Diamond Sutra Commentary: Rare Is the True Faith, Six

Original text:须菩提白佛言。世尊。颇有众生得闻如是言说章句。生实信不。佛告须菩提。莫作是说。如来灭后。后五百岁。有持戒修福者。于此章句。能生信心。以此为实。当知是人。不于一佛二佛。三四五佛而种善根。已于无量千万佛所。种诸善根。

Explanation: Subhūti said to the Buddha: World-Honored One, are there really sentient beings who, upon hearing such words and passages, can genuinely believe and accept them? The Buddha told Subhūti: Do not speak thus. In the last five hundred years after the Tathāgata's parinirvāṇa, there will be those who uphold the precepts and cultivate merit, who will be able to give rise to faith in these passages and teachings, and regard them as true and trustworthy. You should know that such a person has not planted wholesome roots with just one Buddha, two Buddhas, three, four, or five Buddhas, but has already planted wholesome roots at the places of immeasurable thousands and millions of Buddhas.

In the previous section, the World-Honored One taught: 凡所有相皆是虚妄，若见诸相非相，即见如来. Upon hearing this, Subhūti gave rise to doubt, wondering whether sentient beings who heard such profound passages and principles could genuinely believe and accept them. This question was raised at a very fitting time. Because sentient beings differ in the sharpness of their faculties and in their merit and wisdom, their faith in and acceptance of the Dharma also differ. Sentient beings of meager merit and dull faculties find it very hard to believe and accept the true great Dharma, and often give rise to doubt and slander. Such things have happened since ancient times. At the assembly of the Lotus Sutra, did not five thousand disciples refuse to believe in and accept the Mahāyāna and withdraw from the assembly? This is a normal phenomenon; throughout the kalpas there have always been those who did not believe in and accept the Dharma of true reality and slandered it. Because sentient beings have not severed their bonds and fetters, they constantly give rise to self-view, view of grasping views, view of doubt, and other wrong views; lacking right knowledge and right view, slandering the Dharma and disbelieving is inevitable.

Self-view is the view that takes the five aggregates and eighteen realms as the self, believing that this self is real and that the functions and activities of the five aggregates are real. The view of grasping views is when sentient beings hold their own views as primary, and regardless of whether they are correct or not, they refuse to accept others' views even when those are correct. Moreover, because sentient beings have not realized the true mind, their views and knowledge concerning worldly and world-transcending matters are all wrong, deviant, and incorrect, such as the sixty-two views of the non-Buddhists. The view of doubt is when sentient beings cannot make correct judgments and cognitions about correct Dharma principles and good spiritual teachers, and harbor knots of doubt in their minds. Because these fetters tightly bind sentient beings, they cannot free themselves from ignorance. In addition, since sentient beings' merit and karmic conditions are not complete, they inevitably slander the Dharma and the Three Jewels, let alone in the Dharma-ending age.

The World-Honored One's true Dharma lasts one thousand years, the semblance Dharma one thousand years, and the Dharma-ending age ten thousand years. The last five hundred years after the Tathāgata's parinirvāṇa may refer to the five hundred years before the Dharma-ending age comes to an end. At that time, those who uphold the precepts and cultivate merit will be rare; if there are any, they must be people of very deep wholesome roots and merit. Seeing such passages in the Diamond Sutra that break through the bodily form of the Tathāgata and break through all marks of dharmas, they can believe deeply without doubt and praise the Tathāgata's teaching as true; such a person must be rare and hard to encounter. Whoever believes in and accepts the passages and principles in the Diamond Sutra is a person of right faith.

Reaching right faith is extremely difficult. On the bodhisattva's path of study and practice, one has already passed through the stage of the ten faiths, entered the stage of the ten abodes of cultivating merit, upholding precepts, cultivating patience, cultivating meditation, and cultivating wisdom, and completed the four aids of warmth, peak, patience, and the supreme worldly dharma; the provisions for bodhi are also complete, one breaks through all false marks and realizes true reality. This requires tens of kalpas, hundreds of kalpas, thousands of kalpas, or even longer eons of steeping in and cultivating the Buddha's Dharma, thereby acquiring right view. During this period, one must have made offerings to countless Buddhas, already having listened to sutras and heard the Dharma at the places of immeasurable thousands and millions of Buddhas, planted wholesome roots, and accumulated merit—something that cannot be accomplished in a short kalpa. Countless sentient beings resolve to cultivate the path, but only a very few reach this stage. So it is not surprising to see that most people are still at the beginner stage. Cultivating the Buddha's path is extremely difficult, only because one has transmigrated through birth and death for kalpa upon immeasurable kalpa, with ignorance deeply rooted and wholesome roots shallow—a few days of sunshine cannot melt the long-accumulated hard ice.

Original text:闻是章句。乃至一念。生净信者。须菩提。如来悉知悉见。是诸众生。得如是无量福德。

Explanation: Those who hear such passages and give rise to even a single thought of pure faith—the Tathāgata knows them all completely and sees them all completely, and these sentient beings attain such immeasurable merit.

The Buddha is also called the one who possesses the wisdom of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā); his merit and wisdom are both perfectly complete, and he fully knows all worldly and world-transcending dharmas, and fully knows all the seeds and functions contained in the tathāgatagarbha—knowing not a single dharma is lacking, this is called the wisdom of all aspects. This wisdom is so subtle that when it rains simultaneously in the worlds of the ten directions, the Buddha knows the exact number of raindrops. One world contains one billion four-continent systems, one billion great oceans, one billion Mount Sumerus, one billion six heavens of the desire realm, one billion first-dhyāna heavens, and countless heavens of the second dhyāna and above. How many celestial bodies there are in the ten directions, over how vast a range, and the number of raindrops falling—the Buddha knows them all. The Buddha's wisdom is so subtle that when any sentient being in all the worlds of the ten directions gives rise to a single thought, the Buddha knows it, while sentient beings themselves are often not even aware of their own thoughts: after reciting the Buddha's name or sutras for a long time, they only then notice that they have been having wandering thoughts all along. Whatever the manas grasps at, the mind chases after—like a monkey and a horse, very hard to subdue.

How many sentient beings are there in the worlds of the ten directions? On our planet Earth alone, there are roughly more than seven billion humans. How many animals are there? Too many to count. If a fish spawns, it may produce thousands upon thousands of offspring; in one square meter of land there are countless ants, and various insects and bacteria are even more uncountable. Bacteria grow everywhere; every inch of our skin is covered with bacteria, and the nine orifices and the secretions that flow out, such as tears and sweat, are all bacteria. Peel back the skin, and the muscles, sinews, bones, marrow, blood, brain matter, and internal organs inside are all bacteria—there is no place without them.

The Buddhist sutras say that these bacteria have three heads and six arms, are of all colors, and of strange shapes, killing and devouring one another. If their numbers and species become unbalanced, we fall ill—skin diseases are just like this. So when using medicine to kill bacteria, another portion of beneficial bacteria is killed, and one contracts another illness. As for ghost and spirit beings, they are everywhere—wild mountains and remote wilderness, riversides and forest edges, crossroads; even on a tiny blade of grass, beings lacking merit attach themselves. In the Śūraṅgama Sutra, the World-Honored One said: a pure bhikṣu walking on a path will not step on living grass, let alone pull it out by hand. Beings lacking merit take a tiny blade of grass as their home, dwelling upon it; if it is trampled or pulled out by hand, the beings' home would be destroyed. Add to this the beings in the hells, the asura classes, and non-human beings—this is how many beings there are in just one small world system. Then how many must there be in one great chiliocosm, in the great chiliocosms of the ten directions?

With so many sentient beings, whenever any being gives rise to a thought, the Buddha knows it. Therefore, when a sentient being's conditions ripen and wholesome roots mature, the Buddha knows it and will arrange the corresponding conditions to deliver that being. So if someone hears the passages in the Diamond Sutra and gives rise to a single thought of pure faith, the Tathāgata will of course know and see it completely. For every sentient being, throughout beginningless kalpas, which destiny they were born into, what karmic actions they committed, what retribution they received, how many wholesome roots they planted, how much merit they accumulated, and when they can enter the path and attain the way—the Buddha knows it all.

Original text:何以故。是诸众生。无复我相人相众生相寿者相。无法相亦无非法相。

Explanation: Why is this said? It is because these sentient beings are able to not cling to the bodily form of the Tathāgata, knowing that all marks are false and illusory; they have long since been without the notions of self, person, sentient being, and life span. They first broke through the four marks, and then further broke through all marks of dharmas, cultivating until their minds have neither the mark of dharmas nor the mark of no-dharmas.

Dharmas are divided into conditioned dharmas and unconditioned dharmas, dharmas arising from conditions and dharmas not arising from conditions. The five aggregates are dharmas, the eighteen realms are dharmas, the three realms are all dharmas, and true suchness is also a dharma. Whatever can be cognized by people is a dharma; whether visible or invisible, existence is dharma. There are true dharmas and false dharmas, arising-and-ceasing dharmas and non-arising-non-ceasing dharmas, dharmas formed by causes and conditions and dharmas that exist innately and are not formed by causes and conditions—from every angle and every aspect, there are distinctions.

Dharmas include dharmas of causes and conditions and dharmas not of causes and conditions. Dharmas of causes and conditions are emptiness, that is, false; dharmas not of causes and conditions are dharmas that exist from the very beginning, that is, true dharmas, dharmas that do not perish. Whatever dharma directly points to the attainment of buddhahood is the ultimate dharma; the dharma of seeing one's true mind and awakening to one's nature, the dharma of true suchness, is the ultimate dharma, while the methods for reaching the ultimate dharma are expedient dharmas. The mark of dharmas is existence; the mark of no-dharmas is emptiness. Those who can give rise to a single thought of pure faith in the passages of the Diamond Sutra have not only broken through the four marks, but have also broken through the mark of dharmas and the mark of no-dharmas.

Original text:何以故。是诸众生若心取相。即为著我人众生寿者。若取法相。即著我人众生寿者。若取非法相。即著我人众生寿者。是故不应取法。不应取非法。

Explanation: Why is this said? Because if these sentient beings grasp at marks in their minds, they are attached to the four marks of self, person, sentient being, and life span. If they grasp at the mark of dharmas, they are attached to the four marks of self, person, sentient being, and life span; if they grasp at the mark of no-dharmas, they are attached to the four marks of self, person, sentient being, and life span. Therefore one should not grasp at dharmas, nor should one grasp at no-dharmas.

If sentient beings grasp at marks in their minds—no matter what marks they grasp at—because there is a self that grasps at marks, they are attached to the four marks. If sentient beings grasp at the mark that dharmas exist, because there is a self that grasps at marks, they are attached to the four marks. If sentient beings grasp at the mark that dharmas do not exist, because there is a self that grasps at the mark of no-dharmas, they are attached to the four marks. Whether sentient beings grasp at the mark of dharmas existing or not existing, it is always a self that grasps at marks, so they are all attached to the four marks.

The mark of dharmas is the existence of dharmas in the three realms; the three realms exist dependent upon sentient beings' cognition—only with a self can one cognize the marks of dharmas in the three realms. Therefore, if one grasps at the mark of dharmas, believing that all dharmas have marks of existence, one is attached to the four marks of self, person, sentient being, and life span. If one grasps at the mark of no-dharmas, believing that all dharmas are empty, that none exist, that there is no mark of dharmas, one is likewise attached to the four marks.