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by Fred Rossini — May 18, 2002
The Heart Sutra lives! It is a major foundation of my practice. When I first heard the Sutra, it sounded like nonsense. Over the years, it has changed for me and continues to change as an expression of my practice. It is not an intellectual document, but rather an interactive, open-ended expression of experience that has changed and grown in a symbiotic relationship with my developing practice. Here it is now - along with my most recent verbal expression of an inexpressible.
"Good evening. About 1200 years ago in the courtyard of a Chinese Buddhist Monastery two monks were discussing the motion of a flag in the wind. One claimed that the flag was moving; the other that the wind was moving. A third monk joined them. He disagreed with both and said that it was the mind that moved. Your mission, if you wish to undertake it, is to experience directly how the mind moves. This recording will self-destruct in 10 seconds." If you elect to undertake this mission, you can ignore what follows.
The Heart Sutra is part of a larger group of Sutras that were composed in an ancient Indian language long after Gautama's death. It is the shortest of all the Sutras. The Sutra has migrated through many oriental and western languages. Clearly the Sutra has changed. The version from which the current translation was made was based on a Japanese rendition modified many times. I will not attempt to deal with the text in a scholarly manner. Historically, the Sutra is a speech by the Buddha to the disciple Sariputra (who does not appear in this version, but who is in the generally accepted text). For present purposes the Sutra is a living entity that represents an experiential communication between self nature - the Buddha speaking - and the little self - the disciple Sariputra listening. Its meaning resides in the direct experience of the hearer. The Heart Sutra is a hint of what to look for in experience; for many it has been a very powerful hint. For me it is a treasure map. A treasure map is not a picture to be framed or a text to be analyzed. It is a guide that leads you to the treasure. To find the treasure, you begin to follow the map. As you learn the terrain, the map becomes clearer and more meaningful. The way I have used the Sutra as a hint or map is the following. First, follow the hint experientially; then, be aware of the experience; finally, return to the Sutra. Repeat forever. The Heart Sutra is a marvelous resource. Use it well!
A Bodhisattva is said to be one who experiences directly self nature (or Buddha nature or original nature) and thus could enter an enlightened state, but instead, out of compassion for all beings, elects to remain in the world and to work for the enlightenment of all beings. Compassion is acting in order that all beings may directly understand self nature. Each Bodhisattva manifests a unique aspect of self nature to other beings. However, what a being experiences is determined by the state of its current understanding. Each of us is a Bodhisattva, or at least a Bodhisattva in training. Each of us is in some way Kannon Bodhisattva of Compassion who is the experiencer of the hint of the Sutra and the follower of the treasure map. In other words, this Sutra is directed at each of us and points to our individual path.
Our path, the path of a Bodhisattva, is to practice the deepest wisdom. Practice is awareness, experiencing with our body-mind what is here and now, just as it is, without naming it or linking it to a web of preexisting ideas and beliefs that are not what is here and now. When we are distracted from our awareness, we calmly return to it as we become directly aware of the nature of the distraction. We often identify practice with meditation on a cushion. Indeed for most of us that was its starting point. We extend our practice of awareness in walking meditation, and we can further extend it to every aspect of our lives if we have the patience and determination to do so. Thus ordinary life is practice. The final oxherding picture shows ordinary life, not a meditative state. For most of us it is easier to practice on a meditation cushion than in the hassle and constant change of everyday life. As Mumon says in his Postscript to the Mumonkan, "It is easy to know the Nirvana mind, but difficult to attain the wisdom of differentiation." For him the deepest wisdom is the wisdom of life, not that of meditation. Another rendering of "deepest" is "beyond." Yet this wisdom which is beyond our ordinary experience is in no way separated from our ordinary experience. Perhaps the rendition should be "here/beyond." The Sutra now goes on to describe practicing the deepest wisdom.
What is here and now has been described by an old Buddhist psychology as the five aggregates. These are form (physical form, corporeality), feeling (immediate sensation of form), thought (perception of sensation), impulse (judgment of perception giving meaning to it), and consciousness. Different scholars have different views of what the aggregates are. Let us consider the aggregates to refer to the world that we encounter in ordinary life. This world is the knowing subject, the process of knowing, and the object of knowing. The list of aggregates may describe a process by which form is the object of sensation that is recognized and given meaning to be integrated into consciousness. This process constitutes our consciousness of things, objects that are viewed as independent from the knowing subject. In practice we experience the aggregates directly and continuously, attending to them closely. Our attention focuses on them as they are, free from the theories of psychology, even ancient Buddhist psychology, as well as from the names we give them, the judgments we make about them, and the stories that we tell ourselves about them. We experience the aggregates as our world, in its everchanging and impermanent gyrations. The Buddha is proposing that the world we experience - the aggregates as subject, process of experiencing, and object - has no permanent content or stability. It is a world without substance. There are no things. Thinghood is not part of direct experience. Most importantly, we experience the ego or self to be vacuous and insubstantial. Thoughts, judgments, feelings come and go. We do not experience an unchanging entity that houses them. The lack of a substantial self, ego, soul is a focal point of practice. It is to be experienced. For our practice rests not on intellectualization, not on belief, not on will power, but on direct, unmediated experience. According to the Sutra, no matter how hard we may look for a self, such an entity is not experienced apart from the impermanent aggregates. What is experienced is that there is no separation between the experiencer, the experiencing, and the experienced. The Sutra asks us to focus on the content and origins of the aggregates as they arise within our consciousness to realize their emptiness. In other words, go directly to the source of self and world from which we are in no way separated. Become awareness.
The existence of suffering is the First Noble Truth. Suffering in the Buddhist sense may be described as desiring or craving some state or condition that is not here and now or wanting to be rid of something that is here and now. We are never satisfied. We experience these cravings non-stop, never accepting our present state and always looking beyond. "If I only had ......" or "if ...... would just go away." The internal refrain never ends. The subject of these desires, as hinted earlier, has no stable or permanent existence. Who is suffering? No permanent entity. The process of suffering is likewise empty. What is this thing called suffering? Nothing of substance. That which is experienced as suffering is also without substance. Suffering arises outside of the immediate here and now as a characterization or judgment of experience. This characterization is based on a set of beliefs that are outside the here and now. For most of us most of the time our awareness is overwhelmed by the patterns and expectations that make up the little self. The feelings of pain emanating from our self constructed prison are intense. They are here and now. On the other hand our understanding and judgments of how this state impacts a permanent self - suffering - are part of the world view we have internalized. Transcending suffering by directly realizing its origin and nature, and thus its emptiness, is experiencing the Fourth Noble Truth.
The Sutra now addresses the experiential nature of emptiness and its relationship to self and world as manifest in the five aggregates. It begins with form that is immediate. Forms are constantly experienced. As hinted earlier, forms have no substance. What is the nature of form and whence does form come? The hint given in the Sutra is to turn awareness to form in order to experience emptiness. This hint seems to be a contradiction, but following it may provide a view of emptiness. Forms are not permanent substances, nor are they of permanent substances. Forms come, go, and change. Turn the experience to the coming and going of forms. Is emptiness whence the changing forms arise? Just as form is not a substance, emptiness is not a substance. Emptiness could be logically constructed as the source of the changing forms. As such it would be a form among forms. But emptiness is not a logical construction. It manifests itself in awareness. In one sense what is suggested is that the principle of contradiction, that there cannot be both A and not A, and the principle of identity, that A is A, do not hold in direct, unmediated experience, as helpful as they may be in manipulating our self-created world. Form is experienced as a manifestation of emptiness and emptiness as a manifestation of form. In the process of experiencing, the experiencer, the experiencing, and the experienced all manifest themselves as impermanent forms which are not separated by the boundaries which we have believed divide self and other. In other words, what we call object is not separated from what we call subject and the link between them is likewise not separate from either. Experiencer, experience, and experienced as well as form and emptiness are manifestations of the original nature. They are separated by going outside of direct experience.
For me this is the punch line of the Sutra. Because of the way we conceptualize things, I have a strong temptation to say that form arises from emptiness. Yet this defies the experience of no separation. There isn't any "thing" like form and there isn't any "thing" like emptiness. They are each other! The section on Prajnatara, who was Bodhidharma's teacher, in the Transmission of Light expresses this succinctly. "When we consider emptiness the substance of the myriad forms, there is nothing before us; when we consider myriad forms the function of emptiness, there is no different road. Therefore at this point the path of teacher and apprentice is transmitted." Form and emptiness are two views of the same face - the original nature. There is no distinction between the "monkey mind" and Buddha nature. Just awareness, awareness without separation. This is what is. Emptiness is shimmering self nature as is a shit stick (per the old koan) as well as all other forms. Emptiness is not nothing; it is one aspect of no thing. Form and emptiness are descriptions of what we naively conceive of as the self and the world. This is recognized through awareness that is not separate from its subject or object.
The Sutra now reinforces its major point with the other four aggregates that describe the process by which consciousness is formed. The aggregates and the process they constitute can be directly experienced. They have no substance and are in no way separate from one another, form, and from the original nature - emptiness. All the aggregates are emptiness in the same way that form is emptiness. Emptiness is each and all of the aggregates just as emptiness is form. Nothing is separated from emptiness; it is just as it is. If separate, form establishes separate entities creating self and independent things and allowing the self to encapsulate in its own prison world. Feeling creates a link between forms and entities that sense. Thought attaches a sensing subject to the sensation. Impulse gives meaning to what is perceived thereby adding an additional layer. What is has been embellished and created into the self world of consciousness that dazzles and imprisons its creator in an addiction which can only be recognized by experiencing directly the emptiness or non-thingness of original nature of which the self-created world is a manifestation. Things are not independent, free-standing entities. They are a manifestation of emptiness - no separation.
The Sutra resumes its description of original nature that manifests the aggregates and emptiness. Original nature is here characterized in terms that are very important to most people - birth and death, purity and defilement, gain and loss. What is said is that original nature is free from these pairs of opposites. It is neither A nor not A. It is not differentiated in the way that "things" are differentiated from other
"things." It is as it is. Awareness is direct and not reflexive. In particular, original nature does not come into being or cease to be as these are categories apart from direct experience. It is not defiled or pure as these describe and limit some "thing" and carry with them judgments of its worth. It neither increases nor decreases since there are no "things" to add to or subtract from it. Pairs of opposites are characterizations or descriptions that have a basis only in the self-created world.
The Sutra continues to describe original nature as emptiness. None of the characteristics of the world and its construction (the five aggregates), the physical senses through the world is experienced and the process by which they function, or our own selves (body and mind) have any substance or thingness. The Sutra addresses each as part of a long list of entities without substance.
Ignorance is experiencing what is not, i.e. separate substances or things. Direct experience is not ignorance since direct experience yields no things. Yet ignorance is experienced directly as an insubstantial part of the world of delusion which causes unending suffering in beings as they perceive that world to be substantial. Since enlightenment and delusion are without separation, ignorance is insubstantial, but unending. Old age and death are directly experienced as without substance. Yet they are experienced directly as unending causes of suffering in the insubstantial, self-created world where they are believed to be substantial.
Now comes a denial of the Four Noble Truths! This indicates the provisional nature of "truth," and the ephemeral and non-substantial nature of all vehicles by which one "practices." The commonly held basis of practice (the existence of suffering and the possibility of ending it) and the commonly held goal of practice (ending suffering) are simply denied. For the Four Noble Truths designate the practitioner as separable from the suffering which, as a thing, can be ended. Thus the Sutra denies the Four Noble Truths in that direct experience finds no reality in them. As all of the Buddha's "teachings," they are an expendable raft to be used only when and for as long as useful.
This line is particularly relevant as it guts the standard descriptors of practice of any substance. There is no path, way, or vehicle apart from the direct experience of original nature. Since wisdom resides in awareness of original nature, it does not exist apart from this awareness. "Wisdom" and "attainment" are descriptors or characteristics predicated of Buddhahood. They are empty of and by themselves. To seek them is to seek no thing. Seeking "wisdom" and "attainment" turns awareness away from original nature to entities without substance. Practice without motive or goal, without clearly defined vehicle or desired state. Just experience what is as it is.
This statement indicates the relationship between the practitioner, as Bodhisattva, and the heart of wisdom that is direct experience of
original nature as described in the Sutra. Direct experience through awareness is commended to the practitioner as the foundation of practice.
The self that gives us our identity and chains us to the unending wheel of desire and fear is not. This little mind, because it is not a permanent or substantial entity, cannot be a source of permanent and substantial fear and craving. It is not a real impediment, only a self-created one. We do not have to be a prisoner of the mind. We can eliminate our addiction to it.
Nirvana, as described here, is recognizing what is and living in accord with it. It is process and experience, as indicated by the use of dwell, not thing or state. Delusion is not recognizing what is and not living according to what is. Likewise, it is process and experience, not thing or state. Far beyond is not a physical distance. There is no separation between enlightenment and delusion as experienced, for both are equally empty. Indeed as process, delusion and enlightenment both manifest the original nature. Far beyond refers to the difference between awareness of what is as it is and its absence.
The historic Buddhas were/are said to be perfect human manifestations of the original nature that we all possess here and now. Awareness is atemporal since it is here and now. The "three times" - past, present, and future - are abstractions which create structures outside of immediate awareness which is here and now. The Heart Sutra is directed to you, a Buddha in training. If you follow its hints, you will realize your original nature, Buddhahood!
Know as used here refers to the knowledge of direct experience, not of things. "Wisdom beyond wisdom" is experiencing without clinging to the concept "wisdom." The basis of this wisdom is the experience of the emptiness or the "no thingness" of the entities encountered in the world. The world is both form and emptiness and neither form nor emptiness. "Wisdom beyond wisdom" is the wisdom beyond duality.
The Sutra now presents a very different hint for realizing the "wisdom beyond wisdom." A dharani is a string of words whose recitation may lead to great benefits for the one who recites it. It is proposed that the recitation of the dharani that expresses the "wisdom beyond wisdom" will allow the practitioner to realize that very wisdom. Recitation or chanting is comparable to sitting and walking meditation in that is an awareness practice, albeit with more bodily activity than sitting and a different type of activity than walking. It is another approach to not attaching to our life world and thus allowing the original nature to manifest. Reciting the dharani may be analogous to koan study in that it is a device to expedite letting go of the life world created by the ordinary mind.
Again the message of the first part of the Sutra is reiterated. The emptiness of the self and all entities making up the world mean there is no subject to suffer and no thing that constitutes suffering. Thus suffering is transcended by transcending duality through the recitation of the dharani or by the practice of awareness. There is no suffering and no entity to suffer.
Know again refers to the knowledge of direct experience. "Truth" is the reality or suchness beyond the truth/falsehood duality that is realized in maintaining direct awareness. The absence of direct awareness gives rise to the world of true/false and hence to doubt which is an absence of awareness.
The dharani is the Sanskrit "gate gate paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha." Usually the dharani is untranslated and repeated in its original form since it is not a logical or scientific statement that requires a meaning. The alternative is to translate it, which is what is done in this version of the sutra. One somewhat literal translation is "going going yonder, going yonder, completed enlightenment perfect." The translation here is more poetic. The last line "having never left" represents a departure from literalness to emphasize the point that there is no separation between delusion and enlightenment and that they are here and now. Wisdom is beyond duality; it is immanent rather than transcendent.
This discussion of the Heart Sutra is constrained by the translation used. There are other versions that may or may not alter the treasure map the Sutra presents. However, this version is a very useful map. There appears to be repetition in the Sutra. Yet this repetition is for me both reinforcement to and subtle variation on important themes.
Direct experience is awareness of what is, as it is, directly without intermediaries. Direct experience does not involve extinguishing or eliminating form, feeling, thought, impulse, consciousness, etc. Emptiness could just as well be referred to as fullness or completeness. Original nature is delusion as well as enlightenment. Everything is fine as it is - beyond the good/evil duality. Actions based on the heart of wisdom arise from direct experience rather than from some external set of precepts or rules or commandments or vows. The precepts are just as empty as the aggregates.
Finally, blocking our understanding of the Sutra, its hints to practice, and its description of what is, is our addiction to the self. This addiction is similar to an addiction to a drug, substance, or behavioral pattern. It is very difficult to detect and eliminate as, with few exceptions, and none known personally to me, we all suffer from this addiction. Thus we lack an obvious path to learn the nature of and cure for this addiction. The Buddha and others have on various occasions presented hints on how to eliminate this addiction. However, these are presented to specific individuals at specific times and may be more or less helpful to us here and now. The Heart Sutra is for me a stunning example of the clearest and most helpful of these hints.
Thanks to: John Cooper, Don Halloran, Rich Woodcock, Ann Mahoney, Janet Cooke, Mickey Elliston.
(c) Frederick A. Rossini 2002
| Revised for www.ZenSpace.org May 18, 2002. | Return to Commentary Page > |