The Diamond Sutra

Videha’s review of Osho’s discourse series on one of the most famous and profound sutras of Buddha, the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, The Perfection of Wisdom That Cuts Like a Thunderbolt.

These discourses of Osho belong to the highest realizations, point to the deepest understandings and address the most advanced stages of the spiritual path and the evolution of awareness.

It is important to continue to grow and to let go more and more, even if sometimes strenuous, difficult, painful… because of our attachments. Osho invites and helps us to fly higher and higher, at the same time aware of our difficulties. To let us know how things are, naked and raw, is precisely the expression of the greatest compassion, whose sole purpose is our awakening.

Osho states, “Remember one thing: here I am speaking for so many people. They are different, their approaches are different. Sometimes it will fit with you, sometimes it may not fit with you. When it doesn’t fit you have to keep patience, because when it fits with you it will not fit with somebody else. He has to keep patience. I am speaking for many people – and not only am I speaking with you and for you, I am speaking for millions who are not here, to whom these words will reach.

Sometimes if you feel the thing is too difficult for you or unapproachable for you, be patient. Listen. Maybe your heart is not dancing, maybe it is higher or deeper than the heart. There are things of the head, there are things of the heart, and there are things which are beyond. This is of the beyond. And the beyond is very difficult. You know something of the head, you know something of the heart but you know nothing of the beyond.

But these words are rare. This Diamond Sutra is a diamond, the most valuable diamond that exists in the world literature. Nobody has spoken like that, nobody has taken such flights. But if you feel that you cannot fly so high, don’t close yourself. Make efforts. Even if you can go a little further than you can go right now, even if you can take a few steps towards the unknown, that will be enriching to you.” ¹

One of the things I feel most about Osho’s love and wisdom is his incredible ability to accompany us along all the phases, aspects and implications of our spiritual journey. Bringing us from an initial and necessary phase during which we acquire the first instruments of awareness towards our impulses, repressions, fears, in short, our unconscious, to a phase of crystallization, integrity and rooting, to then demolish every idea, every illusion, every certainty, every image of our self, including the so-called ‘spiritual’ or ‘meditative’ ones. Moreover, he shows us all the layers and ramifications of our infinite emotions.

Alternatively, it urges us to investigate the depths of our darkness, or makes us fly in the boundless skies of joy, to then reveal to us that everything, really everything, every experience and the one who creates all those experiences, are nothing but dreams, and that the only thing that has value is the awakening from the dream, howsoever beautiful and comfortable it might be. We live in a world, exterior and interior, which is only the fruit and creation of the projections of our mind and its interpretations. There is nothing objective, everything is subjective…

Osho says, “Buddha remains uncompromised, hence his purity. He does not care what you can understand, he cares only what the truth is. And he says it without being worried whether you understand it or not. In a way this looks hard; in another way this is great compassion.

Truth has to be said as it is. The moment you compromise, the moment you bring truth to the ordinary level of human consciousness, it loses its soul, it becomes superficial, it becomes a dead thing. You cannot bring truth to the level of human beings; human beings have to be led to the level of truth. That is Buddha’s great work.

[…] The Sanskrit name of this sutra is Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. It means perfection of wisdom which cuts like a thunderbolt. If you allow, Buddha can cut you like a thunderbolt. He can behead you. He can kill you and help you to be reborn.” ²

Some of the essential points of the Diamond Sutra are emptiness, the absence of self, non-attachment. Osho reminds us how the understanding of what is meant by emptiness is based on the experience and personal realization of impermanence. From here it follows the non-attachment to the external and inner phenomena, including to one’s own self, discovering that this too is only an ideation, the greatest illusion.

I believe that along our journey the personal realization of impermanence is the milestone that shows us that we have finally and truly entered the path of meditation.

With deep trust and infinite gratitude for Osho.

Review by Videha

Excerpts by Osho
¹ The Diamond Sutra, Ch 7
² The Diamond Sutra, Ch 1