Edited text of a series of three lectures on the Heart Sutra given by Dr John Crook to the Bristol Chan Group in 1992
Part 1 - 4th November 1992
Introduction and Background to the Sutra
When the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita,
he perceived that all five skandas are empty,
thereby transcending all sufferings.
Sariputra, form is not other than emptiness
and emptiness not other than form.
Form is precisely emptiness
and emptiness precisely form.
The Heart Sutra is certainly the most important scripture in Zen. It summarises and captures some of the root notions which are fundamental to the teaching in Zen. The original versions are in Sanskrit. However it is well known to the Japanese, the Chinese and also to the Tibetans. It is not a scripture of the Southern school. It is a scripture of the second turning of the wheel of the Dharma when the Mahayana or Great Vehicle scriptures began to be produced. In fact the Heart Sutra is a summary of an enormous body of literature known as the Prajnaparamita Sutras.
There was at one time in India a tremendous number of scriptures which were written to try and convey the Great New Idea of the time. This was the heart of the Great Vehicle the Mahayana, namely, the voidness of absolutely everything. This was not just selflessness or the absence of self in the person or the mind but corresponding emptiness of the entire Cosmos. Few were able to understand this emptiness which does not mean nothingness. (Buddhism has never been nihilistic.) In these scriptures there was a presentation and exploration of this concept of emptiness and the practices associated with it.
The scriptures were collected together by the monks into a large book known as the Scripture of Great Wisdom. This was enormous and because it was really a packaging together of numerous repetitions it became completely incomprehensible. It was really used for chanting. Nobody actually understood it. After all, emptiness is a difficult thing!
The teachers decided that they had to capture the heart of this vast book and present it in a simple form everybody could understand. Hence the Heart Sutra came to be formulated as a summary of the essential issue. The other summary of a similar kind is known as the Diamond Sutra which comes from a different text but is exploring the same issues.
This literature, the Prajnaparamita, eventually became the subject of extensive philosophical criticism. There was a school of logic which eventually gave rise to the next phase of philosophical criticism, namely the Madhyamaka and Cittamatra schools. These both have their roots back in the Prajnaparamita sutra from which the Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra are the brilliant crystallisations.
But what does the Sutra actually refer to? The versions that we have in Zen are very short ones, the Tibetan one is considerably longer. The Tibetan version gives much more of the content of the original idea. There is an opening statement which sets the scene. The Buddha has gathered all his disciples together on the top of the Vulture Peak mountain, which still exists in India today. They were not only ordinary people, but Brahmins, warriors, monks, Kings and important people of the time. Also strange spirit like creatures, gandharvas and mysterious powerful protectors, mythical beings and dragons. They are described in the Tibetan Scriptures in loving detail. They were all on the mountain waiting for the Buddha to speak. But the Buddha was in deep, deep contemplation. Throughout the sutra he says absolutely nothing. A little character called Sariputra is the one who says "Hey! Can anyone tell me how to practise? How can I practice the Great Wisdom Teachings?" Of course, this is a literary device to produce an answer. The Buddha, however, continues in his profound contemplation and meditation and it is left to the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara to give an answer.
Here we need to pause a little bit and look in to the background of these writings. The character of this sutra is mythical. In the earlier stories of the Pali school of Southern Buddhism the stories are of remembered events, they are historical and probably close to what actually happened. But the Prajnaparamita Sutras were written several hundred years after the death of the Buddha and are re-inventions. In the Heart Sutra, this idea of a great gathering is being used as a device to present the philosophy and the teaching. Furthermore, Avalokitesvara was not a person. He is a projection of a particular quality of Buddhahood. One of the interesting things that happened over the hundreds of years after the Buddha's death was the shift to the personification of Buddha quality. For example one of the Buddha's qualities is kindliness, so people began to think of a particular Buddha of kindliness. Many Buddhas begin to appear in the literature who are not historical Buddhas at all but are ideas, such as the Shining One, Resplendent Beauty, and Glorious Insight and Great Wisdom. Some of the scriptures of this period refer to gatherings which are just many names referring to psychological qualities. The most important are the Bodhisattvas or the Buddha's sons, Wisdom Beings who provided the teachings.
Avalokitesvara is a condensation of the idea of compassion or of kindliness. This function of the Bodhisattva is hidden in his name, Avalokitesvara. Isvara is one of the titles of Shiva, it means Great Lord. Avalo is a Sanskrit word meaning the One Who Looks Down. This can be interpreted as the mother who looks down at her nursing child or as one who looks down from a high place and sees the suffering of the world and the impossibility of saving everyone. Because he has vowed not to become a Buddha until everyone is saved it also means that he has no hope of ever becoming a Buddha and a tear drops from his eye. Of course this becomes the feminine Tara. These Sanskrit stories are full of a wonderfully rich tapestry of myth making.
In this story up on the Vulture Mountain, Avalokitesvara is sitting and he takes compassion on Sariputra. This is described in the Sanskrit version which has been translated into Tibetan. The Chinese version starts off with the opening lines and the reply. Even the question is not given in this Zen version of the Heart Sutra. Sariputra had asked "How can we practice?" It is the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara who answers. Incidentally, this tradition of question and answer still happens today and it happened to me when I was in Hong Kong. On Lan Tao island there is a Buddhist monastery. I visited about two years ago and went to see the Master at the end of the Retreat. His name is Sun Yap. He is a very attractive dynamic old man. I asked him about method. "Ha!" he said, Method!" as if it was a dirty word. Then he pointed to a scripture hung on the wall and said, "That". That was translated as "Heart Sutra". I then asked "How?" He pointed to another scripture hanging on the opposite wall. This translated as "What is IT?" So the tradition of asking a question and being given the Heart Sutra still exists today.
The Heart Sutra is crystal clear, that is IT. How to Practice. Why didn't the Buddha answer? He just provides presence. It is almost as if at this stage in the development of Buddhism the notion has developed of the Buddha as a Cosmic Buddha rather than a human mind. This was a move to experiencing the Buddha as a Cosmic Mind rather than a natural human teacher.
Now, what was Avalokitesvara doing when he was asked the question? He was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita. What is this coursing in the Prajnaparamita? This translation is by the scholar Konzai and the word coursing suggests someone dynamic, coursing like a greyhound, or flying. The translation from Throssle Hole says, "When one with deepest wisdom of the heart that is beyond discriminative thought, the Holy Lord Great Kanzion Bosattva knew that the Skandhas five were, as they are in their self nature, void, unstained and clean". To understand the Heart Sutra we have to understand that the answer we are given is coming from a person with a very particular experience, that of "oneness with the deepest wisdom of the heart which is beyond all thought".
The word Prajnaparamita comes through in its Sanskrit form. This means "Perfection of insight", the highest, clearest, most straightforward or most important insight. This word insight does not just refer to an intellectual insight like the solving of a mathematical equation. It is not to do with words. This is explicit in Roshi Kennets version which says "Deepest wisdom of the heart which is beyond discriminative thought". In other contexts the word Prajna means no thought, something which is insight. The word is supremely important. The two great principals of Mahayana are Prajna and Karuna. Karuna means compassion and Prajna means insight. In practising Buddhism, the two most important ways to proceed are in the practising of insight (Prajna) and of compassion (Karuna).
Avalokitesvara was experiencing this insight. As practitioners we need to capture in ourselves what this implies and what it means. An insight which is beyond all discriminative thought is like an "Ah Ha!" experience. One in which you suddenly see something - "Ah, it's SO!" If you think about it, the moment when this something strikes has no content. If you capture the moment of "Ha!", in that moment there is wordless insight. Of course you then go on to think about it and put it into words. It's like someone saying to you "Do you see that bird over there?" You look and you look in the trees and can't find it. Then suddenly, you do - and it's "Ah! There it is after all". Again if you capture the moment of realisation when you see through the camouflage, it is not discriminative thought, it is recognition. This insight has a quality of recognition. But what is being recognised? Well the scripture tells us. "When the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita, he perceived that all five skandhas are empty".
What is meant by the Skandhas? The skandhas have been talked about in Buddhism since the days of the Buddha. In the Pali scriptures they are talked about as the Kandhas. They were the Buddha's description of the nature of the mind. He said that the human mind is made up of five parts. Sensation, perception, volition, the samskaras and consciousness. Sensation is like touch. Perception is knowing that you have been touched. It is a clarification of what something is. For example you know that a noise is a cuckoo calling rather than a cuckoo clock. Volition is willing or wanting or craving or needing. The samskaras are the predispositions which make all of us different, our complexes and the karmic residues of our personal past. Finally consciousness is what makes us aware of all these processes. These five words are a total description of the nature of the mind, a model of the way the mind works.
In the early scriptures of the Buddha, contemplation of the mind is very important. Avalokitesvara's practice comes from the early writings. What he perceives, is that the Skandhas are empty. Coursing in the deep insight means that in the period before the question was asked here is one who is in a profound meditation on the nature of the mind. He has pressed that meditation to such a point that he has complete insight into it and this reveals the emptiness of the mind. We are talking about meditation practice. The answer comes straight from that meditation from the "Coursing in the great Prajnaparamita". Most of the middle part of the Sutra is a direct explanation, in language, of what Avalokitesvara was experiencing in his practice, before the question was asked.
We now have to try and get some notion of what it is like to be in a profound state of meditation which has been pressed so far that you perceive that your mind is empty. We could try to do that with one or two simple exercises, not that we can find out what the Prajnaparamita actually is but we may be able to generate a simulacrum of it. This is a traditional teaching especially with the Tibetans, setting up a psychological trick which makes you think "Ah! I see". But then they say, "Well you haven't actually seen it because that takes another fifteen years of practice!" But by doing this exercise you can see the kind of direction in which you can move and think about it. The hook we have to get ourselves off is that insight has got anything to do with the intellect or discriminative thought, even though the language suggests that.
Here is the exercise which is derived from Douglas Harding.
Let's look at something in front of us, here for example the Buddha. Just sit comfortably and look at the Buddha. Don't do anything else such as think "What is coming next" just LOOK.
Now ask the question, "Where is what I am looking at?"
Now if you ponder you will find that you are inclined to say "well it's a few yards in front of me", or you may say "well it must be in my head somewhere". In other words, is it there, or is it in my head, or is it neither. And then you say "well what is my experience of where it is?" Now if you are thinking it is over there, you are experiencing it over there. But if you are experiencing it as being in your head, it gives a different kind of feeling. Your experience of looking at the object is shaped by the constructs you impose upon it. So it is not so simple.
As one goes in to the issue of where it is, it is not so clear because in actual experience, not in terms of thinking, you can't really tell.
Now stay looking at the Buddha. It appears that there is a something out there. It has got a certain shape and colour and size. You seem to be at the opposite end from what you are looking at. In other words if you were the Buddha who was looking back at you, you would see your face. But it isn't your face that is looking. It is something behind your face which is looking at the Buddha.
Can you experience that which is behind your face? Go slowly into this.
Take your time and then you can ask yourself the question, "That which is the other side of the room has shape, but does that which is behind my face have shape? Look to see, don't discuss it in your head. Place your awareness at the place where you are looking out from. Is there anything there which has shape?
That which is on the other side of the room has a certain colour. That which is behind your face, does it have any colour?
That which is in front of you has a certain size. That which is behind your face, does it have any size?
In fact is there any word at all that you can use to describe that which is behind your face from the locus out of which you are gazing? Indeed, has that locus even got any place in actual experience, not in logical inference?
Now if you follow along, what do you find in that place? Is there a word? Void? Silence? Spaciousness? Nothing at all-ness? Emptiness? At this point we have to be very careful for all this is manifesting. We can turn on the language again and find sensation, perception, volition and consciousness. All these words do have a meaning. There must be some kind of situation of interdependence between these words and this curious business that when I actually start looking at them I can't find them. Something very strange happens here when words are only names. When you look at the place where the names should be, you don't find them. So when you say the mind is empty you're not saying there is nothing there but that it is empty of what the names would seem to say is there, the descriptions are not it.
You must imagine that Avalokitesvara was sitting and had turned his gaze inward to the spot out of which his normal visible attributes from other people would have been manifested. If he turned his gaze back to that spot and if he applied his discriminative intellect he would say, "Ah yes, there is some sensation. Ah yes, there is perception too. Ah yes, and some volition. Ah yes, there is consciousness. And also, there is a certain predisposition there too. How interesting! But if I actually look at it, at that place where all these things manifest, do I find it?
Imagine that Avalokitesvara has taken up as his practice the nature of the mind. This can be a form of Koan. What is the mind?" As a skilled practitioner he wouldn't be asking himself from the intellect, he would be looking directly into IT. He would find emptiness.
A sensation comes in one ear. "Can anyone tell me how to practice Great Wisdom?"
"Form is emptiness and emptiness is form" is what comes instantly from such a meditator.
Part 2 - 18th November 1992
The Sutra now continues:
"Form is precisely emptiness
And emptiness precisely form.
So also are sensation, perception, volition and consciousness;
Sariputra, this voidness of all dharmas is not born, not destroyed,
Not impure, not pure, does not increase nor decrease.
In voidness there is no form
And no sensation, perception, volition or consciousness,
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,
No sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought,
There is no realm of the eye
All the way up to no realm of mental cognition.
There is no ignorance and no ending of ignorance.
There is no ageing and death and no ending of ageing and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no cessation of suffering and no path.
There is no wisdom or any attainment".
Here we have the pivotal message of the "Second Turning of the Wheel of the Law", the doctrine of emptiness as the central feature of the Mahayana. Yet when we examine the way the idea is presented we find the language used belongs at first to the older vision, the philosophical doctrine of the Theravada. Scholars who have studied the text carefully suggest that it was assembled from the huge Prajnaparamita literature during a transitional period in the history of Buddhism when a fresh emphasis was gradually extending the ideas of the original view. The difference lies in the wider scope and greater range of perspective. Let us see how this happens.
The main ideas of the early doctrine go right back to the first sermon when the Buddha spoke to his yogin friends in the Deer Park at Benares. The Buddha expressed his new found understanding, his enlightenment, very simply in the Four Noble Truths, that life is suffering, that suffering is due to craving, that craving can end and that the way is eightfold in method.
The word translated as craving means any kind of wanting, either wanting something you have not got, or not wanting something which you have. Either way it is the movement of desire or rejection which is the root of the lack of ease. Clearly the Buddha is speaking primarily about mental suffering, about attitudes we hold which cause us distress. He is not talking about the pain of a broken leg, but rather the attitudes towards a broken leg which can make a great deal of difference to the manner in which we cope with an accident. He speaks of the mental approaches to life and not some magical or idealistic idea which will stop a broken leg from hurting.
If you find that you are suffering the Buddha recommends that you look into your own mind to see what it is doing with the problem. Instead of evoking some state of passionless trance or samadhi the Buddha recommended his own method of Vipassana. This method requires a practitioner to look directly at the processes of his own thought and feeling without denying them. One has to ask the question "What is going on here?" and then explore it fully by letting thought and feeling express itself within an acute awareness of process.
What do you find? Well, you find sensations, ideas, wants and consciousness. You also realise that all this is situated in the form that is your physical presence. These features are known as the five 'skandhas'. All mental phenomena are structured in this way. Whenever you look into your mind you will find them.
Furthermore they are based in the operations of the eye, ear, nose, sense of touch and awareness and the mental corollaries of these physical systems. You also become aware that these systems get old, wear out and die. At the centre of all this activity is your sense of your "own being", your self, ego or I. This is the Buddha's model of the mind described in detail in the scriptures of the Theravada known as Abhidharma.
But the Buddha also said that such processes of knowing, wanting and rejecting, all centred on the presence of a self, are in a special sense quite illusory. These are the terms you come up with when you set out to analyse and describe the way the mind works. Where is the self? Is it the totality of the body? Is it in the body at all? What is its relation to the body? As you read this - try to find it. Paradoxically while you will have little doubt about the fact of your existence, the precise location or mode of being of what you appear to be is very far from obvious. Similarly, if you seek to locate the roots of experience whether of sensation, volition, thought or awareness you again find yourself tumbling into an absence of certainty, into a great doubt. Such processes are easy to name but when you seek to locate or find them, or observe from where they arise, there is more of an absence than a presence. It is as if these words don't refer to things but to merely transient states the objectivity of which is highly illusory.
The Buddha said that all these words simply isolate aspects of a process of interdependent origination ('pratityasamutpada'); where the mind is so are all of they. But where is the mind? It too is in an interdependent relationship of inner and outer, of before and after, of now-ness and then-ness. Nothing in fact can be pinned down. There is at root just a great flowing together. Furthermore, in meditation these processes flow apart in ways that differ from everyday minding. There are alternative ways of seeing things. Indeed what are things? Are they out there or in the mind, part in or part out? Can one actually say?
The Buddha said that all these processes lacked objectivity as things with intrinsic selfhood. They were empty of "inherent existence", rather their being had the nature of flow which only appeared partible through the activity of a discriminatory mind. Self was therefore "empty" and, since that was so, to be attached to it as if it were a thing was to be in great ignorance. In fact, this was the root of all illusion and suffering. Meditation on this allows one to drop attachment, drop the illusory projection of objectivity and enter a world of revelatory freedom. Words are names and, as modern thinkers might say, we tend to live within our texts and not within truth itself. To let go of the assumptions of the worldly illusion, ('samsara') is to find the freedom of 'nirvana' where all texts themselves are dropped.
If you are not here what is there to fuss about? Of course the world remains in itself, ineffably so. There is sensation, form and process and it is beautiful. Why do you want more? Or want it to be otherwise? This is how things are. There is no need to crave or reject because there is nothing substantial to crave or want.
The essential feature of this approach is to realise that it is based in meditation. Thought can raise innumerable objections and create endless metaphysical speculation. The Buddha is speaking out of his enlightenment. He is sharing it, transmitting it. To receive it one has to follow the same path. Philosophically the idea of "self" is a "category error". Self is simply not the sort of thing it seems to be. Meditation is essential to realise this existentially. At some point there is an "Ah ha!" experience. "So that's it" you will say. You have dropped a concept and seen a freedom. These are first steps on the path leading to a place where your view of self as entity itself also falls away.
In the "Second Turning of the Wheel of the Law" these ideas were pressed further. In the traditional view, the Buddha himself taught this extension to certain disciples who were ready for it. Some scholars in fact believe there was a minority belief among certain practitioners which always held the new view. Others think there was a gradual revision of the original insight.
The idea of emptiness came to be focused not only on psychological phenomena but applied to all phenomena of any sort anywhere. Whereas the Buddha's first approach had been psychological and had shown how the individual could go beyond self limitation, the notion of everything as empty now expands and expands until everything you can think of, the vast cosmos itself is seen as Vast Emptiness. Vastness unlimited, unbounded spaciousness, timeless presence.
Do you catch the idea? Imagine the space through which the universe has expanded since the Big Bang. Physicists say one cannot really talk of this in terms of space or time at all since neither of these had existence before the primal explosion. There is eternity, an endless present moment; an imagined vastness.
This is the root of the Mahayana. So also, however, is the opposite realisation. If all form is precisely emptiness, emptiness nonetheless appears to us as form. Form is precisely emptiness but emptiness also is precisely form. Samsara and Nirvana are contrasting perspectives on the Unknown Nature that lies behind it all. The vision of the Mahayana is that both are true in a co-emergent mutuality which becomes the focus of meditation itself.
In the older vision the ending of self cherishing led to the realisation of the Arhat - one who had gone beyond and disappeared without a care. In the new view no-one has disappeared. The market place is still full of the goods and contending merchants. The sadness of the ignorance, the horror of war, abuse, crime and the knot tied by visions of self importance or fearful insignificance appear again as real; an illusory vision maybe but one that inspires an appropriate compassion. The new idea is the Bodhisattva, one who seeks enlightenment only so as to assist others to enlightenment themselves. How can others be helped along the path? This is the way of the Bodhisattva. Paradoxically this way has no path as such, no resolution as such, no wisdom inheres within it. Suffering is empty yet never ceases. There is no attainment. There is however the activity of the Bodhisattva functioning within the dual insight that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. In the co-emergent vision the Bodhisattva knows nothing - yet through his being he seeks to transform the world.
How do we comprehend this? What is our starting point here? Take pain. Look into it closely. In meditation place your awareness on your aching knee, the itch on your cheek or your backache. If you can sustain a disinterested awareness it changes its apparent nature. Instead of pain to be rejected or escaped it changes to mere sensation, neutral. If you just feel it to be so the discomfort slowly disappears. Finally it moves on and something else appears. What then did the word 'pain' mean?. Zen masters are not very sympathetic if you have a backache in meditation on retreat. "Put your mind in it!" they may say. Change may take time but mostly you suddenly find yourself free and realise the extent to which your own fear of pain was creating it. (Of course this practice is not appropriate in cases of actual medical problems).
Now look at form. Is your body really here. If so in what manner? Shut your eyes and where is it? All this has to be gone into. "You" may entirely disappear and instead of your body on the cushion there may be a mere awareness of presence. A presence of what?
Now look at the Universe in all its multiplicity. What happens if you persist with the Koan "What is it?".
If we look at volition, our wants and rejections, we find they are structured by ideas which we project upon our world. These projections are called "samskaras". They are the product of our education, relations with parents, karma rolling down through centuries. We conceive things in highly patterned ways in which our presuppositions create only apparent realities. In modern psychotherapies these are the sources of neurosis, fixed attributions the illusory nature of which we have not seen. You believe you should be seen as famous or beautiful yet you are not so perceived. Trouble for everyone, pride, jealousy and paranoia, fear that one may not be what one has cracked oneself up to be. It turns out that it is very difficult to think differently, to change these deeply emotionally rooted, presuppositions. Some such 'samskaras' have dreadful consequences. They produce prejudice and ethnic cleansing of all sorts be they in Serbia, Tibet under Chinese domination or the paranoid Muslim fear of Salman Rushdie (he might be right and that must never be allowed).
In what sense are these 'samskaras' empty? If you examine your own prejudices and biases in deep meditation you will find out. Just as pain dissolves when examined with a meditative mind so too do the 'samskaras' weaken their hold upon our attitudes. Prejudice dissolves in meditation as the self becomes freed of selfishness. Pre-conceptions drop away. Others are seen just as they are, as deluded as you are. In the same boat. Compassion has a chance to emerge in the mind.
As meditators you need to examine your own 'samskaras' and work with them. Let them appear in full force and do not shrink from them. Then go into them, examine their bases. How can we test that they are empty?.
The purpose of the Western Zen Retreat is to allow your personal 'samskaras' to arise in the communication exercise. Working with "Who am I?" your judgemental nature appears undeniably. After multiple evasions and excuses you have to admit who you are. Gradually it all appears less dreadful. As you realise this is just the way you think, so you realise it is possible to think differently.
But something else is going on. In meditation the mind is much calmer and more insightful. You reach the point of realising that your whole self conception and that of others is a rigmarole of the imagination. You may reach a point where you simply give it up. You drop it. And, as it disappears, you realise your mind is suddenly cool, clear and empty of discrimination that leads to prejudice. You see others just as they are, as you are. And giving up the self you can understand Shih fu when he says "Let the Universe do it". You are no different from the Universe.
When the mind lets it all go, becoming still and quiet you may find there is no sensation of time, no fixity in space. There is a sort of cosmic reference, no longer walls, boundaries, horizons. The clock ticks but where is the ticking? It no longer advances in time, it goes backwards and forwards. Momentless presence, eternity. Eternity itself never moves. Have you ever moved?
If you have touched the Eternal you will know there is no wisdom, no attainment, no path. There is the fullness you cannot express. Beyond its limitations the mind can only find the ineffable. What began as a mountain is no more a mountain, but then it is simply the mountain again. What was said can no longer be said, but then it is said again. The text is empty but outside of being it is all we have. The text of the Sutra moves on. "With nothing to attain, the Bodhisattvas relying on insight have no obstruction in their minds. And having no confusion and imaginings they reach ultimate Nirvana". Afterwards the Bodhisattva will go into the kitchen and prepare for you just another cup of tea. Earl Grey or Peppermint perhaps?
Part 3 - 25th November 1992
The Sutra ends with the following words:
With nothing to attain
Bodhisattvas relying on Prajnaparamita
have no obstructions in their minds.
Having no obstructions there is no fear
and departing far from confusion and imaginings,
they reach ultimate Nirvana.
All past, present and future Buddhas
relying on Prajnaparamita
attain Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi.
Therefore, know that the Prajnaparamita
is the great mantra of power,
the great mantra of wisdom,
the supreme mantra,
the unequalled mantra
which is able to remove all sufferings.
It is real not false.
Therefore recite the mantra of
Prajnaparamita:
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.
An alternative translation is given by Roshi Kennet in her metrical rendition from the Japanese.
In the mind
of the Bosatsu who is truly one
with Wisdom Great there are no obstacles
and going on beyond this human mind
he is Nirvana. All the Buddhas True
of present, past and future, they are all,
because upon Great Wisdom they rely,
the perfect and most high enlightenment.
The Prajnaparamita one should know
to be the greatest mantra of them all.
The highest and most peerless mantra too
Allayer of all pain Great Wisdom is.
It is the very truth no falsehood here.
This is the mantra of Great Wisdom, hear!
Buddha, going going going on, going on
beyond, and always going on beyond,
always becoming Buddha. Hail Hail Hail!
In our two preceding talks we have seen that the Sutra expresses the Mahayana vision of ultimate emptiness. Not only are all the attributes of mind perceived as empty but the whole cosmos and all its components, the dharmas, are seen as empty too. The awakening to emptiness is the heartfelt realisation that no thing stands by itself with an inherent existence or solitary independent selfhood. Emptiness means that apparent things are empty of their thingness. Everything is in intimate relationship with everything else. There is a continuous flux of time and space in which all appearances flow in interdependent origination. "Form is precisely emptiness and emptiness is precisely form". This fluidity of process is itself empty and the ultimate process hidden beyond our understanding: it is ineffable, and experientially void. Yet, here the things are, right before our eyes, ears and under our fingers.
The flux of time appears to us as it does because our sense organs are structured to see them as we do. Birds, bees and bats do it differently, Their sense organs represent the objects of awareness to them in other modes than our own. These various interpretations of our universe allow differing sentient beings to find food, companions, objects and experience in their own ways. Emptiness thus is forms; forms are how emptiness is expressed in sentience.
There is then an emergence together of form and emptiness. Both present themselves together to our minds. The great Tibetan Teacher, Tsong kha pa, remarks that this two sided vision is one of the most difficult realisations a Buddhist practitioner needs to comprehend. Yet, once the insight is seen, liberation from the attachment to things as such more easily arises.
As we deepen this perspective, we begin to see that there can be no separation between ignorance and insight, time and space, ageing and death or cessation of ageing and death and indeed, amazingly, no path, no wisdom or any attainment. All such words arise from the reifications whereby we dissect out experience into parts and events, creating a thingness of things where insight reveals an uninterrupted flow. When this is perceived one suddenly sees that there can be no attachment because there is actually nothing at all as a thing to be attached to. And with all attainments and paths seen as illusory there can be no loss or gain and therefore no fear, anxiety or worried concern. The mind, normally confused and troubled by such things, thus becomes free of them. There are no obstructions, only a great clarity. This clarity, in which all basis for attachments has been blown away, is called Nirvana.
The realisation requires meditative insight for the words alone can only convince intellectually, if at all. In meditation, a focus on any thing leads to its dissolution. Insight becomes curiously empty, vast spaciousness, vastness itself, unlimited. Names are no longer realities, just names. Namelessly the Universe unfolds.
And in this experience is a joy that comes from a release into freedom and a bliss that arises from gratitude. The three deep experiences of the Buddhist practitioner are emptiness, joy and bliss from which love and compassion arise as s/he contemplates the world in its encaging worldliness, a world to which we all return.
Those who have not had such a realisation should not dismiss its reality nor doubt their own potential. One practitioner at the Maenllywd was working on a koan during a Western Zen Retreat. Suddenly the meaning of the entire Heart Sutra became apparent as a single all embracing insight. He was overwhelmed in tears of joy. Later his realisation was acknowledged by Shih fu for he was so blessed as to be able to activate such insight again and again. For most of us such insights are mere glimpses highly tinged with emotion. We quickly become attached to them and want more. A depth of insight into emptiness has not yet materialised and ideas of attainment, path and goal still pester the mind.
We all have predispositions to create complex scenarios of attachment based on early experience. These samskaras arise because from the very beginning we attribute thingness to things and see them as objects for desire or rejection. Maybe the pattern of receiving mother's breast and the denial of it began the setting up structures of desire and satiation. These become more complex as circumstances unroll throughout life, the never ending elaboration of karma.
In Chan practice the samskaras make their appearance in the wandering of thought and emotion as we sit upon the cushion. Often we are warned about allowing the elaboration of wandering thought but, actually, once the mind has quietened down, much of it can be simply seen as clouds wandering across a sky. They come and go, we can learn to detach from them. This is cultivation in practice and it facilitates the possibilities of insight.
One Samskara in particular lies at the root of wanting and this includes the wanting of enlightenment experiences. This is the "thought that confers the I". If you watch your experience closely you will come to see that the emotional tone of your being is greatly determined by whether this "thought conferring I" is present or not.
To take a gross example, you may be having a jolly conversation when someone makes a remark that is a little critical of you . Immediately you feel the sensation we call "hurt". The remark has triggered your "thought which confers an I", your ego, and you respond defensively as if you were a fortress to be guarded. More subtly, you may be gently cruising on your cushion in a state of mild bliss and a seductive voice starts congratulating you. "Ah, this is it! Any moment now and its anuttara samyak sambodhi for me". Oh sad error. As nothing special happens, disillusionment spreads. Do we learn from this? Usually not. The "thought conferring I" is very deeply hidden.
To observe that it is this thought, almost alone of all thoughts, that is one's own deepest enemy requires persistence in self examination. And also humility, for we are unlikely to dispose of it once and for all merely because of recognition. Yet recognition is the beginning of wisdom. When we set aside this thought, other thoughts are rarely troublesome. In fact, since thought is natural to the moving mind, thoughts can become inspirational and the instruments of wisdom.
The clarity that arises when the "thought that confers an I" is absent is a very precise experience. Once recognised, this clarity is a door to insight (prajna). Indeed it is the raft that takes one to the other side. All Buddhas of past present and future have or will uncover this understanding and it is what Gautama showed his companions in the Deer Park all those centuries ago.
The Sutra ends with what we may call a celebration. Ananda stands in for the experience of Great Wisdom and, once an association is made between the mantra and the experience, the repetition of the mantra becomes a means of cultivating its signification. Usually the mantra is translated as "Gone gone, gone beyond, absolutely gone beyond, Wisdom, Hail". Roshi Kennet stresses the present moment as "Going, always going on beyond". She emphasises the need for perpetual practice, ever present cultivation.
The going beyond the thought that confers the ego is the central feature of the meaning of the mantra. The emptying of the self of its thingness is now perceived as real and with deepening insight the emptiness of all things becomes ever more clear. Roshi Kennet also stresses that the mind that has gone beyond is itself Nirvana. There is no longer a mind or an ego that has Nirvana. Nirvana simply presents itself.
Does all this seems remote and distant? Well, take heart! It is not so faraway. For example, try a change in language as a door to a fresh experience. We normally say "I" whenever we use a verb . Thus: "I have a head ache", "I am resentful", "I am cutting carrots", "I am enduring the heat and crush on the underground". Now try to rephrase yourself without the I. Thus: "There is a headache", "Here is a resentment", "There is a carrot cutting", "There is a hot crushed feeling down here". Such a change allows the actuality to be present without the possessiveness, the rejection or the desire of a needy self attribution. Things are just as they are. Often they may still be troublesome but we can stop giving them an inflated importance as when the illusory me-ness of my feeling is the central pivot to experience. As Shifu says so often, "put it down. Let the Universe do it!" When you are out of the way there is no path and no attainment. You are looking directly at the moon and not at its reflection in the bucket. Try it.
1 D.E. Harding, Head Off Stress, pub. Arkana ISBN 0 14 01.92026
