The Profound Yogācāra Meaning of the Diamond Sutra (122)

The merit of receiving, upholding, reading, and reciting the Diamond Sutra is truly difficult to narrate and describe. By citing just a small portion of examples to illustrate its general outline, everyone will be able to understand the boundlessness and inconceivability of its merit. For instance, after a bodhisattva realizes the prajñā of true reality, cultivating the four dhyānas and eight samādhis in accordance with the tathāgatagarbha, he will obtain hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of millions of mind-made bodies (manomaya-kāya), thereby benefiting and bringing joy to countless sentient beings and delivering them beyond the suffering of saṃsāra. This merit is truly priceless and beyond comparison; it cannot be calculated, and its merit can never be exhausted, but will instead increase without limit.

As for the merit of giving away Mount Sumerus of a great trichiliocosm, although it is also extremely great and beyond reckoning, it is still finite and can be completely exhausted. This merit also cannot offset unwholesome karma; perhaps due to ignorance, while enjoying blessings one may use that merit to commit great unwholesome deeds, and then one will undergo evil retribution in accordance with that unwholesome karma. When unwholesome karma is committed, the merit will also be diminished and consumed, until finally the merit is entirely used up in various ways. But the merit of a bodhisattva who reads, recites, receives, and upholds the Diamond Sutra not only cannot be diminished, it will also increase, with the accumulated merit growing ever more abundant and ever greater.

As the bodhisattva's wisdom continues to grow, his merit will increase countless times over. When a bodhisattva cultivates to the stage of an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva, with a single mental engagement he can manifest a trichiliocosm filled with the seven treasures, countless times more than Mount Sumeru, and the bodhisattva will give it all to sentient beings—that merit is even more impossible to calculate. The bodhisattva will also manifest even more of the various material necessities of life that sentient beings require, giving them to benefit and bring joy to sentient beings, and this merit too is impossible to calculate. In addition, the bodhisattva manifests countless transformation bodies, going to worlds in the ten directions to extensively deliver immeasurable and boundless sentient beings—as for that merit, there is no need to calculate it, because it simply cannot be calculated, nor can it be imagined; it is inconceivable.

This is the merit attained by an eighth-bhūmi bodhisattva, or the merit attained by bodhisattvas before the eighth bhūmi—all of this merit is impossible to calculate. Then, when the bodhisattva cultivates further to the stage of a bodhisattva of equal enlightenment, over a hundred kalpas the bodhisattva manifests countless great bodies of sentient beings for immeasurable beings to eat and survive famine, and the merit thus obtained is even more unimaginable. Cultivating further to the stage of buddhahood, extensively delivering immeasurable sentient beings throughout the worlds of the ten directions, the merit thus obtained cannot be computed even if all sentient beings were to calculate it together, nor can it be expressed by any words. Therefore, the World-Honored One said that for a person who receives, upholds, reads, and recites the Diamond Sutra and the four-line gāthā within it, his merit is greater than that of one who gives the seven treasures by immeasurable hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of millions of times—and even this is not the limit; the two are truly beyond comparison.