Hello.
My name is Jayan Tashi and today in fulfillment of my Master's coursework final assignment
for a course on Master Huang Po, I will be reciting the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā
Sūtra.
The version of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra that I have chosen is preserved by
Lapis Lazuli Texts.
Many years ago around the time when my paternal grandfather Lim Keat Seng passed away, I had
actually emailed the webmaster of this particular Lapis Lazuli Texts project, and asked him
or her whether could I actually transcribe or preserve
these teachings in my preferred way.
The webmaster back then had approved this.
He told me that this is permissible because the website is in
the first place released under the Creative Commons 1.0 Universal License.
In other words it is being released in the public domain without any rights being claimed,
and how this website first of all came about is that the webmaster himself was inspired
by his own Dharma teacher who I remember approximately as the Venerable Nan (Huai) Chin.
In my case I am more of a Singaporean, so I have never been to Communist China in my
lifetime, even though I have been to nationalist China which is Taiwan, so in a way how Buddhism
is in China remains slightly fuzzy to me.
Yet we do recognise the fact that most of the Buddhist teachings which originated from
the Buddha i.e.
Gautama Buddha actually were transcribed and preserved in mainland China over the over
the centuries in the Qin dynasty, the Zhou, the Han Dynasty as well as the subsequent
dynasties.
My focus today is less about Chinese history, but it is a fact that as far as the sutras
had passed through China and then they became proliferated throughout even countries such
as Japan as well as parts of Southeast Asia including Vietnam, the scriptures today have
a slight research and academic relevance in parts of the Western world where there is
a pretty good number of academia as well as literati that are keen on having a look at
religions outside of the Western religions such as Christianity.
Essentially of all the scriptures that can be found in most of the major religions on
this planet Earth such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, these religions and
well as their major scriptures have already been translated in one way or another into
the International English language.
This Lapis Lazuli Texts project that you are seeing in front of me right now is actually
one that is also one of the many ongoing English sutras translation projects.
The translation project itself is something that is what I regard or what I was educated
as open canon.
In other words, in Buddhism - unlike certain religions that are mostly theist and there
is a major central teaching such as the Quranic Islam as well as the Bible (the New Testaments)
in Christianity - in Buddhism there is very seldom any major centrifugal teaching.
In other words the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra is just one of the many teachings by
the Buddha and it is not Universal in the sense that the teaching itself applies to
a certain group of people but not all the people on this planet Earth will benefit from
this scripture.
Since I am from ethnic Chinese stock the nature of this scripture has a profound impact on
me.
The Diamond Sutra which is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra was one of the first
scriptures that was popularized in mainland China where most Chinese actually hailed from.
In the Han Dynasty when writing first became available the Diamond Sutra which in Chinese
is known as 金剛般若波羅蜜經 is one of the first teachings that was printed on
wooden block and made mainstream.
It was also one of the first texts that the Chinese civilisation
actually propagated throughout the whole subcontinent.
Before the mass printing i.e. press came about in China, the nature of literacy in China
was mostly with bamboo strips.
In other words, they would carve during the Zhou Dynasty or even the Qin Dynasty.
They would actually carve writings on bamboo strips or even other forms.
In the Shang Dynasty, they used oracle bones, so words became more proliferate other than
oral teachings during this Han Dynasty.
From that point onwards after the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra was translated into
Chinese, published throughout China, other sutras started to become common and more Buddhavacana
also came about.
Today, even though China after the Communist revolution and cultural revolution has already
abandoned most of these religious teachings, I am still mindful of the fact that there
are still a substantial number of temples of a Buddhist lineage that still
practise actively in China except that they are not communicating in a manner that is
very socially engaged with the rest of the developed
world.
In other words, if you visit parts of China today whether from Luoyang, Chang'an till
Chengdu, or Yunnan, or even parts such as the coastal areas which can range from Beijing,
Nanjing, Shanghai, Fujian which is where the monastic Master Huang Po came from - he was
born in Fujian - these are the places in China where I am totally aware that are still a
variety of Mahayana Buddhist monasteries that are operational.
In other words, ever since the passing of Mao Zedong, over the years
Deng Xiaoping as well as other leaders - more modern leaders including Jiang Zemin and Xi
Jinping - took over, while Buddhism is still suppressed in large parts of China, it generally
is not a seen as a major track to the communist state.
In other words, with regard to press laws, the temples are still functional except that
they are operating mostly within the mainland China subcontinent instead of actually engaging
the rest of the world; and as a consequence because of this, there are a number of Western
literati.
They have translated some of these scriptures into English which is my primary language
as a Singaporean.
This example here is the Diamond Sutra.
I will be reciting this as a 10-minute discourse.
This is a very short scripture.
It's not the longest scripture in the world and along with this Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā
Sūtra, I have also started another project on the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, but because the
Śūraṅgama Sūtra is way longer than the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra,
the time that is required of me to just complete the recitation of one Śūraṅgama Sūtra
can help me recite almost all the documents that can be found in the Lapis Lazuli Texts
project.
Given that I have been allowed to to use these documents as they are, I shall now be reciting
the documents.
Yeap.
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