The Third Diamond

This is the third book of The Triple Diamond Sutra. Even if you went to the trouble and expense of finding and buying a copy of the Triple Diamond Sutra, you would not find this book in it. There is a plan to eventually reissue the entire tome and include this work in it, but there is some uncertainty as to whether that mega-project will come to fruition any time soon. And so, for now, until that can be achieved, my compromise measure is to release this third book of The Triple Diamond Sutra so that all of the currently-known sections of the larger book are available separately on both Amazon as a paperback and on Smashwords as an ebook.The first book in this Nothing Holy trilogy is a volume called Tales of Zen Buddhist Scoundrels. This was later followed up by Tales of Slot Machine Bodhisattvas. And the two were combined to form the only available version of The Triple Diamond Sutra. However, none of these volumes contains a complete version of The Third Diamond, and so I present it here until the full three-volume project can be properly compiled and released.The "triple diamonds" are a metaphor for a cosmic slot machine where I envision hitting a karmic, financial and hedonistic jackpot of three diamonds in a row. (There is some literalism involved as well, as I try to make monthly pilgrimages to Lytton Casino in San Pablo California where, as it turns out, I tend to break even or make a small profit.) The symbolism employed in the title of the full work alludes to the original Diamond Sutra in Buddhist literature; the jackpot of money I wish I had but currently don't; and, of course, the jackpot of moderate vice, consisting of healthy doses of sex, alcohol, gambling and blasphemy - the whole "prescription," so to speak, being an offering to the fullness and authenticity of person we all aim for but which, alas, remains as illusive as a world of targets to a blind archer.