Dhyana is also defined in relation to a ninth realm
higher than either the meditative or cosmological lev-
els of absorptions. This state of the cessation of per-
ception and sensation is attained by those who join
perfected concentration and insight.
See also: Cosmology; Meditation; Psychology; Vipas-
sana(Sanskrit, Vipas ́yana)
Bibliography
Buddhaghosa, Bhadantacariya. The Path of Purification, tr.
Bhikkhu Nanamoli. Berkeley, CA: Shambhala, 1976.
Nyanaponika, Thera. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation.New
York: Samuel Weiser, 1975.
Payutto, Phra Prayudh. Buddhadhamma: Natural Laws and Val-
ues for Life,tr. Grant A. Olson. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1995.
KARENDERRISDIAMOND SUTRA
Judged by almost any conventional standard the text
known as the Diamond Sutra(Sanskrit, Vajracchedika-
prajñaparamita-sutra) was, and remained, an impor-
tant MAHAYANA sutra across wide geographic
boundaries and over a very long time. The date of its
composition in Sanskrit is uncertain. Arguments have
been made for the second and fourth centuries of the
common era. It was first translated into Chinese at the
very beginning of the fifth century, but both
VASUBANDHUand ASAN ̇GA, two learned Indian monks
who probably lived in the fourth or fifth centuries, had
already written authoritative commentaries on it, and
this would seem to require that it was already an im-
portant text in their day, and had therefore been in cir-
culation for some time. Whereas for many Mahayana
sutras only very recent eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century Sanskrit manuscripts survive, for the Dia-
mond Sutra we have at least three much earlier
manuscripts that date from the fifth to the seventh
centuries and come from widely separated places. The
existence of such early manuscript remains may also
testify to the text’s importance, and certainly reveals,
when compared with later versions and translations,
how the text developed and changed its shape over
time.
Once translated into Chinese in the fifth century,
the Diamond Sutrawas then translated again at least
five more times by some of the brightest luminaries of
Chinese Buddhist scholasticism, and perhaps eighty or
more commentaries were written on it in Chinese. The
Diamond Sutra,and several Indian commentaries on
it, were also translated into Tibetan, and further trans-
lations, paraphrases, and developments of it survive,
in whole or in part, in a wide range of Central Asian
languages—Khotanese, Sogdian, Uigur, and so on. The
Diamond Sutrawas, obviously, the focus everywhere
of an enormous amount of attention in learned Bud-
dhist circles.
The Diamond Sutra,however, was not of interest
only to the learned. In the practice oriented and at least
rhetorically anti-intellectual schools of Chinese Chan,
for example, it was also assigned an important place.
In the carefully constructed religious biography of the
famous, if largely legendary, sixth patriarch HUINENG,
the Diamond Sutraappears as the pivot of his religious
life: Huineng was supposed to have been an illiterate
woodcutter when he heard it being recited and it trans-
formed his life. In fact, the recitation and copying of
the Diamond Sutrawas in itself in many places, and at
many times, a widespread religious practice under-
taken for a variety of less elevated, but no less crucial
purposes. Tales of the “miraculous” power of the
recitation and copying of the Diamond Sutraare pre-
served not just in Chinese and Japanese collections of
“miracle tales,” but also in Tibetan and Mongolian.
This clearly was a text that worked on many levels, and
for a variety of different kinds of Buddhists.
The Diamond Sutrais, of course, not its real name,
but an abbreviation based largely on early attempts to
translate its title into English. In Sanskrit it is called
the Vajracchedika-prajñaparamita.Bearing in mind
that vajrais an almost untranslatable Sanskrit term
referring to a kind of divine and dreadful weapon, like
a discus or thunderbolt, and only by secondary asso-
ciation applied to the hard, cutting properties of a
diamond, the title might be translated as “The Per-
fection of Wisdom [text] that Cuts like a Thunder-
bolt.” This title would seem to suggest several things.
First the Vajracchedikais classified by its title as a per-
fection of wisdom text, and this claim has, by and
large, been accepted by modern scholarship, even
though its relationship to this larger group of texts
remains problematic. Almost from the beginnings of
modern BUDDHIST STUDIES it was described as a
succinct summary of the perfection of wisdom, but
the Vajracchedikamakes no mention of several seem-
ingly definitional perfection of wisdom ideas like
S ́UNYATA (EMPTINESS) and UPAYA(skill in means).DIAMONDSUTRA