The purpose of Buddhism is enlightenment. All the Sutras, including the Diamond Sutra that will be serialised from next week, are Dharma talks which are the words spoken by the historical Buddha for the purpose of leading people to enlightenment. So, the core of all the Sutras is just two things; how we can attain enlightenment, and how everything appears when we have attained enlightenment.
Enlightenment means being able to see and hear everything without being influenced by one’s preconceived notions and frame of thought which are made up of words and knowledge. That is to see and hear things without attaching any words, including names, which describe or explain them, to things. Seeing things in this way is referred to as seeing them as they are, or seeing them as empty, which is called seeing the true-Self, or reaching the Pure Land. Accordingly, the core of all the Sutras, it can also be said, is how we can see the true-Self, or how we can reach the Pure Land and what the true-Self, or the Pure Land is like.
What matters here is that paradoxically, while telling us to detach all words from things when we see and hear them, the Sutras are explaining in words both how we can see things without being influenced by words and knowledge, and how they appear when we see them in this way. Put in other words, the Sutras are saying what cannot be explained in words and explaining in words what can’t be said. This means that we cannot appreciate the core of the Sutras through intellectual understanding based on words. This is why the historical Buddha said, “Not a word have I said” to prevent people from missing what he really meant by clinging to intellectual understanding, and why ancient masters invented expedients of koans which are Zen questions to help people to surmount the limitations of intellectual comprehension. So, reading the Sutras requires more than intellectual understanding, and taking intellectual understanding for true understanding is regarded as being deluded by words in Buddhism.
This is why the Sutras should not be read and taken in the same way that worldly literature is.
In the case of worldly books, the contents of them can’t be fully comprehended until at least half, if not all, of each book is read. However, in the case of the Sutras, if we appreciate even a single word correctly in the Sutra we are reading, it is no other than enlightenment and the same as having read all the other Sutras, not to mention the one we are reading at that moment because each word, each phrase and each sentence contains all that the Sutras say. In short, each of them is the gate to enlightenment and we have only to open and pass any one of them. This is why the Dharma talks refer to ‘a gate to enlightenment’ and not ‘a text on enlightenment’. This is also why ancient masters would even say that the Sutras are not supposed to be read but to be seen. So, we should regard each word, each phrase and each sentence as a gate to enlightenment instead of being deluded by words and clinging to intellectual understanding.
Therefore, you should keep it in mind that if you have not attained enlightenment, no matter how many times you have read or copied a Sutra, you have not understood even a single word correctly in the Sutra, that is, you have knocked hard on and touched the gate only to fail to pass the gate.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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