Talk Notes:
Meeting the Heart Sutra 7 - The Good News
I hope you were able to welcome Bodhidharma on the way in. He came here today from Kent and I think he's arrived at the end of his journey here at Red Cedar and will look after us, and encourage us, and challenge us in our practice for the rest of this kalpa.
But let's finish our Heart Sutra page of negations.
In past talks we've talked a lot about emptiness. How emptiness is the literal translation for Shunyata the word that was used to point towards the wide open, interpenetrated, and fluid way things actually are. As opposed to the locked down separate, stable, and distinct way the mind describes things. We talked about how that rigidity and separateness causes suffering. And how that's most important perhaps in the way we conceive of ourselves. The way our mind has us literally quite "full of ourselves." Plus the great strife we're seeing in the world now around how once I believe in my ideas of myself then it's natural to believe in my idea of the "other". How damaging that othering is. We see that in the news but also when we're paying attention in our day to day lives.
And the good news which we're about to get to in the next page is that when we deeply resonnate with and appreciate the empty nature of all that is than there's nothing to fear, nothing to protect, nothing to solve. We find real happiness and peace. The kind of happiness and peace that's not dependent on anything - that's not about getting what we want or avoiding what we don't want. Radical acceptance is in the mix here too.
Not that we don't still engage with the world - this teaching is a core teaching on the path of bodhisattvas - those who devote themselves completely to healing the suffering in the world. We just go about it in a whole different way as our appreciation and feeling for emptiness grows. We do our best and know that's truly our best. We accept the outcomes - what happened happened and maybe our choices and actions made some contribution but we also know int he vast empty array of causality - of karma - the web of interconnections is more complex than we'll ever be able to perceive. So if it flops, we see that it flopped, we learn what we can and we try again. Without adding blame or shame or game to the thing.
One last note about trying to make sense of the shunyata teachings is that the Chinese landed on the character 空 kōng to mean "emptiness" - and that characer also means "sky" - so to embrace the sky-like qualities of mind. The Japanese pronounce that character kū when talking about Buddhism but interestingly they have a different reading for 空 when they are literally talking about the sky which is sora. Japanese is an interesting language - very layered.
So form does not differ from the sky, the sky does not differ from form. Form itself is sky, sky itself form. And everything else is like this.
Then last time we got most of the way through the Heart Sutra's terse discussion of the implications that emptiness have for our everyday experience and for all of the traditional Buddhist teachings. They just used the word "no" to mean "it's not really the way you think it is". No form, eyes, sight and sight consciousness. Doesn't mean we don't have eyes or can't see, it means that we are full of assumptions about how all that works. Please free yourself from your assumptions and look deeply, understand clearly, go beyond any ideas you have about it all.
And that this all applies to the powerful Buddhist teachings like the 5 skandhas. We leave off with the last paragraph of the page. Two deeply important Buddhist teachings are then no'd in this way.
Heart sutra
There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance... neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death.
The dot dot dot here is very important. This refers to a teaching called the twelve-fold chain of interdependent origination. Ignorance is the first of twelve points and old age and death is the last one. I've summarized the list on page 7 into 8 on the packets. We don't have time to go into this deeply but it's a description of how every moment of experience comes to be, how sticky it all gets for conditioned beings, and how it leads to suffering.
The extinction part is that in early Buddhism the approach was to learn how to run the whole system backwards - to radically unpack experience and see how these many factors led to suffering, to un-peel them one by one - so that they go extinct in a way - as the path to freedom.
Then it says
Heart sutra
no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.
This is inviting us to look deeply into the A-#1 core teaching of Buddhism called the Four Noble Truths. That trying to depend on things to make us happy leads to suffering caused by clinging, desire and aversion. But that thankfully there's a way to stop doing that to yourself. And that way is the path of practice leading to supreme knowledge of how things really are and attainment of the deep peace they called nirvana.
A great and useful and important teaching. We should bring it up every day. Suffering is here. And it can be pretty quiet and subtle kinds of suffering. How am I causing it? Oh, I want reality to be other than how it is, got it. What do I do about that intensely powerful habit energy? I walk the path, I practice, I learn to see more deeply into how things are. And what a relief it is to have found at true path.
Wonderful and the Heart Sutra says this too is empty, this too is like the sky, this too we shouldn't cling to or reify. Or judge ourselves and others around how well we're understanding and making use of the four noble truths. The four noble truths are no four noble truths. The four noble truths are free of four noble truths. Do you understand?
Heart sutra
With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajña paramita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.
And since there is radically nothing to attain we just dive into the wisdom of emptiness - that's what prajña paramita is. We've been studying the teaching of the six paramitas on Sunday morning this year and here's the capstone paramita which, this being the dense Heart Sutra, includes the other five. So we can say the bodhisattva also relies on generosity, on their wise ethical living, on bringing up joyful effort, and in stabilizing the mind in meditation. The wisdom paramita - prajña paramita - is the wise understanding that sees the emptiness, the radical freedom, of all of these practices. Paramita is sometimes translated as perfection - perfect practices - but it also means going beyond.
And going beyond is what this entire sutra is all about! Practicing Buddhism so deeply that we go beyond Buddhism. Studying our experience of self so wisely and lovingly that we go beyond any idea of a separate self. And so on.
And when we enter into this way deeply there's nothing to fear, there are no bocks, no hindrances. We go beyond all of our confused ideas and discover true peace.
The "inverted views" by the way refers technically to four mistaken views:
- the view that anything can every be permanent
- the view that true satisfaction can be found in things or ideas
- the view that there is a separate self
- the view that because something is attractive to us it's worth striving for and clinging to
These views make zero sense in the light of emptiness is the idea. It's not so much that we are finally convinced that these views were mistaken. It's more than in a mind that's in harmony with emptiness these views just don't arise. We are "far beyond" them.
And next we get a bit of a sell job. This isn't just a great way for you to practice, it's how all of the Buddhas practice and how radically transformational it is.
Heart sutra
All buddhas of past, present, and future rely on prajña paramita and thereby attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.
"complete, perfect enlightement" translates the best possible awakening, there are many many different kinds of samadhi states and realizations. This translates one called annutara samyak sambodhi which is the great awakening of fully realized Buddhas.
These emptiness wisdom teachings are insanely powerful and important in other words.
And then we have a surprising pivot to a devotional practice. Or maybe it's not so surprising as what else could one possibly say about emptiness after all we've been through.
Heart sutra
Therefore, know the prajña paramita as the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra, the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which removes all suffering and is true, not false.
Prajña paramita isn't a teaching to think about, it's a practice to live. To live as a mantra. Mantras are sounds of power that aren't about intellectual meaning. To chant mantras is what we in our minds that separate things into categories and concepts might call a devotional practice.
And as mentras go - as practice goes - it's the best. Bright, supreme, and incomparable. And powerful - so powerful that it removes all suffering. And if you STILL had the least bit of doubt about all of this we toss in a bold assertion that it's true, not false. Which is kind of wonderful after all of this study of emptiness which seems to say that the concepts of true and false aren't what we think they are anyway. But nonetheless, this is the real deal so practice this.
Lastly the Sutra calls us how to recite this mantra - how to express our deep practice in that form:
Heart sutra
Therefore we proclaim the prajña paramita mantra, the mantra that says: "Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha."
The mantra is left untranslated in English and also in Chinese and Japanese the just give the best approximation of those sounds as they can. But it means "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awakening YES." Svaha isn't literally "yes" but it the spirit of that kind of yes.
Some of the traditional commentaries say that the mantra is actually a kind of sneaky way of presenting the entire sutra for those exceptional students who can feel into the deeper meaning of the manta. So it's also a kind of secret teaching vehicle.
Literally in Zen there aren't any regular practices where we go around chanting "Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha" but nothing's stopping you from taking this up at home and as you walk around.
Thus ends our version of the Heart Sutra. The longer version chanted in Tibetan Buddhism includes a standard sutra-type closing just like it included a sutra-type opening which set the scene and gave a little back story.
Here's the closing as translated by Edward Conze:
Longer form of the heart sutra
"Then the Lord rose from that concentration, and he complimented the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Mahasattva, saying: 'Well done, well done, son of good family! So it is, O son of good family, so it is! Just as you have taught it, so should the deep perfection of wisdom be practiced. Even the Tathagatas are full of joy.' Thus spoke the Lord. Enraptured, the venerable Shariputra, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, and the whole world with its gods, men, asuras, and gandharvas, rejoiced in the Lord’s teaching."
Let's do a quick and simple little exploration with a partner just turn to someone close by and take turns speaking about what feels helpful, useful or important to you in the Heart Sutra.
