The Diamond Sutra (Chin-Kang-Ching) or Prajna-Paramita

“Thou, of all souls the Soul!

The comprehending whole!”

In conversation with Chinese monks regarding the meaning of this impressive passage, we found that they invariably approved of a suggested rendering, that “Buddha is the One in whom all Laws become intelligible.”

41 Compare the observations made by Sir Edwin Arnold in his preface to The Song Celestial, regarding the date when that famous Brahmanic poem was composed; and the gentle indication that in its teaching may be found “echoes of the lessons of Galilee, and of the Syrian incarnation.”

42 An instructive exposition of this subject by J. Muir, Esq., entitled The Progress of the Vedic Religion towards Abstract Conceptions of the Deity, may be consulted in the Jour. R.A.S., 1864–65.

43 In colloquial Chinese there is a noteworthy saying, that “Buddha is simply a condition of mind.” This “condition of mind” is beautifully expressed by a “classic” couplet, which, rendered into English, means “as pure as the image of the moon in a river,” and “as lovely as the bloom of a flower in a mirror” (Shui-Li-Chï-Yüeh, Ching-Li-Chï-Wha).

44 Compare the beautifully expressed sentiment of Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, concerning “the One in whom all Laws are intelligibly comprehended.” “There is no poverty for him who hath Thee in his heart.” (See Life and Times of Akhnaton.)

45 Rhys Davids, when he expounded the doctrine of Karma in Buddhism, clearly indicated the Buddhist position, “that whatever a man reaps, that he must also have sown.” Chinese Buddhists appear to be assured, “that if a man reaps sorrow, disappointment, pain, he himself, and no other, must at some time have sown folly, error, sin; and if not in this life, then in some former birth. Where then, in the latter case, is the identity between him who sows and him who reaps? In that which alone remains when a man dies, and the constituent parts of the sentient being are dissolved; in the result, namely, of his action, speech, and thought, in his good or evil Karma (literally his ‘doing’) which does not die.”

46 In the concept Karma, Sakyamuni Buddha suggested the revealing of a moral cause which explained the otherwise insoluble riddle of the evident inequalities, and consequent sufferings of life.

47 Compare Buddhism.

48 “The much-canvassed Ritschlian doctrine of the Worth—or ‘value-judgments,’ in which the peculiarity of religious knowledge is supposed to lie.” For the introduction of the term into theology we are indebted to Herrmann, Die Religion, etc., and Kaftan, Das Wesen. See Orr’s, The Ritschlian Theology and The Evangelical Faith.

49 It may be observed in this English version of The Diamond Sutra, that the Chinese term Fuh, in deference to our Oriental friends, is invariably rendered “Lord Buddha”—a designation consonant with their concepts of devotion and piety.