What is the Diamond Sūtra?
The name is given by the Buddha himself: when Subhūti asks what the sūtra is called and how it should be kept, the Buddha says it is called the Diamond Prajñāpāramitā and should be kept by that name. «Kim cang» is the diamond or vajra, the hardest of substances, usually read as an image of the wisdom that cuts through every attachment; «pāramitā» means reaching the other shore. The Sanskrit title is Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā, hence the English name Diamond Sūtra; many Vietnamese readers also look for it as Kinh Kim Cang Bát Nhã Ba La Mật Đa.
It is short beside many Mahāyāna sūtras: the library's translation runs to about 5,300 words, and the reading page estimates some 21 minutes. With the Heart Sūtra, it is among the most chanted and most commented Perfection of Wisdom texts of Northern Buddhism, and the Chan (Thiền) traditions hold it in particular regard.
What the sūtra says: Subhūti's two questions
The sūtra opens with the Buddha in Anāthapiṇḍika's park in Jeta's Grove at Śrāvastī, with 1,250 great monks. After the meal the elder Subhūti rises and asks how one who has set out for supreme awakening «should abide, and how should he master the mind». The rest of the sūtra is the Buddha's answer, mostly given as questions put back to Subhūti — «What do you think?» — and Subhūti's replies.
The answer turns on one idea, repeated again and again: a bodhisattva brings countless beings to nirvāṇa yet sees no being brought there; gives without resting on form, sound or any sign at all; for one who still holds the notions of a self, a person, a being or a life-span is no bodhisattva. The Tathāgata cannot be seen through the body or the thirty-two marks, and the teaching is likened to a raft for crossing a river: even the Dharma is to be let go, let alone what is not the Dharma.
The core teaching and the passages people remember
Put briefly, the core is a mind that rests on no sign: aspiring, helping others and practising without clinging to the notion of «I», of «others», of beings, or to the deed itself. The sūtra says it in the teaching that the mind should arise «resting nowhere», and in a formula it repeats many times: what the Tathāgata calls A is not A, and so it is called A. The formula is usually explained as showing that concepts are only names, without a fixed nature of their own.
The sūtra holds two four-line verses. The first says that whoever seeks the Tathāgata in form or in sound walks a wrong path and cannot see the Tathāgata. The closing verse likens all conditioned things to a dream or illusion, a bubble, dew and a flash of lightning, and asks us to see them so. The sūtra also tells of a past life of the Buddha: when King Kali cut his body limb by limb, he held no notion of self, person, being or life-span, and so no anger arose.
Reading and chanting at home
The library's translation runs as one continuous text, without numbered sections, so you read it from beginning to end. Open the text, press «Chant» and choose the slow speed the first time; tap the screen when you want to stay with a passage. Chanting slowly aloud takes longer than the silent reading time shown on the page.
The library holds the Vietnamese translation only — no Sino-Vietnamese transliteration, recording or download yet. For deeper study, treatises and commentaries on the sūtra from the Chinese canon, in Vietnamese translation, are listed below.
