Eternal Legacy by Sangharakshita

Author:Sangharakshita
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Windhorse Publications Ltd
Published: 2013-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

Though it is extremely useful, and has wielded enormous influence, this work does not concern us here, as the summaries are not sūtras but śāstras, and therefore excluded from the canonical literature. The Maitreya or Maitreyanātha who composed the Abhisamayālaúkāra is, however, traditionally identified with the Bodhisattva of that name. This poses a question which will be discussed in Chapter 18 below.

Among the shorter sūtras, the finest are the two earliest, both appearing before 400CE, the Vajracchedikā and the Hṛdaya. The Vajracchedikā or ‘Diamond Cutter’ sūtra (vajra is really the mythical ‘thunderbolt’, and denotes something of irresistible strength) is also known as the Perfection of Wisdom ‘in 300 lines’. A short text in two parts and thirty-two chapters, it is in the form of a dialogue between the Buddha and Subhūti. The Sanskrit original does not, however, give any chapter division, and the one adopted by Max Müller and other scholars dates back to c. 530CE when in China it was introduced into Kumārajīva’s translation. It is not really of much help. Unlike the summaries, the Diamond Sūtra (as it is popularly known) does not attempt to give a systematic survey of the Prajñā-pāramitā teachings. Instead, it confines itself to a few central topics, which it inculcates by addressing the intuition rather than the logical intelligence. The result is not one that is calculated to endear the work to scholars.

While Part 1, which ends at the beginning of chapter 13, is fairly coherent, the same cannot be said of Part 2. Even Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, and Kamalaśīla, all of whom commented on it, failed to unravel its complications. According to Conze this part may well be no more than ‘a chance medley of stray sayings’, or the palm leaves of the original manuscript may at some time have been displaced.113 Were this so, it would be difficult to account for the sūtra’s immense prestige and popularity, as well as impossible to explain the undeniable force of its spiritual impact.

Fortunately, Han-shan, an enlightened Ch’an Master of the Ming dynasty, has written a commentary which offers a satisfactory solution of the problem along traditional lines.114 According to him, the full title Diamond Prajñā-pāramitā Sūtra (as it reads in Kumārajīva’s version) indicates that the teaching of the sūtra aims at revealing the Buddha’s Diamond Mind, so as to cut off people’s doubts and awaken their faith. This Diamond Mind is the Absolute Mind of Supreme Enlightenment. What the Buddha does, in the course of his dialogue with Subhūti, is simply remove the latter’s doubts as they arise one by one in his mind as he listens to the Buddha’s discourse. The apparent disorder of the sūtra is due to the fact that it generally reports only one side of the discussion: for Ānanda, by whom the sūtra was transmitted, recorded the Buddha’s replies, but not Subhūti’s unspoken doubts, which he was of course unable to perceive. When these doubts are discovered and made explicit the whole sūtra will become perfectly intelligible.

Following Vasubandhu, who had listed twenty-seven, Han-shan gives thirty-five such doubts.

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