Note 18 — THE DIAMOND SUTRA

“The omniscience of Buddha is not the knowledge of all things, but the power of knowing whatever he wishes to know. In opposition to other teachers, who deduce their doctrines from certain previously assumed principles, and who may err either in the data, or in the deductions from them. Buddha affirms of himself that the complete field of truth is before him, that the eye of wisdom to perceive it was obtained by him when he became a Buddha; and whatever he desires to know he perceives perfectly, and at one glance, without any reasoning process.”—(Rev. D. J. Gogerly, in the Ceylon Friend. Quoted by R. Spence Hardy, in Eastern Monachism).