Diamond Sutra
Contents

Kalupahana explains the negation of the Diamond Sūtra by seeing an initial statement as an erroneous affirmation of substance or selfhood, which is then critiqued (" ' all dharmas' are dharmaless"), and then finally reconstructed ("that is why they are called 'all dharmas ' ") as being conventional and dependently originated. Kalupahana explains this final reconstruction as meaning: "that each concept, instead of either representing a unique entity or being an empty term, is a substitute for a human experience which is conditioned by a variety of factors. As such, it has pragmatic meaning and communicative power without being absolute in any way." According to Paul Harrison, the Diamond Sūtra ' s central argument here is that "all dharmas lack a self or essence, or to put it in other words, they have no core ontologically, they only appear to exist separately and independently by the power of conventional language, even though they are in fact dependently originated".
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