Almost as soon as anyone interested in Zen, or indeed almost any form of Mahayana Buddhism, begins to sit with a group of practitioners he or she will encounter the Heart Sutra. Most groups like to include a short liturgy in their evening's 'sit' and it is very probable that the Heart Sutra will form the key element in this. The text is by no means self-explanatory and meditation instructors themselves are not often well equipped to say what it means. This brief introduction to a very large subject will try to point to at least some of the main things a practitioner should soon know about it. Although philosophical in form, fundamentally the Heart Sutra cannot be separated from meditation. To meditate in clarity it is important to have some insights into what this text portrays and to carry that understanding in the heart. A 'sutra' traditionally means a teaching by the Buddha but the term has expanded to include later writings as well.
When the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita, he perceived that all five skandhas 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. 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 or 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 there is no ending of ignorance through to no aging and death and no ending of aging and death. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. There is no wisdom or any attainment. 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 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 and not false.
Therefore recite the mantra of Prajnaparamita:
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.
The Story
The story in the Sutra is simple. Sariputra, a leading disciple of the Buddha, asks in what manner should he practice "transcendental wisdom". The Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, emerges from his deep meditation to provide an answer. The Sutra ends by providing a mantra that encapsulates the whole matter, thus enabling a practitioner to evoke the essence of wisdom through repeating it. The Sutra version we use in Chan practice and which is also most common in Zen tells us no more than this.
There is a slightly longer Tibetan version in which the setting and circumstance of the occasion is made clear. There is a great gathering around the Buddha. Bodhisattvas Mahasattvas, spiritual beings, monks and nuns come together on the famous Vulture Peak Mountain at Rajgriha, once the capital of an ancient kingdom in northern India, where so many of the teachings of the Buddha were given. Everyone sits in silence and the Buddha himself remains in deep meditation until the very end. Into the silence comes Sariputra's question and Avalokiteshvara's answer. The Buddha then comes out of meditation and congratulates Avalokiteshvara on the excellence of his reply and enjoins everyone to follow it. The assembly breaks up in general rejoicing.
The Prajnaparamita Texts, Origin and Development
The Heart Sutra is one among a considerable number of ancient texts known collectively as the Prajnaparamita Sutra meaning the sutra of the insights that will 'take one across to the other shore': that is from the travail of Samsara, our troubled world, to the bliss of Nirvana. All of these texts show great similarity, consisting of questions and answers concerning the practice of "transcendental wisdom " and are all clearly fragments of a long tradition. The earliest text is dated from around 100BC and the latest was composed around 500 CE with commentarial literature continuing to appear until the demise of Buddhism in India in the 13th century. The scholar Edward Conze has argued for four phases in this history. In the first the basic argument is stated; in the second there is an expansion of the texts to enormous lengths, partly due to applications of basic formulae to almost every imaginable situation and also due to their use in repetitious chanting; thirdly, the unwieldy and by now almost uninterpretable bulk was reduced to simple precis-like accounts providing the essence of the argument often in verse and with great beauty. In the last phase, tantric influences came in and the texts became dharanis, that is short mantric verses for chanting, the shortest being the single syllable Ah!
In the earliest sutra, the Astasahasrika, the principle discussants are the Buddha, Sariputra and Subhuti, the last two being names of great arhats among the earliest disciples of the Buddha. In later texts these quasi-historical interlocutors are replaced by one or other of the great, idealised Mahasattvas of the Mahayana. In the Zen text, as we have seen, this is Avalokiteshvara.
This shift suggests that the earliest text relates arguments known to Buddha's contemporaries and gives rise to the question as to whether these sutras may not have been originally taught by the Buddha himself. Most scholars view them as late developments marking the emergence of the later Mahayana Buddhism (Great Vehicle) from the early Theravada - the doctrine of the elders. It seems clear that the Mahasanghikas of Eastern India in Andhra were the first group to present ideas foreshadowing the Prajnaparamita viewpoint. Nagarjuna the great philosopher who developed the Madhyamaka (middle path) perspective on the basis of the Prajnaparamita, also came from that area.
There is a story that Nagarjuna was given the lost teachings of Prajnaparamita by the Nagas (Water Spirits).This story has been taken by some authorities to suggest that the Buddha may indeed have taught them after which they were preserved in secret by only a few adepts. If so, Nagarjuna simply recognised the importance of these texts and established them as the most advanced thought of Buddhism. Indeed in the early teachings, the Theravadin scripture known as the Samyutta Nikaya, which presents some of the first ideas about emptiness, there is a prophecy that such teachings would be lost - carrying the implication that they would have to be rediscovered.
Indeed, due to the recondite subject matter, it may well be that the Buddha only taught his full view of the nature of reality to a few disciples and it was this that was later rediscovered. We may never understand the full truth of this matter but it is at least clear that the main thrust of the view can be traced back to the earliest teachings of Buddha.
What is Transcendental Wisdom?
Essentially this was Sariputra's question and we need to understand why he asked it. The answer has a direct bearing on our understanding of Buddhism in modern times.
After the Buddha's death, Buddhism gradually spread all over India, especially as a consequence of the efforts of the Buddhist Emperor Asoka who had gained political control of virtually the entire sub-continent. As time passed, varying versions of the interpretations of the teachings developed in different areas. Travel was slow in those days and the varying views of important teachers far apart could easily lead to doctrinal divergence. The main thrust remained for a long time close to the oral tradition stemming from the Buddha but gradually a new approach, which became known as the Great Vehicle spread widely. In time this Mahayana was to spread to China, Tibet, Korea, Japan and Vietnam whereas the lesser vehicle, (Hinayana) known more respectfully as the "Doctrine of the Elders" (Theravada), remained predominant in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand.
The main distinctions between these traditions were as follows:
- The new Mahayana developments in India arose due to the increasing need for the rather ascetic and abstract features of early Buddhism to respond to the deifying tendencies of a growing popular movement becoming clearly expressed in a rising "Hinduism" with its multiple Gods based in ancient shamanic beliefs. These appear in Buddhism as the transformations of psychological forces - although perhaps only the sophisticated truly understood them in this way. The sounds of the Bodhisattvas mantras or their ritual visualisation could be used to evoke the spirit of these beings - their psychic force.
- The historical person of the Buddha was increasingly seen as representative of a universal principle, the Buddha Mind, first expressed through him in his enlightenment but which lay as the basis of human experience in the cosmos.
- The realisation that mind was 'empty' of any quality of being a 'thing' was extended to all components of mind and indeed to all the elemental root ideas (dharmas) whereby the universe was described. Words were only names with conventional meanings.
- Emptiness means that rather than having some inherent selfhood from their own side all "things' were basically compositions or confections resulting from causes and effects in continual, interactive complexification within impermanence. Although truly there, our apparent world is not at all as it appears. We live in a virtual world. This is a prime theme in the Mahayana.
- The main mental processes became 'reified' or personalised as symbols of the universal, Buddha mind. Thus the great Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara is no historical or even mythical individual but rather symbolises the activity of compassion, Manjusri symbolises insightful wisdom concerning the nature of reality, Ksitigarbha symbolises the spirit that takes one into hells to rescue beings. Great Bodhisattvas work through countless rebirths for the enlightenment of all and will not rest in their own reward until this is achieved.
These five features suggest that the Mahayana draws on a wide range of human activities including the ritual use of imagination which are focused on transformation rather than ascetic negation and which have a user friendly aspect helpful to the laity. These changes spread slowly and doubtlessly irregularly so that monks from differing sanghas would dispute them. The Sariputra of our text is a Theravadin monk seeking to understand the broader reach offered by Mahayana thought. To him wisdom had meant individual enlightenment. He would have understood the emptiness of mind as present in a world that was otherwise naively real. His social attitude would have been severely monastic. In Avalokiteshvara's reply Sariputra is faced by a radical broadening of the idea of emptiness to all phenomena necessitating radical shifts in interpreting the path. The discovery that there is 'no path' and 'no goal ' would be startling to him but also profoundly freeing when understood accurately. He also meets in Avalokitesvara a being dedicated to his own enlightenment only when all other sentient beings have been enlightened first. Transcendental wisdom that 'reaches to the other shore' entails these extensions from the narrower view of early Buddhism. The person of Sariputra thus symbolises a monk in transition facing radically new ideas perhaps originally taught by the Buddha to a select few who had kept such insights secret for centuries.
Going through the text
Let us now examine quite closely what the text actually says. How does Avalokitesvara answer Sariputra's question. The text reads:
When the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was coursing in the deep Prajnaparamita he perceived that all five skandhas were empty and thereby transcended all sufferings.
Avalokiteshvara answered Sariputra. "Form is none other than emptiness. Emptiness is not other than Form. Form is precisely emptiness, emptiness precisely form. So also are sensation, perception, volition and consciousness".
Avalokiteshvara is not just sitting there when Sariputra asks his question. He is in fact practising the very yoga of transcendental wisdom concerning which Sariputra asks. Prajnaparamita - meaning the 'insight that takes us to the other shore' is also a name for transcendental wisdom.
What is the great Bodhisattva up to? Essentially he is sitting in a mode of active, close observation of the mind, a meditative enquiry (Vipassana) observational rather than intellectual. The five skandhas (heaps, accumulations) which he is observing are sensation, perception, cognition, volition and consciousness.
To identify an object you have to have the sensation of its appearance, this is then perceived in relation to other objects and distinguished as such, cognition then sets in, articulating in appropriate scenarios the relationships of that object to its context, its metaphorical usages etc. The experience so understood may then participate with needs, wants, prejudices and values in generating some course of action usually heavily predetermined by earlier experiences and constructs of value or prejudice. Consciousness, whether implicit or explicit, provides the awareness of the whole process.
As the Bodhisattva directly investigates this experience as a continuum and strives to isolate and identify each of the five skandhas he finds in fact that they are merely names for aspects of a unitary, confluent process. Although named for analytical understanding each of the skandhas turns out to be unfindable as a separate entity. Even so their designation is not meaningless as it points to an aspect of the activities of mind.
Classical writers likened this process to an analysis of a chariot. If you point to any part of the chariot and ask "Is this the chariot?" the answer will be no. If you do this exhaustively with all the components of a chariot you find no chariot anywhere. The chariot is just a word for the functional relations of all the elements pointed to -- and the same analysis can be made of each separate part. Where then is the chariot?
This insight resembles that of Gilbert Ryle, a modern English philosopher, in his famous book "The Concept of Mind" (1949). He imagines someone being shown around Oxford. He is shown various colleges, various departmental buildings, laboratories, sports fields, rowing boats, but at the end of the tour he asks his guide "Well now - tell me where is the university?" The university here is a metaphor for mind.
Such insight in meditation allows the practitioner to let go of all such discriminations so that they merge in one awareness. Suffering indeed is brought about by discriminations of sensation, perception and cognition acting with reference to an ego's needs. The sudden disappearance of their conceptual distinctiveness into a merged oneness of meditative equipoise is thus experienced as a release from all contingent suffering.
The 'ego' or self is itself an imputation based on these functions. It is a pivotal, integrative idea that has doubt about its 'reality' and uses the skandhas to gain credentials through the positive valuations of others and a sense of security as a thing in the world. The quiet collapse of the skandhas in meditation brings about the collapse of the ego for just as they are illusory so too is the ego. Avalokiteshvara was experiencing this directly in a heartfelt manner, coursing in it with neither fear nor attachment. On hearing the question his compassion was aroused and he answered not from thought but from his immediate experiential state.
Avalokiteshvara knows the psychology which Sariputra has been taught. Eyes, ears etc give rise to their specific consciousnesses. Consciousness relates needs to action and speaks of goals and paths, of old age and the fear of death. But all these are empty of 'inherent selfhood' from their own side just as the functions of perceiving, cognising and so on are. They are all names that allow us to construct a (secondary) world of descriptions within which our intention of preserving the pivot of it all, the ego, has its being. We live in a conceptual cage of our own ideas. This is our virtual world, our living dream awake. Once these terms are properly understood their thingness evaporates. We are freed from the cages through the dropping of the names. Once more there is a merging into a sense of oneness, silence, emptiness. As is said in Zen, at first there were mountains, then there were no mountains, then the mountains were there again. For it is not that there is nothing there. It is just that the universe appears in the only way our minds allow - objects in a continuum.
And so Avalokiteshvara says:
"Sariputra, this emptiness of all dharmas is not born, not destroyed, not impure, not pure, does not increase nor decrease. In emptiness there is no form, no sensation, perception, volition, or consciousness: no eye, ear, nose, tongue body, mind, no sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thought, there is no realm of the eye and so on through to no realm of mental cognition, There is no ignorance and there is no ending of ignorance through to 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 nor any attainment."
In this passage the Bodhisattva seems to destroy everything that the Buddha taught let alone what Sariputra has learnt. Yet in fact he is saying no more than that all these conceptualisations are nothing more than exactly that. We live in a world of conceptualisations and they constitute a cage - even a Buddhist cage. While the structure of our mind can do no other than represent the universe to us in these conventional, socially sharable, modes, the whole great thing itself remains untouched, ineffable. In letting go of these discriminations and our attachment to the conceptual scenarios they generate we find an uncharacterisable freedom. Nothing can be said of emptiness yet 'that which is' undoubtedly exists. Paradoxically even an emptiness of emptiness can be said to exist - although in saying this we pass beyond language.
"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 Buddhas in all times have relied on this and thereby gained supreme release."
Sariputra's logical mind must have seen the inner logic of this. Since the whole edifice depends on conceptualisation based in the five fundamental functions of mind, once these are laid aside a clarity free from the imaginings of attachments can emerge. It was always there, prior to thought. It is not anything new. It is just how things are when released from the splitting influences of conceptualisation. And yet, and yet, given the functioning of our minds, we need discrimination to act. So emptiness is expressed again in forms. As is said in Tibetan Mahamudra meditation, emptiness and the world of things co-emerge. This is how our minds work. We have become one-sided, enmeshed in our world of name and form we do not see the ineffability of silence. We need to see it to get a glimpse of the true nature of being.
The mantric conclusion may be a late addition in tantric times. No matter. Once we have gained some insight into the meaning of Prajnaparamita we may be able to evoke that insight by a word that acts as a trigger. Mantras are designed to act that way.
"Gone gone, gone beyond, utterly gone beyond - Wisdom wakes."
Modern Insight in the Light of the Ancient
The insight of this Sutra, some two thousand years old and based in a philosophy sprung from the introspective awareness of meditative insight, is remarkable in part because the objective analysis of the cosmos in modern physics has taken us strikingly into similar territory. Indeed an insight into the meaning of the Sutra can be gained by relating it to contemporary Science. What indeed is knowledge? Matter, the thingness of objects, dissolves conceptually before our eyes into chemistry, into atomic structure, into electrons and positrons, into quanta and then into unfathomable mystery. Each layer of interpretation, each language, is deconstructed into another more basic, more underlying, until we grope into space and time as ineffable, as mystery. Here the experience of being becomes awesome. Yet still we scientists grope onwards for who knows what may yet be seen.
At this deep level of thought the categories dissolve and reappear in strange forms. Forms are indeed empty, yet the unborn, unnamed keeps reappearing in new formal guises.
When we stand at the limits of knowledge, whether conceived as inner or outer, we encounter the great questions, the koans. Whether our lives have cosmic meaning cannot be said. Yet here we are co-emerging in clarity and discrimination to view an amazing vista. What a privilege, what rejoicing, How wonderful!
Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha!
Gone, gone, completely gone, utterly gone, Behold - Wisdom!
