about a hundred, less than a hundred years ago they found these two copies in, one in Gilgit In northern Pakistan, in the town of Gilgit, they found a copy of the Diamond Sutra, and then they found one just outside on the Chinese town of Khotan. Oral Stein found this other copy. It's called the Stein edition, so there's the Stein edition and the Gilgit edition. They think that those are around 500 to 600 AD, so those are about Those are around 1,400 years old, actual pieces of paper or papyrus or whatever on which we have the Diamond Sutra.

[81:21]

But unfortunately, those only have about half the sutra. They're missing the first half, or they're missing this page or that page. They call them folios, but they're missing this page or that page, or the ink's smudged here, or a worm ate through there. So the Gilgit and Stein editions sort of help us get an idea of how the sutra looked over 1,500 years ago. you never know whether these copies were actually ever used. So whenever you unearth a copy, you never know whether it was a copy for use or a copy just copied. You pay some money to somebody to copy stuff out for merit, and then you deposit that copy without ever reading it into some tomb or something. And so the copy could very often have mistakes in it. Nobody would have ever discovered them. So you have to use these kind of copies with care. But it's remarkable that all these copies that Conzi and Muller used, I'd say probably between 95% and 98% of them are identical.

[82:31]

There's only, say, 2% to 5% of the texts that will have variations. So they're not really significant variants in what we have. So they've concluded that basically the text hasn't changed since it first was composed. Because around 500 or 600 AD, we're already getting a version that, to the extent that we can read it, is identical to what we find that was printed 300 years ago in Japan or in Korea or northern China. So that's sort of how we have our Sanskrit. So when we read the Sanskrit, we have some actual copies that are really old, although they're partials. And then we have sort of old stuff that you can compare with other more recent stuff. And that's what we have. Will it be part of your introduction that the sutra does make sense? It sounds like you're struggling with an idea or that you've come up against an idea that it doesn't make sense. Oh sure, right, and when Kansi, who was the first scholar, first Western scholar to really address the Diamond Sutra and devote himself to the Prajna literature, I think he got to Chapter 14 and he threw up his hands and said, I'm not going on.

[83:44]

The rest of this is just a meaningless sense of stuff and he thought maybe somebody dropped the book and picked up the pages in another order. Yeah, my contribution to this is to present a coherent story. It's sort of like in anthropology when you do an ethnography. Two ethnographers can go to the same village and come up with different ethnographies. But the one that tells the best likely story is the one that is probably closer to the truth. So I'm trying to present a likely story. that to present the Diamond Sutra in a way that it accounts for everything, that all the pieces can be explained with this in mind, with these few ideas. You take this very few couple ideas and explain the whole sutra and if that can be done, well then that must be the best explanation. It's not necessarily the right one, but it's the best one until another one comes along.

[84:49]

And that's why I think that previous commentators, their commentaries lack this coherence. Although they can explain a given passage or a given chapter or whatever, and they were certainly better linguists than I was in terms of Sanskrit, but they They didn't, I don't know, there's something missing, there's no coherence. Well, but that brings it back to the whole idea you've been bringing across is that of wholeness and not pieces. I actually believe this sutra was spoken by the Buddha, which is really hard to say nowadays, and not just to a Buddhist community, but because this will be in print. There are a lot of people who make their living criticizing stuff like this. Their tenure is based upon it, perhaps. I have to present it in a way that can account for what's out there in the scholarly world, but eventually this is an act of faith.

[85:53]

But having studied the sutra, I can't believe it's anything other than the words of the Buddha. It's because it is so coherent and very profound at the same time. And there have been all these scholars for years who are always talking about how this sutra was made up, this, you know, later over here and then, and how Mahayana Buddhism is simply the later development of these people, you know. seven or eight hundred years after the Buddha lived and I've never really believed that and I still don't believe it. I always see these Mahayana scriptures as being at the best or at the worst edited sayings of the Buddha or different scriptures that have been compiled and re-edited because everybody had such a strong oral tradition in that part of Asia. their understanding was based upon it. So I could see how people would have different oral memories that they could, that some very clever person could then combine.

[86:55]

But I can't see how anybody could take, could generate those pieces with the confidence that they were correct, that this is the Dharma. Because as we study Buddhism, you become more humble all the time. And I can't see anybody with this sort of understanding actually pretending that this was the words of the Buddha. So I always see these sutras like the Diamond Sutra. I just take it for granted. This is the words of the Buddha. Now I've got to make sense of it. And in this particular case, maybe I was just lucky that I was actually able to come up with a way of looking at it that, to me, did make sense of it. So it's still maybe the Buddha didn't write any of this. I don't know. And it doesn't really matter anyway. Because the Buddha, it has never been born. But still, I really believe that, and that informs my translation a lot, because to me, it's part of my work.

[87:57]

This is my practice. I'm a translator, and that's what I do for practice. So I put it out there with complete confidence that it's the word of the Buddha, and that I'm doing my best to make coherent sense of it as the word of the Buddha. That's why it has to make sense. And that's why I take pains and I don't mind spending a few years looking for the coherence, for the keys that put it together. I don't know if I'll ever do another sutra. This has been so awesome that I don't know whether I could do this with another sutra, but certainly it worked to my satisfaction with the Diamond Sutra. I'm still not sure really what it means, but I've come up with some things that I know I can say in an introduction that can at least let people know that it is coherent and these are some main ideas and now here it is. and then let the commentary and the translation stand on their own merits. But, and again, I really regret not being able to, and I'm talking about it now and I just can't present copies of this right now.

[89:06]

But, and maybe this time next year they'll be published. I certainly hope so. I'm gonna be done in about a month, so. And it takes the publisher about nine months, they usually say. But anyway, that's the. Well, you know, it hasn't been... Well, I appreciate that, but you know, it's funny, it's just an act of joy. And that's why it's no effort at all. Once you do these sort of things, you have no choice. It's just what you do. I get up in the morning and that's my work. It's just waiting for me. There's nothing else to do. Other than, you know, maybe I have to take care of my kids and go to the market and stuff like that. But I would never want to spend my days doing anything other than this. But again, I don't know what I'm going to do after this because this is such a nice sutra and it's the right size. It's just the right size, 15 pages or so of printed text.

[90:08]

All the other sutras are pretty long. They would take years. I don't know whether I have the breadth for that. But in any case, it's... Yes? No, no, this is... Here's what I have. If you read it out loud, it'll be on tape and I can listen to it later and also now. As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space, an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning, you created things like this, so should they explain it. This is called explaining. And I read that view created things like this several times. I was trying to think, you know, what is that? I mean, I couldn't quite... It was hanging off by its end, by itself.

[91:13]

Right. And so what's understood there is so should they view created. Well, maybe, so should they view created things and get rid of like this. meter going there too. Right, well that's what, yeah, any change, right, would have to, the poetry is really important for these things. It really threw me off because I, it just, in the flow, in the meaning, so I would suggest viewing creative things like this, comma, no comma, but so should they explain it. Well, the only trouble with... Well, I'll... Okay, I'll... Well, one thing I'll have to do, though, is you have to end-stop the last line.

[92:15]

You can't have a comma, because then the poem will be hanging. And you don't want a poem... You can't say, viewing created things like this, comma, so should they explain... No, no, no. Oh, I see. If you had a comma there, then it would make the poem dependent upon this prose statement afterwards. And you couldn't, like, hold that poem in your mind by itself. Right. But maybe after lightning is a possibility. Well, actually, I myself have been a little dissatisfied with that last line. You created things like this. These things are... But how should they explain it? As a Lamb. And then it's to say you, it puts it in you view, you should view, rather than they. Because it's they, how should they explain it? Well, I could invert the whole thing, too. Well, actually, believe it or not, most of the Chinese versions have done just that.

[93:19]

And one of the Sanskrit copies as well has something up at the beginning of the poem. I forgot what they had. There are some variants on this particular arrangement just for probably that reason, to introduce the poem and then to conclude it with the right sort of feeling. But I'll definitely keep that in mind because I myself am still working on the conclusion a little bit to make it more succinct. Yeah, and I do overuse the word thus a lot. Yeah? Yeah, the same word. That's why the whole sutra is about viewing, seeing. Whenever I translate see or view, it's the Sanskrit word drishti. Drishti, and that's why when the Buddha says, can you drishti me?

[94:31]

Can you see me? Can you view me? And of course, drishti is also this underlying view. In Sanskrit, the word drishti has the idea of mistaken view. Oh, I took it as an adjective. It is an adjective, but I guess an adjective that was a verb once upon a time. Oh, I see that our views created things like this. Oh, I never imagined that. You created things.

[95:43]

Are like this? Are like this. Oh. Like this. So that makes sense. But then you have to put it in R. So it's hard to parse that sentence. Oh, great. Well, I got my work cut out for me there. OK. But then you have to insert R. OK. Well, in here. But in one sense, I mean, if you had like, well, the created, I mean, you could also say it's C composite things this way. Yes. Which is very flat-footed. Yes. But that, I think, gets at the meaning. I will definitely take that into consideration because I want that. I don't want to have those sort of ambiguities hanging out there at the end of the thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that would solve it, created things. Is it what? Yeah, it's like, it's like getting free laughs when there was no pun intended. It's sort of, it is, it's true.

[96:46]

Sometimes, you know, if you can get an extra meaning in there, I'll take that. But I also don't want, I have to think about what these extra meanings and whether I really want them hanging out there or not, whether I want that ambiguity. But I can see that I've got to do something with that. I don't believe that the Sanskrit has the word things. I think it just has view created. I'll have to look. I didn't bring the Sanskrit with me, but I think it's just view that which is created or view the created like this. I'll have to look. as Kumara Jiva just to clear things up for us. Well, that would be a real honor, being associated with Kumara Jiva. He's always been a hero of mine. And I feel very embarrassed even to talk about his omissions or mistakes.

[97:51]

But he was a great translator, the first great translator into Chinese. and everybody reveres them. I think I mentioned when I was teaching a class last year to the nuns and monks up at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, one day I mentioned, I said, today we're going to look at Kumarajiva's mistakes and they just sucked the air out of the room. There was like 30, 40 people just sort of gasping all at once. It's like there's no more oxygen in the room. So the Chinese have great reverence for Kumarajiva, and I share that as well. But I think translation is a really important way to bring things, you know, religious teachings. And of course teachers too, like Suzuki Roshi, you know, the nirmanakaya, the embodiment body. Well, thank you. I'll try to live up to that.

[98:53]

Any other questions? Yeah. I wanted to thank you for making it seem that words could be part of practice. Because you're talking about making a sitting that's important to me. And I've been sitting a lot more. Maybe now I'll think that when I go home and write. That's also part of practice. It's very good to hear somebody with the etymologies in here. That meaning does matter. Oh, thank you. You know, I use words like black holes, sort of. I step into them and disappear. I really do. I have lots of dictionaries and I love to get lost in the word. And just sort of sit there with the word. Sometimes I just do that. There's the word. And I just try to wait for something to happen. And it's funny how it works and that's why I was telling people I use the word, the name Red Pine when I'm translating because all these things happen that you have no right to expect happening in terms of I'll be working on something and then I'll just open a book and there's the answer right there in that page of that book of explaining that with a quote explaining that, showing me how that word was used.

[100:11]

Once you get into them, you become very sensitive to meanings that you're not even aware that you know about. You just become sort of open to that. That word sort of opens itself up to possibilities. Suddenly, you're walking through the supermarket or something like that, reading a box. Oh! You never know where you're going to get it. I don't understand a whole lot of this hypothetical reasoning stuff, but what I got out of the concretely is the practice of offering. And it's a very simple, for simple folks, and it's very profound too, teaching and the way of living in gratitude. What I get from this class is the importance of it and how much it has to do with our whole way of life and practice.

[101:15]

So I started with that simpleness of it, for simple folks, the practice for simple folks, and then the idea of merit, which is wrong, you know, like to collect them and so you can get into the next life. That's how you teach to the simple folks and how much is that a good thing to teach simple folks. Well, what the sutra teaches, and it sounds like you've grasped it really well, because the sutra is this idea, you see it really clearly at the beginning of the sutra, that's what the Buddha does all day long. He lives his life with gratitude, too, and is engaged in this constant offering, this life of offering. But as far as the merit goes, there's these two kinds of merit that the Buddha's contrasting all the time, and that's the offering of the most valuable things in the universe, and then the offering of this teaching. And that's why you might say the simple folk are more attached to this first kind of offering, unfortunately, rather than the second kind of offering.

[102:22]

I think that's what you're getting at, that people can misconstrue the idea that you can accumulate merit and that that merit is meaningful somehow through material offerings. But the real merit that this sutra is talking about is the offering of the teaching. I guess I just want to... I'm just getting... That's good enough. The offering of the teaching? I don't think you can do anything more. Well, because if you did do anything more, you'd be outside the offering. there'd be this universe or this dialectic or a dualistic universe. And I think that's all the Buddha is doing, is just engaged in this constant offering, which that's what the Dharma body does. It offers up the nirmanakaya, the body we see and we receive the teaching from. I don't know, it's just an intricate, it's like a box inside of a box inside of a box, and after a while you get tired of taking the boxes apart.

[103:25]

offering a bowl of rice, which the Buddha accepts. And I think what the sutra is about, understanding how when you're offering that bowl of rice, you're offering the teaching. Yes. If you do that in the right spirit, it is the teaching, nothing more or less. That's why I thought at the beginning of the sutra, when the Buddha engages in this practice of mindfulness, it doesn't say his body or his sensations, it just says what's before him. He uses this adjective, he does a, instead of a body meditation, he does a present, whatever's present meditation. That's what he just, when he went to town and everything was offering, he was offering, everything around you is an offering, it's this purusha, behind everything, without being behind it. And it is, it's just an amazing, very gratifying way, I think, of looking at practice. And certainly it liberates one from one, from self. I found this really helpful too, because for me this really ties together Zen and a lot of the Zen stories and koans with early practice.

[104:44]

I mean that's, you know, drink a cup of tea, you know, or have a cup of tea. I mean there's so many resonances. When you're talking about, you know, in this moment when Subuddhi asks, you know, the ball of rice, it's like three pounds of flax. It's like right here, right now. So it's like, oh, okay, so it's with much more ornate language. You know, it's like the same taste. It is. And even in this sutra, we see that Sabuddhi's awareness of the teaching is more emotional than logical. I mean, logical is not really... doesn't mean anything. Whenever he answers logically, it's almost a meaningless answer. But when he answers emotionally, then we can see that he understands the teaching. And that's sort of what... The Zen thing, too, is just a logical answer is not going to advance you on the path. It's neither yes nor no, but what are you feeling right now is more and more maybe closer to it.

[105:48]

But anyway, I was really blown away. I had no idea. I did not expect this sutra at all. I've been reading the sutra for years. It's the only sutra, it's the first sutra I ever read and I've been reading it for years and I didn't know what it meant. I had no idea. It's just, you know, you just quote your little, there's a wonderful little passage here and there's a little passage there. But, um, Well, thank you. It's been a wonderful offering. I've enjoyed offering it. And thank you again for all coming here. We had talked about transferring the merit, and I just scribbled a little something that perhaps I could recite, which is just taking out one word from our daily liturgy and putting in another word, which seems appropriate for today, just as a way of moving the merit on. Sure, yeah. May the merit of this class pervade everywhere and may we together with all beings realize it in a way.

[106:52]

Thank you, Bill. Well, I hope I can do another sutra soon.

[107:00]

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