About
2500 years ago Avalokitesvara dictated the heart-sutra to Sariputra, that began
with:
Oh, Sariputra, form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
This thesis
is the key to the gateless gate.
If everything that we consider as form to
not be emptiness and that we con-sider as emptiness to not be form, then we consider
form and emptiness as two separate phenomena.
Turning the key is to realize
that what we see as separate phenomena is unity.
At the moment that form and
emptiness are experienced in their actual quality, this unity cannot be given
a name. Our capacity for reasoning is able to ex-press this unity neither in speech,
nor in writing, nor in an image, for the simple reason that whoever experiences
it themselves is this unity, i.e. speech which explains itself, or an eye that
sees itself.
Everything that can be said about it is that you are a you, a
tree is a tree, in short, that which is, is.
Hongaku Zeshin
Leiden
29
april 1997