The Profound Meaning of the Diamond Sutra from the Consciousness-Only Perspective (121)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Incomparable Merit

Original text: 须菩提。若三千大千世界中。所有诸须弥山王。如是等七宝聚。有人持用布施。若人以此般若波罗蜜经。乃至四句偈等。受持读诵。为他人说。于前福德。百分不及一。百千万亿分。乃至算数譬喻所不能及。

Explanation: The World-Honored One said to Subhūti: If someone gathered all the seven treasures in the three-thousandfold great thousand worlds, as numerous as all the Sumeru kings, and gave them away in generosity (dāna), the merit from this would be extremely great, exceedingly great. But if there is another person who can receive, hold, read, and recite this Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, or even just one four-line verse of the Diamond Sutra, and expound it to others, then the merit gained by these two people — the latter far surpasses the former. The merit gained from receiving and holding the sūtra is a hundred times, a hundred thousand koti times, even immeasurably countless times greater than the merit of one who gives away seven treasures as numerous as Sumeru. The gap between them cannot be calculated by any human method of computation, nor can it be described by any human linguistic analogy — the gap is simply too vast.

One three-thousandfold great thousand world contains a billion or ten billion Sumeru mountains, and one Sumeru mountain is countless times larger than the Earth, while the Earth itself has countless hills of various sizes and vast, boundless lands. If a person could give away the seven treasures of just one small hill, that merit would already be beyond calculation — let alone giving away the seven treasures of the entire Earth, let alone seven treasures as numerous as Sumeru, and even more so giving away seven treasures as numerous as a billion or ten billion Sumeru mountains. The merit such a person would gain could not be computed even by countless computers. Yet the Buddha said that even such immense merit is not great — it is far smaller than the merit of receiving, holding, reading, and reciting the Diamond Sutra, differing from it by an enormous margin, incomparable and beyond reckoning. Even if one receives, holds, reads, and recites just a single four-line verse of the Diamond Sutra, the merit gained far exceeds, by countless multiples, the merit of giving away seven treasures as numerous as all the Sumeru mountains in a three-thousandfold great thousand world. How much greater, then, must be the merit of receiving, holding, reading, and reciting the entire Diamond Sutra?

As explained before, those who can truly receive, hold, read, and recite the Diamond Sutra, or the four-line verses within it, are all people who have genuinely seen the mind and realized the ultimate reality of prajñā. Only they have the capacity to receive and hold the Diamond Sutra, only they truly know how to read and recite it, and only they know how to read the Diamond Sutra and how to recite it. The Diamond Sutra entirely expounds the wisdom and merit of the mind of ultimate reality (dharmatā-citta); its principle is profound and profoundly profound.

Only after finding the vajra mind (vajra-citta) and realizing the tathāgatagarbha can one understand the dharma of the tathāgatagarbha, recite the contents within it, accept all the dharma meanings of the tathāgatagarbha, and gradually practice in accordance with the principle of the tathāgatagarbha, thereby transforming all the mental activities of the deluded mind of the seven consciousnesses. From then on, the afflictions of the deluded mind of the seven consciousnesses will gradually be eliminated, the habitual tendencies of afflictions will gradually grow fainter, and ignorance will gradually weaken. Cultivating in reliance upon the tathāgatagarbha, one will come to know ever more profound dharma meanings, as well as all the seed contents within the tathāgatagarbha. In this way, the delusions of ignorance as numerous as dust and sand will become fewer and fewer, until finally they are all extinguished.