The Heart Sutra 心經

On Friday night, I attended another HKSHP talk given by Dr. Chan Chi Kwan. The Heart Sutra  was on one of the shortest but one of the most important sutras in the realm of Buddhist thoughts, rather like the TLP in the early thoughts of Wittgenstein which I introduced in my previous blog. As it is not long, I shall set it out in full in Chinese, along with my English translation. For ease of discussion, I shall give a line number to each line. In the original, there were no punctuation marks or line sepration.

                                                    心經

1.  觀自在菩薩，行深般若波羅蜜多時，照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄。

2.  舍利子，色不異空，空不異色，色即是空，空即是色    受想行識，亦復如是。

3   舍利子，是諸法空相，不生不滅，不垢不淨，不增不減，

4.  是故空性中無色，無受想行識、無眼耳鼻舌身意、無色聲香味觸法、無眼界、乃  至無意識界，

6.  無無明、亦無無明盡，乃至無老死，亦無老死盡；無苦集滅道，  無智無得亦無不得。 以無所得故，故菩提薩埵，埵依般波羅蜜多故。

7.  心無罣礙，無罣礙故，無有恐怖，遠離顛倒夢想，究竟涅槃。

8   三世諸佛，依般若波羅蜜多故，得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。

9.  故知波若羅蜜多，是大神咒，是大明咒，是無上咒，是無等等咒，

10. 能除一切苦，真實不虛，故說般若波羅蜜多咒，即說咒曰：

11.  揭諦揭諦，波羅揭諦，波羅僧揭諦，菩提薩婆訶.

The Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing deep Prajna paramita
clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty,
transcending all suffering and risk.
Shariputra, form is none other than emptiness, emptiness none other than form;
form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form;
sensation, idea, act, consciousness are like this too.
Shariputra, every object is merely empty form: 
not born, not destroyed; not stained, not pure; not lost, not won.
Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no idea, act, consciousness;
no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object;
no seeing even no willing and consciousness;
no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance,
even no old age and death and no ending of old age and death;
no suffering, attachment, elimination (of suffering), path, no wisdom, and no attainment and no non-attainment.
As there is nothing to attain, as the bodhisattva lives by Prajna Paramita,
there is nothing to hinder his mind; as there is no hindrance, there is nothing to fear,
distanced from dreams and thoughts turned upside down, right to the utterly  final Nirvana.
As all past, present and future Buddhas live by Prajna Paramita,
they attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.
Therefore know that Prajna Paramita
is the most sacred mantra, the most enlightening mantra,
the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which can remove all suffering.
This is true, not false.
Therefore to say the Prajna Paramita mantra
is to say this mantra: 

Gaté Gaté Paragaté (Gone, gone, gone beyond
Parasamgaté             gone to the other shore
Bodhi Svaha!           Awakened perfect!)
 

The whole sutra is a summary of the sutras called Prajna (般若 or Wisdom) Paramita (波羅蜜多or arriving at the other shore) and is based on one idea. That idea is the principle of emptiness, the void, the nothing (空 ). But here, we must be careful. When the Buddha spoke of "emptiness/ void/nothing", he was referring not only to the principle or idea of empitness etc. in a spatial sense. He was also applying the same principle or concept or idea to time, to the material sphere, to the mental sphere, to the feeling sphere, to the philosophical sphere and to the religious sphere and to the religious training and living sphere. He was applying that idea to everything that there is, everything which existed and everything which can exist. In that sense, it is an all encompassing idea or principle. It is the central idea of Buddhism. If we understand it thoroughly, then we would have understood 90% of Buddhist thought. That is why the sutra has been called the "heart" sutra. It lies indeed at the "heart"of Buddhism.

Again, another very important point is that the idea of emptiness or void does not have its ordinary connotation of "really" advocating that there is absolutely "nothing" in this world or that nothing in this world is "reaL". When the Buddha spoke of "nothing", what he meant was not that there is nothing in this world: no objects, no human life, no plants, no animals; no happiness, no pain, no suffering; no success, no failure; no right, no wrong, no rich, no poor;  no love, no hatred; no kindness, no cruelty; no good, no bad and that everything is an absolute "illusion". Some people, including some Buddhists understood the term in this sense. If so, then I don't think that they have correctly understood what the Buddha was at pains to point out.

We must relate his idea about emptiness to what the Buddha was trying to do: he was trying to find a tested method of eliminating the sufferings that he saw everywhere around him. Buddhism is not just a set of metaphysical or philosophical ideas about the world and the people and of the relationship of man with one another, with the plants and animals and with inanimate objects, from the smallest to the biggest, including the whole universe. It is above all a pragmatic method for helping people everywhere to live a better life, here and now on this earth and possibly in the next, if any. When we forget that pragmatic purpose, then we would have misunderstood the great Buddha. To the Buddha, ideas and concepts are useful only in so far as they are able to help Buddhists to live a better life and to attain nirvana: a state of peace, of serenity, of quiet joy, of contentedness with whatever happens or fails to happen in this world, a state which the Buddha thought is available and is possible for everyone, not just for the Brahmins of the Hindu religion. That is why when he proposed this idea, it was a revolutionary idea for Hinduism. To Buddha, ideas and concepts are propounded not as a priori metaphysical or philosophical  principles. They only have instrumental values.They are only means to an end. That end is the eliminaion of human suffering. That is why the Buddha advocates that, if the ideas concepts and principles that he taught are found by the practitioners to be hindrances instead of aids, then we are free to jettison them. Some of the ideas he talked about may work for some people but not for others. That is why he told his disciples that there are more than 8000 ways to achieve the ultimate purpose of nirvana and he told them not to get attached to them, even if they had been taught by him and not to look upon them as absolute truths. 

Buddhism is above all, a practice. That is why the Buddha said that once we have understood what the correct path, or method or way or the law or the dharma is, we may abandon or forget it and merely concentrate on "practising" what we have learned but without any absolute "attachment" to that particular way, or method or law or path, the dharma, whether it be the big path/way/vehicle (Mahayana) (大乘) and the little path/way/vehicle (Theravada)(小乘). Buddhist thoughts are not just to be thought or to be felt, but to be "lived". Only in living that bodhi (the wisdom of such awakened/enlightened consciousness or mindfulness or awareness) does that kind of bodhi have any sense or meaning for the Buddha or for us. Some think that Mahayana is better than Theravada. I don't think Buddha himself would like to think the same way. They are just different. There is no question of which is greater or better.

The bodhi, the method, the way, the path to enlightenment and to permanent awareness is a bit like the Taoist idea of the Tao: the Tao which can be spoken of is not the real Tao. The Tao is not to be spoken of only. It is intended to be the centre of our lives and of our very being. We must live the Tao, become one with it and be a part of it, in practice! We must live the bodhi, the same way that we live the Tao. It must become invisible. That is why it is said that before we learn about Buddhism, a mountain is a mountain and a tree a tree; after we learned the Buddhist idea of "emptiness" for the first time, a mountain is no longer a mountain and a tree no longer a tree; but when we have thoroughly understood and digested the gist of Buddhism, a mountain will again become a mountain and a tree will again become a tree for us. What this meant is that although according to Buddhist idea nothing in this world is "real" and everything is "ïllusory", the word "real" is to be understood in the sense that it has no "permanence" and only in that sense "ïllusory". What we think of as "real" is really only the "form" that that something, some idea, some concept, some rule, some law , some event, some phenomenon ''assumes" at that point in time and have meaning at that point in time for üs". Because the world is a constantly changing world, its meaning for "us" will no longer be the same at the next moment. To the Taoist, the only thing in the universe which does not change is the concept or idea or the fact or the law of "change" itself. The Buddha takes a similar view but from a different path: the path of cause and effect and the concept of co-origination of cause and effect. The world remains the same for us after we have truly understood the teaching of Buddha on "emptiness" because then we have already learned that the true nature of the world is that it is no more than the manifestation of just so many temporary "appearances", "forms", "shapes" which are the result of action of a collection of causes and effects, something not destined to last, and something which only "appears" real to us at the moment of our perception of them and that the most important thing and our first priority must be to live out this "emptiness" and despite the ""appearance"such "emptiness" ie. avoid any form of craving or attachment, even attachment to the aim of nirvana. Paradoxically, only when we cease to treat "nirvana" as a conscious project, a plan, an aim and the ultimate goal will we be able to attain it. Nirvana is the result, not the target of our practice of Buddhst principles!  . 

With this kind of understanding, we can start to go into the text and try to discover what the Buddha is trying to tell us. We know that in Buddhist thought, they classify wisdom  or prajna into two categories worldly wisdom or imperfect wisdom (世界智 or 有漏智) and perfect wisdom (無漏智). He starts first by telling us to follow what he taught one of his disciples, the son of Shari in adhering to the path towards perfect wisdom which he thinks will help us eliminate all forms of suffering (漏 or 煩惱). He said then in line 2 that once the son of Shari (舍利) (or Shariputra) follows the path towards perfect wisdom, he will see or observe or discover that the true nature of the five skandas (五蘊) is its emptiness. He would then be able to arrive (mita) at the other shore (para) and eliminate or avoid all risks of further sufferings or attain nirvana. There he further elaborates on the idea of emptiness. To him, 色 (Rupa) which originally simly means shape or form, the word is used here as referring more generally to all kinds or classes of things which have "form "or "appearance" or all "phenenoma". Here the Buddha repeats the same idea that everything is empty in negative then in positive forms and then adds that  受 (the sensation or feeling) 想 (ideas or conception or impression of the external world ) 行 (acting and the volition, will to act or intention) 識  (consciousness or the ability to be aware or know things and phenomena) are exactly of the same nature ie. empty. These are the so-called 5 skandas (蘊). The word  是 in line 3 means "this" and 法 there means everything which is or can be perceived, thought of, felt etc. or generally everything in this world both internal and external. The sentence therefore means that the true nature of everything which can be perceived etc is empty and there are nothing in this world and in our mind but "appearances" or everything is just "form" or "shape" and "image" of what, upon a deeper analysis to a more profound level, is relatively "true" in the world. In their relatively "true" nature, everything in the universe is as they are ie. empty. They only "appear" to increase or decrease, to be born or to die. Ultimately the universe will revert to emptiness.This applies to the 5 senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, their corresponding sensations and perceptions and their activities inside our brain our 識 or opinion, our concepts, our ideas, our knowledge etc. because all shall pass away one of these days: we shall die and the world will change to another form etc.

In short, the Buddha advises us not to make any distinctions between things in this worldat the most basic, fundamental or most ultimate level, even though according to our conventional knowledge, there are distinctions like clean/dirty. good/bad, young/old, life/ death, success/failure, knowledge/ignorance, suffering/ elimination of suffering, attachment/detachment. To do so will lead only to suffering. If we wish to attain nirvana, we must try our best to stop making any distinctions. This is because ultimately, all suffering are mental. They originate from the activities of our mind which without the teaching of the Buddha will constantly make distinctions in whatever we see, hear, touch, smell, taste. That is because after having made such distinctions, we attach value to them: this is good, that is bad; this is advantageous, that is not. Once we attach values to them, we begin to like some and dislike others and worse, we get attached to some of them which we consider good or advantageous to our "self" and crave for them and when we don't get or attain them, we miss them, we feel nostalgic about them and we feel unhappy. When we think about them all the time before we have them, we suffer because we do not yet have them, something we think that it is good that we have, something that we crave. And craving without immediate satisfaction is a most tangible form of suffering.

Many of Buddha's disciples have thought that it is most important to follow the Buddha's previous teaching on the method of understanding the sources causes of suffering (苦) ie.生老病死 (or life, debility due to aging, illness and death) which he thought was due to the building up (集) of desire or craving (慾望) as a result of their ignorance of the operation of the principle of co-origination of cause and effect (緣起) and because of their encounter of the uncertainty of life (無常), their elimination ( 滅 ) through the way 道 of observing what has been called 八正(聖)道 viz. right perception and understanding (of various Buddhist ideas like right/wrong action, this/other world, this shore/that shore), right intention or thoughts (about constantly being vigilant to our deviation from the right path)  right word (not lying, not gossiping, not using abusive or other inappropriate language)  right conduct (like not killing, stealing, raping etc ), right life (proper way of making a living, getting food and clothing etc) deepening progress (making constant effort to improve by doing good and avoiding evil), right attitude or concept ( being focused on the our own action, thoughts, feelings and the illusory nature of the self and the constant changes in the flow of causes and effects) and right meditation ( using the correct method to meditate through breathing, body posture, control of our five senses, concentration to eliminate confusing or distracting thoughts/desires and to become fully focused on the emptiness of everything) (正見正思正語正業正命正精進正念正定). The Buddha says that we need to realize that the true nature of even these ideas about 苦集滅道  is still empty or that we should not get too attached to them either. We must realize their true nature as so many ideas, instruments, aids,means to help us arrrive at nirvana. To the Buddha, once we remove all these obstacles posed by such conventional thinking and distinction, we will realize or see that these are just some many  dreams, illusions and "up-side down" thinking (顛倒夢想.) due to man's tendency to and fondness of making dualistic distinctions, getting attached to such distinctions in relation to what they think of as their "self". Because we do so, we suffer. Once we realize that and practice a life without illusions or live a life infused through and through with a sense of the great Void or the great Emptiness at the heart of existence itself and allow this great sense of the ultimate Emptiness to color our every thought, our every act, and our very being, then we shall have attained the ultimate state of nirvana. We shall then be free of our avoidable worries and our sufferings. We shall then have "transcended" such distinctions and arrived at the other shore of enlightenment, peace and the accompanying joy.When we merely "live" according to the natural "flow" of the "accidental" coming together and the separation of different causes and effects, forgetting "our" aim of nirvana, then only shall "we" be able to enter the state of nirvana.  

In this Heart Sutra, we find a gradual progression of the level of emptiness that Buddha is talking about. He went on from the superficial level of the world e.g. the causes of suffering, the 5 skandas, and the traditional methods for eliminating ie. understanding the 5 skandas, then following the 8 right or sacred paths and then goes on to advise non-attachment to even various intermediate ideas, concepts, practices etc. and when we reach the end of the sutra, he tries to negate even the established "methods" and even the very idea that we consciously need or desire the nirvana.  He says that there is no distinction between ignorance and non-ignorance (because that is a distinction made by our mind), no difference between life and death ( because what we normally think of as our "self" ie. our body, our mind, our possessions, everything we regard as constiuting our "self" or our "ego" are at the deepest level just illosory so that when we are born or when we die, really nothing has been born or died because our very concept of "self"  is an empty concept. It has no real content. All that occurs are the accidental coming together of certain causes and effects in the world of phenomna or appearance ). There is no attainment of wisdom or non-attainment of wisdom or enlightenment because at the end of the day, since there is no real "self", how can we speak of the attainment of success or failure in the project of enlightenment for that non-existent "self". If we understand this, then all the obstacles to the understanding in our conventional mind will have been removed and if so, then what is there to fear. There is simply no " person" to which the relevant fear can attach itself. We normally only have fear because we are afraid of either not getting something as quickly as "we" desire or alternatively that some one else or some other event will destroy" us", harm "us", injure "us", prejudice "our" interest etc. If we cease to make a distinction between what we normally think of as our "self" and others and between our "self" and the external world, what is there to protect, to defend, whose interest is being feared not being achieved? The boundary between the self and others and the self and the world has been removed! There is simply nothing, no one on behalf of whom "we" need to fear ! Because such distinction and such divisions are made in the "mind", that is why the Buddha advocates "emptying" our "minds" of such divisions and distinctions. Once we are able to do that on a permanent basis, the source of all fear and all sufferings will be gone! In a way, what the Buddha is advocating is a progressive negation of all the previous stages in the path towards nirvana. He started with reasoning and analysis and ended by advising us to give up all conscious reasoning so that the enlightened person will reach the stage where he arrives without consciously striving to arrive at enlightenment!

But to attain the nirvana can only be an ideal for most of us. It requires perhaps a life time of constant practice to raise the level of our awarenes so that we may live every moment of our life in full awareness of this concept or idea of radical "emptiness", and this "aim" of abolishing all kinds of conventional mental distinctions we make and become permanently vigilant to the risk of our falling back into our previous ignorant, unenlightened or irrational or misguided ways. We can practise meditation both to sharpen our awareness and do it so often that it becomes "second nature" to us. If so, we may be then perhaps be able to act and react, so to speak, automatically, in accordance with it in all kinds of different situations of life, imbued with such awareness, without as it were, even having  to "think" that we are doing so or that we have to do so. We must practice and practice until that state becomes a "permanent" state. It would have be the greatest understatement to say that "that is not at all easy"! 

What the Buddha says and advises is remarkably similar to what Thomas Merton says. Merton says in the Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: "Man, thinking of himself secretly as a completely free autonomous self, with unlimited possibilities, finds himself in an impossible predicament. He is "as a god" and therefore everything is within reach. But it turns out that all that he can successful reach by his own volition is not quite worth having. What he really seeks and needs--love, an authentic identity, a life that has meaning--cannot be had merely by willing and by taking steps to procure them....The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts, we have to be open. ...to be open, we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless "I" that is all we know as "ourselves". The chronic inability to relax this cramp begets despair. In the end, as we realize more and more that we are knotted upon nothing, that the cramp is a meaningless, senseless, pointless affirmation of a non entity and that we must nevertheless continue to affirm our nothingness over against everything else--our frustration becomes absolute. We become incapable of exsiting except as a 'no", which we fling in the face of everything. This "no" to everything serves as our pitiful "yes" to ourselves--a makeshift identity which is nothing....The important thing is to be able to stop refusing and to rject this "cramping"before it is too late. One must learn to say "no" to the cramp and " yes" to everything else....This "refusal" is fundamentally a refusal of faith...at least a refusal of the natural readiness, the openness, the humility, the self-forgetfulness that renounce absolute demands, give up the intransigent claim to perfect autonomy, and believe in life....the man on the edge of suicide may in fact be on the edge of a miracle of hope that saves him in spite of himself, pulls him out of the cramp. If he can understand what has happened, he may completely revise his idea of what constitutes "defeat"and what bestows freedom and fulfilment. And he may begin to live as another person--as one who has the humility to accept gifts which come to him on conditions he cannot foresee or determine, which come to him from an unknown source, and which are in no way subject to his own imperious demand. Yet this is no strange supernatural state: it is simply the ordinary way of existence!" In short, if we want a life of freedom, if we want true liberation, we must first die to our old "self", our old ideas of our "self"! We must first reduce ourselves to nothingness and come to full realization of our own previous "rigid" and false ideas about our own ability and recognize our utter inability to be a complete master of our own fate. Only then may we have a hope of a new life, a life of freedom, a life open to the possibilities of a new and more authentic life. .