Master Kamalashila’s Commentary to The Diamond Cutter Sutra (Taichung, 2016)

This is a teaching that Geshe Michael recently gave in his hotel room in Taichung, Taiwan to a small group of people, representing more than 10 countries. This was a continuation of Master Kamalashila’s Commentary to The Diamond Cutter Sutra which he started teaching in Taipei a few days earlier.

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There are two famous commentaries to The Diamond Cutter Sutra that were written in Sanskrit in India.

This one by Master Kamalashila is one of them and was written around 750 A.D., the other was done by by Master Vasubandhu around 350 A.D.

Here’s what Geshe Michael had to say about the two surviving Sanskrit commentaries:

“We have two left — one by Kamalashila, who lived around 750 C.E., and the other by Vasubandhu, who lived some four hundred years before.  Kamalashila’s claim to fame was that he taught King Trisong Detsun of Tibet how to meditate properly by defeating the incorrect teaching of a Chinese monk in debate.”

“Kamalashila’s commentary is an intense treatise that uses the Sutra to explain some very difficult positions held by one of the five philosophical schools of Buddhism.”

Master Kamalashila was the renowned 8th century Indian scholar and abbot of Nalanda University

who was invited to teach in Tibet, and is probably best known for his classic text about meditation called The Steps of Meditation (Bhavanakrama in Sanskrit, Gompay Rimpa in Tibetan).  Many of you know Master Kamalshila because this famous text forms the basis for much of ACI Course 3 on Meditation. To view that course, please follow the link below:

The only known Tibetan commentary to The Diamond Cutter Sutra is called Sunlight on the Path to Freedom and was written by Chone Drakpa Shedrup (1675-1748). ACI Course 6 on The Diamond Cutter Sutra was based on this commentary. Chone Lama in turn based a lot of his commentary on Master Kamalashila’s earlier text written almost 1,000 years before.

To further your study of The Diamond Cutter and study Chone Lama’s commentary, please follow the links below: