The Diamond Sutra, BAUS class (10/6)

CLASS: The Various Aspects of Meditation Theory in the Diamond Sutra

Not Czech monk Ven. Dhammadipa (Xing Kong)

Ven. Dr. Dhammadipa Sak, Ph.D. (aka Fa Yao) is the abbot of the US Zen Institute in Germantown, Maryland, and the Amata Meditation Center in Boyds, Maryland.

He previously served as the abbot of Chuan Yen Monastery (BAUS' CYM) and the Temple of Enlightenment. He is currently a vice president of the Buddhist Association of the United States (BAUS).

The Diamond Sutra 

Wiki edit by Wisdom Quarterly

This Sanskrit discourse is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sutra (a kind of apocryphal sacred text) from the genre of "Perfection of Wisdom" (Prajñāpāramitā) literature.

Translated into a variety of languages over a broad geographic range, the Diamond Sūtra is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia, particularly prominent within the Chan (or Zen) tradition [1] alongside the Heart Sutra.

A copy of the Chinese Tang Dynasty version of the Diamond Sūtra was found among the Dunhuang manuscripts in 1900 by Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu and sold to Aurel Stein in 1907 [2]. They are dated back to May 11, 868 [3]. It is, in the words of the British Library, "the earliest dated printed book" [4].

It is also the first known creative work with an explicit public domain dedication, as its colophon at the end states that it was created "for universal free distribution" [5], a tradition carried on today by many Mahayana publishers given that the Buddha's Dharma is priceless.

Title

I did it, Batman! - There's no I. Keep meditating!

The Sanskrit title for this work is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, which may be translated roughly as the "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Discourse" or "The Perfection of Wisdom Text that Cuts Like a Thunderbolt" [1].

In English, shortened forms such as Diamond Sūtra and Vajra Sūtra are common. The title relies on the power of the vajra (diamond or thunderbolt and also an abstract term for a powerful adamantine weapon) to cut things as a metaphor for the type of wisdom that cuts through illusions to get at ultimate reality [1], which is what the Abhidhamma literature of the Pali canon aims to do.

This sutra is also called Triśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra ("300 lines on the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra").

The Diamond Sūtra is highly regarded in East Asian countries with historical traditions of Mahayana Buddhism [1]. [It is not considered an actual "sutra," a discourse by the Buddha or his immediate disciples, in the Theravada tradition of South and Southeast Asia.]

Translations of this title into the languages of some of these countries include... More

ABOUT THE TEACHER: Born in Taiwan and raised in Malaysia, Ven. Dhammadipa received his ordination in Sri Lanka in 1987. He earned a Ph.D. in theology and religious studies from the University of Bristol, UK, in 2005.

Ven. Dhammadipa has also been a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago School of Divinity. His primary interests include Abhidhamma and meditation practices, and he frequently emphasizes the importance of meditation in society.

He is fluent in Chinese, Cantonese, Hakka, and English and is literate in several other languages including Pali, Sanskrit, Japanese, French, and German for his academic pursuits.

• Chaung Yen Monastery (BAUS)
• Home of Bhikkhu Bodhi
• Sunday, October 6, 2024
• 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
• Please click here to register

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

• 9:00 am – Check-in
• 9:30 am – Meditation unguided
• 9:40 am – Greet teacher/bow to the Buddha
• 9:45 am – Introduction to the day’s master and class
• 9:50 am – Morning Class 1
• 10:35 am – Tea break and cookies
• 10:45 am – Morning Class 2
• 11:30 am – Lunch and break
• 12:50 pm – Meditation
• 1:00 pm – Afternoon Class 1
• 1:45 pm – Tea break and cookies
• 2:00 pm – Afternoon Class 2
• 2:45 pm – Share the merits, bow to the Buddha and teacher, and group photo
• 3:00 pm – Clean up

Celebrating BAUS’s 60th anniversary and the new Dr. C.T. Shen & Mrs. Woo Ju Shen Memorial Hall

• Diamond Sutra Study Retreat Series 3 • Ven. Dhammadipa Fa Yao • 10/6/24
• BAUS, Chaung Yen Monastery, Carmel, Upstate New York; CC Liu, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The practice of subduing demons (video)

Master Sheng Yen (GDD-1111, DVD, 1/15/17); CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The woeful realms of hungry ghosts, demons, and evil spirits can become bothersome.

The practice of subduing demons is actually harmful to demons and ghosts

Catholic Christians want to kill and cast out.

Buddhism advocates loving-kindness and compassion (metta and karuna) in delivering all beings, rather than attempting to fight, subdue, or "defeat" demons, malevolent spirits, poltergeists, and bothersome ghosts. More online courses: youtube.com/user/DDMTV05.

Now you've really pissed me off! The haunting begins.

Ancient Buddhist Model for Today's World

Lewis Richmond (Huffington Post)

In my ongoing effort to find ways to adapt Buddhism to modern American life, I have long been influenced by the example of Vimala-Kirti, the "householder sage" of ancient India (pictured).

According to the Vimala-Kirti Sutra ("scripture"), Vimala-Kirti was a wealthy layperson or householder who was one of the Buddha's leading lay disciples. Although he was a householder, his wisdom was said to exceed that of all of the Buddha's leading monastic disciples.

Much of the sutra is spent recounting arguments between Vimala-Kirti and the monastic disciples about Buddhist doctrine -- disputes which Vimala-Kirti invariably won. The notion of a layperson's wisdom exceeding that of a monastic is only one of many radical notions put forward by the sutra.

There are several English translations of the Vimala-Kirti Sutra. The one I like best is by Dr. Robert A. Thurman entitled The Holy Teaching of Vimala-Kirti. Dr. Thurman's translation is from the Tibetan, as the Sanskrit original has been lost.

Like the better-known Heart and Diamond Sutras, the Vimala-Kirti Sutra was an important text for the Zen traditions of China and Japan. In many Japanese Zen monasteries even today there is an alcove with a statue of Vimala-Kirti, wearing the hair and clothing of a layperson, expounding the teaching.

In Zen, Vimala-Kirti is best known for his "thunderous silence," referring to the time when he ended a long debate about the essence of wisdom by saying nothing at all. Vimala-Kirti was a popular figure among the ruling classes of ancient China, who could identify with his role in society.

The highest spiritual stage in Zen is called "return to the marketplace," in which the spiritual adept, after long years of spiritual training, returns to society to live as an ordinary person and teach others. Vimala-Kirti is traditionally seen as the embodiment of this highest stage.

This is how the sutra describes Vimala-Kirti's lifestyle:

• He wore the white clothes of a layman, yet lived impeccably like a religious devotee...
  
• He had a son, a wife, and female attendants...
  
• [He] made his appearance at the fields of sports and in the casinos, but his aim was always to mature people [there]...
  
• He engaged in all sorts of businesses, yet had no interest in profit or possessions...
  
• He visited all the schools to help develop children...
  
• He was honored as the official among officials because he regulated the functions of government according to the Dharma. More

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Buddhist Opera No-opera
REDCAT, Los Angeles' music and fine art mecca, features a visual-sonic experience on Buddhism's Diamond Sutra. It's interactive.

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AH! Buddhist opera no-opera (Los Angeles)

A Counterpoint of Tolerance: AH!
Interactive Opera No-Opera

“Arouse the mind without resting it on anything”

- Diamond Sutra

REDCAT transforms its flexible performance space into an immersive visual and sonic environment for the world premiere of this inventive international collaboration. Composed and performed by creators from around the globe, this pioneering collective work draws inspiration from the classic Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra.

With composer-performer David Rosenboom and award-winning poet Martine Bellen, the creative team has developed AH! as a celebratory passage across musical cultures and times: a polyglot clarion call for understanding and unity in today’s globalized, ever-more interconnected world.

Spinning off a mandala of 13 extraordinary and ordinary modern-life stories, this spellbinding opera brings together an array of robotic and interactive musical technologies, ingenious stagecraft, and flights of phenomenal musicianship. In the theatrically heightened environment of AH!, everyday life is placed flush against esoteric and transcendent realities.

Performing live, Rosenboom and 10 composer-performers from across the Americas, Europe, and East Asia are joined by an additional cast of musicians, theatermakers, and interactive artists under the direction of Travis Preston, who stages this exceptional music event with production designer Christopher Barreca, choreographer Mira Kingsley, and video designer Jeremiah Thies.

• Interact with and contribute to AH! via the Web at ah-opera.org

The audience is invited to engage with and contribute to AH! before, during and after performances, via the website http://www.ah-opera.org/, mobile media, and a magical multitouch screen at the theater. Arrive early and participate!

DETAILS

A Counterpoint of Tolerance is a project commissioned by the Transatlantic Arts Consortium (TAC). This production of AH! is made possible with generous support from TAC, The Evelyn Sharp Foundation, Judith O. and Robert E. Rubin, and Abby Sher. World premiere: A co-production of the The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and the CalArts Center for New Performance, in cooperation with Idyllwild Arts.

Date & Time: September 16, 17, 18 at 8:30 PM.
General Admission: $12-$25
TICKETS (online, or call REDCAT's box office at 213-237-2800).

AH! Buddhist Opera in Los Angeles

A Counterpoint of Tolerance: AH!
(Sept. 16, 17, 18, 2009) Bringing together an array of robotic and interactive musical technologies, ingenious stagecraft, and flights of phenomenal musicianship, REDCAT is transformed into an immersive visual and sonic environment for the world premiere of this inventive international collaboration, composed and performed by creators from around the globe and inspired by the classic Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra.

• Collaborate with artists, contribute to music: ah-opera.org

Ahopera mandala (CLICK HERE)

The Earliest dated printed Book
The Buddhist text known around the world as the Diamond Sutra (or Vajra Cutter Sutra) is a short Mahayana discourse of the Perfection of Wisdom (prajna-paramita) genre.

It teaches the practice of the avoidance of abiding in extremes of mental attachment. A copy of the sutra, found early in the 20th century among the Dunhuang manuscripts, is in the words of the British Library, "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book."

It is inscribed, "Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 15th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [11 May 868]." This is about 587 years before the Gutenberg Bible. More>>

Buddhist Dream Interpretation

A Buddhist Approach to Dreams

Jung and Junti: Dreams West and East

Rev. Heng Sure (paramita.typepad.com)

UrbanDharma.org

Part 1: Dealing with Dreams

A. European Approach to Dreams

It is said that the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in his lifetime analyzed over 80,000 dreams. Dreams for Jung played an important complementary role in the psyche....

• 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams (ListVerse)
• Tibetan dream interpretation (PDF)

B. An Indian Approach to Dreams

When Buddhists in India dreamed they dealt with their dreams in a variety of ways. Certain types of dreams occurred frequently enough to the ancients to merit listing as separate categories for dream-analysis. The categories show the following different kinds of dreams. The most distinctive use, for Buddhists, was

1. seeing dreams as a simile for emptiness, sunyata, the ultimate nature of all things.
2. seeing dreams as portents of things to come, which overlapped with another type of dream:
3. as messages or teaching by the gods, spirits, or bodhisattva.
4. Buddhists in India and in China thought, like Freud and Jung, that it was possible to diagnose aspects of the dreamer’s mental and physical health from the symbols of dreams.
5. The theoretical psychology school of Buddhism, the Vijnanavada (“Consciousness-only”) School, called dreams “monkey-sleep,” a function of the “isolated mind-consciousness”.
6. Buddhist psychologists saw dreams as the return at night of things thought on during the day.
7. Finally, Nagarjuna explained dreams as a standard for testing the quality of a bodhisattva’s vows.

Dreams appear in the earliest Buddhist writings, and played no less an important role in Buddhism than in our lives today. Being human, Buddhists have always slept; and when asleep, they dream. While dreaming they perceived the same disembodied shadows and disconnected images as we do. After waking they sought the meaning of their dreams.

The diviners and prognosticators of India and China, being culture-bound individuals, interpreted the dreams according to the modes and methods available to them. Those methods were in some respects suggestive of methods used today, in some respects they were quite different. Dreams are very democratic; both rich and poor alike dream at night. But when trying to analyze what dreams meant, it is important to know who the dreamer was.

The educated, literate, elite certainly had more options in their systems of dream analysis. Dreams could be messages from ancestors and Sages more often for a prince or a scholar because they had a concept of history. Uneducated individuals seemed to turn to formula-books of ready-made dream interpretations to explain the symbols of dreams.

Generic do-it-yourself recipes, such as Aunt Sally’s Dream Book and Horoscope Love Advisor that we find at the supermarket check-out counter had its counterpart in most cultures. Dream interpretation formulas answer some superficial questions, to be sure. But they tend to center on love, money, and bad luck. Nagarjuna’s Ta Chih Tu Lun gives us the following important patterns that occur regularly in dreams.

1. Dreams as a simile for emptiness.

The most common use of dreams in the literature of the Mahayana -- or “Northern School” of Buddhism in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam -- is to see dreams as a simile for sunyata, (emptiness) the hollow core at the heart of all component dharmas (things). For example, in the well-known Vajra Sutra (Diamond Discourse), the Buddha taught that:

“All conditioned dharmas, are like a dream, like an illusion, like a bubble, like a shadow, like a dewdrop, like a lightening flash; you should contemplate them thus.”

Dreams symbolize the changing and impermanent nature of all things known to the senses. Sights, sounds, smells, flavors, sensations of touch and thoughts are all dream-like, fleeting, and ultimately unobtainable. By pursuing and grasping material things or ephemeral states, we create the causes for misery and suffering. Those desire-objects are not real and permanent.

When they break up and move on, we will experience grief, if we can’t let go. The hallmark of living beings is that we are “sleeping, “ unawakened to the truth of the emptiness and impermanence at the nature of conditioned things. This covering of sleep and lack of awareness is called “ignorance,” and it makes us in our waking state, from the Buddha’s viewpoint, look as if we are dreaming.

Bubbles burst, shadows run from light, dewdrops vanish by noon without a trace, lightning roars and vanishes, and dreams leave us at dawn. To continually perceive such things as real locks us into the endless cycle of birth and death. The Buddha was not simply giving us an evocative metaphor, a literary device or a philosophical point. He felt related to all beings, and in his compassion he was pointing out to his family a way to escape the prolonged misery of affliction and death. The dream simile occurs over and over in the sutras to teach about emptiness.

In the Ta Chih Tu Lun, dreams occur as a didactic teaching device. Sariputra, the foremost Arhat [enlightened disciple] in wisdom, learns the true application of the emptiness theory through the simile of dreams. Dreams are like ordinary waking reality in that both are empty and false. There is nothing gained by seeking out or clinging to any thought or mark that distinguishes the two states.

With the exception of message-dreams and portent dreams, two categories that we will look at below, for the Buddha’s monastic disciples who were intent on cultivating the mind full-time, dreams were considered as illusory and false, no different from the illusions of waking-time reality.

2. Message-dreams or teaching by the gods, spirits, or bodhisattvas

Dreams can be a message from a bodhisattva, an ancestor, a god, or a spirit [brahma or deva]. The intent of the dream may be to test the dreamer’s resolve: Is one non-retreating (avaivartika) from Bodhi (enlightenment) even when sleeping? The purpose of the dream visit may be to communicate information vital to the dreamer’s well-being.

The Buddha himself had five dreams of catastrophes, falling stars, and worlds in collision just before his enlightenment. The dreams were sent to him not by a benevolent Dharma-protector, but by a malevolent sorcerer, intent on disrupting the Buddha’s samadhi (concentration) and preventing his awakening.

3. Prescient or Portent Dreams

Prescient or portent dreams that predict the future are the only category of dreams that the ancients considered real or valuable in itself. Based on the records we have, it seems that dreamers in the past wanted to know more or less what dreamers want to know now: whether their dream augured good luck or misfortune. The office of dream diviner was esteemed, and nobility and commoner alike, waking after a dreamy sleep, sought to know the meaning of their dreams. More>>