< Diamond Sutra > 5,000 words
Just chop one thing
An illiterate woodcutter
Selling firewood on the street
Hear someone chanting
Read a lot of sentences
But one sentence directly penetrated him
He couldn't tell why.
But those eight words were like a bolt of lightning.
Split him open a seam
He puts down the firewood.
Put down the mother
Traveled thousands of miles to find an old monk
One late night eight months later
The old monk told him this scripture alone in the secret room
When it comes to the same sentence
He was completely enlightened
Those eight words are
There should be nothing to live in but a heart
This woodcutter is called Hui Neng
Later became the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism
One of the most important figures in the history of Chinese Buddhism
And that book
It's the < Diamond Sutra > we're going to dismantle today.
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
In the first two issues, we dismantled the < Ahan Sutra >
That's the Buddha's original diagnosis.
He told you
Your pain is not a random event
It has a precise cause called craving.
There is a complete pathological mechanism called the Twelve Causes
There is a systematic treatment program called the Noble Eightfold Path.
It was an extremely rigorous clinical report.
But starting today
We are entering the second level of Buddhism
Prajna system
If the < Ahan Sutra > is a medical certificate
The Diamond Sutra is a scalpel
It no longer patiently explains to you why you are sick
It goes straight to the disease-making core of your brain.
One knife down
First open the name of this scripture
< Vajra Prajna Paramita Sutra >
King Kong
Is the hardest substance in the world
It can't cut anything.
But it can cut through everything
Prajna
Sanskrit transliteration
Not ordinary smart
It's the ultimate insight that penetrates all appearances to the essence
Paramita
Reach the other side
Together they are
A wisdom as sharp as King Kong
It can take you from this side of confusion to the other side of enlightenment
What is the distance between this side and the other side?
Not a river
You built a wall yourself.
The Diamond Sutra is dedicated to tearing down this wall
This scripture is a translated version of Kumarashi
The full text is about 5,100 words
But these 5,000 words are turned over and over
Actually only chop one thing
persistent
Let me put it more precisely.
It's your obsession with "phase"
What is "phase"?
You can think of it as your brain's labeling system.
You see a person
Your brain instantly labels him with a series of labels: This is my boss
He doesn't like me very much.
There was something wrong with his expression in the last meeting.
You see one thing
The brain also labels: this is failure
And that's not fair.
This has implications for my future
You see yourself.
The brain posts more: I am a relatively capable person
But not confident enough
Others may look down on me
These labels are "phase."
The Diamond Sutra divides it into four categories
Call me phase, human phase, all living beings phase, longevity phase
I like
It's your obsession with "who am I"
human appearance
It's your obsession with what other people are.
All beings
It's your obsession with grouping.
Such as enemies and friends, winners and losers
longevity
It's your obsession with "I want to go on in time"
This is where the fear of death comes from
These four are combined.
In today's terms
It's the self-model plus the world model in your brain.
Your brain took decades
With all your experience, your education, the losses you've suffered
Built an extremely sophisticated forecasting system
This system tells you who you are
What is the world like?
What is good and what is bad?
What happens next?
It does help you make quick decisions.
So that you don't have to rediscover the world every morning
It works.
But what's the problem?
You treat the model as reality itself.
For example
You drive with navigation.
Open open
You forget that there is a real road outside the window
You just stare at the phone screen
The screen says there's a river ahead
You brake suddenly
But in fact, the river was filled in three years ago
The screen says this is the fastest way
You follow me
But there is a closer path next to it
It's just that the map hasn't been updated.
You are trapped on an outdated map
I thought I was walking in the real world
All your pain
Essentially treating the map as territory
Cognitive science today calls this "predictive coding."
Your brain is not a passive camera.
It's a proactive forecasting machine.
It's constantly drawing on past experience.
Generate predictions about the current world
And then project that prediction.
As the reality you "see"
You think you are looking at the world
You're actually looking at your brain's best guess about the world.
When guesses and real signals don't match
That's a prediction error.
Your mood swings are a response to this error
You are angry
Essentially not because something is wrong with the world
It's because your predictive model doesn't match the world
Buddha didn't have an MRI 2,500 years ago.
There's no Bayesian formula.
But he relied purely on vipassana
Saw the same thing
He realized that humans are not interacting with the world
You're interacting with your model in your head.
You think you are angry with your boss.
Now, you're angry with the expectation of what the boss should do to me.
You think you're sad about a breakup
So you're looking at the collapse of that prediction that the relationship should last forever.
And sad
Your pain never comes from the event itself
It's the gap between the event and your prediction.
See through this layer
Buddha in the Diamond Sutra
He said something astounding
All appearances
It's all false
If you see all phases are different
Then see the Tathagata
Translated into vernacular: all the labels you put on your head
All is not the thing itself
When you can see through labels, it's just labels.
When it's not the truth
You see the truth
Attention
Buddha didn't say that the world doesn't exist
Table or table?
Flower or flower?
Here's what he said.
You made up your own stories about tables and flowers
Flowers are neither beautiful nor ugly
It is a flower
It's your brain that says, "Beautiful."
And you cling to beauty.
Then you are afraid that it will wither
Then you start to feel sad before the flowers thank you
A Flower
It creates a mini-misery in your head in three seconds.
It's not the flowers
It's the label.
What does this have to do with the desire for love that we covered in the Aham Sutra?
Thirst is your urge to catch.
And "phase" is what you grab.
The object of your love
Never the thing itself
It's the labels that you have in your head.
You don't love that person
You love that model in your head of what he should be like
If the model doesn't match reality
Pain comes
So the Aham Sutra cuts into the engine of thirst.
The Diamond Sutra cuts the "phase" of this fuel
The engine needs to be fueled to run.
Cut off any one
The bitter machine stops
Now let's look at the most powerful move of the < Diamond Sutra >
The Buddha used a sentence pattern repeatedly in his scriptures
I call this the Prajna formula.
It looks like this: A
non-A
Is an A
For example, the Buddha said
Tathagata World
non-world
Is famous world
Buddha's Thirty-two Phantoms
non-phase
It's a thirty-two prime minister
So here's another example.
Buddhism
It's not Buddhism.
It's a dharma.
This sentence pattern occurs more than 20 times in the whole sutra
What is it doing?
It's systematically dismantling your attachment to all concepts
You said "world."
You think you know what the world is like
Buddha said
The world you mentioned
Not the world itself
It's just a name called "World."
You said, "Dharma."
You think you've got the truth
Buddha said
The Dharma you mentioned
Not Buddhism itself
It's just a concept called dharma.
What this formula does
It's between your name system and your emotional responses.
Insert an interval
Try it in your daily life
You say, "I'm anxious."
Your body immediately starts to contract
You become someone who is anxious
But if you look at it using the prajna formula
So-called anxiety
non-anxiety
Is anxious
The thing you feel
It's not an entity called anxiety.
Anxiety is just a label you put on it.
As soon as the label is removed
You'll find that underneath are just some physical sensations
Heartbeat a little faster
The chest is a little tight
Breathing is shallower
Yes.
No monster called anxiety is attacking you.
It's your naming system that creates the monster
One more.
You have just been criticized by the leader.
You said, "He doesn't respect me."
You are instantly angry, wronged, and want to fight back
But if you stop for a second
So-called disrespect
non-disrespect
It's disrespectful
He said some sound waves.
Those sound waves travel through your ears and into your brain.
Your brain learns from past experience
Classify them as "disrespectful" to the label.
And then your emotional system launched a full-scale counterattack against the label
But disrespect is not an objective entity.
It's a decision your brain makes at that moment.
Change someone to sit in your place
Hear the same thing
Probably not offended at all
You can also try a deeper one
You say, "I'm not good enough."
This idea may have been with you for decades
You are convinced
But
Not good enough
The name is not good enough
"Not good enough" is not a fact etched in your bones
It's your brain at a certain age
According to certain experiences
Generated a label
Maybe I got a low score when I was a kid.
Maybe someone important said something that hurt you
Your brain solidifies that momentary judgment into a permanent label.
And you carry that label for decades.
All decisions are influenced by it
But that label was never you
It's an old model.
It's long overdue for an update.
This is where the sharpness of Vajra Prajna lies
It doesn't talk to you
I don't tell you, "Look away, let go."
It cuts the line directly between your naming system and your emotional response
Your name system is still working
But you're not being held hostage by it anymore
OK
Here we can go back to the story of Huineng
Those eight words
There should be nothing to live in but a heart
What does that mean?
Why can it bring complete enlightenment to an illiterate person?
"Live."
Just stay, stick, stick
Your heart hits something
It's stuck.
Can't unplug
That's it.
See delicious
The heart is glued
Live in appetite
Hear others praise you
The heart is glued
Live in praise
Remembering the embarrassing incident last year
The heart is glued
Live in memory
Your heart is glued hundreds of times a day
Should have nowhere to live
Just so your heart doesn't stick to anything
But the key is the last three words
And born of its heart
Not to turn you into a stone
I don't feel anything.
It is to keep your mind awake, alert, and lively.
Respond when it's time to respond
Feel it when it's time to feel it
But not sticky
Coming soon.
Go away
Like a mirror
Everything is clearly photographed in front of you
But something was taken
No trace left on the mirror
Think about it.
How many times a day are you kidnapped by your own thoughts?
No message returned.
You start making up the script in your head
One sentence is wrong.
You toss and turn in bed for three hours.
A goal was not achieved
You judge yourself
These are all "live"
Your heart is glued to a spot
Can't move
You call this state anxiety
It's called internal friction.
It's called insomnia.
There should be nothing to live in but a heart
It's about another way of living
Your heart can deeply touch everything
But not stuck to anything
This is not apathy.
Quite the contrary.
This is the ultimate freedom
You can go deeper into something than anyone else.
Because you have no fear
You can let go more simply than anyone else
Because you know the "phase" you put in
Is phase
Not reality
You pay attention
Huineng is an illiterate person.
He hasn't read any classics
I haven't studied any philosophy.
But he understood when he heard these eight words
Why is that?
Because prajna is not knowledge
Prajna is seeing
Knowledge needs to be learned
It only takes an opportunity to see
You don't have to read the entire Diamond Sutra to understand.
You only need one moment
Really see how your heart "lives" up
The act of seeing itself
Prajna
Huineng can do it
You can do it too
The difference is not in IQ
It depends on whether you are willing to stick to that moment
Stop
This is also where the dialogue structure of the Diamond Sutra is particularly noteworthy
The whole sutra is not taught by the Buddha alone
It was his disciple Subhuti who was asking the question
The Buddha replied
Subhuti asked a particularly good question: good men and good women develop bodhichitta
How should I settle my heart?
How should I subdue my heart?
You see
This problem is the problem you face every day
You're upset.
You want to house it?
Your mind went wild
You want to subdue it
But the Buddha's answer is not, "You have to do this.
That's how you practice. "
The Buddha's answer is one thing from beginning to end
The thing you think needs to be settled, needs to be subdued
You see it clearly
It settles on its own
It's not you who controls the heart
You see the way the heart works.
The heart is naturally no longer out of control
So much for that.
I have to share with you the most striking passage from the Diamond Sutra
The Buddha said, You should know.
All the laws I speak
Like a bamboo raft for crossing a river
After reaching the other side
You should put down the raft and keep walking
Rather than carrying it on the road
Fashang Yingshe
Not to mention illegal
The lethality of this sentence is seriously underestimated by many people
What is the Buddha saying?
He's saying: Even these things I just taught you
Prajna is fine.
Emptiness is good.
It is better to have a heart without living
They're all tools.
You use them to cross the river
Just put it down
Don't mistake tools for beliefs
Don't think of the raft as a destination
Do you know how many thought leaders in human history have dared to say that
Most people want you to carve his words on a stone tablet for generations
Buddha said
Even my law is a raft
Throw it away when you run out
Because if you think of the Dharma itself as the new object of attachment
You just replace one obsession with another.
You used to be obsessed with money
Now clinging to "emptiness"
The content of obsession has changed
But the obsession itself is still there
Then you haven't changed anything
And that's what I keep saying on this channel.
Everything I've been talking about.
Science too.
Buddhism is also good
Philosophy too
It's all rafts
Use it if you think it works
If it doesn't fit, let it go
Fashang Yingshe
Not to mention illegal
OK
Let's do a comprehensive review
If you sum up the more than 5,000 words of the < Diamond Sutra > in one sentence, what are they doing?
I would say: it trains you to distinguish between map and territory.
Your brain is a built-in mapping machine.
It's constantly making models of the world.
About their models, predictions about the future
And that's what it does.
You don't have to turn it off.
You can't live without a map.
But you need to always remember one thing: a map is not territory
Labels are not things
Models are not reality.
The story in your head
Not the truth.
When you truly internalize this knowledge
When you can capture every moment of emotion
The labeling.
Your world won't get any less
Will only get bigger
Because you are no longer held hostage by your own filters
You start to see that thing behind the filter.
The Ahan Sutra tells you
Your pain has a delicate mechanism that can be disassembled
The Diamond Sutra takes this mechanism a step further.
It tells you
The fuel that powers this whole mechanism
It's your naming system.
The things you think are true
It's all about labels.
It's not about ripping off all the labels.
I'm not asking you to turn off your brain.
It wants you to see
The moment the label is attached
You have left the truth
Enter the story
This is the difference between prajna and ordinary wisdom
Ordinary wisdom tells you, "Don't cling."
You nod your head.
Then continue to cling
Prajna doesn't tell you anything
It allows you to see for yourself how the attachment happens
Just like you don't have to convince yourself, "Don't be afraid of shadows."
You just have to turn around.
See what that thing casting a shadow is
Yes.
Fear disappears on its own.
So Prajna is not a theory that requires memory.
It's a visual ability that can be trained.
The act of seeing the label being attached
Prajna
The moment I saw it
You have already picked up the knife made of King Kong
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
What is the most stubborn "aspect" in your life?
It's the one you know it's just a label
But you just can't tear it off
Have you tried to look at it with the prajna formula?
So-called what
Not what
What is it?
You try to tell yourself once
See what happens.
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.