INTRODUCTION

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The Sanskrit term Samgna original: Samjñā; in Buddhist philosophy, this refers to perception, the faculty of recognizing and labeling things, usually rendered into Chinese by Ming original: 名 (míng), meaning "Name", and into English by “Name,” seems to deserve our further attention. Like the term Dharma The cosmic law, truth, or the teachings of the Buddha, a clear knowledge of “Samgna” is indispensable for a correct understanding of our text.

In one of the opening passages of The Diamond Sutra, we find that Sakyamuni Buddha The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, in reply to an enquiry by Subhuti One of the Buddha's senior disciples, known for his deep understanding of "Emptiness", suggests that by means of this “wisdom,” enlightened disciples shall be enabled to bring into subjection every inordinate desire.

“Every species of life, whether hatched in the egg, formed in the womb, evolved from spawn, produced by metamorphosis, with or without form or intelligence, possessing or devoid of natural instinct—from these changeful conditions of being The text here transitions from a description of all living beings to the Buddhist goal of liberating them from the cycle of birth and death

before the minds of his disciples in the simile of a “raft”—a thing to be abandoned when the mind “touched the further shore” of everlasting truth. It seems to be in this tentative sense that intellectual Buddhists regard all ecclesiastical institutions, priesthoods, dogmas, ordinances, etc.; and we have met monks who would classify “belief in the ‘efficacy’ of religious rites or ceremonies” with obnoxious forms of “heresy” and “immorality.” (Compare Rhys Davids’ Buddhism T.W. Rhys Davids was a prominent 19th-century British scholar of the Pali language and founder of the Pali Text Society.) With regard to the Buddhist objection concerning the “efficacy” of religious “rites,” compare the noble sentiments expressed in the following lines, delightfully rendered by Sir Edwin Arnold from the Bhagavad-Gita A 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata (The Song Celestial):—

“Serenity of soul, benignity,
Sway of the silent spirit, constant stress
To sanctify the nature,—these things make
Good rite, and true religiousness of mind.”

1 Max Müller Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), a founder of the Western academic field of Indian studies suggests that Samgna and Dharma “correspond in many respects to the Vedantic Namarupe” original: Nāmarūpa, literally 'name and form,' referring to the mental and physical components of an individual ——in Chinese Ming-Seh original: 名色 (míng sè); Name and Form——name, form, or characteristic.