Reflections on "The Diamond Sutra:" Beyond Is and Is Not

The Diamond Sutra is a profoundly important text in Mahayana Buddhism. Composed in India somewhere between the second and fifth century CE, The Diamond Sutra extols the bodhisattva vow to save all beings while claiming that there are no separate beings to save. How does one hold this paradox?

Zen embraces such paradoxes yet also asks us to leap beyond them. The Diamond Sutra offers a metaphorical nudge.

Here's an adapted and abridged translation, followed by some discussion.

The Diamond Sutra [translation by Mu Soeng]

Bodhisattva-mahasattvas should cherish one thought only: “When I attain perfect wisdom, I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe.”

 
Yet although immeasurable, innumerable, and unlimited beings have been liberated, truly no being has been liberated because no bodhisattva who is a true bodhisattva entertains such concepts as a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. Thus there are no sentient beings to be liberated and no self to attain perfect wisdom. If they cherish the idea of a dharma, they are still attached to a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. If they cherish the idea of no-dharma, they are attached to a self, a person, a being, or a living soul. Therefore, do not cherish the idea of a dharma nor that of a no-dharma.

The truth is ungraspable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is not. What are called dust particles are not dust particles. That is why they are merely dust particles. What is called true perception is indeed no-perception. This is what the Tathagata teaches as true perception.

The teaching of the Tathagata on the perfection of patience is really no perfection and therefore it is the perfection of patience. A bodhisattva should also practice generosity without dwelling on form. The reason he practices generosity is to benefit all beings. Practicing generosity while still depending on forms is like walking in the dark. Practicing generosity without depending on forms is like walking in the bright sunshine seeing all shapes and colors.

The past mind cannot be gotten hold of, the future mind cannot be gotten hold of, and the present mind cannot be gotten hold of. The dharma called the anuttara samyak sambodhi is at one with everything else. That is why it is called the perfect, unexcelled awakening. It is self-identical through the absences of a self, a person, a being, or a living soul, and that is why it is fully known as the totality of all the wholesome dharmas. And yet, no dharmas have been taught by the Tathagata. Such is merely a name. Thus they are called “wholesome dharmas.”

The true nature of the Dharma cannot be understood. No one can be conscious of it as an object. At the same time, no one should say that those who have set out on the path of the bodhisattva need to see all dharma in terms of their annihilation. Do not entertain any notion of the annihilation of dharmas.

So you should view this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; 
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Reflections:

The Diamond Sutra begins by celebrating the bodhisattva's vow to attain enlightenment and save all beings.

Many of us begin our practice aiming for the first part of the vow, the aspiration to attain enlightenment for ourselves. We initially imagine that we will rise above karma altogether like we are some sort of orb, impervious to of cause and effect. We picture ourselves as entirely separate, enlightened beings who are not susceptible to the vicissitudes of life. 

Over time, we see that this is not how we actually exist, and the gap between our expectations and our experience weighs on us. Liberation never looks the way we think it should. We may persist in our self-interested approach to practice, but for many of us, the second part of our vow to save all beings begins to feel appealing. Maybe focusing on saving others will help us open beyond this painful self-concern?

The vow to save all beings does touch our hearts. We realize that our immature notions of ourselves at the center of the universe are limiting and inaccurate. We expand our awareness and begin to serve something greater than ourselves. Altruism can feel good.

But dualistic ways of thinking persist. Practicing the precepts without the wisdom of nonself is inherently egocentric. We begin to formulate strategies to improve our "selves" and save “others.”  We might aim to cultivate generosity (or any of the six paramitas), but our motive for being generous is, ironically, self-improvement. We may get caught by a grandiose idea of being a bodhisattva, of being the one who saves other beings, or even of being a helper. It's quite a little ego booster. We identify as bodhisattvas in contrast to those who are the recipients of our charity. There is something condescending in our efforts. Our pride becomes their shame. With this identification as a fixer or helper can come a sense of superiority, aloofness, distance, sadness, and isolation. We are just painting the walls of our prison.

Seeing ourselves as bodhisattvas, we may also reify the idea of others who need to be saved. We may hope to resolve our own anxiety and pain by "fixing" other people's lives. We might find ourselves running ragged volunteering and cajoling others to join us. We may burn out after biting off more than we can chew. Or we may begin to think we are better than other people who we believe are doing less. Unfortunately, our lack of tolerance of suffering provides little solace. If we desire to help too much, others may play along and become our dependents. We may nourish our identity as helpers but disempower others by stealing their agency and even trying to replace their existing support networks. 

Despite our efforts, we eventually also see that there is no way to prevent all suffering in the world in any conventional sense. We all lose everything and everyone we love. It's our first noble truth. We may begin to feel like failures. Our hearts may break, then break open, for all the beings we cannot save, including ourselves. 

If we are honest, we may realize that we simply do not know how to save all beings. Our strategizing and directional efforts inevitably fail. If we can bear sitting with disillusionment, we may begin to see what underlies our struggle -- a conception of the self, of others, and of suffering as abiding, separate entities. 

When we are attached to ideas of ourselves, we act on behalf an imagined, enduring entity that does not actually exist. We long to protect this supposed entity, and we suffer when our self-concept is punctured by inevitable change. When we hope to fix others, as if there were other selves who could be brought to a separate, permanent state of salvation, we find that there is no such place. There is nothing substantial that we can attain for ourselves or for others. Everyone and everything is subject to change.

But our dualistic way of thinking is our basic operating system; we project independent substantiality into things. When we take our bodhisattva vow with integrity, one effect is that, like a mirror, it helps us see the dualistic operating system that undergirds suffering. 

But we still don't know what else to do. Should we just give up? 

What if we do give up trying to save all beings according to that dualistic framework? What would happen if we "give up the pursuit of happiness" (as if it were "out there" somewhere waiting) and choose instead to bear witness and be with things as they are without knowing in advance what to do? What might it look like to honor our bodhisattva vow to save all beings non-dualistically?

According to an ancient Chinese story, Layman Pang once fell in the mud. Ling Zhou, his daughter and a Zen adept in her own right, then threw herself down in the mud with him. When he asked her what on earth she was doing, she replied, "helping." Layman Pang laughed.

Ling Zhou did not reach down from above but simply joined in without knowing "the answer." Here there is no gap between self-and-other.

Did she save her father? Ling Zhou’s wisdom and her gift was her compassionate non-separation. Sometimes being "saved" means being free to be exactly as we are. 

Maybe saving does not need to look as we imagine. Maybe it doesn't always fit into our narrative of us fixing someone else's life. Maybe saving can be meeting on equal ground and just being "in it" together. Attention can be our guide, not imposed dualistic ideas. We can let go of our expectations for particular outcomes. We may find that sometimes, being together in the situation is not only enough but exactly right. Sometimes people don’t want to be fixed, and many problems can’t be solved. In such moments, we share Buddha’s sanctuary. We don’t need to escape people's pain by running away or by fixing them.

When my mother slowly degenerated with Alzheimer's, there was ultimately no fixing that could be done. Eventually, all my strategies failed. Not knowing what to do next, my role was to simply be with and love her. As she lost the use of language altogether, I still felt deeply connected with her. I could not stave off her disease, but our togetherness was of absolute value, quite beyond the scales of success or failure. Even when there's no cure, it's possible to heal.

This does not mean we are unresponsive. While suffering has no fixed essence, people still suffer, and as interwoven beings, our hearts may break. And, we can sometimes be of benefit. In allowing ourselves not to know what to do in advance and in openmindedly bearing witness to the entire situation, possibilities emerge that are often more appropriate than anything we can plan in advance. As Bernie Glassman says, "Healing cannot arise until we bear witness to the suffering," like Buddha leaving his protected childhood palace. We let the imagined walls between ourselves and others come down.

We meet on equal ground when we open beyond our dualistic ideas of self and other, saved and unsaved. We open beyond dualistic notions when we acknowledge but see through the senses of self that we think separate us from everything and everyone.

There is some basic reasoning that can help us comprehend the lack of a fixed, separate self. This is reasoning we can easily understand. From the perspective of time, there’s no fixed self, only change. The cells in our body are constantly dying and being replaced. So are our thoughts and values. More gradually changing aspects of ourselves may lead us to believe there is something abiding in the mix, but any amount of change undermines identity. Even yesterday’s and today’s “me" are not the same. And from perspective of space, there is no separate self because a self is made of non-self elements. We sometimes call this "dependent arising." We are water, earth, air, and sunlight. We are culturally inherited languages and practices of our ancestors. Remove these non-self elements, and nothing remains. There’s no innate or intrinsic self; every bit of us is borrowed and relational. The bubble is nothing without the water surrounding it. There is also not a unified self, just parts that can be broken down endlessly.

The same analysis applies to all beings. Thus there are no fixed, separate selves or essences anywhere. Therefore, "no dharmas have been taught by the Tathagata." No phenomena exist in an enduring or independent way. However, we really need to meditate to see this for ourselves. In looking closely, we begin to see that intrinsic essences are indeed unfindable, including our self.

We do not need to try to stop senses of self from arising. In fact, we need our senses of self to honor appropriate boundaries. We do not need to go to war with our shapeshifting ego. The moment we compassionately see senses of self as merely senses of self, they lose their grip on us. When we see that senses of self are actually shapeshifting, dependent arisings, we are less attached to them, and we suffer less as they change. We can simply witness senses of self as merely senses of self, and we are liberated from their grip.

However, The Diamond Sutra goes on to warn not to get stuck in the idea of “no self” or “no dharmas” either. The teaching of “no self” is just medicine to liberate us from the suffering and isolation caused by clinging to ideas of self and other. The idea of no self becomes a nihilistic hell cave when we cling to it. And in trying to annihilate the self, we create the notion of the self that needs to be annihilated! This circular argument could go on endlessly.

Zazen is the practice of leaping beyond the many and the one. When we see that self and other are "merely names" and that thoughts are merely thoughts, we are liberated from belief and disbelief. Even the notions of form and emptiness are nails hammered in the sky. 

Liberation is the practice-realization of things just as they are, which is truly beyond comprehension, beyond is and is not. Our mental models fail to capture what is. Ironically, this is profoundly liberating. We are no longer bound by our conceptions. We are entering the stream of life.

We can still use language to talk about this phenomenal world but with the recognition that language too is a dependent arising; names depend on provisional referents. Still, we operate in "conventional reality," which language helps us navigate. Even though there are not abiding essences anywhere, we use language to refer to shapeshifting phenomena that have no fixed, separate essences. The key is to wake up when we get lost in our conceptual maps. When we are lost in ideas and desires -- even the desire to help others -- we tend to suffer and cause harm, and the precepts help us wake up to what we are doing.

We all get lost sometimes. We so desperately want to be able to hang onto moments when we feel good about ourselves. We take pride in our accomplishments and in our mind's ability to comprehend reality. For a long time we may not be able to recognize thoughts as merely thoughts and senses of self as merely senses of self because of pride -- an attachment to positive senses of self. The inverse of this is shame when we make mistakes. As children, we were expected to know things and were perhaps embarrassed when we did not. We got bad grades in school. Interestingly, sometimes we believe shame even more readily than pride. But both are merely fleeting senses of self.

We are released from our attachment to intellectual pride and shame when we see that "the truth is ungraspable and inexpressible. It neither is nor is not.... The true nature of the Dharma cannot be understood." Our inability to conceptualize the true nature of reality is not a failure but simply accurate.

In opening beyond our conceptual maps, we see that our ideas of fixed essences were misleading. Even suffering has no fixed, separate essence. Pain is a flash of lightning in a summer cloud. Grief is a mask worn by love.

When we open to suffering just as it is, compassion, a non-dualistic acceptance of what is, reveals that even suffering is empty. Ironically, when we let go of the protective distance that we create between ourselves and our hearts -- when we let go of our idea of suffering as something separate -- it opens like a flower, and its imagined solidity dissolves. Beyond good and bad, just tears. 

In learning to tolerate our own suffering, we learn to tolerate others’. This releases us from the need to fix and allows us to bear witness with great compassion. In this way, emptiness -- things exactly as they are -- is a refuge for us all, one that we can share with all beings.

Like the self, suffering is no suffering. We merely call it suffering provisionally. This does not mean it is nothing or that we should slip into denial. Denial reifies whatever we are denying. We are invited to be intimate with whatever is.

When we look deeply, we find that everything is subtle, mysterious, and beyond description. This is our freedom.

So you should view this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; 
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

We may still wonder, how can we fulfill our bodhisattva vow to awaken and save all beings? I am reminded of a quote from Catcher in the Rye: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Bodhisattva practice does not make us special, and we don't need to be. Mary Oliver writes, "You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves." And as the late, great Tina Turner sang, "We don't need another hero." We just openly pay attention and offer an appropriate response, moment after moment. We may sit with a grieving friend, write a letter, attend a demonstration, offer incense, or even sweep the floor. Sometimes we get it wrong, atone, and begin again. A life of vow.

There's a story about Ryukon, the Japanese poet, zen master, and hermit. He lived in the mountains but would sometimes spend time with his family and play with the village children. One day a relative found him to ask for help. Ryukon's nephew, a teenage boy, was causing trouble. Ryokan agreed to see what he could do. So he went to stay at his brother's house where his nephew lived. After a few weeks, Ryokan decided to leave and go back to the mountain. He began to lace up his sandals, and the boy came into the room and sat across from him. Ryukon's hands were shaking with age, so the boy decided to help him with his sandals. As he knelt before Ryukon, tears from Ryukon's eyes landed on the boy's hands. When the boy saw the tears streaming down Ryokan’s face, he knew they were for him. From that moment, the boy completely changed.

Bearing witness without knowing in advance what we will do, we might bandage a child’s boo-boo, a child who stands before us with tears on her cheeks. This uncontrived response, which does not depend on the concept of self and other but which also does not negate the shimmering suchness of a child, is like "walking in the bright sunshine seeing all shapes and colors." Though without any separate, fixed essence, each intimate presence shines forth uniquely. We see the tears on her cheeks and hear her cry. We bandage her cut because it is simply the thing to do. We think, but we are not lost in our own ideas. We are awake with this child who, in this moment, is our life, this child of the universe. Caring for this one child is caring for the universe in the form of a child. There is no "other" anywhere. This may sound like a great mystical revelation, but it is just things as they are.

Since there is no self to awaken separate from the totality of wholesome dharmas, and since there are no separate dharmas anywhere (wholesome or otherwise), all beings are included in this moment. Indeed, all beings are included in each bow we make. Our forehead touches the floor. The earth holds us up. The air fills our lungs. The stars give shape to infinite space, which is nothing other than our mind, which is not separate from all beings. Each breath and each bow includes all beings throughout space and time. When we bow, we hold nothing back, and we are given the universe. We give ourselves away completely in this moment, and we are given everything in return. This is non-dualistic generosity in which giving is receiving and receiving is giving. Ultimately, there is no giver, no receiver, and no gift. We merely call it giving. With Avalokiteshvara as our guide, we open our bodhisattva heart as a refuge for all beings, and we let ourselves be held by all beings. Hearing the cries of the world, without knowing in advance what to do and without expectation of what the outcome will be, we each make our unique offering. As Bernie Glassman writes, each of us are one of Avaolokiteshvara's thousand hands responding to the cries of the world. Because there are no separate beings anywhere, all beings save all beings.