Page 326 - The Secret Museum

passed on first of all by word of mouth, then gradually some of his teachings were

written down, first in Pali and then in Sanskrit. This version of the Diamond Sutra
was translated from the Sanskrit into Chinese by one of the best Buddhist scholars
and translators in China at the time, Kumārajīva. He wasn’t really a fan of translated
works, even though this was his skill. He said that reading texts in translation ‘was
like eating rice someone else had already chewed’.

In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha is thought to be trying to help Subhuti let go of
his limited notions of reality and enlightenment. In four lines near the end, the Buddha
talks about impermanence:

All conditioned phenomena

Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows;
Like drops of dew, or flashes of lightning;
Thusly should they be contemplated.

It’s best to listen to the sutra or, if you can, chant it, as otherwise it’s like reading
a musical score without playing the music. You need to hear it aloud or sing it
yourself to really feel the effect it has on your consciousness. One of the SOAS

students had an app called ‘iDharma’ on his iPhone, so we listened to the Diamond
Sutra being chanted as we looked at it. It was a magical moment.
In China, when a cat purrs, the Chinese phrase is ‘the cat is reciting the sutras’

and, just as a purring cat is a lovely sound to hear, so too is the Diamond Sutra. Why
not have a listen?

Buddhists all over the world chant the Diamond Sutra today, in the same way it
has been chanted for over a millennium. They do this to create merit.

Within the text of the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha says, ‘If a good son or good
daughter dedicates lifetimes as many as the sands in the River Ganges to charitable
acts, and there were another person who memorized as much as one four-line verse
of this scripture and taught it to others, the merit of the latter would be by far greater.’

This is also the reason why this particular version of the text was made. On the
back page, there is a dedication, which reads:

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].

Wang Jie – we do not know who he was – created this version, and probably
many others just like it, which have not survived, to create good fortune for his
parents.

If there were once lots of copies of this exact version of the Diamond Sutra made
in AD 868, why is this the only one that survives? This is what I find really