An unremarkable morning
Reading it as an argumentWhat this course does that a first reading does not
The Diamond Sūtra is short enough to read in an hour and has been read that way for twelve centuries. The Academy's beginners' course reads it once, whole, as a complete scripture — which is the right way to meet it the first time.
This course does something else. Eight sessions, four of the thirty-two sections each, following Taixu's 1927 lecture notes the whole way — and reading the sūtra not as a devotional text but as the argument that the Perfection of Wisdom literature makes. There is a structure here, it is repetitive on purpose, and by section 32 it has done something specific to the reader that a single pass will not accomplish.
One thing to hold from the start. This sūtra is not obscure and it is not mystical. Nearly every difficulty in it is the same difficulty, restated: the mind wants to land somewhere, and the text will not let it.
Section 1Where other sūtras open with the earth shaking
"Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying at Jetavana, in Anāthapiṇḍada's Park near Śrāvastī, together with a great assembly of monks, twelve hundred and fifty in all. When it came time to eat, the World-Honored One put on his robe, took up his bowl, and went into the great city of Śrāvastī to beg for food. Going from door to door in order, he returned to his own place when he had finished. He ate the food, put away his robe and bowl, washed his feet, and sat down on the seat prepared for him."
如是我聞。一時，佛在舍衛國祇樹給孤獨園，與大比丘眾千二百五十人俱。爾時，世尊食時，著衣持缽，入舍衛大城乞食。於其城中，次第乞已，還至本處。飯食訖，收衣缽，洗足已，敷座而坐。
Read that without hurrying, because nothing else happens in it. He gets dressed. He walks into town. He begs from door to door in order — the phrase 次第 matters; no skipping the poor houses for the rich ones, and no skipping the rich for the poor. He comes back. He eats. He washes his feet. He sits down.
"Other Mahāyāna sūtras open with the earth shaking or light streaming from the Buddha's brow. This one opens with him getting dressed, taking his bowl, walking door to door without favoring the rich over the poor, eating, washing his feet, and sitting down. "Ordinary daily conduct is itself the Buddha-dharma," he writes — walking, standing, sitting, lying down, the ordinary mind itself, none of it separate from the teaching. Before Subhūti asks a single question, the sūtra has already shown its answer once, silently, in the shape of an unremarkable morning."
Read the note in its place →That last observation is the key to the whole course, and it is worth planting now. Everything the next thirty-one sections will say in increasingly paradoxical language has already been demonstrated, without comment, by a man washing his feet.
Sections 2 and 3The question, and an answer that removes the questioner
"At that time the elder Subhūti rose from his seat in the midst of the assembly, bared his right shoulder, knelt on his right knee, and, joining his palms together in reverence, said to the Buddha: "How rare, World-Honored One! The Tathāgata watches over and cares for all bodhisattvas, and entrusts all bodhisattvas with his teaching. World-Honored One — when a good son or good daughter sets out for unsurpassed, perfect, complete awakening, how should they stand, and how should they subdue their own mind?""
時，長老須菩提，在大眾中，即從座起，偏袒右肩，右膝著地，合掌恭敬。而白佛言：「希有世尊！如來善護念諸菩薩，善付囑諸菩薩。世尊！善男子、善女人，發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，應云何住？云何降伏其心？」
Two questions, and the whole sūtra is their answer: how should they stand (應云何住) and how should they subdue their own mind (云何降伏其心). Everything from here to section 32 is addressed to one or the other.
The questioner matters too. Subhūti is the disciple foremost in understanding emptiness — and, Taixu notes, his family's storehouse was found mysteriously empty on the day he was born, so he was named Born Into Emptiness. The sūtra's one interlocutor is the man already best equipped to follow it.
"Taixu's sharpest observation is about the answer the Buddha promises but has not yet given: "abide like this, subdue the mind like this" points forward to what the next two sections will actually say — there is no separate technique for subduing the mind on top of learning how to abide; grasping after one more method to control the mind is itself the disturbance. He compares it to Bodhidharma and his student Huike: Huike begged him, "my mind is not at peace — pacify it for me." Bodhidharma answered, "bring me this mind, and I will pacify it." Huike searched, and said, "I have looked for it, and it cannot be found." "Then," said Bodhidharma, "I have already pacified it for you.""
Read the note in its place →That exchange, six centuries after the sūtra and in a different country, is the best short gloss anyone has written on what the Buddha is about to do. The answer to "subdue my mind" is not a better technique. It is the discovery that there was never a fixed thing there to subdue.
And the answer, when it comes, is startling — because it answers by taking away the one asking.
"The Buddha told Subhūti: "All bodhisattva-mahāsattvas should subdue their mind like this: of every kind of sentient being there is — born from an egg, born from a womb, born from moisture, born by transformation; possessing form or without form; possessing perception, without perception, or neither possessing nor lacking perception — I will lead every one of them to final nirvāṇa, and there liberate them all. And when I have liberated these countless, immeasurable, boundless beings, in truth no being at all has been liberated. Why is this? Subhūti, if a bodhisattva still holds the notion of a self, a person, a being, or a lifespan, that bodhisattva is no bodhisattva at all.""
佛告須菩提：「諸菩薩摩訶薩，應如是降伏其心：所有一切眾生之類，若卵生、若胎生、若濕生、若化生；若有色、若無色；若有想、若無想、若非有想非無想，我皆令入無餘涅槃而滅度之。如是滅度無量無數無邊眾生，實無眾生得滅度者。何以故？須菩提！若菩薩有我相、人相、眾生相、壽者相，即非菩薩。」
The structure of that sentence is the structure of the entire sūtra, and it arrives in section 3. I will liberate every being that exists — and no being has been liberated. Not a qualification. Not a mystery. The largest possible commitment, followed immediately by the removal of the one who would be making it.
The four notions named at the end — self, person, being, lifespan — will recur perhaps twenty times before section 32, and Taixu's gloss on why they come as a set is worth keeping: call yourself "I," and there is already a self; grant that self a human shape among others, and there is a person; place it among the kinds of beings, and there is a being; grant it a duration, and there is a lifespan. Pull one and you have all four.
Section 4The first thing the reader is actually told to do
"Furthermore, Subhūti, when a bodhisattva practices giving, they should give without dwelling on anything at all — giving without dwelling on form, and without dwelling on sound, smell, taste, touch, or mental object. Subhūti, a bodhisattva should give like this, not dwelling on any mark. Why is this? If a bodhisattva gives without dwelling on marks, their merit cannot be measured."
"Subhūti, what do you think — can the empty space to the east be measured?" "No, World-Honored One." "Subhūti, can the empty space to the south, west, north, above, and below be measured?" "No, World-Honored One." "Subhūti, the merit of a bodhisattva who gives without dwelling on marks is just as unmeasurable as that. Subhūti, a bodhisattva should stand only in the way I have taught.""
「復次，須菩提！菩薩於法，應無所住，行於布施。所謂不住色布施，不住聲、香、味、觸、法布施。須菩提！菩薩應如是布施，不住於相。何以故？若菩薩不住相布施。其福德不可思量。」
「須菩提！於意云何？東方虛空，可思量不？」「不也，世尊！」「須菩提！南、西、北方，四維上下虛空，可思量不？」「不也，世尊！」「須菩提！菩薩無住相布施，福德亦復如是不可思量。須菩提！菩薩但應如所教住。」
Section 3 answered how do I subdue my mind. Section 4 answers how should I stand — and the answer is not a posture of mind at all. It is an instruction to do something.
"His gloss on the space-in-ten-directions comparison is direct: giving that still dwells on a mark nets only the finite, countable rewards of gods and humans — a return that can, in principle, be measured. Giving that dwells on nothing is unmeasurable for the plainest of reasons — it was never gathered up as a possession belonging to anyone in the first place, so there is nothing there to add up. This is, Taixu says, exactly how a bodhisattva "abides": not by fixing the mind on some higher object, but by giving in a way that leaves the mind nowhere to land."
Read the note in its place →That deflates the "unmeasurable merit" language considerably, and helpfully. It is not a promise of an enormous reward. It is a remark about arithmetic: a merit that was never taken up as anybody's possession has nothing to be counted.
Notice that this does not tell you to give more, or to give to better recipients. It tells you to give without the mind fastening on anything — not on the gift, not on the recipient, not on yourself as giver, and, the hardest one, not on the merit. Four sections in, the sūtra has already made its characteristic demand: the move it asks for is a subtraction, not an addition.
- The answer is shown before it is asked for — in a morning containing nothing but dressing, begging in order, eating, washing, sitting.
- Two questions run the whole sūtra: how should one stand, and how should one subdue the mind.
- There is no technique for subduing the mind. Looking for one is the disturbance — which is what Bodhidharma told Huike.
- The formula arrives in section 3: the largest possible commitment, followed at once by the removal of the one making it.
- The four notions come as a set. Pull one and you have all four.
- Unmeasurable merit is an arithmetic remark, not a promise — what was never anyone's possession has nothing to add up.
One practiceGiving with nowhere to land
Section 4 is the only instruction in the first four sections that can be carried out directly, and it is more difficult than it sounds — not because giving is hard, but because the fourth thing it asks you to let go of is almost invisible.
Then watch for the four landing places in order. The gift: did you note what it cost? The recipient: did you assess whether they deserved it? Yourself: did the thought I am someone who does this arrive? And the merit: the faintest and most persistent — a sense of something accrued, an account in credit.
Do not try to suppress any of them. Only notice which of the four you had not previously noticed at all.
Most people find the fourth invisible until it is named, and then find it everywhere. That is the honest result of the exercise. The sūtra does not say the four are wicked; it says that giving which dwells on them is measurable, and that this is a smaller thing than it could have been.
Check yourselfFive questions
Of the four places a mind can land when giving — the gift, the receiver, the giver, the merit — which one had you never noticed?
The sūtra's interest is not in your generosity, which it takes for granted. It is in where the mind comes to rest afterwards, and whether you knew it was resting there.
Session 2 · Sections 5–8
Seeing the Buddha by his marks, and being told that what has marks is false; the rarity of anyone believing this at all; and the sūtra's flat statement that there is no fixed thing called awakening and nothing the Buddha ever taught.