Syllabus

• Week 1

  Course introduction

  • Course introduction

    In this activity, you are going to watch the introductory video, read the articles that introduce the course and meet our lead educator, Dr Cheung Siu Nang Bruce.

  • Some key concepts of The Diamond Sutra

    In this activity, you are going to learn key concepts of The Diamond Sutra

• Week 2

  To attain Buddhahood in ‘day-to-day’ experiences

  • Introduction

    Part 1 Introduction

  • Section One: The Reason for the Dharma Assembly

    The Buddha lives in the world, which is no different from how people in general engage in daily life; there is nothing unusual about it.

  • Section Two: The Well-manifested Makes a Request

    Subhuti discovered that the Buddha ‘had such serenity and ease in his everyday life’; this was rare.

  • Section Three: The Orthodox Truth of The Great Vehicle

    The approach to subdue afflictions: There is nothing unusual about the attainment of Buddhahood, it is only to wipe away the differences between all living beings and the Tathagata (the Buddha)

  • Section Four: Marvelous Conduct without Attachment

    The Buddha’s life is like the sun shining upon the entire earth. That is ‘bestowing alms without any attachments’.

• Week 3

  The Unconditioned Phenomena are the heart of attaining Buddhahood

  • Introduction

    Part 1 Introduction

  • Section Five: Genuine Discernment of Suchness

    When one perceives the thirty-two marks of the Buddha, who wouldn’t start having desires and aspirations? The Buddha says ‘Everything with form is unreal’.

  • Section Six: True Faith is Rare

    If we ‘develop faith in these lines and accept them as embodying the Truth’, we will know the seeds which all buddhas sowed in us are beginning to wake up. We understand the Truth. We should not grasp at non-dharma.

  • Section Seven: Nothing Attained and Nothing Spoken

    The Unconditioned Truth is not speech or thinking, neither is it what is said or thought about. It transcends deliberate efforts and is being in communion with the life of the bigger self.

  • Section Eight: All Things Comply with Dharma

    The ‘scriptural dharma’ is the ‘dharma’ which can be heard (the four-lined verses), it cannot do without language. The four-lined verses are passed on to others through the sense of hearing. All buddhas arise from here.

• Week 4

  Four stages of Buddhahood and Adornment of the Pure Land

  • Introduction

    Part 1 Introduction

  • Section Nine: The One Form is No Form

    The four stages of liberation: (1) ‘Taking refuge’, (2) ‘The present moment and the growth in joy’, (3) ‘Karma is not a problem’, (4) ‘Everlasting samādhi’

  • Section Ten: Adornment of the Pure Land

    The adornment of the Pure Land is not a matter of form (phenomenon). This is contemplation on equality; ‘Bringing the existence of the world into the sacred experience of the original vow.’ This is contemplation on purity.

• Week 5

  From a person who ‘receives and holds four-lined verses’, to a buddha who ‘expounds the four-lined verses for to others’

  • Introduction

    Part 1 Introduction

  • Section Eleven: The Supremacy of Unconditioned Blessings

    The original life goal of all living beings is self-awakening (that they themselves are buddhas, and wish to save others); All men of virtue and sages are known as such on account of the Unconditioned Phenomena.

  • Section Twelve: Venerating the True Teaching

    Those who ‘widely disseminate the four-lined verses so that it will spread to all parts of the world’, should be ‘venerated just as if they were the Buddha’.

• Week 6

  The Unconditioned Phenomena is “The Vájra-cchedikā Prajñā-pāramitā”

  • Introduction

    Part 1 Introduction

  • Section Thirteen: Receiving and Holding the Dharma of Suchness

    This section summarise the ways of having “The Vájra-cchedikā Prajñā-pāramitā”

Who will you learn with?