By: Bob Zeglovitch
This morning, we began to chant the Heart Sutra as part of our regular practice, adding it to the Harmony of Difference and Equality which we have chanted regularly for several years. The Heart Sutra is the most recited and copied sutra in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, and is central in Zen liturgy. It dates to approximately 350 CE and originated in northern India, although its precise origins remain somewhat obscure. The short text is one of approximately 38 sutras in what are known as the Prajna Paramita sutras (the sutras of Transcendent Wisdom). These are core early texts in the Mahayana tradition, which centers around the teaching of emptiness and the bodhisattva ideal. The bodhisattva ideal was a response to the model of the arhat (person who has attained full enlightenment) prevalent in early Buddhism, in which the practitioner gained individual liberation. In the bodhisattva tradition, the practitioner works for the liberation of all beings.
The doctrine of emptiness (in the translation we are using this term is called boundlessness) was a philosophical response to the Abhidharma tradition in Buddhism. Abhidharma is an umbrella term for a number of systems that were developed to categorize what was understood to constitute the types of conscious experience in terms of various factors and relationships—called the “dharmas”. In a sense, the dharmas could be likened to the building blocks of our experience in the phenomenal world, appearing and disappearing rapidly and in an infinitely complex web of relationships and causal chains. At least some Buddhist schools held that these dharmas constituted actual fundamental and indivisible elements of reality. Nevertheless, because of their radically impermanent and complex nature, they were consistent with an understanding of not-self, or anatta. Under this approach, the understanding was that there was no ego, body or mind behind a collection of impermanent elements. The Mahayana tradition represented a radical break from this rationalistic approach, and held that all dharmas, all phenomena, are empty of intrinsic existence and nature.
The Soto Zen teacher Shohaku Okumura describes emptiness in this way: “Even the fundamental elements are empty. This means that eye, ear, nose and tongue don’t function separately, buy only as a whole. They are all connected with each other. That is one meaning of emptiness. Nothing can exist as an independent entity and everything functions as part of a larger system. This perspective is called nondiscrimination mind or nondiscrimination wisdom.
In the Heart Sutra, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is addressing Shariputra and expounding on emptiness. Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion—named Kuan Yin in China and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan, male in India and female in China, Japan, Korea and Tibet. A translation which encompasses several meanings of the name is “the lord who beholds the doings of the phenomenal world and hears its cries of compassion.” Avalokiteshvara has a thousand arms and an eye in the palm of each hand, through which she is able to help all those in need, in a skillful manner appropriate to the individual situation.
Shariputra was one of the two principle disciples of the Buddha, and was known as the “Marshall of the Dhamma”, renowned for his ability to understand and teach the dharma, including the understanding of anatta or not self. Although scholars date the beginnings of the Abhidharma schools to a couple of hundred years after the Buddha, the Theravadin school maintains that the Buddha taught the Abhidharma to Shariputra, who was the founder of this scholastic approach based on the categories of “dharmas.” His appearance as the listener in this text therefore makes rhetorical sense, since he is being instructed by the Bodhisattva of compassion on the teachings of emptiness that go beyond the Abhidharma understanding.
There is another character that appears at various places in the sutra—Prajnaparamita. In the Kaz Tanahashi/Joan Halifax translation that we are using this appears simply as “wisdom beyond wisdom.” While it is accurately represented as describing the highest form of wisdom or the perfection of wisdom, it is also personified in Mahayana cosmology as “the mother of all buddhas.” In Mu Soeng’s excellent book The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, he states, “if we interpret the mother as a source from which all things are born, we will understand the wisdom of shunyata or emptiness as the source of liberation for all buddhas and bodhisattvas.”
The chant ends with the mantra, Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate means “gone, gone.” Paragate means “gone beyond.” Parasamgate means “gone completely beyond—to the other shore of samsara, the sea of suffering.” Bodhi means “the Awakened Mind.” Svaha is the Sanskrit word for homage or proclamation. Mu Soeng renders the complete mantra as follows: “Homage to the Awakend Mind which has gone over to the other shore.” He notes that the critical word is “beyond”, which can also be translated as “transcendent”. The other shore is a reference to the nirvanic realm, a place of ease and tranquility, refuge and safety. However, in Zen the understanding is that nirvana is to be found within samsara.
There is much more, of course, that could be said about this essential and dense sutra, but hopefully this provides some basic orientation. Mu Soeng’s book is excellent for a deeper dive, as is The Heart Sutra by Red Pine.