Thus I have heard. Those words are the first of the Six Requirements. It is essential that all who lecture or read sutras be quite familiar with the Six Requirements which are: belief, hearing, time, host, place and audience.

1. Thus is the requirement of belief,

2. I have heard is the requirement of hearing,

3. At one time is the requirement of time,

4. The Buddha is the requirement of a host,

5. In Sravasti in the Jeta Grove of the Garden of the Benefactor of Orphans and the Solitary is the requirement of a place,

6. Together with a gathering of great bhikṣus, twelve hundred fifty in all is the requirement of an audience.

The six requirements prove that a sutra was spoken by the Buddha. Since the requirements begin every sutra, they are called the “Common Preface.” The text which immediately follows them varies with each sutra, and so it is called the “Specific Preface.” In this sutra the Specific Preface is:

“At that time, at mealtime, the World Honored One put on his robe, took up his bowl, and entered the great city of Sravasti to beg for food. After he had finished his sequential begging within the city, he returned, ate the food, put away his robe and bowl, washed his feet, arranged his seat, and sat down.”

The Common Preface is also called both the “Foreword” and the “Postscript.” When lecturing sutras one can discuss this section as a foreword to the sutra and also as a postscript appended at a later date….

The six requirements are called the Postscript because they were not part of the original sutra. The Buddha did not say “Thus I have heard…” That text was added afterwards by the Venerable Ananda when the sutra division was compiled. The Postscript is also called the Prologue. Therefore the six requirements may be called the Foreword, the Prologue, and the Postscript.

The Buddha Instructed that all sutras he spoke should begin with the four words “Thus I have heard…” Those who investigate Buddhist sutras should know the history of those four words.

Sūtras provide a road to travel in cultivation. Going from the road of birth and death to the road of no birth and death, the common person penetrates to sagehood – to Buddhahood. One who wishes to walk that road must rely on the dharma to cultivate. The dharma is in the sūtras.

The word sūtra has many meanings.

1. It is called “an emanation” because it comes from the Buddha’s mouth.
2. Sutra is also called “a bright revelation” because it can illumine the whole world with its light.
3. Sutra is also called “a constant” because it is a method which never changes. Whether in the past or in the present, the sutra remains the same. Not one word can be taken out, not one added. It neither increases nor decreases.
4. The sutra “strings together.” Like beads on a string, the principles of the Buddhadharma are linked together in the lines of the sutra from beginning to end.
5. The sutra “attracts” living beings in the same way that a magnet draws iron filings. Living beings drawn to the sūtras come to have a thorough understanding of the Buddhadharma.
6. The sūtra is a “method” of cultivation held in veneration by living beings in the past, present and future.
7. Sūtra is also called a “bubbling spring.” The principles flow from the sūtras like water from a bubbling spring which moistens the entire earth, causing all living beings to be filled with the joy of dharma and to obtain delightful dhyana food.

The complete title of the sūtra is the Vajra Prajña Paramita Sūtra.

Why does one need literary, contemplative, and real mark prajña? Sakyamuni Buddha spoke four lines of verse which those who study the Vajra Sūtra should regularly recite:

All conditioned phenomena
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows,
Like dew drops and a lightning flash:
Contemplate them thus.

Everything is conditioned phenomena. Eating, wearing clothes, walking, standing, sitting, lying down, running a business – all activities are conditioned phenomena. Those are examples of external conditioned phenomena. There are also the Five Skandhas – form, feeling, thought, activities, and consciousness – which are conditioned phenomena. The four principal elements – earth, water, fire and wind – are conditioned phenomena. The six roots, the six dusts, the twelve places, and the eighteen realms are all conditioned phenomena. All those phenomena, whether external or internal, are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows.

What is a dream? No one knows. If we knew then we would not dream. People are in a perpetual dream. When you fall asleep and dream, you are unaware of the things which exist in your ordinary waking state, and when you awaken from the dream, you usually cannot remember the events of the dream. In the same way, we are unable to remember the events of our former lives, because they have disappeared in this present life’s dream.

Someone may have a dream in which he becomes wealthy, is appointed an official, and is on the verge of becoming president, when suddenly someone else says to him, “Sir, you are actually having a dream.” But in the midst of his dream of riches and position, the person cannot believe what he is told.

“Everything that is happening to me is real,” he says, “I am wealthy, I am an official, I am a candidate for president. How can you say that I am dreaming?” However, when he awakens from his dream, he will know without being told that all those events happened in a dream.

So too we people are as if in a dream. Now I will tell you: this is a dream. Although I have told you, surely you will reply, “What do you mean, a dream? This is all real. These things are actually happening. How can you say it is a dream? You cheat people.”

When your cultivation is accomplished, you will awaken from this dream and know without being told that everything you did in the past was a dream. The reason you do not believe me when I tell you that you are dreaming is that you still have not awakened from your dream. When you awaken you will agree, “Yes, it was all a dream.” …

When you understand the Buddhadharma you know that everything is empty and illusory. The world is empty and illusory, realized from a conflux of conditions which only seem to be real. When you do not understand the Buddhadharma, you are like the child or the fool who considers everything to be real. This is not to belittle people! It is a simple fact. People who do not understand the Buddhadharma think that being wealthy is real and think that official positions actually exist. In actuality, everything is one. A person is the same whether he is rich or impoverished. If you understand that everything is empty and illusory, then you cannot be confused by anything. You will not become attached to unreal states.