Diamond Sutra

The Diamond Sūtra (Sanskrit:Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) is a Mahāyāna (Buddhist) sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or "Perfection of Wisdom" genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment. The Diamond sutra is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia, and is a key object of devotion and study in Zen Buddhism.

A copy of the Chinese version of Diamond Sūtra, found among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early 20th century by Aurel Stein, was dated back to May 11, 868. It is, in the words of the British Library, "the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book."

Title

The Sanskrit title for the sūtra is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, which may be translated roughly as the "Vajra Cutter Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra." In English, shortened forms such as Diamond Sūtra and Vajra Sūtra are common. The title relies on the power of the vajra (diamond or thunderbolt) to cut things as a metaphor for type of wisdom that cuts and shatters illusions to get to ultimate reality. The sutra is also called by the name Triśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (300 lines Perfection of Insight sutra).

Diamond (disambiguation)

Diamond is the hardest known natural material. Diamond may also refer to:

Other common meanings

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People

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond (/ˈdaɪəmənd/ or /ˈdaɪmənd/; from the ancient Greek ἀδάμας – adámas "unbreakable") is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at standard conditions. Diamond is renowned as a material with superlative physical qualities, most of which originate from the strong covalent bonding between its atoms. In particular, diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material. Those properties determine the major industrial application of diamond in cutting and polishing tools and the scientific applications in diamond knives and diamond anvil cells.

Because of its extremely rigid lattice, it can be contaminated by very few types of impurities, such as boron and nitrogen. Small amounts of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (lattice defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange or red. Diamond also has relatively high optical dispersion (ability to disperse light of different colors).

Imee Ooi

Imee Ooi (/ˈiːmiː ˈwuːiː/ EE-mee WOO-ee; Ch: 黃慧音, pinyin: Huáng Huìyīn) is a Chinese-Malaysian record producer, composer, and singer who composes and arranges music for classic Buddhist chant, mantra, and dharani. She performs her compositions in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Mandarin. In 1997 she founded a record label, I.M.M. Musicworks, to publish her music. To date, she has released more than 40 albums.

Ooi also composed and directed three highly acclaimed stage musicals: Siddhartha, Above Full Moon, and Princess Wen Cheng (aka Jewel of Tibet).

Biography

Ooi was born in Taiping, Malaysia to a musically-inclined Hoklo family. Her grandfather, who was a writer and dramatist, emigrated to Malaysia from Guangdong, China. Ooi's mother was a piano teacher; Imee and her four siblings all learned piano. Ooi continued her study of piano and trained as a classical pianist.

Ooi's Chinese name in Pinyin is Huáng Huìyīn (黃慧音), which is pronounced "Ng² Hui⁶ Im¹" in the Hokkien dialect.

Filmography