[HN Gopher] Five Things to Know About the Diamond Sutra, the Old...
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Five Things to Know About the Diamond Sutra, the Oldest Dated
Printed Book
Author : squircle
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-07-02 18:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| kragen wrote:
| the prc has recently enacted export control regulations to
| prevent strategic technologies from falling into the hands of
| geopolitical rivals such as the usa. among the first four items
| on the list, presumably included as a sort of joke, are
| papermaking techniques and movable type
|
| [my error, not movable type; see below]
| popcalc wrote:
| I'm trying to find a source for this.
| kragen wrote:
| apparently i misremembered; papermaking and ink are on the
| list, but not printing or movable type
|
| from
| http://images.mofcom.gov.cn/fms/202312/20231221153855374.pdf
|
| 4
|
| Zao Zhi He
|
| Zhi Zhi Pin
|
| Ye
|
| 082201J Zao Zhi Ji Zhu 1.Xuan Zhi De Sheng Chan Gong Yi
|
| 2.Qian An Shu Hua Zhi De Pei Fang Ji Sheng Chan Gong Yi
|
| also, item #6 is gunpowder; i think the chinese government
| wanted to remind the so-called west that all their wars have
| been fought with chinese technology for centuries
| yorwba wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the document is not directed at anyone in
| the West (big hint: it's not in English) but rather for
| internal consumption. Hence also listing traditional
| Chinese medicine, which is irrelevant for the West, even
| historically, but plays an important domestic propaganda
| role as an equal-opportunity competitor to "Western" (i.e.
| evidence-based) medicine.
|
| As for the technology used to fight wars, as early as the
| Ming dynasty, cannons were re-imported from Portugal
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongyipao . Technology
| transfer has rarely been a one-way street.
| kragen wrote:
| it's a law, not a press release; both are largely
| motivated by public relations, but the dynamics are very
| different. in particular none of china's laws are in
| english, as i imagine none of the laws of your country
| (nigeria?) are in chinese
|
| a lot of the particular traditional chinese medicines
| mentioned are not at all irrelevant to the west
| carld wrote:
| Full translated English text: https://diamond-sutra.com/read-the-
| diamond-sutra-here/
|
| My favorite passages:
|
| "This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this
| fleeting world:"
|
| "Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like
| a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an
| illusion, a phantom, or a dream."
|
| "So is all conditioned existence to be seen."
| ars wrote:
| What does "conditioned" mean in that sentence?
| mmoskal wrote:
| Everything that is experienced except for awareness itself.
| tgdude wrote:
| https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/dependent-
| originatio...
|
| Dependent origination (Skt: pratityasamutpada, Pali: paticca-
| samuppada) is also known as conditioned co-arising and
| several other terms. Buddhism teaches that everything that
| exists is conditioned--dependent on something else. This
| applies to thoughts as well as objects, to the individual as
| well as the entire universe. Nothing exists independently.
| Everything is conditioned.
|
| This concept is illustrated in the Buddhist teachings of the
| chain of dependent origination, which describes the factors
| that perpetuate the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The
| twelve links in the chain are sequential, each factor causing
| the following one: Because of this, that arises. When this
| ceases, that also ceases.
|
| The links form a never-ending cycle that binds us to
| suffering, and the goal of Buddhist practice is to escape
| from this vicious cycle. Though there is more than one
| version of the sequence of links, they commonly run this way:
|
| - Ignorance - Mental formations - Consciousness - Name and
| form - The senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and
| mind - Contact - Feeling - Craving - Clinging - Becoming -
| Birth - Aging and death
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Just to add to this excellent explanation - the specific
| Buddhist text being referenced here is the Vipassana Bhumi
| Patho from the Abhidhamma.
| andeee23 wrote:
| conditioned in buddhism refers to the fact that anything that
| exists, originates from something else.
|
| so any one thing you examine will be "conditioned" on the
| previous things that cause it to appear
|
| cause and effect basically
|
| this has some philosophical implications, since all you are
| as a person is a bundle of emotions, mental patterns, etc
| that are ultimately conditioned
|
| this leads to the buddhist view of no self, where there isn't
| something that makes you "you". just a bunch of responses to
| stimuli. some of those responses are thoughts of a self.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I think there's some minor controversy over whether it's the
| oldest printed book. There are some printed fragments of the
| Lotus sutra and Dharani sutra that might be 100+ years older.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Then its the oldest complete text. Fragments aren't themselves
| a book, just evidence of one.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| It seems it's a stretch to call it a book, as it's a scroll
| just 6,000 words long. Shorter than a journal article.
|
| The oldest complete dated document would seem better.
| MrLeap wrote:
| I love the Diamond Sutra. I read it every few years. To me, it's
| very funny. how can one read about all the absolutely galactic
| scale quantity of "merit" to be gained right next to explanations
| about the illusory nature of words without laughing?
|
| It's layered like an onion. One layer is meant to free people
| from illbeing. Another layer is for error correction codes and to
| make the message 'viral'. Another layer opened my eyes to
| incontrovertible truth about the noisy approximations and lossy
| signals that comprise the the human experience. So many layers
| read rather mystically at first, but you can always cut through
| it and find out it's not magic, it's really the way things are.
|
| From another angle, it's a blob of metadata around a packet that
| contains instructions to all sentient beings -- in my words:
| "Relax. Be compassionate to yourself and others. All barriers to
| compassion are illusions. Tell this to other people. If you need
| to reformat the content as a listicle to get through to grandma,
| that's cool."
|
| There's other angles. It's a fascinating document.
|
| I believe the massively intelligent person(s) who composed it had
| a sincere objective to help all life.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I never considered it as a text that attempts to show how
| quantity is always a _kind_ of quality, so no matter how much
| you do something, it won 't change how you exist in the world
| unless you change _how_ you do it. What people are really after
| with weed and psychedelics is that kind of qualitative change,
| especially at the level of consciousness. But with dependent
| origination, changing how _you_ in particular perceive the
| world does not actually change the world that _you_ are a part
| of, and therefore doesn 't lead to qualitative change of
| experience. What must be done, instead, is to change the world.
| True liberation is absolute.
| marmaduke wrote:
| I like your summary. I also like Alan Watts' comment, that the
| mind is like a diamond, totally transparent but also the
| hardest, durable aspect of our existence.
| johndhi wrote:
| Can't resist also suggesting to those interested, listening to
| Osho's discourses on the Diamond Sutra, available here:
| https://oshoworld.com/the-diamond-sutra-by-osho-01-11/
| elevaet wrote:
| > So you should view this fleeting world--
|
| > A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
|
| > A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
|
| > A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
|
| row row row your boat
|
| gently down the stream
|
| merrily merrily merrily merrily
|
| life is but a dream
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