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The Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra), "The Perfection of Wisdom Sutra that Cuts like a Thunderbolt," is a short Mahayana sutra of the prajnaparamita genre, which teaches the practice of the avoidance of abiding in extremes of mental attachment. Since it can be read in approximately forty minutes, it is often memorized and chanted in Buddhist monasteries. This sutra has retained a high degree of popularity in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition for over a millennium, especially in East Asia, and most importantly within the East Asian meditation (Chan/Seon/Zen/Thien) school, where it is recited, taught, and commented extensively, even today. One basic reason for its popularity is its brevity: the sūtra can be chanted in about forty minutes, which means that it also readily memorizable for the average person. More important, though, is the basic resonance of the text's message with a core aspect of Chan doctrine/praxis: the theme of "non-abiding."
There is a printed copy in the British Library which, although not the earliest example of block printing, is the earliest example which bears an actual date. It is dated as May 868 CE, and, in 1907 was found in a cave in Dunhuang.
The Diamond Sutra is the oldest dated printed book. It is a Perfection of Wisdom text, printed from wooden blocks. It was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in a walled-up cave near Dunhuang, in northwest China. The colophon, at the inner end, reads: Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11th May, AD 868]. This is about 587 years before the Gutenberg Bible.
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