The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion Paperback – 6 July 2010

Thay explains a difficult sutra succintly

Great master in Buddhism. I am so happy that this book was available on your site. It means we canpractise anywhere and anytime.

"If we are only an independent island, living in a community but not seeing or smiling with the community, we are not practicing as a bodhisattva.""Seeing the snake was an erroneous perception, and the Buddha teaches us that the four notions (self, person, sentient being, and life span) are four erroneous perceptions at the root of our suffering.""It's the last of the six paramitas, the six bodhisattva practices for crossing to the other shore. The others are generosity, mindfulness trainings, endurance, diligence, and meditation.""When we perceive things, we generally use the sword of conceptualization to cut reality into pieces, saying, "This piece is A, and A cannot be B, C, or D". But when A is looked at in light of dependent co-arising, we see that A is comprised of B, C, D, and everything else in the universe.""The ideas of emptiness, impermanence, and selflessness are extremely helpful, but if you use them without understanding them deeply and clearly, you can suffer and cause harm to others.""When we take refuge in something that is changing, we can never have peace.""The raft is to help us cross over to the other shore. Is is a wonderful, even necessary instrument. But we should use the raft in an intelligent way. We should not cling to it or carry it on our back after we are done with it. The teaching is to help us, not to be possessed by us. It is not meant to deceive us, but we may be deceived by it because of our own way of clinging to it.""The art of posing a question is very important.""In this sutra, we learn how to deal with words and concepts. Words are used to name or describe concepts, but as soon as we see things as they are, we understand that both words and concepts are not the things themselves. Words and concepts are rigid and motionless, but reality is a steadily flowing stream. It is impossible to contain a living reality in a rigid framework.(...) There is always some distance between our words or concepts and that which is being described.""it is possible to use words and concepts for true communication, as long as you are not caught by words and concepts. The way to avoid being caught by words and concepts is to see the nature of interbeing in everything.""When we can see the non-rose elements when looking at a rose, it is safe to use the word 'rose'.""All concepts are dharmas, objects of mind, signs.""When our true mind can see there is no difference between self and other, then we're a bodhisattva, a fully awakened person.""[others] they only need that source of joy and peace radiating from us. If we have the habit of not being able to communicate with the people around us, we have to look deeply into ourselves to see why. The practice of the Diamond Sutra is to try to dismantle the shell that separates us from others in order to live happily with ourselves, happily with people around us, and happily with our planet."

Profound.Thank you.Transmission of ancient wisdom as true today as when it was first imparted – and now passed on by a wise monk.Timeless.

This book was both my first exposure to the Diamond Sutra and to Thich Nhat Hanh. The Diamond Sutra itself, in my opinion, is not for the beginner. It is short and sometimes almost annoyingly repetitive, but it is very deep and its message hard to swallow. On the other hand, Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary is simple and direct, not adding unnecessary layers that would obscure the text but rather providing an interpretation that is easy to follow and attempts to bring out its true meaning.

This book is a remarkable work by a remarkable monk, Thích Nhat Hanh. It consists of a lucid commentary on arguably one of the most important sutras in the buddhist canon. The Diamond Sutra appears on the surface to be complete nonsense. But, underneath the veneer of seeming contradiction lies the unprecedented insight of the Buddha. The sutra's deepest meanings reveal the secret of viewing the world with the eyes of transcendent wisdom, seeing past the static definitional meaning of concepts to their underlying suchness. As the sutra reveals, this is one of the most important understandings on the path to enlightenment.The Diamond Sutra is not for beginners in Buddhist thought. But Thích Nhat Hanh's insightful and lucid commentary explains the deep meaning of the sutra in clear and understandable language. This is amazingly helpful for the average person to be able to deeply understand one of Buddhism's most opaque yet important teachings.