Customer Reviews

Buddhist Wisdom Books: The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra

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For anyone interested in Buddhism, Edward Conze's translation of the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra is essential reading. The text is very readable and Conze takes great care to explain the basic concepts necessary to understand the sutras. Only a rudimentary knowledge of Buddhist philosophy is required for an understanding of the text. The Diamond Sutra in particular has the capacity to transform one's view of the world as it explains how our relationship to language supports our delusional view of the phenomenal world.

The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra are two exceptionally profound Mahayana Buddhist texts that are by no means easy to understand. In attempting to read them it soon becomes apparent that the author or authors of these texts were scholastics thoroughly schooled in the intricacies of Indian Buddhist thought.

It also becomes clear that they must have been spiritual aristocrats, persons who had in fact achieved Enlightenment and who, though scholars, were writing from the point-of-view of the Enlightened. Given this, the texts present us with certain problems.

Edward Conze (1904-1979) has been called "the foremost Western scholar of the Prajnaparamita literature" and it seems to me that he has in this edition gone as far as it is possible for a scholar to go in explaining these difficult sutras to a modern audience. I also feel that his translations far surpass most others in their beauty.

Conze, however, although a brilliant linguist and scholar and one who had actually practiced meditation, tells us himself that he was never able to reach Enlightenment. In his edition, although he has certainly been able to help us penetrate the technical meaning of the sutras, their deep spiritual significance that only a truly Enlightened one could make us powerfully feel had to be left to another to convey.

I first acquired Conze's 'Buddhist Wisdom Books' many years ago, have always loved it, and have often returned to it. It is a magical book, but to fully bring out its magic requires a different kind of teacher, one who could breathe life into it simply because it reflected his own experience. Happily just such a teacher appeared recently.

I would strongly urge readers of these texts to watch Steven Norquist's SIG 2010 Conference Video Presentation on Enlightenment (stevennorquist.com). Norquist, who is the author of Haunted Universe: The True Knowledge of Enlightenment, nowhere mentions the sutras in his talk. He doesn't need to since he has experienced their truths for himself. But despite never once referring to the sutras, the story he recounts of his own experience adds a new and startling dimension of significance to them.

The sutras and Norquist are in fact complementary. Whereas the sutras will help you to better understand Norquist as a true Master, Norquist himself serves, albeit perhaps unwittingly, to open up the sutras for us in a way that a scholarly approach alone could never do. Personally I was blown away by how beautifully the sutras and Norquist dovetail and thereby serve to mutually illuminate each other. I think you may be blown away too.