Nguyen Du read the Diamond Sutra over and over, thousands of times, until he had the opportunity as Ambassador to make a trip to China. As he looked at Prince Luong’s stone terrace and its fading carved words, he lamented:

“Finally I understand that only wordless sutras are genuine teachings!”

(Chung tri vô tự thị chân kinh)

The ancients similarly attested: “We vow to understand the true meaning of the Tathagata’s teachings” (Nguyện giải Như Lai chân thật nghĩa).

Perhaps there is something … some secret here.

The Buddha said hat to discipline one’s mind, one must bring together countless types of beings – beings born from womb, from egg, from moisture or from transformation, beings with form or without forms, with perception of without perception, with neither perception nor non-perception… to the final extinction (of rebirth), to the Nirvana without exception. Then, although these countless, incalculable beings have been brought to extinction, in reality… no one been extinguished!

Up to now, we think that beings are animated things, inclusive of human beings, so if we bring every ‘being’ to extinction then whom are we left to live with? Some texts say that we must bring the totality of beings to extinction without pride on oneself, in so doing to achieve the magnanimous deed that is the way of a Bodhisattva.

Other texts have alluded to beings not as human beings or animated things but as thoughts, ideas, concepts!

To ordinary people as ourselves, the sentence “bring to extinction”, then moving toward Nirvana is somewhat terrifying! In fact, to bring people to extinction does not mean to kill them, but to bring them across the way to the other shores, i.e. to liberate them!

If we think it through, maybe the premise here is the word “being”. If we manage to decode it, we might perhaps open even the “Lost secrets of Martial Arts” (Càn khôn đại nã di tâm pháp) as Vô Kỵ (the knight errant of Kim Dung’s martial novels) did while he stayed in a deep crypt.