The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra.

The Five Previous Chinese Patriarchs

 

It wasn’t easy being the Sixth Patriarch. Many people wished to kill him and his disciples as well. For this reason, after the Great Master obtained the Dharma, he went into hiding, dwelling among hunters for sixteen years. Even after establishing his Dharma platform at Nan Hua Temple, followers of other religions tried to kill him, and so the Great Master hid inside a big rock. He sat there in meditation, and although they set the mountain on fire, he was untouched by the flames. The rock could still be seen when I was at Nan Hua Temple.

Who wanted to kill him? In general, it wasn’t you and it wasn’t me. On the other hand, if you consider the insane things we have done in past lives, it might well have been you or it could have been me. But in this life it wasn’t you or me and so there is no need to worry about having broken precepts in this case.

As I told you, the Great Master is counted as the Sixth Patriarch from the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma, who was the Twenty-eighth Indian Patriarch. “Bodhi” means enlightenment and “Dharma” means law. When Bodhidharma set sail from India, fulfilling Shakyamuni Buddha’s prediction that the Mahayana teaching would be transmitted to China during the time of the Twenty-eighth Patriarch, the Buddhadharma already existed in China, yet it was as if it were not there at all.

Although there were men who studied, there were few who lectured or recited the sutras and repentance ceremonies were seldom practiced. Cultivation was superficial. Scholars debated and argued, but none of them truly understood.

The principles in the Sutras must be cultivated, but at that time in China they were not cultivated because everyone feared suffering. Now, in America, it is just the same. People sit in meditation. However, as soon as their legs begin to ache, they wince and fidget and then gently unbend them. People are just people and nobody likes to have aching legs.

While still in India, Patriarch Bodhidharma sent two of his disciples, Fo T’o and Yeh She, to China to transmit the sudden enlightenment Dharma door. But no one, not even Chinese Bhikshus, would speak to them. So they went to Lu Mountain where they met the Great Master Yüan Kung, who lectured on mindfulness of the Buddha.

Master Yüan asked, “What Dharma do you transmit that causes people to pay you so little respect?”

Fo T’o and Yeh She could not speak Chinese, so they used sign language instead. Raising their arms in the air, they said, “Watch! The hand makes a fist and the fist makes a hand. Is this not quick?”

Master Yüan replied, “Quick indeed.”

“Bodhi (enlightenment) and affliction,” they said, “are just that quick.”

At that moment, Dharma Master Yüan became enlightened, realizing that originally Bodhi and affliction are not different, for Bodhi is affliction and affliction is Bodhi. He made offerings to Fo T’o and Yeh She, and shortly thereafter, the two Indian Bhikshus died on the same day, in the same place. Their graves may still be seen at Lu Mountain.

Patriarch Bodhidharma saw that the roots of the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle Buddhadharma, were ripe in China. Fearing neither the distance nor the hardship of travel, he took the Dharma there. The Chinese called him “barbarian” because he talked in a way that no one understood. When children looked up at the bearded Bodhidharma, they ran away in terror. Adults feared that he was a kidnapper and so told their children to stay away from him.

Patriarch Bodhidharma went to Nan Ching where he listened to Dharma Master Shen Kuang explained the Sutras. When Shen Kuang spoke, the heavens rained fragrant blossoms and a golden-petalled lotus rose from the earth for him to sit upon. However, only those with good roots, who had opened the five eyes and the six spiritual penetrations were able to see that. Now! Isn’t this wonderful?

After listening to the Sutra, Bodhidharma asked, “Dharma Master, what are you doing?”

“I am explaining Sutras,” Shen Kuang replied.

“Why are you explaining Sutras?”

“I am teaching people to end birth and death.”

“Oh?” said Bodhidharma, “exactly how do you do that? In this Sutra which you explain, the words are black and the paper is white. How does this teach people to end birth and death?”

Dharma Master Shen Kuang had nothing to say. How did he teach people to end birth and death? He fumed in silence. Then, even though heavenly maidens rained down flowers and the earth gave forth golden lotuses, Dharma Master Shen Kuang got angry. This is what I mean when I say that the Buddhadharma existed in China, but it was as if it were not there at all.

When angry, Dharma Master Shen Kuang used his heavy iron beads to level opposition. In response to Bodhidharma’s question, he reddened with anger and raged like a tidal wave smashing a mountain. As he whipped out his beads, he snapped, “You are slandering the Dharma!” and cracked Bodhidharma across the mouth, knocking loose two teeth. Bodhidharma neither moved nor spoke. He hadn’t expected such a vicious reply.

There is a legend about the teeth of holy men. You must not ask about the principle, however, because it is too inconceivable. The legend says that if a sage’s teeth fall to the ground, it won’t rain for three years. Patriarch Bodhidharma thought, “If it doesn’t rain for three years, people will starve! I have come to China to save living beings, not to kill them!” So Bodhidharma did not let his teeth fall to the ground. Instead, he swallowed them and disappeared down the road. Although he had been beaten and reviled, Bodhidharma could not go to the government and file suit against Dharma Master Shen Kuang. Those who have left home have to be patient. How much more so must a patriarch forbear.

Bodhidharma then met a parrot imprisoned in a wicker cage. This bird was much more intelligent than Dharma Master Shen Kuang. Recognizing Bodhidharma as the First Patriarch, the bird said,

Mind from the West,
Mind from the West,
Teach me a way
To escape from this cage.

Although Bodhidharma had received no response from people, this parrot recognized him. Hearing the bird’s plea for help, Bodhidharma whispered a secret expedient teaching to teach this bird how to end suffering. He said,

To escape from the cage;
To escape from the cage;
Put out both legs,
Close both eyes.
This is the way
To escape from the cage!

The parrot listened attentively and said, “All right! I understand,” and stuck out his legs, closed his eyes, and waited.

When the bird’s owner came home from work, he always played with his parrot. But this time when he looked in the cage he was shocked. The owner was on the verge of tears. He couldn’t have been more upset if his own son had died. He pulled open the cage door and scooped up the bird, which lay still and quiet in his hand. The body had not yet chilled. The owner looked with disbelief at the little body. He peeked at it from the left and right...it didn’t even quiver. Slowly, he opened his hand...PHLLRTTPHLRTTPHLRTT! The bird broke loose from his hand and flew away!

Now, like the parrot, we are in a cage. How do we escape? You may say, “I am really free. If I want to eat, I eat; if I want to drink, I drink. I do not have to follow rules. I can do anything.”

Don’t think you are quite so clever. This is not freedom, it is just confusion. To be free, you must be free of birth and death, and then, if you wish to fly into space you can fly into space, and if you wish to drop into the earth, you can drop into the earth. If you can do this, you are truly independent. Like the parrot, you are free.

As I explain The Sixth Patriarch Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, I do not lecture well. This is not polite talk; it’s true. Some lecture well, yet do not dare explain. After I have lectured, you of true eloquence may follow. When you have opened your wisdom, you will understand.

In his great anger, Dharma Master Shen Kuang knocked out two of Bodhidharma’s teeth. He thought he had won a great victory because the Barbarian put forth no opposition. But not long after, the Ghost of Impermanence, wearing a high hat, paid a call on Master Shen Kuang:

“Your life ends today,” said the ghost. “King Yama, the King of the Dead, has sent me to escort you.”

Master Shen Kuang said, “What? Must I die? When I speak the Dharma, flowers fall from the heavens and the earth bubbles forth golden lotuses, yet I still have not ended birth and death? Tell me, is there a person in this world who has ended birth and death?”

“There is,” came the reply.

“Who?” asked Shen Kuang. “Tell me, and I’ll follow him to study the Way.”

“He’s that black-faced Bhikshu whose teeth you just knocked out. King Yama bows to him every day.”

“Please, Old Ghost, speak to King Yama on my behalf. I want to follow that Bhikshu. I am determined to end birth and death. Can’t you allow me some more time?”

“All right,” said the ghost. “Since you are sincere, King Yama will wait.”

Dharma Master Shen Kuang was delighted. He was so quick to rush after Bodhidharma, that he forgot to thank the Ghost of Impermanence; in fact, he even forgot to put on his shoes. He ran until he met the parrot whom Bodhidharma had freed, and suddenly he understood, “Originally it is just this way! I need only act dead. I need only be a living dead person!”

Bodhidharma walked on, ignoring the barefoot Dharma Master following behind. Arriving at Bear’s Ear Mountain in Loyang, the Patriarch sat down to meditate facing a wall. Dharma Master Shen Kuang knelt close by. For nine years, Patriarch Bodhidharma sat meditating and Dharma Master Shen Kuang knelt beside him, seeking the Dharma.

Earlier, when I spoke this public record, an eleven year old child asked me, “During the nine years he knelt, did he eat or not?” I replied, “How could anyone kneel for nine years without eating and still live? When the Patriarch meditated, Shen Kuang knelt, and when the Patriarch ate, Shen Kuang ate.” But this is not recorded in the books. While the Patriarch was sitting, many people came to bow to him and were received as his disciples.

One day a great snow fell, and it rose in drifts as high as Shen Kuang’s waist, and yet he continued to kneel. Finally, Patriarch Bodhidharma asked him, “Why are you kneeling here in such deep snow?”

“I want to end birth and death,” replied Shen Kuang. “When I was lecturing Sutras I was unsuccessful. Please, Patriarch, transmit this dharma to me.”

“What do you see falling from the sky?” asked Bodhidharma.

“Snow,” said Shen Kuang.

“What color is it?” asked Bodhidharma.

“It’s white, of course.”

“When red snow falls from the sky,” said Bodhidharma, “I will transmit the Dharma to you. You knocked out two of my teeth, and I have been most compassionate in not taking revenge. Do you really expect me to give you the Dharma?” This was the test Patriarch Bodhidharma gave to Master Shen Kuang.

How did Shen Kuang complete the test? Cultivators of the Way carry a knife to protect the substance of their precepts. A true cultivator would rather cut off his head than break a precept.

Shen Kuang drew his precept knife, and with one slice, cut off his arm and thus passed his test. His blood flowed onto the new fallen snow. He scooped up a bucket full of crimson snow, dumped it before Bodhidharma, and said, “Patriarch, do you see? The snow is red!”

Bodhidharma said, “So it is, so it is.” He had tested Shen Kuang’s sincerity, and now the Patriarch was extremely happy. “My coming to China has not been in vain. I have met a person who dares to use a true mind to cultivate the Way, even forsaking his arm in search of the Dharma.”

The Patriarch then spoke the Dharma door of “using the mind to seal the mind.” It points straight to the mind to see the nature and realize Buddhahood.

While hearing this dharma, Shen Kuang didn’t think about the pain in his arm, and before that he had thought only of making the snow turn red. But now, he once again produced discursive thought: “My arm really hurts!” he said. “My mind is in pain. Please, Patriarch, quiet my mind.”

“Find your mind,” said Bodhidharma. “Show it to me and I will quiet it for you.”

Dharma Master Shen Kuang searched for his mind. He looked in the ten directions: north, east, south, west, in the intermediate points, and up and down. He also looked in the same seven places that the Venerable Ananda looked when Shakyamuni Buddha asked him the same question in The Shurangama Sutra. That is,

1. He looked inside his body;
2. He looked outside his body;
3. He looked for it hidden somewhere in his sense organs.
4. He looked where there was light;
5. He looked at the place where conditions came together.
6. He looked in the middle, between the organs and their objects;
7. And, finally, he looked in the place of non-attachment, which is no-place.

At last Shen Kuang said to Bodhidharma, “I can’t find my mind! Great Master, it is nowhere to be found.”

“This is how well I have quieted your mind,” said the Patriarch. At these words, Shen Kuang understood the meaning of the Dharma transmission, the wonderful, ineffable principle.
Ten thousand dharmas return to one;
Where does the one return?
Shen Kuang did not understand,
And ran after Bodhidharma;
Before him at Bear’s Ear Mountain
Knelt nine years

Seeking Dharma to escape King Yama

With the transmission of the Dharma, Shen Kuang received the name “Hui K’o” which means “Able Wisdom.”

Master Hui K’o asked Bodhidharma, “In India, did you transmit the Dharma to your disciples? Did you also give the robe and bowl as certification?”

“I transmitted the Dharma in India,” replied Bodhidharma, “but I did not use the robe and bowl. Indian people are straightforward. When they attain the fruit, they know they must be certified. If no one certifies them, they do not say, ‘I have attained the way! I have given proof to Arhatship! I am a Bodhisattva!’ They do not speak like this.”

“Chinese people, however, are different. Many Chinese have the Great Vehicle Root Nature, but there are also many people who lie. Having cultivated without success, such people claim to have the Way. Though they have not certified to the fruit, they claim to be certified sages. Therefore I transmit the robe and bowl to prove that you have received the transmission. Guard them well and take care.”

While the Patriarch Bodhidharma was in China, he was poisoned six times. Dharma Master Bodhiruci and Vinaya Master Kuang T’ung were jealous of him. They prepared a vegetarian meal which contained an invariably fatal drug, and offered it to the Patriarch. Although he knew it was poisoned, he ate it. Then he vomited the food on to a tray, and it was transformed into a pile of writhing snakes.

After this unsuccessful attempt, Bodhiruci tried again, using an even more potent poison. Again, Bodhidharma ate the food. Then he sat atop a huge boulder and spat out the poison. The boulder crumbled into a heap of dust. In four more attempts, jealous people tried without success to poison the Patriarch.

One day, the Great Master Bodhidharma said to Hui K’o, “I came to China because I saw people here with the Great Vehicle Root Nature. Now I have transmitted the Dharma and am ready to complete the stillness.” After his death, the Patriarch’s body was buried. There was nothing unusual about his funeral.

In Northern Wei (386-532 A.D.), however, an official called Sung Yün, met Bodhidharma on the road to Chung Nan Mountain in Ts’ung Ling. When they met, Bodhidharma was carrying one shoe in his hand. He said to Sung Yün, “The king of your country died today. Return quickly! There is work to be done.”

The official asked, “Great Master, where are you going?”

“Back to India,” the Great Master replied.

“Venerable One, to whom did you transmit your Dharma?”

“In China, after forty years, it will be ‘K’o.’”

Sung Yün returned to his country and reported the incident. “Recently, in Ts’ung Ling, I met the Patriarch Bodhidharma who told me that the king of our country had died and instructed me to return to the capital. When I arrived I found it exactly as he had said. How did he know?”

His countrymen scoffed, “Bodhidharma is already dead. How could you have met him on the road?” Then they rushed to the Patriarch’s grave and found it empty, with nothing inside but one shoe.

Where did Bodhidharma go? No one knows. Perhaps he came to America. Wherever he wanders, no one can recognize him, because he can change and transform according to his convenience. When he came to China, he said he was one hundred and fifty years old, and when he left, he was still one hundred and fifty years old. No historical references can be found.

When Bodhidharma was about to enter Nirvana he said, “I came to China and transmitted my Dharma to three people. One received my marrow, one my bones, and one my flesh.” After the transmission, the Patriarch himself no longer had a body. Great Master Hui K’o received the marrow and Ch’an Master Tao Yü received the bones.

Bhikshuni Tsung Ch’ih could recite The Lotus Sutra from memory. After she died, a green lotus flower grew from her mouth. She received Bodhidharma’s flesh. In the end, the Patriarch had no body at all. So don’t look for him in America; you won’t find him.

The Second Patriarch, Hui K’o of the Northern Ch’i (550- 577 A.D.) whose family name was Chi, was formerly Shen Kuang. When he was born, his parents saw Wei T’ou Bodhisattva, the golden armored spiritual being, come to offer protection; thereupon they named their son “Shen Kuang” which means “spiritual light.” Not only was the Patriarch intelligent, but he had an excellent memory as well, and his skill and powers of discrimination were so remarkable that he could read ten lines in the time it took an ordinary person to read one. In a gathering of one hundred people, al1 talking at once, he could clearly distinguish each conversation.

The Great Master, however, had great anger; he disagreed with everyone and was always ready to fight. When Shen Kuang explained Sutras, as I have told you, he used his iron beads to win his arguments. Later, after he knelt for nine years in quest of the Dharma, it was his great anger which enabled him to cut off his arm and feel no pain. It was also because of this anger that he later felt pain. Unafflicted by anger, he would have felt no pain. Pain is just an affliction and affliction is the cause of pain.

The Second Patriarch was forty years old when he left Bodhidharma. Having obtained the Dharma, he went into hiding because Bodhiruci and Vinaya Master Kuang T’ung, who had made six attempts on the life of Bodhidharma, also wished to kill his disciples. So although Hui K’o had great anger, he nevertheless obeyed his teacher and went into hiding for forty years. When he was eighty, he began to propagate the Buddhadharma, teaching and transforming living beings.

Later, the disciples of Bodhiruci and Vinaya Master Kuang T’ung tried to kill Master Hui K’o, who feigned insanity to lessen the jealousy of his rivals. But he never ceased to save living beings who were ready to receive his teaching. Because so many people continued to trust the Second Patriarch, Bodhiruci’s disciples were still jealous. They reported Hui K’o to the government, accusing him of being a weird inhuman creature. “He confuses the people who follow him,” they charged; “he is not even human.” The Emperor ordered the district magistrate to arrest him, and Hui K’o was locked up and questioned:

“Are you human or are you a freak?” asked the Magistrate.

“I’m a freak,” replied Master Hui K’o.

The magistrate knew that the Patriarch said this to avoid causing jealousy, so he ordered him to tell the truth. “Speak clearly,” he demanded, “what are you?”

The Great Master replied, “I’m a freak.”

Governments can’t allow strange freaks to roam the earth, and so Hui K’o was sentenced to die. Now, isn’t this the way of the world?

The Patriarch wept when he told his disciples, “I must undergo this retribution.” He was a courageous man, certainly not one to cry out of fear of death. He was sad because the Dharma had not become widely understood during his lifetime.  “The Buddhadharma will not flourish until the time of the Fourth Patriarch,” he announced, and then he faced the executioner.

“Come and kill me!” he said. The executioner raised his axe and swung it towards the Master’s neck. What do you think happened?

You are probably thinking, “He was a Patriarch with great spiritual power. Certainly the blade shattered and his head was not even scratched.” No. The axe cut off his head, and it didn’t grow back. However, instead of blood, a milky white liquid flowed onto the chopping block.

You think, “Now really, this is just too far out.” If you believe it, that is fine. If you do not believe it, that is fine too; just forget it. However, I will give you a simple explanation of why blood did not flow from the Patriarch’s neck: When a sage enters the white yang realm his blood becomes white because his body has transformed completely into yang, leaving no trace of yin. “I don’t believe it,” you say. Of course you don’t. If you did, you would be just like the Second Patriarch.

When the executioner saw that the Master did not bleed, he exclaimed, “Hey! He really is a freak! I chopped off his head, but what came out was not blood, but this milky white fluid. And his face looks exactly as it did when he was alive!” The Emperor knew that he had executed a saint, because he remembered that the Twenty-fourth Indian Patriarch, Aryasimha, had also been beheaded and had not bled, but a white milky liquid had poured forth, because he had been without outflows. When one has no ignorance, one may attain to a state without outflows and enter the white yang realm.

You think, “But you just said that Patriarch Hui K’o had great anger. How could he have been without ignorance?” You are certainly more clever than I am, for I did not think of this question. But now that you have brought it up, I will answer it. His was not petty anger like yours and mine which explodes like firecrackers, “Pop! Pop! Pop.” His anger was wisdom and because of it his body became yang. Great patience, great knowledge, great courage, and great wisdom: that’s what his temper was made of.

Realizing that Hui K’o was a Bodhisattva in the flesh, the Emperor felt great shame. “A Bodhisattva came to our country,” he said, “and instead of offering him protection, we killed him.” Then the Emperor had all the great officials take refuge with this strange Bhikshu. Thus, even though the Second Patriarch had already been executed, he still accepted these disciples.

The Third Patriarch, Seng Ts’an of the Sui Dynasty, was of unknown family name and origin. When he first came to visit the Second Patriarch, his body was covered with repulsive sores like those of a leper.

“Where are you from?” asked the Second Patriarch. “What are you doing here?”

“I have come to take refuge with the High Master, and to study and cultivate the Buddhadharma,” answered Seng Ts’an.

“You have a loathsome disease and your body is filthy. How can you study the Buddhadharma?”

Master Hui K’o was clever, but Dhyana Master Seng Ts’an was even more clever. “I am a sick man and you are a high master,” he said, “but in our true minds where is the difference?”

Thereupon, the Second Patriarch transmitted the Dharma to Seng Ts’an saying, “This robe and bowl have been passed on from Bodhidharma. They certify that you have received the Dharma Seal. In order to protect it you must go into hiding, because Bodhiruci’s followers will try to harm you. Be very careful and let no one know that you have received the transmission.”

The Third Patriarch Seng Ts’an also feigned insanity while he taught living beings. During the persecution of Buddhism by the Emperor Wu of the Northern Chou dynasty (reigned from 561-577 A.D.), the Patriarch fled into the mountains. While he hid there, the tigers, wolves, leopards, and other fierce animals all disappeared.

After transmitting the Dharma to the Fourth Patriarch, Tao Hsin, Master Seng Ts’an invited a thousand Bhikshus to a great vegetarian feast. After they had eaten, he said, “You think that to sit in full lotus is the best way to die. Watch! I’ll demonstrate my independence over birth and death!” The Master left the dining hall, followed by the thousand Bhikshus. He halted by the trunk of a tree, and after pausing for a moment, he leapt up and grabbed a big branch. Then while swinging from the tree by one hand, he entered Nirvana. No one knew his name or his birthplace.

Someone is afraid and thinks, “The First Patriarch was poisoned, the Second Patriarch was beheaded, and the Third Patriarch died hanging from a tree. I certainly do not want to be a patriarch. It’s much too dangerous.” With this attitude, even if you wanted to be a patriarch you could not. As long as you fear death, as long as you fear anything at all, you cannot even be a patriarch’s disciple. Patriarchs are not afraid of suffering. They are not afraid of life and they are not afraid of death. Making no distinctions between life and death, they roam among people, teaching and transforming them. Like Fo T’o and Yeh She, they know that affliction is just Bodhi and that birth and death is Nirvana. So, tell me now, who is not afraid of birth and death? If there is such a one, I will make him a patriarch.

The Fourth Patriarch’s name was Tao Hsin. While very young, Master Tao Hsin left home under Master Seng Ts’an and for sixty years he sat in Dhyana concentration, without lying down to rest. Although he seldom opened his eyes, he wasn’t asleep. He was working at cultivation. When he did open his eyes, everyone shook with terror. Why? No one knew. Such was the magnitude of his awesome virtue.

Hearing of the Master’s great virtue, in the seventeenth year of the Chen Kuan Reign of the T’ang dynasty (643 A.D.), the Emperor sent a messenger to invite him to the palace to receive offerings. Unlike we common people, who would attempt to wedge ourselves into the court without being asked, the Great Master, the Fourth Patriarch, refused the invitation saying, “I am too old and the journey would be tiring. Eating on the road would be too difficult. I cannot undergo such hardship.”

When the messenger delivered the Patriarch’s reply, the Emperor said, “Go back and tell him that the Emperor says that no matter how old he is or how difficult the journey, I have ordered him to come to the palace.”

The messenger returned to the Patriarch and said, “Master, regardless of your health, you must come to the Emperor’s court. We will carry you back, if necessary!” At that time, since there were no airplanes or cars, travel was difficult.

“No, I cannot go,” replied the Patriarch. “I am too old and ill. Take my head if you must, but my heart will not go.”

The messenger thought, “There is nothing to do but to go back without him. I cannot take his head to the Emperor. This Bhikshu is very strange; he is hardly human.”

The messenger then hurried back to the Emperor. “Your Excellency, you may have the Master’s head, but his heart will not move!”

“Very well, go get his head,” replied the Emperor. He put a knife in a box and gave it to the messenger saying, “Slice off his head, but under no circumstances should you harm this Bhikshu.”

The messenger understood. He returned to the Fourth Patriarch. “Venerable Master, if you refuse to come, the Emperor has ordered me to cut off your head,” he said.

Patriarch Tao Hsin said, “If in this life my head gets to see the Emperor, that will be great glory. You may remove my head now.” The messenger took out the knife and prepared to cut off his head. The Great Master closed his eyes and waited calmly for about ten minutes. Maybe it was ten minutes, maybe it was nine or eleven. Don’t become attached. It is certainly not determined exactly how long he waited. But nothing happened, and finally Master Tao Hsin got angry, just like the Second Patriarch, and shouted, “Hey! Why don’t you slice off my head!”

“The Emperor had no intention of harming you,” the messenger quickly replied. “He was just bluffing.”

The Patriarch heard this and laughed aloud. Then he said, “Now you know that there is still a person in the world who does not fear death.”

The family name of the Fourth Patriarch was Ssu Ma and his personal name was Hsin. Ssu Ma was an honorable ancestral name. Both the Emperor Ssu Ma of the Chin dynasty and the historian and skilled writer Ssu Ma Ch’ien of the Han dynasty had this name. When the Fourth Patriarch became a Bhikshu he took the new name Tao Hsin. He lived seventy-two years, sixty of which were spent without lying down even once to sleep. The Fourth Patriarch’s realm of accomplishment was inconceivable.

While Tao Hsin was cultivating, a nearby city was besieged by bandits for more than a hundred days, depriving its inhabitants of water and supplies. Seeing the lives of the people in danger, Master Tao Hsin left his mountain retreat to rescue the city dwellers. He taught them all to recite “Mahaprajnaparamita.” After they had recited for a time, the bandits fled and water reappeared in the wells. This is the response based on the Way which Master Tao Hsin evoked as a result of his superior cultivation.

When the Fourth Patriarch decided to build a temple, he looked with his Buddha eye and saw Broken Head Mountain surrounded by a purple cloud of energy. Observing this auspicious sign, the Master went there to dwell, changing its inauspicious name, “Broken Head,” to “Double Peak” Mountain.

The Master used expedient dharmas to teach living beings how to discard their bad habits. These stubborn living beings, however, often discarded what was good and continued doing evil. But the Master persisted and by using all kinds of skill-inmeans caused these stubborn living beings to realize their mistakes. He propagated the Dharma for more than forty years, transforming living beings greater in number than seedlings of rice, stalks of hemp, shoots of bamboo, or blades of grass.

One day the Fourth Patriarch said to his disciple Dharma Master Yüan I, “You should build me a Stupa. I am going to leave.”

In the second year of Yung Hui, of the T’ang dynasty (651 A.D.), on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth lunar month, Patriarch Tao Hsin, who had never been ill, sat down and entered Nirvana. His disciples locked his flesh body securely in the stone Stupa. A year later the iron locks fell away and the Stupa opened by itself. Looking in, everyone saw the body of the Fourth Patriarch still sitting in full lotus, appearing the same as when he was alive. The Master’s body had not decayed, but the flesh had dried out. The Fifth Patriarch, Hung Jen, wrapped the body with lacquered cloth and gilded it. This “true body” still exists today.

The Fifth Patriarch, Hung Jen, also lived during the T’ang dynasty. His family name was Chou. He lived in Huang Mei County near Double Peak Mountain. When he was seven, he went to the temple on the mountain to attend upon the Fourth Patriarch. The Great Master Hung Jen cleaned the lamps and censer before the Buddha images; he swept the floor, carried water, split firewood, and worked in the kitchen. At age thirteen he took the ten novice precepts and studied under the Fourth Patriarch for over thirty years.

The Fifth Patriarch was eight feet tall and had an extraordinary appearance. When others treated him badly, he remained silent and unmoved. Because he did not give rise to discrimination, he never spoke of “right” or “wrong”, and when fellow Bhikshus bullied him, he never fought back. His calm, quiet manner indicated that he had realized a state of peace.

Even after working hard all day, the Master didn’t rest. Instead of sleeping, he sat in meditation, uniting body and mind in powerful samadhi.

Master Hung Jen lived in the woods of P’ing Mao Mountain slightly east of Double Peak Mountain, so his teaching is called the East Mountain Dharma Door. Once, like his master the Fourth Patriarch, he saw a horde of bandits besieging a nearby city. Their leader, a Mongol named K’e Ta Ha Na Lu, and his followers had so tightly cut off the communications that even the birds couldn’t fly in or out. The Fifth Patriarch went down P’ing Mao Mountain toward the city. When the bandits saw him, they were terrified, for they saw not only the Patriarch, but also a retinue of golden-armored vajra king Bodhisattvas armed with jeweled weapons, manifesting awesome virtue and brightness. The thieves retreated, their siege broken.

How was the Great Master able to command these vajra king Bodhisattvas? The Fifth Patriarch had cultivated and he recited the Shurangama Mantra. The Shurangama Sutra says that if you are constantly mindful of the Shurangama Mantra, eighty-four thousand vajra store Bodhisattvas will protect you from all danger.

In the fifth year of the Hsien Ch’ing reign of the T’ang dynasty (660 A.D.), the Emperor invited Great Master Hung Jen to the palace. The Master declined the invitation. The Emperor sent a second invitation which the Master also declined. Finally, the Emperor sent a variety of gifts, including rare medicinal herbs, as an offering to the Great Master, the Fifth Patriarch.

In the fifth year of the Hsien Hsiang reign of the T’ang dynasty (674 A.D.), the Fifth Patriarch said to his disciple, Master Hsüan Chi, “Build me a Stupa. I am going to leave.” In the second month on the fourteenth day he asked, “Is the Stupa ready?” Master Hsüan Chi replied that it was. The Patriarch said, “For many years I have taught living beings. I have taken across those whom I must take across and have transmitted my Dharma to Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch. Now, in addition, you ten should become Dharma Hosts, and establish Bodhimandas to preserve and spread the teaching among living beings.”

The ten he addressed were: Dharma Masters Shen Hsiu, Chih Hsien, I Fang, Chih Te, Hsüan Chi, Lao An, Fa Ju, Hui Tsang, Hsüan Yao, and also Upasaka Liu Chu Pu, who had dealt with correspondence and accounting. The Fifth Patriarch sent each of these ten people to a different place to teach and transform living beings.

Shortly thereafter, he sat very still and his energy dispersed as he entered Nirvana. During the seventy-four years of his life, the Fifth Patriarch Hung Jen had accepted many disciples, and had transmitted the Dharma to the Great Master Hui Neng.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

[PDF]Prajna Paramita Sutra

www.bdcu.org.au/prajnaparamita_sutta.pdf

 

CONTEMPLATING, PRAISE UTMOST THE PRAJNA PARAMITA; WITH NO BEGINNING. AND NO END, IS .... OM NAMO MAHA PRAJNA PARAMITA SUTRA.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

The Hero’s Journey
In that sanctioned mix of Myth and History that makes up early Sanskrit religious texts, Siddhartha Gautama rose in the moonlight streaming through the doors of his bed-chamber.
He glances a moment at his beautiful wife the princess Yasodhara, and his new-born son Rahula. He then turns and walks out in silence, passed the palace gates of Kapilavastu, the capital of his father’s kingdom.

He mounts his horse Kanthaka, and rides towards the river, as Channa his faithful manservant follows. On the banks of the river, Gautama dismounts, unsheaths the sword that marks him a Kshatriya, the noble warrior-caste, and cuts his long youthful locks.

He then hands the reins of Kanthaka to Channa, and orders that he return to the palace. Without looking back, he walks into the forest. Thus begins the story of the Buddha-Dharma, the final turn, the settling denouement, in the long history of the Mother-Tradition.

The Education of Gautama

Siddhartha Gautama, later The Buddha, did not begin his journey in a vacuum of philosophical and intellectual inquiry. By his day, the Tradition of the Dharma was perhaps 1,000 years old. The core literature of the tradition, the Vedas and more importantly, theUpanishadic take on the Vedas, was well-established for at least 500 years or so, judging by the style of Sanskrit and historical cross-references in the texts.
It was into this environment, its established norms of inquiry and validation, that the young Siddhartha Gautama entered when he crossed the river into the forest.
And he began his Inquiry in the proper forms of the day. He first aligned himself with five different Gurus, each with a wide reputation for accomplishment in his particular branch of theDharmic-Tree.
And along with this direct oral tutelage, Gautama’s education as was the custom of the day, included extended study of the established texts.
The oldest two Upanishadic texts at the time of The Buddha were theBrihadaranyaka Upanishad and the Chandogya Upanishad [see the Page ‘Upanishads’]. No one seems to be able to confirm which was the earlier of the two but it is of little consequence.
For what is evident beyond debate is that Siddhartha Gautama borrowed extensively from both texts, both to extend his own understanding of the Dharma, as well as to write a new terminology to express it.
Rta
The oldest mystical expression in Sanskrit sacred text seems to be the word ‘Rta‘, famously cited 400 times in the Rg Veda [No, I have not counted it].
Rta has no formal definition although linguists have claimed a link to the English word ‘Art’, an undefinable yet evident order [ we’ll, it is Rta spelt backwards, almost; a darn good reason why they are connected].
It has been used to mean variously, ‘Divine Law’, ‘Natural Order’, ‘Earthly Support’ and such. And its most frequent comparisons are with the Chinese Tao and the Greek Logos.
Do you have a definition for the Tao?
Dharma
The role of Rta was gradually appropriated by a more versatile expression called Dharma, from the root Dhri, ‘to hold together, bind’.
Dharma has been used to mean a host of things over the centuries but the core intuition underlying it was the simultaneous presence of two seemingly contradictory ideas.
The idea of ‘The way it is’, concomitant with the idea of ‘The way it ought to be’ [ its not a wise reflex to seek stern binary divides here].
The power of the word is impressive. It became the defining core of the name for the Mother-Tradition itself.
The Upanishads
Where do you go to mark the Mother-Tradition of the Buddha-Dharma? What can one point to and say: ‘This is the heart of the Mother-Tradition?’
The unequivocal answer is ‘The Upanishads‘. That body of text at the tail end of the Veda, which from the earliest commentary, has been freely and unquestioningly granted the status by the informed within the Tradition, as the keeper of its deepest truths.
‘Upanishad’: Upa [near], ni [down], and s(h)ad [to sit]. It is as Rahasya, ‘Privileged Sacred Knowledge’, to be acquired at the ‘Knee of Listening’ of ‘The One Who Knows’.
It is Vedanta, ‘The end of the Vedas’, of Vedic Understanding, a word-play on the fortuitous convergence of the metaphorical and the literal, as the Upanishads comprise the finale of the entire Vedic opus.
The two oldest and most influential texts of the Upanishadic canon are the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads [see ‘The Mother-Tradition’ for details and relevant excerpts].
And they were part of core Dharmic teaching at the time of the education of the young Siddhartha Gautama.
‘Goal’ in the Mother Tradition
The Mahavakya is an acknowledged and sanctified summary phrase expressly used with Upanishadic elaborations. A tight, often cryptic construction that packages the principal insight of the entire piece in portable, teachable form.
The Summum Bonum of the Mother Tradition can be summarized in two Mahavakyas.
From the Chandogya Upanishad: Aum Tat Sat and Tat Tvam Asi.
It can be summarized in English as follows:
‘That-ness is; That-ness is the True; Thou art That-ness’.
‘Path’ in the Mother Tradition
The means to this end vary. But the most widely authenticated one is the proposal from Yagnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad;
Neti! Neti!
It can be translated into English as follows:
‘It is not this! It is not this!’
Apply this rule comprehensively, uncompromisingly [see the Post ‘The Inviolable Twins] and you will find yourself back at Original Subject. The Self. Another name for ‘That-ness’.
And at its denouement, one settles in this realization [Moksha] and lives out one’s life, the program and purpose of human birth now fulfilled.
You will find the two summaries from the Chandogya, and the above delineated method from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, at the center of the commentaries, dialogues and teaching-methods of every revered teacher in the tradition, from Shankaracharya to Ramana Maharishi.
Tatha-gatha
‘I come’ said the young Siddhartha Gautama, ‘not to replace the Dharma, but to  reclaim it.’
The Buddha’s choice of appellation for himself according to the literature, was not as ‘The Buddha’ [ ‘The Awoken-One’] but as the ‘Tatha-gatha‘. ‘He who is That-ness-Gone’.
‘That-ness’ is a word chosen precisely because it files under no grammatical category, neither noun nor verb, nor any other. It fits no label, is the lexicographers torment and designed with that very purpose in mind.
Tatha-gatha, the appellation chosen by the Buddha, is a reconstruction of the same word [Tathatha] that originates in the Chandaogya Upanishad. But in that reconstruction, it gets modified by a consequential fraction. Why so?
‘That-ness’ versus ‘That-ness Gone’
From The Diamond Sutra: ‘Subhuti, if anyone should say that the Tathagata comes or goes or sits or reclines, he fails to understand my teaching. Why? Because Tathagata has neither whence nor whither, therefore is He called Tathagata‘.
‘That-ness’ is not the same as ‘That-ness Gone’.
The Buddha is not asserting anything about the nature of ‘That-ness’. For to do so would be to not have understood the nature of ‘That-ness’.
But that is precisely where the Mother-Tradition took ‘That-ness’ in its long history before his arrival. And got seriously lost.
From the Chandogya Upanishad [see the Page for the full excerpt]:
‘Then the father said: ‘Here also, my dear, in this body you do not perceive Sat (Being); but It is indeed there. Now, that which is the subtle essence—in it all that exists has its Self. That is the True. That is the Self. That thou art, Svetaketu.”
That-ness in the Upanishad was a ‘Subtle Essence’. A ‘Self’. A nuanced ‘Object’ noted from an as yet un-exhausted ‘Subject’. A description palatable only to one who has stopped short of True-Nothing and doesn’t yet have Emptyness in clear view.
The Buddha however in his modification of the appellation, is pronouncing about his own state, the state of being ‘That-ness Gone’. There is no word said about any sighted ‘Object’. Tatha-gatha is all about the Subject. Or rather the absence of it.
The Formulation of Emptyness

What about the ‘Means’ to this reformulated ‘End’?

Again, the Buddhist approach was to take the original formulation, the sanctified ‘Means’ of the Mother-Tradition, and rearrange the two lines:
‘It is not this! It is not this!’ is rewritten as:
‘It is not this! It is not: ‘It is not this!’
Its Logical-Form is now identical with the expression for Emptyness. It is the Mother SEE. The Original Koan. The first Synthetic Self-Destroying Device.
Mother and Child
The difference between the highest offering of the Mother-Tradition and that of its brilliant, questioning progeny, the Buddha-Dharma, the point where the paths sharply separate, is to be found in the addition of a suffix and the rearrangement of two lines.
The ‘Independent and Separate Subject’
In the language of the Sutra, there is nowhere to be found an ‘[Independent and Separate] ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality’.
There is not anywhere to be found, either by observation or by inference, and outside of an unexamined, inherited authority and unquestioned convention, an ‘Independent and Separate Subject’.
Or in contemporary phrase, an ‘Independent and Separate Subject’ that is:
A Physical Body, a Cell, a DNA Code, a Thought, a Mind, an Awareness, a Consciousness, a Totality, a Nullity, an Unity, an Entity, an Ego [Latin for ‘I’], an Energy, a Life-Force, an Intelligence, an Observer, a Thinker, an Inquirer, a Speaker, an Actor, an Enforcer of Will, a Receiver of Experience, a Vehicle of Emotion, a Receptacle of Sensation, a Presence, an Existence, an ‘Organizing Principle’, a ‘Hidden Abstraction’, an ‘Inner Being’, a Spirit, a ‘Soul’…
‘Center, Essence, Ground’
In particular, there is no separated ‘Mind’, no independent Model-Manufacturer, sitting between my ears and behind my nose.
And no separated ‘Observer’, no independent ‘Seer’, sitting inside my eyes and beneath my brow.
There is no Center, no Essence, no Ground that is this purported ‘Independent and Separated’ Ontological Presence that is an ‘I’.
‘I Told You Twice!’
In its common English translation: ‘Neti, Neti’ [‘Not This! Not This!’]  has been traditionally understood as an injunction of reinforced, emphatic negation.
The traditional interpretation, which is no interpretation at all, has been that Yagnavalkya, with intent to crown the significance of this seminal rule, chose to repeat it twice. There is much repetition in the Upanishadic verses, largely for ease of memorization in a primarily oral tradition. But this is not one of them.
Over the centuries it appropriated for itself authoritative status as the original and proper formula for decoding the symbol ’0′ itself. [It hasn’t changed much.]
The Ever-Spinning Reel
The rule as so interpreted is incomplete and misleading. It is the common error of making linear what is in fact a self-scuttling circular loop. It has been so practiced for centuries, however fruitless the results. But there will never be result nor fruit with this formula. It is an ever-spinning reel.
For this interpretation has no natural convergence. It has not exited the Two-ness Template. The observer stands outside the formula and it enters an insidious permanent loop. The reel will spin for ever if you don’t at some point see that you are part of the movie.
No amount of negating will lead to convergence unless the negating turns in on itself. The ‘Neti‘ loop is complete only when the aim, act and agent of negation are themselves negated in full self-scuttle.
Stopping-Short of True Nothing
If you manage to get all the way to True Nothing, you will not return without a full cognition of Emptyness.  You cannot return without a full cognition of Emptyness.
If you stop-short of True Nothing, you will find Religion.
The Modeled-Self is ‘seen through’ at True Nothing, and only at True Nothing.
The Mother Tradition got stuck because it chose repeatedly to stop short of True Nothing. The assumption of the separated-self was never fully ejected in its purported denouement.
A separated-self continued its habitation in the most nuanced of commentaries and in the most confident of pronouncements.
There is no Cosmic Game afoot
Life is not a play of ‘Hide and Seek’. There is no cosmic game afoot.
It is not that you have to struggle in sustained self-mortification to find Life’s true purpose [ a common claim of all religious traditions, but begun here; see the various Posts on this].
The very notions of ‘Final Denouement’ and ‘Necessary Struggle’, of Path and Purpose, are predicated on the presence of an ‘Independent and Separate self’.
Ignorance and Enlightenment, Bondage and Liberation, Sin and Salvation, the whole Kit and Caboodle.
They all fall out of a belief system mounted on a ‘Conventional Understanding’.
The Buddha-Dharma in its highest expression says there is no such thing as an ‘Independent and Separate Self’ except in your indulgent imagination. An inherited, uninvestigated, desecrating and profane presumption that has caused endless mischief.
And it is possible to see this with complete conviction and in that very act, be ejected from it.
The Fix
By the time of the Buddha, the intent of Tathatha was egregiously miscued, hopelessly mauled beyond all possibility of reinstatement.
It had to do as always, with a stopping-short of True Nothing and proffering a modeled-view of a mystically sighted ‘Object’ which was then titled ‘Self’. The very choice of name is an alert that the ‘Subject-Object’ divide, always ejected as a pair, was still in place. A terminal state more insidious than the beginning one because it erroneously believes the Subject is no more.
A new, more transparent and tamper-proof expression had to be put-together. The Scholar-Monks of the Prajna-Paramita went back to the drawing-board to come up with a simple way to communicate their denouement.
And this time they were not going to risk another miscue. They designed the formal Self-Eating Expression [SEE], the synthetic self-destroying device that is Emptyness, that upon proper cognition took with it the Seeker.
And no Guru, no commentator, could now maul its meaning as was done with Tathatha, stalling generations of trekkers on the open-road.
This was the offering of the original verses of the Prajna-Paramita Sutra. The first scripture that finally sets forth Emptyness without equivocations, hedges, and qualifiers. The perfected formulation in other words, of this fundamental formula that was Yagnavalkya’s original and radical claim.
The First Reformation
The Buddha saw his teaching, not as a break from the past, but as the fixed-up, final link in a long chain that went back to the birth of the Dharma, the Mother-Tradition itself.
But his denouement was provably and not just as claim, the definitive insight. The insight on the nature of sight-insight itself [see the Page: ‘Prajna-Paramita‘]. The final and categorical break from the Two-ness Template in the awakening to Śūnyathā.
In a larger spirit, the Buddha saw the entry into Emptyness as the final reclaiming of the Mother-Tradition itself.
A Tradition that had now fallen low, mired as the literature of that era so copiously demonstrates, in rote-ritual, bartered rule and petitionary prayer. Virulent superstition paralyzed the devout and sophisticated cant silenced the seeker.
Similar events occurred 500 years later in Palestine as Christianity effectively birthed from Judaism at the hands of a vocal Rabbi. And 1500 years later in Germany as Protestantism broke from Catholicism with the help of a Priest, a Wittenberg Professor.
[As for Islam, the imams and mullahs have been far more successful than the prophets and priests in staying any serious intellectual revolt, in keeping the pious kneeling at prayer].
The Buddha’s attempt at reclaiming the Dharma was the first attempt at reformation. The Reformation that failed.
Exit
By the 10th Century, Buddhism as Religion and certainly its high-point, the Prajna- Paramita interpretation, was a spent force in the region of its birth.
About the same time, the symbol ‘О’, went West [via Venice] becoming the base of the ‘Hindu-Arabic’ system of Number Representation in the Decimal code. It’s original meaning, now long lost in the region of its birth, descended further to become the modern ‘Concept of Nothing’.
In the new Sangha culture, the exotic mingled with the inchoate to throw up all variations of Buddhism that was made-up of teachings read in books and heard in whispers. Pious monks with the purest of motives had reduced the Buddha-Dharma to another Religion.
The New Passage
BodhiDharma left Kanchipuram,  the most likely point of his origin, and sailed East. His way conjoined teaching with the views, practices and mediums of the day.
That is as it should be. The teaching needs always to integrate with the prejudices and paradigms, the gods and demons of the place and the period. For there is nothing outside the terrain of the teaching and that is the first teaching.
Today, a thousand years after Buddhism left its region of birth, the compass orients West. It crosses to new lands , new  centers of energized inquiry, picked up by men and women with the same spirit of defiant courage that marked the first foreign hosts.
This Site, written in American-English, speaking from a familiar dais of Western idiom, housed in a recognizable intellectual infrastructure and mounted on a wide and free medium that is the Internet, is part of the new passage.

‘Aum Tat Sat ;Tat Tvam Asi’

The Author’s ambition continues to stay alight, in spite of the manifest triumph of history over hope. The reclamation of the original and authentic Dharma in the region of it’s birth.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

 Homage to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas!
‘Call forth as much as you can of Love, of Respect and of Faith!Remove the obstructing defilements and clear away all your taints! Listen to the Perfect Wisdom of the Gentle Buddhas,Taught for the weal of the world, for heroic spirits intended!
No WIsdom can we get hold of, no higher perfection,
no Bodhisattva, no thought of Enlightenment either,
when told of this, if not bewildered and in no way anxious,
a Bodhisattva courses in the Well-Gone’s Wisdom.
In form, in feeling, in will, perception and awareness
nowhere in them they find a place to rest on.
without a home they wander, dharmas never hold them
nor do they grasp at them-the JIna’s Bodhi they are bound to gain.
The wandering Srenika in his gnosis of the truth
could find no basis, though the Skandas had not been undone.
just so, the Boshisattva, when he comprehends the
dharmas as he should, does not retire into Blessed Rest. In wisdom then he dwells.
What is this wisdom, whose and whence, he queries,
and then he finds that all these dharmas are entirely  empty.
Uncowed and fearless in the face of this discovery,
not far from Bodhi is that Bodhi-Being then.
To course in the skandhas, in form, in feeling, in perception,
will, and so on and fail to consider them wisely;
or to imagine these skandhas to be empty; means to course in the sign, the track of non-production ignored.
But when he does not course in form, in feeling, in perception,
in will, or consciousness, but wanders without a home
remaining unaware of coursing firm in wisdom,
his thoughts on non-production-then the best of all the
calming trances cleaves to him.
Through that the Bodhisattva now dwells calmly in himself,
his future Buddhahood assured by antecedent Buddhas.
Whether absorbed in trance or whether outside it, he minds not
for of things as they are, he knows the essential, original nature.
Coursing thus, he courses in the wisdom of the Sugatas,
and yet he does not apprehend the dharmas in which he courses,
This coursing he wisely knows as a no-coursing,
that is his practice of wisdom the highest perfection.
What exists not, that non-existent the foolish imagine;
non-existence as well as existence they fashion.
As dharmic facts existence and non-existence are both not real.
A Bodhisattva goes forth when wisely he knows this.
If he knows the five skandhas as like an illusion,
but makes not illusion one thing and the skandhas another;
if freed from the notion of multiple, things he courses in peace
then that is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Those with good teachers as well as deep insight,
cannot be frightened on hearing the mother’s deep tenets.
But those with bad teachers, who can be misled by others
are ruined thereby as an unbaked pot in contact with moisture.
What is the reason we speak of ‘Bodhisattvas’?
Desirous to extinguish all attachments, and to cut it off,
true non-attachment, or the Bodhi of the Jinas is their future lot.
‘Beings who strive for Bodhi’ are they therefore called.
What is the reason why ‘Great Beings’ are so called?
They rise to the highest place above a great number of people;
and of a great number of people they cut off mistaken views.
that is why we come to speak of them as ‘Great Beings’.
Great as a giver, a thinker, as a power,
he mounts upon the vessel of the Supreme Jinas.
Armed with the great armor, he will subdue Mara the artful.
These are the reasons why ‘Great Beings’ are so called.
This gnosis shows him all beings as like an illusion
resembling a great crowd of people, conjured up at the crossroads,
by a magician, who then cuts off many thousands of heads;
he knows this whole living world as a mock show,
and yet remains without fear.
Form, perception, feeling, will and awareness,
are ununited, never bound, cannot be freed.
Uncowed in his thought, he marches on to his Bodhi,
that for the highest of men is the best of all armors.
What then again is ‘the vessel that leads to Bodhi’?
Mounted upon it one guides to Nirvana all beings.
Great is that vessel, immense, vast like the vastness of space.
Those who travel upon it are carried to safety, delight and ease.
Thus transcending the world he eludes our apprehensions
‘He goes to Nirvana’, but no can say where he went to.
A fire is extinguished, but where, do we ask, has it gone to?
Likewise, how do we find him who has found the Rest of the Blessed?
The Bodhisattva’s past, his future and his present must elude us.
TIme’s three dimensions nowhere touch him.
Quite pure he is, free from conditions, unimpeded.
That is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Wise Bodhisattvas, coursing thus, reflect on non-production,
and yet, while doing so, engender in themselves the great compassion, which is however, free from any notion of Being.
Thereby the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
But when the notion of suffering and Being leads him to think: ‘suffering I shall remove, the weal of the world I shall work!’
Beings are then imagined, a Self is imagined,
the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection, is lacking.
He wisely knows that all lives is unproduced as he himself is;
he know that no more exists than he or any beings;
The unproduced and the produced are not distinguished,
That is the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
All words for things for use in this world must be left behind,
all things produced and made must be transcended-
the deathless, the supreme, the incomparable gnosis is then won.
That is the sense in which we speak of perfect wisdom.
When free from doubts the Bodhisattva carries on his practice,
as skilled in wisdom he is known to dwell.
All dharmas are not really there, their essential original nature is empty, to comprehend that is the practice of wisdom, perfection supreme.
He does not stand in form, perception or in feeling
in will or consciousness, in any skandha whatsoever.
In dharma’s true nature alone he stands,
then that is his practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
Change and no-change, suffering and ease, the self and not-self,
the lovely and the repulsive-one Suchness in this Emptyness they are. And so he takes not his stand on the fruit which he won which is three-fold-that of an Arhat, a Buddha, a Buddha fully enlightened.
The leader himself was not stationed in the realm that is free from conditions, nor in the things which are under conditions, but freely he wandered without a home: just so without support or basis a Bodhisattva stands. A position devoid of a basis, has that position been called by the Jina.
Those who wish to become the Sugata’s disciples,
or Pratyekabuddhas, or likewise kings of the dharma,
without resort to this patience they cannot reach their respective goals, they move across, but their eyes are not on the other shore.
Those who teach the dharma, and those who listen to it taught;
those who have won the fruit of an Arhat, a single Buddha, a world-saviour; and the Nirvana won by the wise and the learned-
mere illusions, mere dreams-so has the Tathagatha taught us.
Four kinds of persons are not alarmed by this teaching:
sons of the Jina skilled in the truth; saints unable to turn back,
Arhats free from defilements and taints and rid of their doubts;
those whom good teachers mature are reckoned the fourth.
Coursing thus, the wise and learned Bodhisattva,
trains not for Arhatship, nor the level of a Pratyekabuddha,
in the Buddhadharma alone he trains, for the sake of all-knowledge.
No training is his training, and no one is trained in this training.
Increase or decrease of forms is not the aim of this training,
nor does he set out to acquire various dharmas.
All-knowledge alone he can hope to acquire by this training.
To that he goes forth when he trains in this training, and delights in its virtues.
Forms are not wisdom, nor is wisdom found in form,
in consciousness, perceptions, feelings or in will.
They are not wisdom, and no wisdom lies in them.
Like space it is without a break or a crack.
Of all objective supports the original essential nature is boundless;
of Beings likewise, the original essential nature is boundless.
As the original essential nature of space has no limits,
just so the wisdom of the world-knowers is boundless.
‘Perceptions’-mere words, so the leaders have told us;
perceptions forsaken and gone, and the door is open to the beyond.
Those who succeed in ridding themselves of perceptions,
they, having reached the beyond, fulfill the teachers commandments.
If, for aeons countless as the sands on the Ganges
the leader himself would continue to pronounce the word ‘Being'; still, pure from the very start, no Being could ever result from his speaking. That is the practice of wisdom, the highest perfection.
And so the Jina concludes his preaching and finally tells us: ‘When all I said and did at at last agreed with perfect wisdom, then this prediction I received from one who went before me:
‘Fully enlightened, at a future time, thou shalt a Buddha be.’END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

‘Method’ to Emptyness.

‘There is no Method’ decries the Sutra, offering-up this pronouncement in the envelope of a Self-Eating Expression.
The Method to the awakening to Emptyness is the undermining of all ‘Method’. The stick used to light the funeral pyre must itself burn to ash. You consume yourself in the Self-Eating Expression.
‘Method’, wrote Immanuel Kant, is ‘procedure according to principle’. The word itself in its Latin and Greek roots denotes a ‘Way'[ Hodos, Tao, Marga] to a ‘Higher Knowing’ [Meta, a relational prefix].
The ‘Higher Knowing’ can range from how to fix a faulty faucet to the ‘Truth of the Highest Understanding’. And Method is uniformly improved, made teachable and testable, if it can be laid out as a list of principles.
This Page is a collection of relevant Posts from ‘Empty Talk’.

A Pious Insanity
Samsara: ‘A disoriented flailing around’. You want to go home because things no longer make any sense.
You have been around awhile. You have progressed from amused bemusement, past simple bewilderment, beyond all sophisticated skepticism to a point of creeping and unquiet desperation.
You are ready to admit, surreptitiously of-course, the view that the World as you have known it is in fact fundamentally absurd.
That most explanations are deflections and denials and copious rationalizations. That a pious insanity is afoot.
‘A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands’ wrote Walt Whitman, ‘How could I answer the child?…I do not know what it is anymore than he.’
You feel Yeats’ fervor: ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer’.
The Meditation Mat
The Path to Emptyness begins under your feet and goes straight down.
You dig right beneath where you stand [or sit] and keep going until you’ve dug yourself into a deep, dark hole.
You then try and climb back by lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps.
You don’t need a ticket to the Mountain-top. You could however use a good, durable Mediation Mat. And its a fraction of the cost.
The Old Race Horse at Ibycus
But the View does not come easy. And it does not come quick.
‘A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, a difficult path is this, poets declare’ says the Katha Upanishad.
When Socrates asks Parmenides to relate his own long journey, he goes silent. Then he says:‘I feel like the old race horse at Ibycus, who trembles at the start of the chariot race knowing from long experience what is in store for him.‘

Testing the First Assumption
So here we are with the question: ‘Is there an Independent and Separate Subject?’ Is there an Independent and Separate Me?
But how do we go about testing this? Perhaps we should reach for the ‘Scientific Method’ given its proven record of success?
Unfortunately, the first requirement for ‘Scientific-Method’ is the unstated conviction, assumed condition and accepted convention that the investigating subject is ‘Independent and Separate’ from the investigated object.
How are we to test our First Assumption using the ‘Scientific-Method’, if the ‘Scientific-Method’ already uses this First Assumption?
It’s time for the Forefinger-Scratch Rule.
The Forefinger-Scratch Rule
You can’t scratch your right forefinger with your right forefinger.
You can scratch your neck with your right forefinger. You can scratch your bottom with your right forefinger. You can scratch your toe with your right forefinger.
But you can’t scratch your right forefinger with your right forefinger.
If you think you are scratching your right forefinger with your right forefinger, either what is scratching is not your right forefinger, or else, what is being scratched is not your right forefinger. Take a look and convince yourself.
This, the elementary truth of the Forefinger-Scratch.
There is little of greater wisdom on the planet; and none more flippantly and frequently violated.
The Loop
You may not use something to understand the same something.
That’s the Forefinger-Scratch Rule.
Otherwise called, in Socrates’ memorable words: [the avoidance of] ‘The most vicious of circles’ [see the Post].
And what Yagnavalkya had repeatedly warned about in his dialogues [see the Page].
Rounding the Circle
So. Is there an ‘Independent and Separate ‘Me’?’
What can I do to find out? I can’t use the sanctioned contemporary method of Inquiry, the ‘Scientific Method’, for the reasons explained in the previous Post. Is there another way?
Yes, there is. And its been around for a long time [about 3,000 years] although rarely used with adequate accuracy or taken to necessary completion.
It say’s: ‘If I grant the truth of the Two-ness Template, if I truly believe that there is an ‘Independent and Separate Me’, then the following two short sentences must also be true':
I cannot see myself. Anything I see as ‘Me’, by that very fact, cannot be ‘Me’.
That’s it.
The Inviolable Twins
Let’s set this down with a little more decorous formality.
1. I must be different from what I see, in order for me to see it.
I can never see myself. I can see all things in the world but the one thing I cannot see is myself. 
Look in a mirror. You see your eye staring at you? Sure you do. You can see your eye. But what you don’t see is the source of your vision. In fact, what you see in the mirror cannot be the source of your vision. In fact, it can be anything but the source of your vision.
Your ‘source of vision’ can only see that which is different from itself. Subject must be different from Object in order for it to see Object as ‘Object’.
2. Anything I see as the source of my vision by that very fact, is confirmed as not being the source of my vision.
Anything I see as ‘me’, by the very fact that I see it, cannot be me.
There is no claim of error in which I can have greater conviction.
Homeward Bound
‘I cannot see what see’s. Anything I see, by that very fact, is not what see’s.’
That it’s it. Start to Finish. Soup to Nuts. Kit and Caboodle.
First, convince yourself that this is true.
If you are not convinced, go back to the bathroom and look in the mirror again. Clean the surface with a damp cloth. Turn on the lights.
Step out into the world. Apply the two rules without blinking or winking. No compromises allowed. No nooks left unlooked.
They will take you back home.
The Full Monty
In order to fully unwind the two expressions, in order to be convinced of their truth and implications, you will have to go all the way back. All the way back to True Nothing.
Standing and ‘Seeing’ from atop True Nothing, the Emperor’s clothes are in full and dramatic view. You get the Full Monty. The show is over and you are done.
But a lot of things can come between here and True Nothing. Lots and lots of things.
And there are specifically designed helpers that can teach you to walk backwards [like the Self-Eating Expression].
And lots of Posts follow about these things.
The Self-Loop
I cannot see what see’s. Anything I see, by that very fact, is not what see’s.
We need a shorter pocket-phrase that conveys what’s being said. A phrase that says: ‘Yo! What you’ve got in your hand is not subject but object disguised, confounded as subject. A model, not the real-thing. A made-up bunny. Look again!’
Let’s call it the Self-Loop. The Self-Loop is on when you look into a mirror and are absolutely sure that the eye you see is the source of your vision.
If you are alert to the Self-Loop you don’t do certain things. If you are not, you do some very silly things.
And dig yourself deeper and deeper into a hole. A hole of your own making [as promised in the Post ‘A Pious Insanity’].
Mentating about ‘Mind’
You are convinced you possess this wondrous thing called ‘Mind’.You model the world around you in great sweeps of analytic glee. Things clarify quickly and all is well. And then the contradictions and absurdities begin to sprout.
You then turn this formidable apparatus, this ‘Mind’, acquired over long year of practice, on ‘Mind’ itself. Perhaps it just needs a little fixing. A little grease, a spot of cleaning and things should come back to normal. It is what ‘Mind’ has taught you to do repeatedly in case of a breakdown of any sort. And it has worked most of the time.
Here is where you enter the salons of the Self-Loop.
The Descent into Absurdity
Mind may not mentate about Mind. Anything the Mind can mentate about as Mind, by that very fact, is not Mind. You can mentate about all things in this great and grand universe of ours. But you may not mentate about Mind.
Consciousness may not grasp at consciousness. Anything consciousness grasps at as consciousness, by that very fact, is not consciousness.
Thought may not seek its nature in another thought. Concept may not conceive itself in another concept. Word may not seek its meaning through other words.
Logical Symbol may not seek its root using other symbols of Logic. Mathematics may not seek proof of its consistency by reaching within the consistency rules of Mathematics. Language may not seek its origin using Language.
And ‘I’ may not inquire about ‘Myself’.
The Virgin-Twins must remain inviolate.
So what happens if you violate them? Some very strange things.
‘Giving Birth to Myself’
If you violate the Twin Virgins in any way, if you get any one of them pregnant, you will ‘Give Birth to Yourself’.
I can understand; but I may not try to understand ‘Understanding’. I can do a lot of things with ‘Understanding’. But I may not try to understand it.
When you define and hold forth on something using the same something, the something gives birth to itself. It has a baby, in other words. A cute but strange baby.
It appropriates the Divine Ability to recreate in its own Image, to see it’s own eye. It doubles while remaining single. It multiplies and divides, while all the time remaining itself.
By giving birth to itself it becomes Object to itself as Subject.
Herein the birth of Maya. The ‘Conventional Understanding’ of the World.
‘Not-Two’
The ‘Two-ness’ idea has lots of layers and you won’t really notice them until you slip on one. But the most relevant can be readily listed.
‘Not-Two’ is a specific and deliberately open-ended construction made up of three elements. The two basic beliefs that generate Model and a third, a pointer to the wide-open exit gate.
The first one is the assumption of the subject-object divide.
The second one, a further divide on the first divide, is in the nature of the doubled referential nature of expression itself. In particular, expression formulated as ‘Thought’ and expressed in ‘Language’ [see the Posts on ‘Sign’ et al].
And thirdly, the open-ended ‘Not’. You will not be able to get past the ‘Not’ until you have worked through the first two divides [see the Post ‘Not, Nothing and Nonsense’].
The terse, seemingly cryptic expression ‘Not-Two’, is something for you to carry around in your shirt-pocket. You can bounce it around; bully it; baby it. A long-tested tool, it has no fat on it.
‘This Mystery which I Understand the Least’
‘Thought’.
It’s origin is unknown [grab that next thought please, and ask it where it came from].
It’s stage can’t be located [inside my head? beneath the sink?].
It’s terminus is not found [where do all those thoughts go, like stairs in an escalator?].
I can’t see it. I can’t hear it. I can’t smell it. And any thinking about it, muddles it more.
I Think. I Think that I think. I Think that I think that I think…
No self-respecting scientist would take seriously, something to which he cannot give the simplest of coordinates.
No activity is less comprehensible than this happening in my head. Yet nothing is more real to me than this mystery which I understand the least.
‘Arouse the Mind with no Abiding Place!’
The smoke gets blacker, the mirrors more numerous and the mirages more real as you approach True Nothing. It’s a good idea to pay attention roundabouts here.
Śūnyathā [Emptyness] is not to be confounded with Śūnya, or its synonym Śūnyam [Empty, True Nothing]. And True Nothing is not to be confounded with the Concept of Nothing. And so on.
‘Arouse the Mind with no Abiding Place!’ A constant refrain of the Prajna Paramitha verses.
In the words of The Diamond Sutra: ‘A Bodhisattva should develop a mind which alights upon no thing whatsoever; and so should he establish it.’
Alight on True Nothing, and nowhere else.
‘The Subject is Quieted as the Object Ceases…’
Modeled Subject and Modeled Object arise and subside together. As long as you are convinced of the reality of ‘Object’, you are necessarily standing on a modeled, made-up ‘Subject’.
The truth of this will become evident as the Subject gradually corrodes, but the idea as important marker has been around, mostly unrecognized, for a long time.
Seng-tsan, the third Chinese patriarch of C’han Buddhism wrote about it circa 600 CE: ‘The Subject is quieted as the Object ceases; the Object ceases as the Subject is quieted…’
If you want to move forward from here you are first going to have to move back. Back, as in all the way back until everything is in view. All the way back until all formulations of imagined ‘Subject’ are in front of you.
All the way back to True Nothing.
Finding True Nothing
True Nothing is not a thought, a concept, an idea. It is not a thing. It is not a process. True Nothing is exactly what the name says: True Nothing. There is nothing there for you to hang your hat on.
‘Not This! Not This!’ [see the Post: ‘The Ever-Spinning Reel’].
When you are at True Nothing everything is ‘in front of you’. And the most important thing that is in front of you is your assumed Subject now revealed as confounded Modeled Object.
And there is nothing behind you except as an idea [and you are not at True Nothing until you are ‘behind’ that idea, and all notions of ‘behind’ and ‘in front’, ‘above’ and ‘below’].
How do you know you are at True Nothing? We’ll, there is no such thing as True Nothing. You’ll know it when you get there. Just move your feet around and see if it touches anything.
What’s so Special about ‘True Nothing’?
What’s so special about ‘True Nothing’? Only from the stance of True Nothing-and nowhere else-will you see with complete clarity and consequent conviction that there is not, never was, an Independent, Separate Observer.
This fantastic notion of an ‘Independent and Separate Self and Subject’.
Standing atop True Nothing, the presumption of the ‘Independent and Separate Observer and Self’ exits. And when that leaves, it takes with it the Two-ness Template, which includes itself.
In other words, when Subject truly goes, it takes with it the whole enchilada. The entirety of the ‘Subject; Object’ Divide.
‘This Unformulated Principle’
From The Diamond Sutra: ‘The truth is uncontainable and inexpressible…Thus it is that this unformulated Principle is the foundation of the different systems of all the sages.’
This ‘Unformulated Principle’ that is ‘uncontainable and inexpressible’ is ‘contained and expressed’ as Emptyness.
To properly cognize  Emptyness is to be convinced beyond a shadow of doubt, plain and undeniable as this line you are reading, of the presence of this: ‘Unformulated Principle that is the foundation of the different systems of all the sages’.
What is Emptyness?
And what is Emptyness?
Formally: ‘Emptyness is that which is Empty of itself’. In the Sanskrit: ŚūnyathāŚūnyathā.
It is the original Self-Eating Expression [SEE], the primal Synthetic, Self-Destroying Device, the first Koan and the ancestor of the fierce ‘Mu’ of Joshu.
The necessary and final re-formulation of Yagnavalkya’s radical claim in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
‘Standing on Nothing, Nothing is Grasped’
So here you are finally atop True Nothing. Now what?
From the Sutra:
‘Who sees Me by form,
Who seeks Me in sound,
Perverted are his footsteps upon the Way,
He cannot perceive the Tathagata.’
Emptyness is not a new ‘Object’ seen while standing atop a new ‘Subject’ that is True Nothing.
If ‘Subject’ is properly seen-through atop the Perch of True Nothing, it would have taken with it the Subject-Object Divide. Subject and Object arise and subside together.
If you are truly atop True Nothing [‘Empty’], if you are properly done with the ‘Subject’, there is correspondingly no ‘Object’ as ‘Emptyness’ to be grasped.
When you have lost your perch as ‘Subject’ you are going to lose your view of ‘Object’. They come and go together. If you can still nail an ‘Object’, you haven’t yet given up your perch as ‘Subject’.
‘Standing’ on nothing, nothing is grasped.
‘Where is my Partner?’
Emptyness is the original ‘Nameless’ [see the Posts].
Say a word about Emptyness, point a finger, hold-forth on the ‘Nature’ of Emptyness  and you will be sent right back to the start of the line.
Such tags are sealing evidence that Subject is still very much alive and is grasping for a partner, an Object that would give it life.
You will not be able to tolerate, come to terms with Emptyness, its unbridled Freedom, its unrestricted domain, ‘un-containable and in-expressible’, as long as there remains an assumed ‘Independent and Separate Subject’ that has not been rinsed out.
The Natural Limit of Inquiry
The natural, necessary and inevitable limit of Inquiry is True Nothing.
You cannot ‘Inquire’ about ‘Emptyess’. To do so is to not have properly cognized Emptyness. If you can name it, you’ve missed it. Grand and difficult Lady, this.
The consequential miscues in the history of the Mother-Tradition began here.
‘Inquiry’ as you have known it in the lexicon of ‘Conventional Understanding’ will cease once the manufactured Subject is properly cognized for what it is.
The ‘Exhaustion of Philosophic Views’.
[Note that Inquiry is with a capital ‘I’. I’m still inquiring after all these years as to why my asparagus never cooks just right.]
Self-Scuttling Sight-Insight
Emptyness and True Nothing are synthetic creations, self-destroying constructions, purely pedagogic devices that fulfill their intended purpose only when they exit, taking with them all the heretofore sacred sutras.
If they are still hanging around that’s evidence that their job is not yet done. And your course is not yet completed.
Standing on Empty, you enter Emptyness [Tathagatha].
The Self-Scuttling Sight-Insight into the Nature of Sight-Insight [see the Page: ‘Sutra, An Introduction’].
Prajna Paramita. Go get it.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra: An Introduction.

 

A Sutra [ Sūtra, cognate with the English word ‘Suture’, a strung-together lock] was originally defined in the classical texts as: ‘A statement of few words, that is free from doubt, of significant meaning in content, having an universal application, free from rhetorical and repetitious words [‘padding’ that is found in many Vedic litanies], and is grammatically and logically accurate’.

The Sutras were originally meant as mnemonic arrangements, the anchoring reference of an oral teaching tradition under the guidance of a Guru. As used here they refer exclusively to the Prajna Paramita texts.

Prajna, is ‘Primal Sight-Insight’. Paramita in this context marks the limit of achievement, what the early literature calls attaining the ‘Other Shore’. Prajna Paramita is translatable with unavoidable clumsiness but fair accuracy as: ‘The [Self-Scuttling] Sight-Insight into the very nature of Sight-Insight’.

The settled cognition in other words, of Śūnyathā: Emptyness.

The Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra [ Mahā Prajñā Pāramita-Sūtra]  is the original source, the first, most comprehensive and least compromised attestation to Emptyness. Its unclouded eye and unhesitant voice have made it a document of heresy to some and divine inscrutability to others.

The earliest sections of the Prajna Paramita verses date back to the two centuries following the death of the Buddha. Of these, the first 41 verses form the extant core.

Soon after, the text was expanded to 302 verses called the Prajna Paramita Ratna Guna Samcayagatha [Arya Samcayagatha] by aspiring monks and leaders of the newly created Buddhist Sanghas. The extensions were mainly elaborations of the six ‘Precious Virtues’ [Ratna Guna], all of which become central in subsequent Buddhist religious writings [numerous versions of the extensions are readily available on the Net].

Noble virtues all and universally revered-but these extensions were the writings of pious and deeply religious men, not the pioneering brave-hearts from whom arose the radical declarations that made up the core verses of the original text.

The subsequent and better known prose expansion of the RatnaGuna was the Astasahasrika Prajna Paramita better known as the ‘Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Slokas’  [a Sloka being a metrical unit of 32 syllables]. This basic reference text has been further expanded upwards to 10, 18, 25 and 100,000 Slokas.

By the time the Prajna Paramita reaches these rarefied heights of loquacious amplification the core insights of the original text are faded into minor footnotes. More often they were simply misplaced or lost in the large monastic libraries. The learned and well-meaning monks, the scribes of the expansions, had tamed the fearsome bellow of the original verses into a domesticated religious document for conventional reverence and worship.

The oral tradition and its dependence on mnemonic phrasing did not transfer well to the new written word in high Sanskrit.  A downward spiral began, progressively compacting the now unwieldy texts to 2,500, 700, 500, 300, 150 and 25 Slokas respectively.

The 25 Sloka compacting is the Hridaya Sutra [‘Heart Sutra’] the daily invocation in every Zendo. Intentionally bite-sized and by far the most well-known, it is to be read and interpreted only as supplement to the Diamond Sutra. Much mischief has been created when it is read in isolation where it’s very tight phrasing can seriously miscue the entrant.

The 300 Sloka version is the celebrated Vajrachedika Sutra [‘Diamond Sutra’], the terse, cryptic summary that captures the entirety of the insights of the first 41 verses in uncompromised form. It is the central document that lays forth the truth of Emptyness without  blinking, and by far the most revealing and undiluted expression of what the original authors meant to say. Better known than the original 41 verses and more willing to speak an absurd tongue, it has held the ungrudging respect of the best minds over the centuries.

The story goes that Hui-neng, the pioneering Chinese 6th Patriarch of C’han-Zen awoke to ‘Enlightenment’ when he chanced upon this Sutra being recited at a public square [see the Page: ‘The Oldest Preserved Printed Text’].

The geographical origin of the Sutra is not very clear. But as
Dr. Edward Conze suggests and for good reasons, there is nothing conclusive about it being Gridhrakuta [‘Vulture Peak’] as is popularly held. An alternative proposal sources it in Southern India between Amaravathi and Kanchipuram. Both Nagarjuna and Bodhidharma came from this stretch of land, and Shankaracharya, the formulator of Advaitha Vedantha, significantly influenced by the Sutra, was from near this region. The great expansions East were mainly Southern and the Sutra has always found its home not in India but overseas and to the East.

The first translation from the Sanskrit was into classical Chinese in 179 C.E. by Lokashema from Kusana called ‘The Prajna Paramita Sutra and the practice of the Way’. [The Tao-Hsing]. It was the first philosophical text to cross the border.

Numerous other translations into the Chinese were done by driven and dedicated scholars over the next 800 years. the best known being that by Kumarajiva and later by Hsuan-tsan which ran to 600 fascicles. The first Tibetan translation took place around 850 C.E. and continued in numerous variations till the 16th century.

The translations into European languages are recent , as late as the early part of the 20th century.  This Site draws on the monumental labors of Dr. Edward Dietrich Conze, the ‘ foremost  Western scholar of the Prajna Paramita literature’, a labor which continued well into the latter half of the last century. His work draws on Haribhadra’s classic Abhisamayalankaraloka, Nagarjuna’s Commentaries  and others, bringing the literature finally into the Western loci of the Modern.

The task of the translator, let alone an interpreter of the Prajna Paramita literature has always been difficult. The job of extracting honest meaning from these bristling and unabashedly absurd lines, phrases that mock even the elemental rules of coherent linguistic structure, especially when being remade for the sensible, pragmatic languages of the modern West,  can bring grown men to tears.

That this Site pretends to be able to cross these deep linguistic, temporal and cultural divides is testimony to the power of these very old verses. Only one who is inescapably captured by the Truth so penetratingly and uncompromisingly expressed in these few lines would be foolhardy enough to share and speak their voice.END=NAM MO SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA.( 3 TIMES ).WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD PATH.THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.20/3/2015.

. What's the correct loi.PART 3.
In the Spring and Autumn era, officials of many vassals often frequented the fellowship, to see the gesture, action, language of a person, or the word contempt silver, or mild hearted attitude, they can discourse on the fate of the human being that will meet or graphics and their speculation is not fulfilled. These conditions are clearly stated so in the history books as the National Language Description story or we can read it.
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A person can feel extremely honest press is compatible with heart heaven, so just observe whether they do good or bad, it is enough to know in advance that they will have to report or graphics. II- The foundation of the fix first. Long shame today, want to be happy but stay away from the disaster, not to rush the healing table, first let's fix should have. People want to fix, it is first necessary to know the tri Wholesale self ashamed. Be aware that the ancient sages as well as the one that can set good example why hundreds of lives, why we have to wreak corruption body. It's sensual pleasures herself captivated the sense, infected many bad habits, do things any means, but for the life is not good, do not know so arrogant, blatantly no sense of shame, on an increasingly devolved to animals within which such self-knowledge. In life there is something greater than self Wholesale self ashamed. Master Mencius said: Gratitude shame where man is a big thing, there is surely a wholesale center sages, no wholesale center is surely only animals, animal only. That's where the fundamental relations of the fix. 2. Captain glass hearts The second is the need to play Captain glass heart, afraid of fear. Heaven and Earth spirits can hardly as easy, but our error unnecessarily hidden, secret life of people do not know that hell demons can fully articulate scrutiny, will surely inflict severe disaster hundred things, will surely light enjoy being reduced. We should not you be afraid of or what! Not only that, where idle deserted bar alone with a body stand alone and are being monitored spirits, very cleverly concealed that god has long Knowing very well until his lungs liver, so it is hard to deceive ourselves forever; a being who lives detect lies to cover up to hide his identity until then its not worth taking a penny. So should I not afraid of Captain glass or back! 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In earthly bear charges from hundreds of years, thousands of years ago, but with the gentle taste nor because his grandchildren that are washed; in the afterlife, it sa hell retribution hundreds of thousands of lives, even though there are sages, Buddha, Bodhisattvas not help, extradition. So he not afraid or shy stars! 3. Long mighty Third, to play brave heart. Many people do not have to fix, mostly because liberals know that the error that it should be removed to quit the post, indentation is not their way back. We need enthusiastic, courageous use of weaning ourselves immediately with no waiting, no more cynical than planned. Error for as little thorn in flesh to quickly withdraw money. Large errors like viper bite fingers, will need to be cut down immediately no hesitation hesitation. The mistake that most correct decision to renew itself was very helpful as well as having been pulled in I Ching hexagram style, a great sandy hexagram. There are three full heart, mind Wholesale Captain glass heart, and mighty heart , surely mistakes are correctable as soon as spring snow meets the sun, so that sin worry Did not dissipate. III - Method fix 1.Theo the minister      of sin, however one can according to the minister that the improved repair, or physical or in the mind. How to use the effect is not the same nor similar. As the day before slaughter foul, next precepts do not kill anymore, as angry curse the day before, today precepts are not angry anymore. The so-called according to the fact that improvement occurred fix it. Today foul, tomorrow trying to fix, according to the incident on the outside but are reluctant to restrain themselves from further violations, actually is General Directorate hundreds difficult part was based disease remains, by far in the east end of sins, the sins arising out tomorrow at the west end is not ethical way, without exception, all sins are clean. 2 .According of weaning him fix his skill while not violating the forbidden world, first we should know fluently have moral; as sin in that they should kill themselves think god hospitality students, they are objects of our attachment to life, kill them to feed themselves, why we may be interested; besides killing them, is closely cut, dissect the pan, cooking pot, they suffered much anguish pain penetrates the core. We killed them to feed themselves, to have what is listed delicacies precious tidbit, but from the neck and then swallow it like no, nothing more. That use vegetables, melon soup is enough no bloating, galaxies all have murdered their lives carriers get hurt being guilty of killing her anymore. Moreover, the material was of blood gases are foreboding, perception, which has intelligence, they also perceive a possible, just like us; besides, we have self-cultivation is carried to a high degree of ethics makes them close to us, respect us, how will the daily killing of students say they object to them forever animosity, hatred our sheep. To think so is to eat the pieces that are hard and painful to swallow. As well the day before the pitch angry, surely people should think not saints, there are many cons mistake, according to the doctrine which says, should genuinely worthy of pity; if they commit themselves that wrong is because they do not understand what ethical to do such intervention, the purity of heart which is not attached, the galaxy is doomed to pitch well. Also consider that the galaxy sure no one claiming his sages, martial artists no wrong place, and no one told us to hate school who, because educated people, intellectuals do not blame the sun resentment, I do not where to choose, the not achieve by themselves are not being painstakingly practice, spirituality should not be sympathetic. We should be self-reflection, introspection, if the libel, the other critics blast should consider it his teachings to practice honed mind, practice for achievement so happy to receive, play golf galaxy is doomed to release anger. If you hear the slander that angry arguing with people, whether you want to use the best refutable in anger surely argue such words are clear transparent, like the silkworm cocoon itself pulling the spring bind themselves, their self-torment. Anger is not only useless but harmful too. In addition to hunt it out, all the other offense are also medical ethical basis that such behavior. Once the doctrine was clear, the offender will automatically suspended. 3.Theo hearted What is known under which fixes the mind? Mistakes have fond manifold, just as in the mind which creates. We do not mind the concept of dynamic errors can arise star. The correct mistakes as learning eager, eager, taking talents to benefit, or anger, or play golf ... there are too many sins estate doomed to distinguish each one to the woodshed, just of one heart into mind think good, do good, as has the idea to detect the evil thoughts naturally contaminated and destroyed. For as the sun appears above is not demons, evil must find a way to hide dared not smeared. This is where transmit leg so sophisticated. Guilt is created by the mind due to improved repair center, as well as cutting a tree stand there must cut consumption from roots, stems sliced ​​open the go, hang a leaf or a star! In general, you can follow the Minister, in accordance with reasonable and repair center for sin, but the method according to the mind is better; religious institution, was correcting it becomes pure, so every time a bad idea, then stir in the mind immediately found himself immediately, but have seen no news has awakened the evil deluded notion sin will not dissipate into. According to improving repair center is the ultimate method, but assume no follow should understand that ethics do not allow us to create guilt or wrongdoing; if not do more, you should customize the, depending on which hold the precepts, trying not to sin. When the user goes on down the search method with methods of lowering's not something impolitic; but only accepted method of lowering the upper roan method that is so clumsy. 4.Hieu of experimental error correction Real vow to reform the fix, in earthly good you often need to remind his province, in underworld spirits to prove his sincerity the most attention, especially the need to repent, not lazy day indulgence, so go through a two-week losses, up to a month, two, three months, must have can be fulfilled. Or see mental calmly, euphoria, or see the wisdom suddenly being opened, or expect the troubled nuisance behavior suddenly resolved coherently, smooth, or meet specific adversaries that move the fun in mind no more hatred, or dream that exhale the unclean, evil; or dream is the ancient sages welcome guidance, or dreamed of flying to the realm of nothingness, or the dream that colonic cell division, see the rare little things like this, there are scenes of target crime that kills bugs. But do not see how that arrogant narcissism that he had reached a high level to quickly take a break interrupt progression path. Past the great lady Cu Ba Ngoc, the Clean Water in Spring and Autumn era, while still Children 20 years old but has enlightened that should fix errors, such as errors yesterday, then today to review to edit for all. The next 21 years to improve understanding is correct mistakes last year has not been completely rid of all; up to 22 years of age at the age of 21 thought it was dream-like lake vague about what mistakes not been repaired. Every year examination of the previous year, according to which gradually continue to modify, to 50 years of age, but knowing the error of 49. The school year renovation of the old mistakes such use of it. They we are ordinary people to death, crime accumulate too much like quills wrapped its body; if reliving things that usually do not see where the mistake, it is because the rough feelings, veiled eyes closed looking to repair such errors. The crime that is too deep will see immediate experience; or uncertainty stalemate mind, mental dullness fatigue, things happen in the blink of the eye immediately forget not remember anymore, or there is nothing but negativity worry; or met the gentleman who usually shy shy dismay; or words legitimate discussion that such moral superiority fun happy to hear; or please to be resentment, or at night often dream that many crazy, crazy for that insane expectations generated speech, language disorder is not normal; which are the form of karma detect it. If you see such phenomena must immediately excited mental mistakes rid of the old to attempt to renew the self-repair, so do not expect yourself to deceive ourselves.END=VIETNAMESE TRANSLATE ENGLISH BY=THICH CHAN TANH.THE MIND OF ENLIGHTMENT.WORLD VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST ORDER=VIETNAMESE BUDDHIST NUN=GOLDEN LOTUS MONASTERY=THE EIGHTFOLD  PATH.AUSTRALIA,SYDNEY.19/3/2015.