The Diamond Sutra

A very important book, and as always Red Pine is one of today’s best translators! My thanks to him and everyone involved in making this book possible!

I expected 400 pages on a 30-page sutra to be a bit of a slog. To my surprise, Red Pine's version of the Diamond Sutra was informative and enjoyable.What makes it so is the author's obvious engagement with the text. He notes in the preface his early confusion with the Diamond Sutra, even after living with it for three years in a Taiwanese monastery. Twenty years later, comparing six Chinese translations to compose his own English version, he still didn't get it. But a trip to Taiwan opened the door of understanding.While waiting for a meeting about translation work for which he had been invited, Red Pine found on a book shelf a 5-volume study of the Sanskrit version of the Diamond Sutra, a project printed in a limited run of only 250 sets. Here he discovered the key needed to unlock the sutra. "The thought had never occurred to me that since the Diamond Sutra was originally in verse . . , its meaning still depended on poetry, which was still apparent in the Sanskrit but not in the Chinese."Finally, he could he see what the sutra was all about. "It isn't emptiness that distinguishes this sutra. It's about bodies, beginning with the Buddha's body and ending with the body of every noble son or daughter who practices this teaching. Our real body is what ties all these teachings together."This delight in discovery shines through Red Pine's writing. He notes that his intention was to create a text to "thank those who have helped me along the path by helping others understand this teaching. By itself, this sutra is not easy to fathom, much less appreciate or practice. Hence, I have translated sections from other sutras that expand on the same teaching, as well as the commentaries of several dozen monks, including my old friends, the fifty-three Zen masters, the Indian pundits Asanga and Vasubandhu, and such modern masters as Chiang Wei-nung, Tao-yuan, and Sheng-yi. I have also added remarks of my own, far more than I anticipated or would have wished. But given my interpretation, I often had no choice."About the only thing I found lacking was an index. By the time I got to the last third of the text, I wanted on more than one occasion to go back and look up a concept, or Red Pine's comments on a concept. There is a glossary, but it is not exhaustive.As this was my first encounter with the Diamond Sutra, I can't make comparisons with other translations or commentaries. I can, though, recommend this as an accessible introduction brimming with the insight of generations of scholars who have studied this sutra. It accomplishes that rare feat among texts, instilling the desire to inquire further, to look deeper.Who looks for me in formwho seeks me in a voiceindulges in wasted effortsuch people see me not.#

WOW! I REALLY LOVE this book!It always AMAZES me how much things can change! When I was a teen, I loved books that could entertain me, that could take me to realms that I'd never experienced before. Fantasy, fiction, mystery, etc. However, just as I eventually left the large wood blocks that entertained me as a toddler, I left fiction books.Now, the best of books are those that have to power to slice right through the roots of my delusions, my inner fictions, my false perceptions, my egoistic identifications! Right through the me and the I that entangle in all sorts of temporal nonsense.I loved Red Pine's commentary and translation of the Diamond Sutra for so many reasons. For one, it was beautifully clear. Exquisitely simple and clear. I had purchased a different version, by a different translator, in Kindle format and it was replete with foreign words that confused and frustrated. I couldn't make it past the first few pages of that book.Red Pine's version was BRILLIANT! It had my jaw dropping and eyes turning into perfect saucers! Let me share with you just two out of so many very powerful quotes by Zen masters, offered to us in this amazing book:"Hu-neng says, 'Those who understand the dharma of formlessness don't think about attaining any goal. If the slightest thought of attaining a goal existed, they would not be called srota-apanas. Srota-apannas are free from the coarser, heavier passions. Thus they are able to find the river of holy living. But they don't find anything because they don't think about attaining a goal. This is the first fruit of practice."For me, this slices right through mental conditioning. Because there is this very subtle sense within, of attaining a goal. The goal of enlightenment, the final liberation. The mind conjures up notions of what that must feel like. How will I know that it's happened? it asks. Logic entangles itself up in knots!Here is another, again, by Hui-neng: "No contention means the practice of purity. The practice of purity is intended to rid oneself of the mind that possesses. if the mind that possesses remains, there is attachment. Attachment is not the way of purity. To always possess the mind that possess nothing is to practice no contention."However, the most powerful words to me where when the Buddha spoke of the non-existence of the self. And then the Zen sword made contact with even deeper weed roots. Seng-chao: "But since neither self nor an other exist, who is liberated? It is only a fiction."There is an energy in this book! It clears you out at the psychological/spiritual level. You feel so much lighter as you read. All psychological tensions become helium balloons that are released onto the ether. I love that the pages are thick, allowing me to take notes on the side margins, without the ink bleeding through to the other side of the page.I was so moved, so inspired, so in awe, in almost every single page of this book, that I found myself underlining something almost in every single page!There is a very simple beauty to this book. In many, many books that I've read in the past, I noticed that the Diamond Sutra was mentioned with great reverence. As if it was the ULTIMATE Sutra. I now know why.I HIGHLY recommend this book to my brothers and sisters out there who are on this journey of self-evaporation and genuine Liberation.

Using a soccer metaphor - this is perhaps the most difficult translation Bill has undertaken. Standing on the shoulders of past translators in both Sanskrit and Chinese, Porter aims at the heart of Zen. This book is to be used as a partner with a meditation practice. As Red Pine often says: "Taste the Tea", don't just read the book!

The amount of work that Red Pine must have put into this is staggering. The Diamond Sutra is about 30 pages long, but he spends 400 pages breaking the Sutra down and making it accessible. There are many stories from Zen masters and their interpretations of each chapter. This wouldn't be the first book on Buddhism I would dive into however. The sutra itself can be hard to understand, and requires a lot of contemplation on what it means. It is a book I believe I will come back to later in life as I felt quite a bit of it was over my head. For the price, it has an immense amount of information, and perhaps the power to free you from your misconceptions on life.