The oldest printed text
So listen to this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Diamond_Sutra
This is an exerpt from the Diamond Sutra printed in the 6th century. I chose this piece because, I always thought the Guttenberg Bible was the oldest printed work and now I find this and there’s probably older works that I’ve not yet become aware of. This strikes me on a number of levels. One is that my Western education had never alerted me to the existence of this document. Another is that most of the key texts that have survived the ages are of a religious nature. The third part of course is the message itself, that we need to unlearn what we think we know in order to find the truth.
