Well, here I go again. I was standing approximately here a week ago. I was talking about Manjugosius sword. And early on in that talk, I described the emblem of Manjugosius sword standing vertically upright on the book. And I said that I was a little bit disappointed that the brief I'd been given for that talk was to talk about the sword and not the book. But I soon got over that and really got into the talk on the sword. But in a way, I'm quite fortunate that today I've got the chance to talk about the book. So in the period of two weeks, I will have had the good fortune to talk about these two emblems, the sword and the book of Manjugosius. Wherefore, you hold the Pranayapa Ramita to your heart. That is a quote from the Manjushri Stutti Sadhana, wherefore you hold the Pranayapa Ramita to your heart. And Manjugosius, of course, is holding with his left hand the book of wisdom to his heart. And this holding of the two emblems, the holding of the book and the wielding of the sword signifies his purifying of the two obscurations, the two veils, the two avaranas, which obscure our vision so that we don't see things as they really are. And that's what the spiritual life is all about. After all, if we go back to the original archaic dharma, we have the Buddha in the dharma powder saying, avoid evil, practice good, purify the mind. So Manjugosius book symbolizes one aspect of this purification through the Pranayapa Ramita. And Manjugosius book, I take it, is any book of the Pranayapa Ramita. So it is, in a very real sense, he's holding the diamond sutra to his heart. Now the diamond sutras you probably know belongs to the third phase of the development of the Pranayapa Ramita literature. In the first phase, you just have the initial statement as it were. I think that's the Ratnaguna samsi Agata and the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines. And then you have this magnificent proliferation into books of, you know, 10,000, 25,000 lines, 100,000 lines and so on. That's the setting phase. And in the third phase, you have the boiling down, all these hundreds and thousands of shlokas, verses being reduced to their very essence. And the diamond sutra belongs to this third phase of the Pranayapa Ramita literature development. And this week, as last week, I'm still talking about cutting. Last week's talk was all about cutting. But today, it's also about cutting because the Sanskrit title of the sutra is the Vajra Chedika, you know, the diamond boat, the diamond thunderbolt cutting sutra. So this week it's not a sword, it's a Vajra. Now following me at this podium last week was Padma Vajra. And he was also speaking about Manjigosh's sword in the form of the diamond sword of wisdom, which he's extolled in the stories and commentaries of the blue cliff record. The one Chan master, he quoted, intimated to his monks that the diamond sword of wisdom, this supreme symbol, the diamond sword of wisdom, is to be found while pissing and shitting in the rat infested privies. That was a bit of a shock. That is, it's to be found in the very heart of the mundane, at the very base, in the course of our most humdrum activities, drawing water, chopping wood, eating a simple meal, walking back to the Jeta Grove after the arms round, washing his feet, putting away his cloak and his bow. This is the opening of the diamond sutra. And the first theme I want to reflect on is ordinariness, ordinariness. It's a hinayana opening to a Mahayana sutra. The Buddha, the enlightened human being, gets up, takes his cloak and his bow, and enters the great city of Shravasthi to collect arms, which he does every day. And then, when he's eaten and returned from his round, he puts away his cloak and his bow, he washes his feet, and then he sits down on the seat which has been arranged for him, a meticulous account of another unsensational day in the life of Gautam of the Buddha. That's one of my favorite phrases from Bante's wisdom beyond words. So the point here is ordinary life is enlightenment. Enlightenment is to be found here and now in our ordinary comings and goings, our prosaic comings and goings. It's the ordinary as wonderful. But what is, what is the ordinary for us? It's not squatting in rat infested privilege. That would be rather extraordinary here in Serlingum. No, no, it's not that. It's me, for example, it's me standing at the post office grill in Brumble. Brumble is across the river. It's a village across the river. It's a very ordinary village. Believe me, I'm going to say, it's extraordinarily ordinary. So it's me in Brumble last week. I'm standing at the post office grill, and the woman behind the counter is asking me if she gave me my change. Or it's me a few minutes earlier than that, still in the post office queue wishing that the old deer in front of me would step on it so that I can get back to the piece of my room and continue my preparation of the talk on the diamond sutra. So I've been reflecting quite a bit recently about the ordinary. Reflecting on it, mainly in connection with a text I've been doing quite a bit of study on, called self-liberation through seeing with naked awareness, which is the Zogchen text. And there's a key passage, quite early on in that text, which is the direct introduction to naked awareness. This is Padmasambhavas Upadesha. And it builds up onto a climax. And the stanza, the one stanza, one line in the climax is, awareness at that moment is quite ordinary. Awareness, this is rig path, this is pure awareness, the goal of the path. Awareness at that moment is quite ordinary. I'm quite, quite often, people in study groups I've been in, when we read these passage, they actually laugh. They laugh because it comes as an anti-climax. The thought of rig path, pure awareness, being ordinary. So it's very much associated with here and now in all its ordinariness. And the underlying precept is checking ourselves to see to what extent do we find ourselves in the mode of wanting to escape from the ordinary. I don't know about you, but I find myself in this mode quite a bit wanting to escape from the ordinary. In search of the extraordinary, whether it's going to see someone else who isn't here or going to see a movie or something, often part of the motivation is to escape from the humdrum, the ordinary. So it's not old old precept, hidden. In the story of the jewel, hidden in the rag robe, the so-called ordinary, when experienced as pure presence, is extraordinary. But ordinary is just a label that we stick on to experience. If we suddenly started experiencing ordinary as extraordinary and continued to do so, on and on, then the extraordinary would become ordinary. Interesting, isn't it? Trees will be trees again. Mountains will be mountains again, just mountains. So what it's all about this, I think, is being content with a simple life. I'm feeling that contentment growing, the contentment with the inverted commas, ordinary. Now this ordinary beginning of the Diamond Soustra carries on with the entrance of Sabouti to the assembly, and then he makes ritual salutations and so on, and it's still not quite ordinary. Sabouti and the Buddha enter into dialogue, and they stay in dialogue until the very end, it all becomes rather unordinary. In the sense of being utterly illogical, even at times nonsensical, with irritating, frustrating consistency until the very end. It's like an elaborate nagging koam, which wears you down, or wears me down. From Sabouti's first question onwards, the Soustra persistently bashes away at us with paradox after paradox, statement after statement, followed immediately by contradiction after contradiction. The rules of ordinary logic are abrogated in this Soustra, Edward Conzer, well they certainly are. The rules of ordinary logic are abrogated. Here's a sample of two of them. Can you just hang on? I've lost page four. Oh my goodness! I knew this sort of thing would happen. I've lost page four. Anyway, take my word for it. You probably read the Soustra anyway, at least once. You know that contradiction follows after contradiction. So what else would I say on page four? Well, even though I find it really frustrating and it really bangs on with all this utter illogicality, I'm obviously not being able to penetrate through the surface of this text. Nevertheless, I feel, in some sense, it's our text. It's our text. I feel that quite strongly. Well, I remember a long, long time ago, I think it was an occasion when I just bought the Edward Conzer copy of the, in fact, this is the very copy that I bought, the Buddhist wisdom books, the Diamond Soustra and the Heart Soustra, Edward Conzer. And I was talking to Bante about it and he said, "Well, after all, it's our Soustra." And that really struck me. And what struck me last night was something that Sumina said when he said that Bante in another context had traced back the foundation of the order to his initial reading of the Diamond Soustra all those years ago. He'd actually traced back. And so I thought that was extremely interesting. So that gave me great courage and it gave me great confidence in holding, well, giving a talk, but us altogether holding a weekend on the Diamond Soustra. Because, in some very real sense, I feel that it is our Soustra. But we have to be very careful using this kind of language in reference to the Diamond Soustra. Because the Pranya, Pranya, would surely say, "Our Soustra, our Soustra, as not our Soustra has it been taught by the Tavagata. That's why it's called our Soustra." Right. And why, as the text would say, and why? Because our implies we, and we implies beings. And the Buddha made it, makes it clear in the very first reply to Sabouti, "If in a Bodhisattva the notion of a being should take place, he is not to be called a Bodhi then again, I have faith in the very words of the text when it says, 'Those all beings of whom the Tavagata has spoken, they are indeed no beings. And why? Because the Tavagata speaks in accordance with reality, speaks the truth, speaks of what is, not otherwise. A Tavagata does not speak falsely. And later we're told that there's merit in not rejecting the text, even though we might find it extremely difficult, hard-growing, and we don't reject it, there's great merit in not rejecting the text, because not rejecting is tantamount to accepting. So this Soutra, the Diamond Soutra, has got hold of me. I'm hooked. You know, in Buddhist iconography, that one of the Bodhisattvas is wielding a lasso. And he throws the lasso and once the Dharma has got you, you're hooked. Sometimes I don't like it. I struggle with it. It leaves me utterly perplexed, not understanding. Sometimes I read the Diamond Soutra when I've got insomnia. And sometimes it works. It me don't. It sends me to sleep. But for some weird reason, I persevered with it. I keep coming back to it and I can feel myself. Oh, no. And I do it when I open it. And why? Because it's cloudy dragon. This is something that's coming to my talk from last night. I was very taken by that reading of Sangha Davis. It's a poem of Bante called Cloudy Dragon. "Behold the Cloudy Dragon, Imperial, Gold, Divine," while he feels the central silence in the storm of the Divine. So the Diamond Soutra, for me, is a kind of cloudy dragon. One can feel, or on a good day, that central silence, capital C, capital S, at the center of its storm, at the center of the storm of paradoxes that are battering you and bashing you and pummeling you. So if we read it when we're really alert, we can experience the Diamond Soutra like a disembodied Zen master. And it's a rinsized Zen master, not a soto Zen master. It's coam Zen. The Zen master has text. It's as if it's not a disembodied abstract bashing away. It's not just a deconstruction of the superficial meaning of the words that are used in the text. Sometimes you get the hint of a powerful spiritual, even, well, obviously transcendental force behind the contradictions. Sometimes one has a hint of a narrow slit, the narrowest slit of brilliant light between statement and denial. And I wonder if it's Vajrapani. I wonder if it's Vajrapani. Vajra fits, of course. It's the Vajra-cutta. And the Vajra, interestingly, is one of Prangyar parameter's implements on the cover of wisdom beyond words, the forearmed form, the outer right hand holds a Vajra. So this association of the text with Vajrapani came to me when I read a passage in an unedited seminar of Bante's on a chapter on the dual ornament of liberation. And in that passage, Bante is talking about the significance of Vajrapani in Mahayana Vajrayama context. And he says that Vajrapani is associated with the animita samadhi, animita, A-N-I, M-I-T-A, animita, not mimita. So this animita samadhi is a transcendental samadhi, realize via insight into the impermanence of all conditioned things. In this samadhi one realizes there is no mimita, there is no sign, no label. Sometimes it's called the labelless samadhi. There is no label which is applicable to ultimate reality. So it's the non-applicability of all concepts, all labels that, with reference to absolute reality. And this is one of the dominant themes as I see it of the Diamond Sutra. In the section on Dhana Paramita at the beginning, the Bodhisattva is urged that when he gives gifts, he should not be supported by the notion of a sign. He should not be supported by a thing, nor should he be supported anywhere. He should not be supported by sight objects, by sounds, by smells, by tastes, by touchables, or by mind objects. Not supported by anything whatsoever. Clearly, this is a very exalted state. Because the heap of merit of that Bodhi being who unsupported gives a gift is not easy to measure. Because here, what we're concerned with is the perfection of giving. True Dhana, transcendental Dhana, suffused with the perfection of wisdom, where notions, labels, labels of giver and gift, labels of receiver and gift, they've all been seen through. There is no emotional investment whatsoever in needing to be seen as kind and generous. No emotional investment in needing to be seen as giving this thing, this particular wonderful gift. There's no hint or trace of anything at all that might inhibit the spontaneous, free play innate naturalness of the Bodhisattva's generosity. Wisdom beyond words has this to say. We are inately void, inately pure, inately generous. Do we believe that? Do we really believe that? It's very challenging, isn't it? It's like powerful positive feedback. You could say, going back to the Vedripani point, that the animita samadhi is the state of mind or being from which the Diamond Sutra emerges. There are other sections on this not being supported, of support being a non-support. There's a famous passage which, according to legend, Huainung, the six-patriarch, heard as he came out of that shop on his firewood-selling round. He comes out of the shop and there is someone reciting a Sutra, and it's the Diamond Sutra, and the passage that's being recited is this one. Therefore, then, Sabouti, the Bodhisattva, the great being, should produce an unsupported thought, a thought that is nowhere supported, a thought that is not supported by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or objects of mind. Kansa points out in his commentary, as does Bante, in his, that this produced an unsupported thought is a rather awkward phrase. It sounds a bit like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, ladies and gentlemen, an unsupported thought. Well, it's not a very elegant way of referring to the arising of the Bodhicitta, is it? The Bodhicitta can manifest only when all supports, all props have fallen away, when all false refuges have been let go of. Have we got any intimation of what this is like to be unsupported in this way, free of crutches, free of emotional dependency? Kansa lists 21 variations of this state of not being supported, and he divides the 21 into three divisions. And in the first division, it's unsupported as applied to two objects, while, for instance, one object leaning on another. And in the second division, it's applied to emotional experience, meaning not settling down anywhere, not settling down anywhere, not nesting, not becoming institutionalised. And thirdly, as applied to social relations, not expecting, not relying on any help from others, not relying on it. So this is a very uncompromising declaration of non-attachment, these 21 ways of being unsupported. It sounds very scary, doesn't it? But at the same time, it's liberating. It relieves one of all that exhausting hassle that crude and subtle jockeying for support that goes on in one's life. This state of being unsupported is enlightenment itself, body awakening the matchless security. Matchless security, matchless security, as no security has that been declared by the tafagata. That's the language of the sutra again. So my question is, coming back to Vajrapani again, is this perfection of wisdom voice in the diamond sutra? Is it the voice of Vajrapani wielding his thunderbolt, smashing through each and every support? In that commentary in the dual ornament of liberation, Bante goes on to say that Vajrapani represents the Buddha's own, as it were, delusion annihilating genius. I thought that was amazing. Vajrapani represents the Buddha's delusion annihilating genius. Genius there meaning tutularity, not that the Buddha himself really means, as it were, any tutularity, but it's a bit like the Buddha's diamond. There's a sutra in the Pali Canon, where some chap, probably a Brahmin, comes up and enters into dialogue with the Buddha, and the Buddha asks him a question, and the chap refuses to answer. I won't go into any details, but he just refuses to answer. So the Buddha asks him again, and he doesn't answer. On the Buddha says, "Where's these effects? I haven't got the actual text. You better watch out." You better watch out, because if someone refuses a third time to answer the Buddhist question, and Vajrapani is there, I think in the sutra, yes, in the sutra, he's above the Buddha's head, with, in his right hand, he's ready to hurt it, you know, when question three comes. So I like that. I made a connection for me, personally, with the diamond sutra, and the way it's like, it's hurling these Vajras at me all the time, wow, you know, and it's the Buddha. The Buddha is speaking, but the Buddha's diamond is Vajrapani there, you know, just hurling these Vajras constantly, breaking through my resistance. Oh gosh, my resistance must be very strong, because he's been hurling them a lot. Well, enough's enough, isn't it, really? But I see this association with Vajrapani is also related to the association between the perfection of wisdom and act shobia, the imperturbable, see Khan's famous essay, Love, Hate and Perfect Wisdom. And Vajrapani, interestingly enough, is the family protector of the Vajra family. I just want to make two more, maybe three more, or give three more reflections. I don't want to give a talk on the diamond sutra without mentioning Anukpatica Dharmak Shanti. I know some of you have been in seminar with me in the last two or three years, and I probably talked about this. I'm sorry if it's like going on a bit, but I'm going to go on a bit. Anukpatica Dharmak Shanti. I want to talk about it, even if I can't say more about it than sort of, well, there's this passage in Wisdom Beyond Words about Anukpatica Dharmak Shanti, and it's wonderful, isn't it? It really gets me. You know, and I don't know why, but it does. So first let me read to you the relevant passage from the sutra. It's on page 171, and very interestingly enough, on 71 and 72, I discovered that these are the two pages in the whole book that have actually come out of it. It's rather scary, give me a try. So this section is entitled, "How does it feel to be an irreversible Bodhisattva?" Okay. So this is the passage in the sutra I want to draw your attention to, "And again, sebouti, if a son or daughter of good family, had filled with the seven precious things as many world systems as there are grains of sand in the river Ganges, and gave them as a gift to the sthargatas, arahats, fully enlightened ones; and if, on the other hand, a Bodhisattva would gain the patient acquiescence in Dharmas, which are nothing of themselves, and which fail to be produced, then this latter would, on the strength of that, beget a greater heap of merit, immeasurable and incalculable." So the Bodhisattva would gain the patient acquiescence in Dharmas. This is the Anut Patika, Dharma Shanti. Shanti, of course, is patience. Dharma is Dharma in the sense of phenomena, and Anut Patika means nonarism, or not produced. So it's the patient acceptance of the nonarizing of Dharmas, and it's represented by the eighth Bhumi, Atchala. Atchala means immovable, interesting tie-in with Atchala. So at the eighth Bhumi, the Bodhisattva becomes irreversible from Anutara, Samyak, Sambodi, and he does this because he's fully developed and Patika Dharmakshanti, which means that the Bodhisattva no longer sees real entities. He sees phenomena in a constant stream of rising and falling, coming into existence and passing away, always becoming, never being. So again, the flow is impervious to labels. It can't be relied on. So the question Bante asks about this is, "Why should acquiescence or acceptance of seeing all Dharmas in this way constitute irreversibility?" And his answer, which I've always liked, and I quote, "Well, we can start by trying to imagine what it would be like not to take anything seriously ontologically speaking. Your experience is like a dream, a vision. Life is a dream. Spanish playwright wrote a play call, that didn't he? La Bida es Suenu or something like that. So your experience is like a dream, a vision. You see it all right, but you see through it, thoroughly seeing through it. It's like a lucid dream, a dream in which you know you are dreaming. Your experience of the world, of conditioned existence, is vivid, more vivid than ever, but you're not mismed by it. And of course, most significant of all, you see that there are no beings to save. And among these so-called beings, there is yourself. So there is also no question of any self to save. The possibility of thinking in terms of individual emancipation no longer exists. From that point onwards, you genuinely see no difference between yourself and others, and all are equally dreamlike and in a sense illusory. It is like a game, and you don't mind anymore what particular game you are playing, but it is also like the other kind of play, a spontaneous expression of creativity. So that's what the Anupatica Dhamma Shanti is, a spontaneous expression of creativity. So this is one of those passages in the sutra and commentaries that strikes for me a note of mysterious depth, but the drift is elusive. I can see how it might appeal to one's innate streak of laziness. You know, the idea that you don't have to do anything. That's rather appealing. But no, there's a much more positive aspect. It gives a glimpse, again, I think, into the ending, at last, of making the wrong kind of effort. How exhausting grasping onto the wrong kind of effort can be. It's the effort to hang on to that sense of self and that sense of other when there is no self to save or to protect, and there is no other to keep at bay. At a lower level, it's the spirit of acceptance when things don't go as well as we'd hoped. Things turn out differently. All that often happens to us. You know, something goes wrong. It doesn't turn out as we'd hoped. Oh dear, you know, that is the time when Anupatika Dharmakshamti should come into operation. Okay, two more points. I've always liked the passages about the incommensurability of merit and insight. Bante's point, no matter how much merit you acquire, it can never add up to insight. That's what the Buddha is always getting at in these repetitions. And the sutra is great at going to town on this, and it goes to town repeatedly. So there's a sort of cumulative effect. I'll just give you a taste of two of these passages. The Lord asked, "What do you think, Sabruti? Is there were as many Ganges rivers as there are grains of sand in the large river Ganges? Would the grains of sand in them be many?" Sabruti replied, "Those Ganges rivers would indeed be many, much more so the grains of sand in them." The Lord said, "This is what I announce to you, Sabruti. This is what I make known to you. If some woman or man had filled with the seven precious things as many world systems as there are grains of sand in those Ganges rivers and will give them as a gift to the tathakatas out of hats, fully enlightened ones, what do you think, Sabruti? Would that woman or man on the strength of that beget a great heap of merit?" Sabruti replied, "Great, O Lord, great, O Lord, would that heap of merit be immeasurable and incalculable?" The Lord said, "But if a son or daughter of good family had taken from this discourse on dharma, that one stands at a four lines and were to demonstrate and illuminate it to others, then they would on the strength of that beget a still greater heap of merit, immeasurable and incalculable." There are many, many such passages and they keep recurring and they have a cumulative effect and this is one of the last ones which really does go for it. Sabruti, I recall that in the past period, long before the Pankara, the tathakata, had a heart fully enlightened one, during incalculable, quite incalculable eons, I gave satisfaction by loyal service to 84,000 million milliards of Buddhas, without ever becoming, again, estranged from them. Just imagine that. But the heap of medics, Sabruti, from the satisfaction I gave to those Buddhas and Lords, without again becoming estranged from them, compared with the heap of medics of those who, in the last time, the last epoch, the last 500 years, at the time of the collapse of the good doctrine, will take up these very sutras, bear them in mind, recite and study them, and will illuminate them in full detail for others. It does not approach one hundredth part, not one thousandth part, nor a one hundred thousandth part, not a ten millionth part, nor a one hundred millionth part, nor a hundred thousand millionth part. It does not bear number, nor fraction, nor counting, nor similarity, nor comparison, nor resemblance. If moreover, Sabruti, I were to teach the heap of medics of those sons and daughters of good family, and how great a heap of medics they will at that time beget and acquire, beings will become frantic and confused. Since, however, Sabruti, the Tafargata has taught this discourse on dharma as unthinkable, so just an unthinkable karma result should be expected from it. Then, finally, there are the human and poetic touches, which suddenly erupt into the text. They appear in this discourse, yes, quite suddenly, and they're all more surprising, in a way, because ninety percent of the discourse is expressed in rational terms, albeit in the form of a paradox. We have, for instance, erupting into this constant stream of statement and contradiction, the amazing observation. Thereupon, the impact of dharma moved the venerable Sabruti to tears, having shed tears, he thus spoke to the Lord, and so on. One feels this could have come anywhere in the second part of the sutra. Kansa comments, the Pranya-peramita texts are so elusive to our understanding, because they are full of hidden hints, illusions, and indirect references to the pre-existing body of scriptures and traditions circulating in the memory of the Buddhist community at the time. They are more often than not an echo of old essays, and that's very interesting. When there was so much memorized by the monks, so much circulating in the memory of the Buddhist community, there were no books, but there was so much circulating in the memory and the constant recitation in assemblies. There would inevitably be echoes when the compilers of this sutra, or the compiler, or compilers of this sutra set to work, there would inevitably be echoes. And there's an echo in this short passage relating to the impact of dharma on Sabruti. There's an echo of sadha prarudita in the perfection of 8,000 lines, sadha prarudita, the ever weeping. The poetic touches you're familiar with. I've always been satisfied by the ending that it should finish with a series of poetic images on the nature of impermanence. After all those symbol clashes, all those drumbeats of paradox, after all those drum rolls of incommensurability between merit and insight, we have, as it were, a single unaccompanied flute, weaving its melody of impermanence, a star's a fault of vision, as a lamp, a mock show, due drops, or a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash, or cloud. So should one view what is conditioned. [Applause]
