Diamond Sutra Quotes

As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this.

This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream. So is all conditioned existence to be seen.

Diamond Sutra says, 'Make no formed conceptions about the realness of existence nor about the unrealness of existence," or words like that. Handcuffs will get soft and billy clubs will topple over, let's go on being free anyhow.

Subhuti, someone might fill innumerable worlds with the seven treasures and give all away in gifts of alms, but if any good man or any good woman awakens the thought of Enlightenment and takes even only four lines from this Discourse, reciting, using, receiving, retaining and spreading them abroad and explaining them for the benefit of others, it will be far more meritorious. Now in what manner may he explain them to others? By detachment from appearances-abiding in Real Truth. -So I tell you- Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightening in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. When Buddha finished this Discourse the venerable Subhuti, together with the bhikshus, bhikshunis, lay-brothers and sisters, and the whole realms of Gods, Men and Titans, were filled with joy by His teaching, and, taking it sincerely to heart they went their ways.

We must not despair the evanescent nature of time or our brief existence; we must embrace our delectable moment on earth. Life is a fantastic dream where we rejoice in the incomparable beauty of this misty world of ethereal sensations and sentiments. Buddha said, “It is better to travel well than to arrive.” We must swim with the tide and rejoice in life of memory, dreams, and the beauty that is transpiring before our very eyes. Indian Buddhist teacher and philosopher Nagarjuna advises in “The Diamond Sutra,” to enjoy the dream world, “Thus shall you think of this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream; a flash of lightening in a summer cloud; a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

understanding the nature of things just as they are. Why? Because: So you should view all of the fleeting worlds: A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud; A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

saving all beings knowing full well that there is no one to save.

phenomenal

Just be true, and there are no barriers.

inspire people to move from a totally information-based orientation toward the transformattive integration of insights from the wisdom traditions with their own experience.

This wisdom is not formulaic and cannot be captured in words, for it has gone beyond words to a place where direct realization rather than conceptual verbalization is the essential mode of being.

When we first hear about emptiness, we feel a little frightened. But after practicing for a while, we see that things do exist, only in a different way than we'd thought. Emptiness is the Middle Way between existent and nonexistent. The beautiful flower does not become empty when it fades and dies. It is already empty, in its essence. Looking deeply, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements — light, space, clouds, earth, and consciousness. It is empty of a separate, independent self. In the Diamond Sutra, we are taught that a human being is not independent of other species, so to protect humans, we have to protect the non-human species. If we pollute the water and air, the vegetables and minerals, we destroy ourselves. We have to learn to see ourselves in things that we thought were outside of ourselves in order to dissolve false boundaries.

Count all these sufferings from here to the end of the endless sky which is no sky and see how many you can add together to make a figure to impress the Boss of Dead Souls in the Meat Manufactory in city City CITY everyone of them in pain and born to die, milling in the streets at 2 A M underneath those imponderable skies”—their enormous endlessness, the sweep of the Mexican plateau away from the Moon—living but to die, the sad song of it I hear sometimes on my roof in the Tejado district, rooftop cell, with candles, waiting for my Nirvana or my Tristessa—neither come, at noon I hear “La Paloma” being played on mental radios in the fallways between the tenement windows—the crazy kid next door sings, the dream is taking place right now, the music is so sad, the French horns ache, the high whiney violins and the deberratarra-rabaratarara of the Indian Spanish announcer. Living but to die, here we wait on this shelf, and up in heaven is all that gold open caramel, ope my door—Diamond Sutra is the sky.

Some of them taught that all worldly things are unreal, because [they are] a result of the perverted views. Only that which transcends worldly things and can be called “emptiness,” being the absence of them all, is real. Others said that everything, both worldly and supramundane, both absolute and relative, both Samsara and Nirvana, is fictitious and unreal and that all we have got is a number of verbal expressions to which nothing real corresponds.

A true bodhisattva is one who sees no demarcations between organic and non-organic, self and non-self, living beings and non-living beings, bodhisattvas and non-bodhisattvas.

When we can see the non-rose elements when looking at a rose, it is safe for us to use the word "rose." When we look at A and see that A is not A, we know that A is truly A. Then A is no longer a dangerous obstacle for us.

A meditation center, for example, is only a form. In our daily life we need forms, but we do not need to cling to them. We can study and practice meditation anywhere.

In what spirit is this explanation given? Without being caught up in signs, just according to things as they are, without agitation.

The Diamond Sutra,

For the practitioner, the understanding of wisdom and compassion—and the inherent tension between the two—is not to be resolved on a theoretical level, but to be experienced in one’s own mind and body. In this way one finds emptiness and compassion to be mutually supportive rather than mutually contradictory.

The bodhisattva vow provides the context and the inspiration to motivate the individual to gain insight into shunyata (emptiness), the essential nature of all phenomena, which leads to an experience of tathata (of suchness), of things as they are in their essential nature, of the mutual identity of phenomenal and transcendent reality. At the same time they cultivate karuna (compassion) for all those still caught in delusions, and help them through upaya (skillful means) so that they too may become free and attain buddhahood

Subhuti, do not believe that the well-traveled one ever thinks, 'I ought to present a system for teaching spiritual truths.' You should never entertain such an idea. Why? Because if anyone thinks this way, they will not only be misunderstanding the teachings of the well- traveled one, but they will be slandering as well. Furthermore, what has been referred to as 'a system of teaching' has no meaning, because truth cannot be cut up into pieces and arranged into a system. The words can only be used as figures of speech.

We all enjoy leaving the city and going to the countryside. The trees are so beautiful; the air is so fresh. For me, this is one of the great pleasures of life. In the countryside, I like to walk slowly in the woods, look deeply at the trees and flowers, and, when I have to pee, I can do so right in the open air. The fresh air is so much more pleasant than any bathroom in the city, especially some very smelly public restrooms. But I have to confess that for years I was uneasy about peeing in the woods. The moment I approached a tree, I felt so much respect for its beauty and grandeur that I couldn’t bring myself to pee right in front of it. It seemed impolite, even disrespectful. So I would walk somewhere else, but there was always another tree or bush, and I felt equally disrespectful there. We usually think of our bathroom at home, made of wood, tile, or cement, as inanimate and we have no problem peeing there. But after I studied the Diamond Sutra and I saw that wood, tile, and cement are also marvelous and animate, I began to even feel uncomfortable using my own bathroom. Then I had a realization. I realized that peeing is also a marvelous and wondrous reality, our gift to the universe. We only have to pee mindfully, with great respect for ourselves and whatever surroundings we are in. So now I can pee in nature, fully respectful of the trees, the bushes, and myself. Through studying the Diamond Sutra, I solved this dilemma, and I enjoy being in the countryside now more than ever.

How Buddhism Entered the World Like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. This is how to contemplate all phenomena. – The Buddha, Diamond Sutra It’s hard to project ourselves back two and a half thousand years into another time, another age, another continent, another country, another economy, another political structure, another social system, and a whole other worldview, and try to intuit the innermost thoughts of a spiritual innovator like the Buddha. However, if we can understand a little better what he experienced and how his contemporaries understood his instructions, we can better know how his teachings relate to us. So before we get to some of the insights, let me share with you some of his story.

It is a perfection that does not aim at completion; rather, it is wisdom based on practice through which one is always progressing toward the ideal.

Buddhist tradition, in fact, distinguishes two classes of people, the "common worldlings" and the "saints" (arya), who occupy two distinct planes of existence, respectively known as the "worldly" and the "supramudane." The saints alone are truly alive, while the worldlings just vegetate along in a sort of dull and aimless bewilderment. Not content with being born in the normal way, the saints have undergone a spiritual rebirth, which is technically known as "winning the path.

Subhuti asked: Will there be any beings in the future period, in the last time, in the last epoch, in the last five hundred years, at the time of collapse of the good doctrine who, when these words of the Sutra are being taught, will understand their truth?-The Lord replied: Do not speak thus Subhuti! Yes, even then there will be beings who, when these words of the Sutra are being taught, will understand their truth.

The last five hundred years: It is well known from the Scriptures of all schools that after the Buddha's Nirvana the Dharma will progressively decline, and that every five hundred years a decisive change for the worse takes place... "The last five hundred years, when Buddhists will be strong in nothing but fighting and reproving, and the Dharma itself becomes practically invisible.

The term fraud alludes to a saying of the Buddha which the Mahayanists were fond of quoting: "All conditioned things are worthless, unsubstantial, fraudulent, deceptive and unreliable, but only fools are deceived by them. Nirvana alone, the highest reality, is free from deception." Two classes of facts are here distinguished-the deceptive multiple things on one side, and the true reality of the Absolute on the other.

In fact, those who want to learn about wisdom must of necessity draw on the tradition of the fairly remote past. For centuries almost everyone has been silent on the subject. Philosophers, of whom some "love of wisdom" might be expected, have increasingly turned to the critical examination of knowledge, and are largely engaged in active disparagement of all that once passed of "wisdom." Nor has the effect of scientific and technical progress been any more propitious. What, indeed, could be more "unscientific" than the pursuit of wisdom-with its concern for the meaning of life, with its search for ends, purposes and values worthy of being pursued, with its desire to penetrate beyond the appearance of things to their true reality?

In the present period of history we find ourselves in one of the worst possible cosmic ages, with Buddhism in full decline, and the people everywhere singularly obtuse about matters spiritual, and incredibly dimwitted when confronted with the wisdom of the sages.

In the Diamond Sutra the meditator is urged to throw away, to release, four notions in order to understand our own true nature and the true nature of reality: the notion of “self,” the notion of “human being,” the notion of “living beings,” and the notion of “life span.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness; whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

experience. Direct perception into one’s own experience allows a practitioner to become free of the concepts of self or no-self, dharmas or no-dharmas. This awareness or direct perception has meant, for practitioners, an expansion of self-imposed boundaries of “self ” and a merging, so to speak, with the true or universal self. It cannot be cautioned too often that in pure experience, linguistic terms do not suffice. The Buddha also gives this warning in this passage.

Just to think that you are killing an animal to eat, just the very idea, is unaesthetic. I am not against it because the animal is killed... because that which is essential in the animal will live, it cannot be killed, and that which is nonessential, whether you kill it or not, is going to die. So that is irrelevant, that is not a point for me to consider. The question is not that you have killed the animal and killing is not good, no. The question is that you have killed the animal -- you. Just to eat? While beautiful vegetarian food is available? If vegetarian food is not available, that's one thing. But the food IS available. Then why? Then why destroy a body? And if you can kill an animal, then why not be a cannibal? What is wrong with killing a man? The meat derived from a human body will be more in tune with you. Why not start eating human beings? That too is a question of aesthetics. And the animals are brothers and sisters, because man has come from them. They are our family. To kill a man is only to kill an evolved animal, or to kill an animal is just to kill somebody who is not yet evolved but is on the way. It is the same. Whether you kill the child when he is in the first grade or whether you kill the young man when he has come to his last grade in the university, it does not make much difference. The animals are moving towards human beings, and human beings had once been animals.

How do you know, what you claim to know?

In some Buddhist sutras, bodhisattvas are said to make buddha realms “magnificent” by their practice of the six paramitas. In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha denies the possibility of any such magnificence. The Buddha taught on many different levels. If in one sutra he says that the six paramitas are “magnificent” while in another he says that they are not, he is not contradicting himself. He is simply rising to a higher level of truth to suit his audience. We can be certain that the Diamond Sutra teaches a very high level of truth because this discourse is directed at Subhuti, the Buddha’s foremost disciple in wisdom.

When the followers of the highest school of Mahayana study the Diamond Sutra, their minds become enlightened as they realise that Prajna is immanent in their own Mind-essence.Since they have their own access to highest wisdom through the constant practice of concentration and contemplation (dhyana and samadhi) they realise that they no longer need to rely on scriptural authority.

To awaken to this teaching is to have ‘no-idea,’ ‘no-memory,’ and ‘no-attachment.’ Not giving rise to delusions, this is the nature of suchness.33 View all dharmas with wisdom. Neither grasp them nor reject them. This is the way to see your nature and become a buddha.

Any bodhisattva who undertakes the practice of meditation should cherish one thought only: “When I attain perfect wisdom, I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe, and allow them to pass into the eternal peace of Nirvana.” And yet, when vast, uncountable, unthinkable myriads of beings have been liberated, truly no being has been liberated. Why? Because no bodhisattva who is a true bodhisattva entertains such concepts as “self” or “others.” Thus there are no sentient beings to be liberated and no self to attain perfect wisdom. —The Diamond Sutra (4th century Ce)

I’m enlightened now. You know, only Buddha-style behavior. Spider chrysanthemums. The Diamond Sutra and the Blue Cliff Record. Hari Rama, you know, Krishna, Krishna. You know, Enlightened.

Despite their value to human beings, jewels possess the three characteristics of all other created dharmas: origination, limited duration, and dissolution, while the teaching of this sutra transcends such limitations and is the source of

buddhahood. Hence, far greater merit results from offering even the smallest part of this sutra, not to buddhas, who no longer have any need for such a gift, but to other beings, all of whom possess the buddha nature yet who remain blind to its presence.