Heart Sutra
Ancient Buddhist
Wisdom
in the Light of Quantum Reality
Commentary
by Mu Soeng Sunim
Primary
Point Press Cumberland, Rhode Island
Copyright 1991 by Mu Soeng Sunim
All
rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without permission
of
the publisher.
First edition, 1991 Second printing, 1992
Electronic
edition 1993, distributed by DharmaNet
International with permission of publisher.
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of Congress Cataloging-in-publication data pending.
ISBN 0-942795-04-0
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--------------------------------------------------------
Acknowledgements
================
Many
thanks to Richard Shrobe, Adria Evans, Sam Rose, Kathy
Diehl and Richard Streitfeld
for reading the manuscript and
their valuable comments. Special thanks to J.W.
Harrington
for help with typesetting and production of this book.
Permissions:
Acknowledgement
is made to the following for their kind
permission to use materials from their
publications:
Selections
from The Tao of Physics, Copyright 1975
Frithjof Capra. Reprinted by permission
of the
publisher.
Selections from The Silent Pulse, Copyright 1978 George
Leonard.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Selections from Creative Meditation
and
Multi-Dimensional Consciousness, Copyright 1976 Lama
Angarika Govinda.
Reprinted by permission of the
publisher.
Selections from The Buddhist Teaching
of Totality,
Copyright 1971 The Pennsylvania State University
Press. Reprinted
by permission of the publisher.
Selections from Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science,
Copyright
1984 State University of New York Press.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Selections
from The Heart of Understanding, Copyright
1988 Thich Nhat Hanh. Reprinted
by permission of the
publisher.
Introduction
============
At
the heart of each of us, whatever our
imperfections, there exists a silent
pulse of
perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and
resonances, which is
absolutely individual and
unique, and yet which connects us to everything in
the
universe. The act of getting in touch with
this pulse can transform our personal
experience
and in some way alter the world around us.[1]
The
convergence between science and mysticism, between
Eastern thought and Western
pragmatism, and the consequent
emergence of a new paradigm in recent times,
offers a
renewed hope that we may yet be able to transform ourselves
and
the world around us. The dangers of failing to do so are
readily apparent,
mostly in the near-destruction of the
ecological system of the planet. There
are many tools of
transformation but the only place where transformation
really
takes place is in the human heart. The ancient
traditions of the East have
always sought to understand the
nature of reality within one's own heart. It
is not an
accident that the Chinese word hsin stands for Heart-Mind.
In
the Eastern way of looking at things, the
thinking-feeling process is a unified
field, in contrast to
the Cartesian dualism of the western scientific mind.
Human
experience has shown that the heart-mind, being deeply
conditioned,
is not an easy place for conflicts to be
resolved. This was brought out most
vividly in the intense
emotional and even existential crisis which the pioneers
of
quantum physics (the post-Einsteinian branch of physics that
deals with
the molecular structure of organisms at the
subatomic level) underwent before
they could accept the
intellectual findings of their own experiments.
The
Heart Sutra, an ancient scripture from the Mahayana
wisdom schools of Buddhism,
is an insight into the nature of
ultimate reality through intuitive wisdom.
The spaciousness
of this insight allows the heart to beat in its naturalness,
beyond
disputations and ideological arguments. Now that
quantum physics has found
some very interesting parallels to
the basic insights of the Heart Sutra, perhaps
the
intellectual and the intuitive can meet in the new paradigm.
At the
same time, while this commentary offers to view the
insights of Mahayana Buddhism
in the light of quantum
physics, it carries no suggestion that the two are
complementary
or interchangeable. They are, at best, two
entirely different orders of reality,
each reflecting
completely different underlying processes that happen to
converge.
In his pioneering book, The Tao of Physics,
Frithjof Capra has observed:
The
conception of physical things and phenomena as
transient manifestations of
an underlying
fundamental entity is not only a basic element of
quantum
field theory, but also a basic element of
the Eastern world view ... the intuition
behind
the physicist's interpretation of the subatomic
world, in terms of
the quantum field, is closely
paralleled by that of the Eastern mystic who
interprets
his or her experience of the world in
terms of an ultimate underlying reality.
Buddhists
express the same idea when they call the
ultimate reality Sunyata--"Emptiness"
or "the
void"--and affirm that it is a living Void which
gives
birth to all forms in the phenomenal world
.... Thus the Void of the Eastern
mystic can
easily be compared to the quantum field of
subatomic physics.
Like the quantum field, it
gives birth to an infinite variety of forms which
it
sustains and, eventually, reabsorbs.[2]
The
effort in this commentary is to see this convergence in
a creative light, knowing
fully well that after convergence
the two orders of reality separate again
and their
underlying processes take a different turn. Above all, this
commentary
on the Heart Sutra is offered in the spirit of a
Zen practitioner. This commentary
arose out of my own need,
and presumably the need of like-minded Zen students,
to
understand the historical and doctrinal background of this
seminal document.
At the same time, I wanted to be careful
not to get caught in the minutiae
of academic analysis and
turn this commentary into yet another doctrinal point
of
view. In the present approach, the focus is not on doctrinal
orthodoxy,
but rather on creating a radical new
understanding of an ancient teaching,
and to understand this
core teaching of Mahayana Buddhism in the light of new
perspectives
on reality and a new model of the universe set
forth by quantum physics. Since
the teaching of the Heart
Sutra is centered around an insight into "emptiness,"
the
Sanskrit word sunyata is used here throughout rather than
its quite
inadequate English translation. It is thus hoped
that the inherent vibrancy
of sunyata which has infused the
spirit of Mahayana for the last two thousand
years will
emerge in the following commentary. Since the developed
tradition
of Zen bears the imprint of sunyata throughout, it
is hoped as well that readers
will approach this commentary
through the prism of their meditation practice,
and that the
vibrancy of their practice will find resonance in the
insights
of the sutra. As Edward Conze has remarked,
It
cannot be the purpose of a commentary to convey
directly to the reader the
spiritual experiences
which a sutra describes. They only reveal
themselves
to persistent meditation. A commentary
must be content to explain the words
used.[3]
A note on
the English translation of the sutra:
===============================================
There
are many translations of the Heart Sutra now being
used by various Zen communities
in the United States. The
translation used here is the one used by Kwan Um
School of
Zen and its member groups, with its head temple at
Providence
Zen Center.
The
Heart Sutra
===============
The
Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra
======================================
Avalokitesvara
Bodhisattva when practicing deeply the Prajna
Paramita perceives that all five
skandhas are empty and is
saved from all suffering and distress.
Sariputra,
form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness
does not differ from form. That
which is form is emptiness,
that which is emptiness form. The same is true
of feelings,
perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
Sariputra,
all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do
not appear or disappear, are
not tainted or pure, do not
increase or decrease. Therefore, in emptiness,
no form, no
feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. No eyes, no
ears,
no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no
sound, no smell, no taste,
no touch, no object of mind, no
realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of
mind
consciousness. No ignorance and also no extinction of it and
so forth
until no old age and death and also no extinction
of them.
No
suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no
cognition, also no attainment
with nothing to attain.
The
Bodhisattva depends on Prajna Paramita and the mind is
no hindrance. Without
any hindrance, no fears exist. Far
apart from any perverted views, one dwells
in Nirvana.
In the
three worlds, all Buddhas depend on Prajna Paramita
and attain Anuttara Samyak
Sambodhi.
Therefore,
know that Prajna Paramita is the great
transcendent mantra, is the great bright
mantra, is the
utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra which is able to
relieve
all suffering and is true not false. So proclaim the
Prajna Paramita mantra,
proclaim the mantra which says:
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.
Historical
Background Of The Sutra
===================================
The
term Buddhism, used generically and rather loosely, is
best understood as an
ever-evolving phenomenon with three
distinct aspects to its history:
1)
the original teachings of the historical person
Siddhartha Gautama who became
the Buddha, the Awakened One:
the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold
Path, and the
Chain of Dependent Origination. There is a fair historical
consensus
on the authenticity of these teachings and the
teacher;
2)
the Buddhist Tradition, by which is meant the developed
doctrines such as the
Abhidharma canon of the Hinayana
tradition, and the sutras (sermons attributed
to the Buddha)
and sastras (commentaries on the sutras) of the Mahayana
tradition
whose composition and compilation took place over
a period of a thousand years
after the death of the Buddha,
and
3)
the Buddhist Religion,which includes a smorgasbord of
bewildering and seemingly
contradictory practices and
beliefs ranging from the marathoning monks of Mt.
Hiei in
Japan to the devotees of Pure Land and Nichiren sects in
East Asia
to the laity supporting the forest-monks in
Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The
Heart Sutra, or the "Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra," to
give it its
proper Sanskrit name, belongs to the Buddhist
tradition, and is probably the
best known of the Mahayana
sutras. It is chanted daily in the Buddhist monasteries
of
China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and in the West. This very short
sutra (containing
about fourteen verses in Sanskrit and 260
characters in Chinese) is a basic
text of Zen tradition and
is considered to contain the essence of all Mahayana
wisdom
schools.
Zen
(Ch'an) began in China as a meditation school of
Mahayana Buddhism and was
partially shaped by its sutra
literature. These sutras capture the dramatic
fervor and
religious aspirations of new movements in India that had
broken
away from the earliest forms of Buddhism (Hinayana),
beginning, most likely,
in the first century BCE. The
Mahayana doctrine developed, religiously and
philosophically,
with the Bodhisattva ideal (which exhorted
a practitioner to work for the liberation
of all beings,
however numberless, rather than striving just for one's own
liberation)
at its center, and the teaching of sunyatya
(Emptiness) as its inspiration.
D.T. Suzuki, the great
facilitator between Zen tradition and the West, finds,
in
the psychology of the Bodhisattva, "one of the greatest
achievements
in the life of the spirit."
Several
of the schools of Mahayana Buddhism are based on a
group of sutras known as
Prajnaparamita Sutras or the Sutras
of Transcendent Wisdom. The earliest portions
of these
sutras go back to the period 100 BCE. to 100 CE; the Heart
Sutra
itself has been dated by Edward Conze at 350 CE.
The
great Mahayana sutras form the center of
Mahayana; in them the new religious
inspiration is
crystallized. A massive and imposing body of
literature,
the sutras differ greatly in content,
but each and every one of them breathes
the spirit
of Mahayana. These widely scattered writings serve
many religious
communities. While individual
sutras or groups of sutras take up particular
themes,
they concur and overlap at many points.
Moreover, one and the same sutra can
give rise to
different religious movements. They are often
accompanied by
explanatory commentaries, or
sastras.[4]
When
Buddhism first moved from India to China in its Mahyana
forms, it was known
not as Buddhism but as the "Religion of
Prajnaparamita" or, since
the sutras of the Prajnaparamita
centered around the teaching of sunyata (somewhat
loosely
translated as emptiness or nothingness), as the "Religion of
Nothingness."
The
Heart Sutra is one of approximately 38 sutras in the
Prajnaparamita group,
and its shortest. In it, the dynamic
vibrancy of sunyata and the cryptic delineation
of its
meaning have been captured with a radical economy of
expression that
has exercised a fascination over the minds
of countless generations of Buddhist
thinkers in India,
China, Tibet and other lands where Mahayana Buddhism
flourished.
Some of the greatest thinkers in Buddhist
history, among them Atisa, Fa-tsang,
Kukai, and Hakuin have
written commentaries on the Heart Sutra.
While
it celebrates sunyata as a timeless truth, the Heart
Sutra has also to be seen
as a historical document, engaged
in rivalry with the rationalist-schematic
approach taken by
earliest sects of Buddhism (designated as "Hinayana"--the
lower
vehicle--by its rivals.) In the centuries after
Buddha's death, the Hinayana
followers, with the
encyclopedic Abhidharma as their literature, had created
categories
of analysis to the point where it became, in the
words of Heinrich Dumoulin,
the Zen historian, "a
dishearteningly lifeless product without metaphysical
elan...."
Mahayana sutras thunder again and again against
philosophers (Abhidharmists)
who are disposed to freeze
reality into a categorical permanence and to discriminate
between
subject and object.
In
the still-solidifying tradition of Mahayana, the Heart
Sutra is a key document
demolishing all these categories,
and pointing out that all categories are
ultimately
dualistic and not leading to wisdom essential for
enlightenment.
In the earliest stages of the formation of
Mahayana, there were schools of
thought which proposed the
doctrine of the "five words" of the Buddha;
meditations on
these words alone have transcendent significance and the
power
to bring liberation (which, they claimed, was not the
case with the rest of
his discourses.) These five words are:
non-soul (anatta), impermanence (anicca),
unhappiness
(dukkha), extinction (nirvana) and emptiness (sunyata).
The
first four of these words are shared by the early
Mahayanists commonly with
the Hinayanists; it is with the
inclusion of sunyata (emptiness) as the last
of these words
that early Mahayana asserts its difference with the Hinayana
schools.
For the Hinayanists, "emptiness" may be synonymous
with the first
word--non-self or non-soul--but its use was
restricted in describing a person.
Mahayana invention was
not only to postulate sunyata (emptiness) as the essential
emptiness
of the phenomenal world, including the world
within a person's mind; the thinkers
of Mahayana took care
to deny the existence of sunyata as yet another category.
Thus
we have the doctrine of sunyata-sunyata, the emptiness
of emptiness. Sunyata
is experienced as intuitive wisdom,
and it is only through the intuitive wisdom
of sunyata, the
theme of Mahayana wisdom schools, that one is ferried across
to
the other shore of liberation.
The popularity of the Heart Sutra in
the
Buddhist tradition lies not only in its brevity but also
in the elusiveness
of its meaning. Distinguished
commentators over the ages have discovered in
it widely
divergent interpretations which have led Edward Conze to
observe
that, "they tell us more what the text meant to them
within their own
culture than what the Indian original
intended to convey."[5]
If
that be the case, the divergent interpretations seem
somehow quite appropriate
since the elusive meaning of
sunyata demands that each generation of Buddhist
thinkers
and practitioners in each culture come to grips with it
through
the praxis of their own experience.
The
Heart Sutra has two versions, the longer and the
shorter. The longer version
has a prologue in which the
Buddha enters into samadhi and an epilogue in which
he rises
from samadhi and praises the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. The
shorter
version, used here, begins without the prologue and
has Avalokitesvara contemplating
the meaning of the profound
perfection of wisdom.
The
Setting
===========
The Heart Sutra is preached on Vulture Peak, east of
the
ancient Indian city of Rajagraha, the capital of the kingdom
of Magadha.
Rajagraha, along with Sravasti, was one of the
two major cities of ancient
India most frequently visited by
the Buddha during his forty-five year teaching
career. The
Vulture Peak is said to have been a favorite site of the
Buddha,
and here he gave a number of sermons to assemblies
of monks and laypeople.
The
rather unique prologue (of the longer version)
introduces us to the leading
characters of the sutra:
Shakyamuni Buddha, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva and
Sariputra.
The Buddha does not speak in the prologue, but enters into
samadhi
and silently empowers Sariputra to ask and
Avalokitesvara to answer. The silence
of the Buddha here is
characteristic of much of Mahayana literature, and supports
its
classical view that the Buddha is "no longer simply the
teacher but is
transformed into the principle of
enlightenment, a silent, eternal, numinous
presence, the
dharmakaya."[6]
The
Heart Sutra is the only Prajnaparamita text in which the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
appears. His (or her) presence
here is significant on several counts: first,
it attests to
the relatively late date of the sutra, a time when the cult
of
the Bodhisattva of Compassion, textually associated with
the twenty-fourth
chapter of the Lotus Sutra and the sutras
of the Pure Land School, had become
well-established.
Secondly, the Heart Sutra is dedicated completely to the
teaching
of sunyata without any reference whatever to the
other major theme of the Prajnaparamita
sutras: compassion
(which traditionally includes upaya or the Skillful Means
of
the bodhisattva.) The absence of this theme is countered,
implicity,
by the fact that the wisdom essential for the
attainment of Buddhahood is proclaimed
by a bodhisattva who
is said to be the embodiment of compassion.
The
presence of Sariputra is equally significant. The Heart
Sutra does not inveigh
against the Hinayana disciples of the
Buddha, as is characteristic of the longer
Mahayana sutras,
in which the Hinayana disciples are considered inferior to
the
Bodhisattvas, both in their wisdom and in their
aspiration to enlightenment.
The presence of Sariputra here
fulfills that function; Sariputra, in the Hinayana
scriptures,
is considered the wisest of the disciples of the
Buddha, but here he comes
across as perplexed and uninformed
when asking Avalokitesvara how to practice
the perfection of
wisdom.
The
Title: Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra
=============================================
Maha
means great or large. Prajna means wisdom, more
specifically intuitive wisdom.
Paramita is commonly
translated as "perfection" although, in a different
etymological
usage, it can also mean "that which has gone
beyond" or "transcendent."
Hridaya means "heart" but here,
in the title of the sutra, it is
used in the sense of a
"core" or "essence" rather than
a physical organ. Sutra is
the spoken word; more specifically, in the Buddhist
tradition,
it is the sermon or the word spoken by the
Buddha. Thus the full meaning of
the title can be "the Great
Heart of Perfect Wisdom" or "the
Heart of Great Transcendent
Wisdom." Or we may use poetic licence to translate
it as
"the Wisdom of the Great Heart of the Universe." That will
certainly
be in keeping with the insight offered by the
sutra into sunyata as the core
of the universe.
"Avalokitesvara
Bodhisattva..."
===============================
Bodhi means being awake
or enlightened; sattva means a
living being, so bodhisattva means an awakened,
enlightened
being, a person who has diligently cultivated the qualities
necessary
to become a Buddha. Avalokitesvara is one of the
celestial Bodhisattvas and
an embodiment of compassion. In
the Mahayana tradition, Avalokitesvara and
Manjushri, who is
the Bodhisattva of wisdom, represent the two core
qualities--wisdom
and compassion--necessary in the
psychological life of a Bodhisattva.
"...when
practicing deeply the Prajnapara-mita..."
==================================================
In
the prologue of the longer version of the sutra, this
line presents the Buddha
as being immersed in deep samadhi
while the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara too
is absorbed in
contemplating the meaning of the perfection of wisdom. The
statement
is significant here in that the tradition insists
that "a looking into"
the nature of reality is not a matter
of mere intellectual analysis (which
the followers of
Mahayana at times accused the Hinayana Abhidharmists of
doing)
but demands deep absorption so that awareness moves
from the merely superficial
to the profoundly intuitive.
This is true for the celestial bodhisattva as
it is for each
one of us. In the Mahayna cosmology, "Prajnaparamita"
(the
perfection of wisdom) is a goddess who has been called "the
mother
of the Buddhas"; her presence here can be interpreted
either cosmologically
or etymologically.
"...perceives
that all five skandhas are empty..."
==================================================
It
is in this state of intuitive awareness that the
bodhisattva perceives the
five skandhas to be empty. Before
we look at the term skandhas, it might be
useful to deal
first with the term "empty" since it is the central
teaching,
not only of the Heart Sutra but also of the entire
Mahayana literature. A translation
of the Sanskrit word
sunyata into western languages has always been problematic.
When
translated as "void" or "emptiness," it has a
nihilistic
undertone, which is how the orientialists of the
nineteenth century saw Buddhism
and portrayed it
accordingly. Fortunately our understanding of the term (and
of
Buddhism) has grown in recent decades and has outlasted
the earlier malformed
interpretations. Our current
understanding of Buddhist meditative experiences
has been
greatly faciliated by the findings of quantum physics into
the
nature of ultimate reality; these findings have added a
new dimension to our
efforts to understand the meaning of
the term sunyata and what it stands for.
For
a very long time, the Newtonian/Cartesian scientific
view of the world rested
on the notion of solid,
indestructible particles as the building blocks of
matter
and all life, moving in space and influencing each other by
forces
of gravitation and interacting according to fixed and
unchangeable laws. This
myth disintegrated under the impact
of experimental and theoretical evidence
produced by quantum
physicists in the early decades of this century. The
experiments
of quantum physics showed that the atoms, the
presumed fundamental building
blocks of the universe, were,
at their core, essentially empty. In experiments,
subatomic
particles showed the same paradoxical nature as light,
manifesting
either as particles or waves depending on how
the experiment was set up. Quantum
physicists, confronting
the mysteries of the universe, were left facing Zen-like
koans
of their own: the sound of a quark, the shape of a
resonance, the nature of
strangeness!
Quantum
physics has thus brought about a radical new
understanding both of the particles
and the void. In
subatomic physics, mass is no longer seen as a material
substance
but is recognized as a form of energy. When a
piece of seemingly solid matter--a
rock or a human hand or
the limb of a tree--is placed under a powerful electronic
microscope:
the
electron-scanning microscope, with the power
to magnify several thousand times,
takes us down
into a realm that has the look of the sea about
it... In the
kingdom of corpuscles, there is
transfiguration and there is samsara, the endless
round
of birth and death. Every passing second,
some 2-1/2 million red cells are
born; every
second, the same number die. The typical cell
lives about 110
days, then becomes tired and
decrepit. There are no lingering deaths here,
for
when a cell loses its vital force, it somehow
attracts the attention
of macrophage.
As
the magnification increases, the flesh does
begin to dissolve. Muscle fiber
now takes on a
fully crystaline aspect. We can see that it is
made of long,
spiral molecules in orderly array.
And all of these molecules are swaying like
wheat
in the wind, connected with one another and held
in place by invisible
waves that pulse many
trillions of times a second.
What
are the molecules made of? As we move closer,
we see atoms, the tiny shadowy
balls dancing
around their fixed locations in the molecules,
sometimes changing
position with their partners in
perfect rhythms. And now we focus on one of
the
atoms; its interior is lightly veiled by a cloud
of electrons. We come
closer, increasing the
magnification. The shell dissolves and we look on
the
inside to find...nothing.
Somewhere
within that emptiness, we know is a
nucleus. We scan the space, and there it
is, a
tiny dot. At last, we have discovered something
hard and solid, a
reference point. But no! as we
move closer to the nucleus, it too begins to
dissolve.
It too is nothing more than an
oscillating field, waves of rhythm. Inside the
nucleus
are other organized fields: protons,
neutrons, even smaller "particles."
Each of these,
upon our approach, also dissolve into pure rhythm.
These
days they (the scientists) are looking for
quarks, strange subatomic entities,
having
qualities which they describe with such words as
upness, downness,
charm, strangeness, truth,
beauty, color, and flavor. But no matter. If we
could
get close enough to these wondrous quarks,
they too would melt away. They too
would have to
give up all pretense of solidity. Even their speed
and relationship
would be unclear, leaving them
only relationship and pattern of vibration.
Of
what is the body made? It is made of emptiness
and rhythm. At the ultimate
heart of the body, at
the heart of the world, there is no solidity. Once
again,
there is only the dance. (At) the
unimaginable heart of the atom, the compact
nucleus,
we have found no solid object, but rather
a dynamic pattern of tightly confined
energy
vibrating perhaps 1022 times a second: a dance...
The protons--the
positively charged knots in the
pattern of the nucleus--are not only powerful;
they
are very old. Along with the much lighter
electrons that spin and vibrate around
the outer
regions of the atom, the protons constitute the
most ancient entities
of matter in the universe,
going back to the first seconds after the birth
of
space and time.[7]
It
follows then that in the world of subatomic physics there
are no objects, only
processes. Atoms consist of particles
and these particles are not made of any
solid material
substance. When we observe them under a microscope, we never
see
any substance; we rather observe dynamic patterns,
continually changing into
one another--a continuous dance of
energy. This dance of energy, the underlying
rhythm of the
universe, is again more intuited than seen. Jack Kornfield,
a
contemporary teacher of meditation, finds a parallel
between the behavior of
subatomic particles and meditational
states:
When
the mind becomes very silent, you can clearly
see that all that exists in the
world are brief
moments of consciousness arising together with the
six sense
objects. There is only sight and the
knowing of sight, sound and the knowing
of sound,
smell, taste and the knowing of them, thoughts and
the knowing
of thoughts. If you can make the mind
very focused, as you can in meditation,
you see
that the whole world breaks down into these small
events of sight
and the knowing, sound and the
knowing, thought and the knowing. No longer
are
these houses, cars, bodies or even oneself. All
you see are particles
of consciousness as
experience. Yet you can go deep in meditation in
another
way and the mind becomes very still. You
will see differently that consciousness
is like
waves, like a sea, an ocean. Now it is not
particles but instead
every sight and every sound
is contained in this ocean of consciousness. From
this
perspective, there is no sense of particles
at all.[8]
Energy,
whether of wave or particle, is associated with
activity, with dynamic change.
Thus the core of the
universe--whether we see it as the heart of the atom or
our
own consciousness--is not static but in a state of constant
and dynamic
change. This energy--now wave, now
particle--infuses each and every form at
the cellular level.
No form exists without being infused by this universal
energy;
form and energy interpenetrate each other endlessly
in an ever-changing dance
of the molecules, creating our
universe. This universal energy is itself a
process, beyond
the confines of time and space; a form, on the other hand,
is
an "event," existing momentarily in time and space. This
"moment"
may last for seventy or eighty years in the case of
a human being, a thousand
years in the case of a sequoia
tree, a few million years in the case of a mountain,
but
internally, at the cellular level, each of these forms is in
a process
of change at any given moment. In the paradigms of
quantum physics, there is
ceaseless change at the core of
the universe; in the paradigms of Mahayana
wisdom, there too
is ceaseless change at the core of our consciousness and
of
the universe.
But
change implies change from something to something else.
Without something to
be changed, there would be no change.
Without forms, there would be no change;
without the energy
of change, the forms would not be able to hold their balance
and
would collapse. In meditation practice, we see this
dynamic, constant change
in our own mind-body system.
It
has been just as difficult for the human mind to accept
the existence of sunyata
at the core of the universe as it
was for the early quantum physicists to accept
the quantum
randomness of the universe. Einstein had even hoped that the
quantum
theory he helped create was somehow flawed, hoping
desperately, even in the
face of the evidence of his own
experiments, that there would be a hidden variable
that
would establish order in the quantum world. Later
experiments, conducted
at the University of California in
Berkeley on Bell's theorem, confirmed the
absence of any
hidden variable, and showed that when either of two
correlated
particles were observed, no matter how far
separated in space, the other was
instantly affected by the
observation--as if the two particles were embedded
in the
observing consciousness itself. Even before Bell's theorem,
Werner
Heisenberg, one of the founding fathers of quantum
theory, formulated in his
Uncertainty Principle that it is
not possible to examine a situation or system
without
altering the system by the very act of examination; in the
deepest
experience of meditation, the object of
consciousness is embedded in the observing
consciousness;
the two are fused together by the energy or sunyata out of
which
both emerge.
A strange
place is this world of the new
physicists, a world of ultimate connectedness,
where
consciousness--or observership, as John
Wheeler calls it--coexisted with the
creation, and
where it might be said that the vastness of space,
the nuclear
conflagration of starts, the
explosions of galaxies are simply mechanisms for
producing
that first glimmer of awareness in your
baby's eyes.[9]
Subatomic
particles, then, are dynamic patterns, processes
rather than objects. Sunyata
too is a dynamic pattern rather
than an entity. Henry Stapp, an atomic physicist,
has
remarked, "An elementary particle is not an independently
existing
unanalyzable entity. It is, in essence, a set of
relationships that reach outward
to other things."[10]
Compare
this to Nagarjuna (100-200 CE, the great Buddhist
thinker whose dialectic of
Madhyamika--the Middle
Way--sought to define the experience of Mahayana wisdom):
"Things
derive their being and nature by mutual dependence
and are nothing in themselves."[11]
Some
commentators on Nagarjuna's formulation of the Middle
Way--between being and
non-being, between realism and
nihilism--have translated sunyata as "devoidness"
rather
than emptiness or nothingness. Nagarjuna's thesis holds that
despite
the absence of all substance, qualities, or
essential characteristics in all
existing things in this
changing world, there does remain the ineffable, final
reality
which can be seen only with the eye of intuitive
wisdom (prajna). A quantum
physicist may contend that this
Final Reality can be intuited at the other
end of an
electronic microscope!
Thus
our understanding of the word sunyata becomes a bit
more clear. All forms are
momentary in time and space; while
the form lasts, it has validity (which is
different from
reality), but this appearance is transitory and illusory.
Therefore,
a more appropriate and accessible way to
understand sunyata may be to apprehend
it as "momentariness"
or "transitoriness" rather than emptiness.
Ancient Buddhism
recognized that all objects are fundamentally devoid of
independent
lasting substance (Sanskrit: svabhava). Instead
the interplay of form and energy
creates a transitory
phenomenon which appears in time and space. Nagarjuna
cautions
us against the temptation to posit sunyata as a
category and reminds us again
and again that sunyata itself
is empty (sunyata-sunyata). The only way to apprehend
the
dynamic nature of sunyata is through the
transitory/momentary appearance
of forms. If no forms were
to be manifested through it, sunyata would be a
dead, static
mass but sunyata's function is to infuse the myriad forms.
Thus,
while sunyata itself is a process, the forms are a
manifestation of that process
and the process can be
understood only through the momentary existence of the
forms.
It was in this sense of a dynamic, universal energy
that ancient Mahayana Buddhism
used the term sunyata.
In
The Tao of Physics, Frithjof Capra makes a similar
observation:
The
phenomenal manifestations of the mystical
Void, like the subatomic particles,
are not static
and permanent, but dynamic and transitory, coming
into being
vanishing in one ceaseless dance of
movement and energy. Like the subatomic
world of
the physicist, the phenomenal world of the Eastern
mystic is a
world of samsara--of continuous birth
and death. Being transient manifestations
of the
Void, the things in this world do not have any
fundamental identity.
This is especially
emphasized in Buddhist philosophy which denies the
existence
of any material substance and also holds
that the idea of a constant "self"
undergoing
successive experiences is an illusion.[12]
In
Sanskrit, sunya means cipher or zero. In the West, a
circle or a zero means
nothingness. In Native American
usage, a circle means coming together, a sharing.
In Indian
usage, a circle means totality, wholeness. As Garma C.C.
Chang,
the noted Buddhist scholar, has remarked,
Zero
itself contains nothing, yet it cannot be
held to be absolutely or nihilistically
void. As a
mathematical concept and symbol, zero has a great
many functions
and utilities, without which it
would be practically impossible to execute
business
and scientific activities in this modern
age. If someone asked you, "Is
zero nothingness?"
you would be hard pressed to give an appropriate
reply.
Zero is both nothing and the possibility of
everything. It is definitely not
something
nihilistically empty, rather it is dynamic and
vital to all manifestations.
In the same way,
sunyata does not mean complete nothingness; being
"serenely
vibrant," it has both negative and
positive facets.[13]
In
the same vein, Masao Abe, another noted contemporary
Buddhist thinker, has
remarked that for Nagarjuna emptiness
was not non-being but "wondrous
Being,"
precisely
because it is Emptiness which "empties"
even emptiness, true Emptiness
(Absolute
Nothingness) is absolute Reality which makes all
phenomena, all
existents, truly be.[14]
Sunyata,
then, carries and permeates all phenomena and makes
their development possible.
Sunyata is often equated with
the absolute in Mahayana, since it is without
duality and
beyond empirical forms. In quantum physics, ultimate reality
is
equated with formless energy at the core of the atom.
This energy (of physics)
or sunyata (of Mahayana) is not a
state of mere nothingness but is the very
source of all life
and the essence of all forms.
Another
helpful way to undertand sunyata is through the Zen
term of "nowness,"
sometimes used interchangeably with
"momentariness." In the absence
of a permanent, abiding
substance anywhere, there is only the nowness of things:
ephermeral,
transitory, momentary. In traditional Buddhist
literature, the "nowness"
of things is described as tathata
or "suchness." The concept of tathata
was first formulated
by Asvaghosha, another great Buddhist thinker who probably
lived
a hundred years before Nagarjuna, and influenced him
greatly. In Asvaghosha's
formulation, when the futility of
all conceptual thinking is recognized, reality
is
experienced as pure "suchness." What is realized in suchness
is
the existence of form-as-itself (the treeness of the
tree, for instance), but
that realization is suffused in
intuitive wisdom (prajna) so that the ultimate
reality of
the form is seen as momentary and essentially devoid (sunya)
of
any lasting substance. Masao Abe, among others, insists
that "Emptiness
is Suchness."
Lama
Angarika Govinda uses the word "transparency" to come
to a fuller
understanding of sunyata:
If
sunyata hints at the nonsubstantiality of the
world and the interrelationship
of all beings and
things, then there can be no better word to
describe its
meaning than transparency. This word
avoids the pitfalls of a pure negation
and
replaces the concepts of substance, resistance,
impenetrability, limitation,
and materiality with
something that can be experienced and is closely
related
to the concepts of space and light.[15]
He goes on to elaborate,
Far
from being the expression of a nihilistic
philosophy which denies all reality,
it (sunyata)
is the logical consequence of the anatman
(non-self) doctrine
of nonsubstantiality. Sunyata
is the emptiness of all conceptual designations
and
at the same time the recognition of a higher,
incommensurable and indefinable
reality, which can
be experienced only in the state of perfect
enlightenment.
While we are able to come to an
understanding of relativity by way of reasoning,
the
experience of universality and completeness
can be attained only when all conceptual
thought,
all word-thinking, has come to rest. The
realization of the teachings
of the
Prajna-paramita Sutra can come about only on the
path of meditative
practice (yogacara), through a
transformation of our consciousness. Meditation
in
this sense is, therefore, no more a search after
intellectual solutions
or an analysis of worldly
phenomena with worldly means--which would merely
be
moving around in circles--but a breaking out
from this circle, an abandoning
of our
thought-habits in order to "reach the other shore"
(as
it has been said not only in the
Prajna-paramita-hridaya, but also in the ancient
Sutta
Nipata of the Pali Canon.) This requires a
complete reverseal of our outlook,
a complete
spiritual transformation or, as the Lankavatara
Sutra expresses
it, "a turning about in the
deepest seat of our consciousness." This
reversal
brings about a new spiritual outlook, similar to
that which the
Buddha experienced when returning
from the Tree of Enlightenment. A new dimension
of
consciousness is being opened by this experience,
which transcends the
limits of mundane
thought.[16]
"...five
skandhas are..."
==========================
The Sanskrit word skandha
literally means a group, a heap,
or an aggregate. In Buddhist tradition, the
five skandhas of
form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness are
taken
to constitute the entirety of what is generally known
as "personality."
These four words ("five skandhas are
empty") are the essence of the
earliest Buddhist teachings.
The Buddha taught the three marks of existence
(suffering,
non-self and impermanence) as the defining characteristics
of
individual human existence; to these three marks, the
Mahayanists added the
fourth mark of sunyata (emptiness) and
extended the concept to each and any
existent in the
universe. A detailed look at the five skandhas will mean
understanding
the very basis of Buddhist teachings and will
provide a solid foundation for
an extended look into
sunyata.
The
first and the most obvious of the skandhas is the
corporeal form (Sanskrit:
nama-rupa) which comes into being
as a result of the energies of four elements
(earth, air,
fire and water) coming together in a certain configuration;
when
looked at by quantum physics, a form is seen to be
devoid of any solid, everlasting
substance. The form is held
together in time and space by the interacting energies
of
the four elements in a certain pattern and balance. The
characteristics
which all skandhas, whether physical or
mental, share are: arising, stabilizing,
decay and
dissolution. Decay and dissolution occur when the balance in
which
the elements have been held together for a certain
period of time loses its
inner tension and the organism is
left without the essential vitality to hold
itself in time
and space.
The
skandha called feeling (Sanskrit: vedana) is the general
concept for feelings
and sensations. These feelings and
sensations can be classified into pleasant,
unpleasant and
neutral. As with the skandha of corporeal form, feelings and
sensations
also arise as a result of certain factors coming
together. They then gain an
intensity, hold it for some
time, lose the intensity after some more time,
and finally
disappear. A particular feeling or sensation may change into
another
feeling or sensation which, in turn, will go through
the same process ad infinitum.
The
skandha called perception (Sanskrit: samjna) includes
perception of form, sound,
smell, taste, touch and bodily
impressions, and mental objects. Perception
takes place only
in relation to an object (or thought) and does not exist
independently
of an object of attention.
The
skandha called impulse (Sanskrit: samskara) refers to
mental formations. In
Abhidharma-pitaka, the traditional
compend-ium of Buddhist psychology, a total
of fifty-two
impulses are listed, and include mental activities such as
volition,
attention, discrimination, joy, happiness,
equanimity, resolve, effort, compulsion,
concentration, and
so on; included in this skandha are all the volitional
impulses
or intentions that precede an action. Since actions
can be either physical,
verbal, or mental, impulses can
accordingly be physical, verbal or mental.
This skandha
refers both to the activity of forming and the passive state
of
being formed. The impulses thus are the impressions,
tendencies, and possibilities
in one's consciousness, and
are the sum total of one's character. The impulses
are the
result of the totality of one's actions and thoughts,
including
those of earlier births, and their continuing
presence is the condition for
a rebirth. If they are absent,
no karma is produced and no further birth takes
place. Since
the impulses can be good, bad or neutral, they determine the
type
of rebirth that will take place since their quality
conditions consciousness,
and through them consciousness
seeks a form in rebirth to manifest those qualities.
The
skandha called consciousness (Sanskrit: vijnana) is the
faculty of knowing.
Consciousness is a reaction or response
which has one of the six organs (of
eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, body and mind) as its basis and one of the six
corresponding
external phenomena (visual form, sound, smell,
taste, touch and mental thoughts)
as its object.
Consciousness arises out of contact between the object and
the
corresponding organ, but consciousness does not
recognize an object itself.
It is only a sort of awareness,
awareness of the presence of an object. For
instance, when
eye comes into contact with a blue color, eye-consciousness
simply
"sees" the presence of a color. The recognition that
the color is
blue comes from the skandha of perception, the
third aggregate discussed above.
Likewise, the
hearing-consciousness only hears the sound but does not
recognize
the category of sound; this is done by the
perception-aggregate, and so on.
A
commonly-made mistake about consciousness is to
misunderstand it as some sort
of soul or permanent self or
continuum that proceeds through one life and onto
the next.
The Buddha taught that consciousness arises only out of
conditions;
without the presence of conditions there is no
consciousness. Consciousness
depends on form, feelings,
perceptions and impulses for its arising and cannot
exist
independently of them. It is essentially an observing
function.
"...and
is saved from all suffering and distress."
==================================================
All
suffering is caused by delusion--delusion as to the
nature of ultimate reality.
Ultimate reality, in Buddhist
view, for which now some very interesting parallels
have
been provided by quantum physics, is neither being
(particle) nor non-being
(wave), neither solid nor abiding
in space-time continuum. .The qualities of
non-self
(Sanskrit: Anatman) and impermanence (Sanskrit: Anitya) are
the
hallmark of each individual existence; it is only the
ego which clings to the
deluded view of a permanent self and
distorts the nature of reality. In meditation,
one
apprehends on a direct, experiencial level that the five
skandhas are
mere processes and that no self exists in the
sense of a permanent, eternal,
integral, independent
substance; it is through this apprehension that a person
is
saved from deluded views, and hence from pain and suffering
that ensue
from such deluded views.
"Sariputra,
form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness
does not differ from form. That
which is form is emptiness,
that which is emptiness form."
==========================================================
As
noted above, like all phenomena, form is devoid of any
inherent self-abiding
nature. This devoidness (emptiness) is
not a quality which a form gains in
the course of its
(momentary) existence but is infused with it from the very
beginning.
Quantum physics, as noted earlier, posits the
energy of silent pulsation at
the core of everything in the
universe, thus defining for us emptiness or sunyata
as the
"core energy"; in this light it is possible to see all forms
emerging
out of this silent pulsation as in waves or
particles at the cellular level.
The
sutra insists that form is emptiness. There is a
critical difference between
form being empty and form being
emptiness. Sunyata, in Prajnaparamita sutras,
is the
ultimate nature of reality; at the same time it does not
exist apart
from the phenomena but permeates each
phenomenon. Therefore, sunyata cannot
be sought apart from
the totality of all forms. And, although all forms are
qualified
at their core by sunyata, its presence does not
negate the conventional appearance
of form. In this sense,
emptiness is dependent upon the form it qualifies,
as much
as form is dependent on emptiness for its qualification.
Thus form
is emptiness, and emptiness is form. At its core
level, form does not differ
from emptiness nor does
emptiness differ from form.
"The
same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses,
consciousness."
======================================================
In
much as it does with form, the presence of emptiness does
not negate the conventional
appearance of feelings,
perceptions, impulses, consciousness. All of these
skandhas
are constantly arising and dissolving as a result of certain
conditions
being present. These conditions are, in turn,
empty and conditioned by another
set of conditions which,
too, are empty and so on, ad infinitum. All conditions
qualifying
other conditions qualifying the skandhas are
momentary phenomena giving rise
to momentary phenomena. None
of these has any inherent self-nature.
"Sariputra,
all dharmas are marked with emptiness."
===================================================
Dharma
is a comprehensive term with a variety of meanings
and applications at multiple
levels for both Hindus and
Buddhists. In the sutra here, the term is used in
the sense
of a fundamental unit of existence, the building blocks of
the
empirical personality and its world. In this sense, the
dharmas are something
like the atoms of Democritus or the
monads of Leibniz. The term "point-instant"
comes closest
perhaps to capturing the insight behind the term dharma
within
the context of the Heart Sutra. These
"point-instants" have miniscule
extension in space and have
practically no endurance. Again, the analogy of
wave-particle
unpredictability best captures the drama of
"point-instants."
It
is out of these dharmas, the fundamental units, that the
skandhas are made.
Since all existence is manifested through
one or another of the skandhas, it
seems inevitable that all
existence is a conglomeration of dharmas. But the
dharmas
themselves are not any solid objects positioned in time and
space,
just as the waves and particles of quantum physics
are not. The dharmas make
a momentary appearance and then
flicker out. They appear as a result of the
interplay of
underlying sunyata, the core energy; hence they are
inherently
empty. There is absolutely nothing one can hold
on to.
"They
do not appear or disappear, are not tainted or pure,
do not increase or decrease."
============================================================
The
quality of appearing or disappearing is usually
attributed to (seemingly) solid
objects. If the dharmas are
seen as a series of momentary flickerings, they
cannot be
invested with having the quality of appearing or
disappearing
precisely because flickerings are not solid
objects. A flickering, so swift
in time and miniscule in
space, is not, in itself, tainted or pure, nor does
it
increase or decrease. An appropriate analogy here is of the
waves in
the ocean. A large wave is not a solid entity by
itself but is composed of
a series of smaller waves which in
turn are composed of still smaller waves
and so on. Even
while we get the illusion of a "wave," there is actually
a
remarkably swift movement of water in certain patterns. A
wave does not
exist out there in the ocean. Out of
ignorance, we may attribute these qualities
(of
appearing/disappearing, taint/purity, increase/ decrease) to
conventional
appearances (skandhas) but, since at the core
of conventional appearances,
there are only unpredictable
flickerings (dharmas), our acceptance of these
qualities as
real in themselves will be a deluded view. The only place
where
our deluded view will find resolution is in the
reality of sunyata.
Also,
the categories of arising and disappearing, pure and
impure, increasing or
decreasing, belong to the realm of
affirmation and negation which are, in turn,
produced by our
conceptual thinking. In pure experience, there is no
affirmation
or negation. In the experience of sunyata there
is only emptiness, not its
affirmation or negation as having
arisen or having disappeared, holy or unholy,
etc. Here, it
would be wise to remind ourselves of Nagarjuna's caution
once
again that as a concept sunyata too is empty. Any
affirmation or negation of
sunyata would be conceptual, and
hence a deluded view.
"Therefore,
in emptiness no form, no feelings, perceptions,
impulses, conscious-ness. No
eyes, no ears, no nose, no
tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no
smell, no
taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes and so
forth
until no realm of mind-consciousness."
===========================================================
This
passage is a further triangulation of the earlier
assertions by the Abhidharmists
with regard to skandhas and
dharmas. Not wishing the hearer to somehow form
the
misimpression that "emptiness is form," or any such category
of
analysis, the sutra now employs the classical Indian
philosophical methodology
of negation to rid the hearer of
any such possibility. This methodology is
two-pronged; on
the one hand it denies any identification of emptiness with
the
skandhas (form, feelings, perceptions, impulses,
consciousness) or the six
sense-objects (eyes, ears, nose,
tongue, body, mind) or the phenomena perceived
by the six
sense-organs (shape, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought)
or
the six consciounesses produced as a result of contact
between the sense-organs
and the external phenomena (eye
consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness,
tongue
consciousness, touch consciousness and mind consciounsess);
in this
sense, this negation is a rejection of the Hinayana
predilection for numerous
categories of analysis. On the
other hand, the sutra asserts that sunyata is
ineffable and
inexpressible and is not to be confounded with eye, ear,
nose,
tongue, and so on, until any and all categories are
denied as identifiable
with sunyata.
Therefore,
in sunyata there is nothing to hold on to.
Sunyata is complete absence of all
identifiable phenomena,
yet it is not nihilistically void. What has ceased
to
operate in sunyata are all categories of analysis. When the
rationality
of the Hinayana thinking is transcended, and one
enters into the realm of intuitive
truth, only then does one
experience the qualityless, valueless, ineffable
sunyata of
the Mahayana tradition.
"No
ignorance and also no extinction of it and so forth
until no old age and death
and also no extinction of them."
=====================================================
This
passage is a restatement of the insight contained in
Buddha's enlightenment
experience as well as a further
negation of Hinayana rationality. The legend
of Buddha's
enlightenment tells us that in the first watch of the night
of
his great experience under the rose-apple tree, he
experienced all his past
lives, one by one, as he had lived
them. In the second watch of the night,
he witnessed the
death and rebirth of all cosmos and all being in them,
across
the aeons. Still, to his credit, he was not satisfied
that he had discovered
the root cause of human suffering as
he had set out to do when he took his
great vow not to move
from his seat under the tree. Finally, at dawn, he saw
the
Morning Star and, in a flash, understood what he had been
seeking. This
insight has been articulated in later
tradition as the Chain of Dependent Origination
(or the
Chain of Causation) and presented as a schema:
1)
there is ignorance (as to the true nature of
reality);
2) ignorance leads
to mental formations or impulses
(the skandha called samskara);
3) impulses
or mental formations give rise to
consciousness (the skandha called vijnana),
the
totality of thoughts, speech and actions;
4) consciousness determines
the resulting mental and
physical phenomena (the skandha called nama-rupa or
the
realm of name and form);
5) mental and physical phenomena condition the six
sense
realms: the five physical sense-organs of eye,
ear, nose, tongue, body, and
the mind;
6) the six sense-realms come into contact with
(sensorial and
mental) phenomena;
7) contact gives rise to sensations or feelings (the
skandha
called vedana);
8) feelings give rise to desire or thirst;
9) thirst gives
rise to clinging;
10) clinging gives rise to the process of becoming;
11)
the process of becoming leads to rebirth;
12) rebirth leads to suffering, old
age and death.
Often
this Chain of Dependent Origination is graphically
represented as a circle
and variously called the Wheel of
Samsara, the Wheel of Becoming or the Wheel
of Karma.
Through the preaching of his insights, the Buddha taught
people
how to turn the wheel in the reverse order--through
the complete cessation
of ignorance, mental formations are
eradicated; through the eradication of
mental formations,
consciousness is eradicated and so forth until one arrives
at
the cessation of conditioned rebirth and hence of
suffering, old age, and death.
This reverse turning is often
called Turning the Wheel of Dharma and is called
the path to
nirvana, the state of being in which all deluded views as to
anything
in human personality being permanent or substantial
are eradicated. It is important
to bear in mind that each of
the twelve factors in the Chain of Dependent Origination
is
conditioned as well as conditioning. As such, they are all
interdependent
and interconnected; in itself, no single
factor is absolute or independent.
Each factor is inherently
empty. When the Wheel of Dharma is turned, all these
factors
find their resolution in nirvana or sunyata.
In
sunyata, as noted earlier, forms are only
flickerings--without any quality
of solidity or
time-endurance--manifesting themselves momentarily. Knowing
this
fundamental truth, we are spared the necessity of
choosing one over the other,
of attachment to one and
aversion to another or both. Thus another occasion
of
clinging is dissolved. We are also spared the necessity to
categorize
the insight of the Buddha. Mahayana tradition
insists that it is enough for
a believer to firmly hold on
to the thought of enlightenment and practice diligently.
A
firm belief that in sunyata all things find their resolution
is therefore
enough for a Mahayana believer. To know through
the eye of wisdom that all
the twelve links in the Chain of
Dependent Origination are interconnections
and
inter-relations is to echo the words of Werner Heisenberg,
one of the
founders of quantum physics, "The world thus
appears as a complicated
issue of events, in which
connections of different kinds alternate or overlap
or
combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole."[17]
"No
suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no
cognition, also no attainment
with nothing to attain."
======================================================
This
is the most shocking rejection yet of the Hinayana
approach to Buddha's teaching
which had insisted that the
totality of Buddha's teaching was contained in
the first
teaching he gave to his five former colleagues soon after
his
enlightenment. This teaching is called the First Sermon
or the Sermon of the
Four Holy Truths. In this schema, the
four Noble Truths are:
1)
existence is dukkha (pain, suffering, discomfort,
dis-ease, sense of incompletion);
2)
dukkha is caused by "thirst" (Sanskrit:
tanha)--desire to be, desire
to have;
3) the thirst can be stopped (nirvana);
4) it can be stopped by
walking the eightfold path
(namely--right understanding, right thoughts, right
speech,
right action, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindfulness, right concentration).
The
Mahayana disciples had no quarrel with the insight
contained in any of these
classifications but what
precipitated a conflict for them was the Hinayana
insistence
on a monastic elitism which declared itself to be the sole
custodian
of Buddha's teachings and their interpretation.
Through the innovation of sunyata,
both as the ontological
and transcendent nature of reality, the Mahayana followers
declared
all categories, and hence their interpretations, as
dualistic, thus null and
void. By positing a simple faith in
the thought of enlightenment and diligent
practice, they
sought to make the Buddha's enlightenment experience
available
to any and all, laypersons and monastics alike.
This
passage then is a declaration that suffering,
origination of suffering, and
the stopping of suffering by
following a certain path are empty categories;
at the same
time, it is an affirmation that in the pure experience of
sunyata,
there are no dualities or distinctions between
suffering and its stopping,
between suffering and the
so-called path to liberation. The sutra declares,
almost
ruthlessly, that there is no cognition or attainment with
nothing
to attain. Hinayana tradition had seen in the person
of the arhant an embodiment
of great spiritual attainment,
and he was a model to be emulated. Historically,
however,
soon after the death of the Buddha, a controversy emerged
over
the status of the arhant and at the Second Council
(held about a hundred years
after the death of the Buddha);
one of the key issues debated at the Council
was whether or
not it was possible for an arhant to relapse. The consensus,
controversial
though it was, was that an arhant can indeed
relapse. Subsequent Mahayana literature
built upon this
limited capacity of the arhant and extended its belief
system
to include the transience of all categories of
existence, including suffering,
its cessation, and any
attainment to come out of such cessation.
"The
Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita and the mind is
no hindrance. Without
any hindrance, no fears exists. Far
apart from any perverted view, one dwells
in Nirvana."
================================================
The bodhisattva
is steadfast in his/her trust in the wisdom
of sunyata and finds in it a sense
of completion; he or she
is completely at peace with it and with himself. This
is his
(her) support, and he knows there is nothing lacking in it.
Whatever
the limitations of his or her conditioned mind may
be, he or she has a perfect
understanding of, and trust in,
the truth of sunyata. No perverted or deluded
views are
going to cloud his or her vision. In traditional Buddhism,
there
are "four perverted views" from which liberation is
sought:
1)
a view that anything existent can be permanent
even if it is compounded;
2)
a view that satisfaction may be found in the world
of compounded entities;
3)
a view that there is a permanent self or soul; and
4) a view that things are
desirable and therefore worth
striving for and clinging to.
An
investment in any of these "perverted" views is likely to
produce
fear and confusion. Fear and confusion, by their
very nature, seek other things
to cling to, and each
clinging brings about its own particular perverted view
to
further cloud the vision. Rooted firmly in the wisdom of
sunyata, the
bodhisattva has no such hindrance. S/he does
not mistake the unreal for the
real, the conditioned for the
unconditioned, the relative for the absolute,
etc.
For a contemporary
reader of the sutra, the words, "no fears
exist" may be the most
significant insight contained in the
sutra. Our century has been characterized
by existential
angst and its concomitant despair and hopelessness. The late
twentieth
century culture finds itself driven by the basic
fuel of fear even while the
individual is really yearning
for love. Our conditioning has become such that
we fear fear
and we fear love. Any resolution of the individual human
condition
has to perforce deal with the basic fear of
duality, fear of the "other,"
fear of the world which one
finds to be hostile and threatening, and yet indispensable.
Unless
this dichotomy, this sense of separation from the
world is resolved, all our
efforts to find a "meaning" in
human life are going to be nothing
more than manipulative
gestures. It is only in the pure experience of sunyata
that
one transcends the manipulative gestures which societal
conditioning,
in its ignorance, sees not as illusions but as
substantive. The training of
the bodhisattiva is to see the
illusory nature of these manipulative gestures
and transcend
them.
Without
a clouded vision, the bodhisattva "dwells in
nirvana." For the earlier
Hinayana, nirvana was the state of
liberation resulting from the eradication
of suffering
caused by desires and any notion of a permanent selfhood. As
happened
with many other aspects of Buddha's teaching,
nirvana too came to be posited
as a category in the
Abhidharma scheme of things. Mahayana response to this
position
was that while the Hinayana follower had certainly
achieved a measure of peace,
his understanding of liberation
was limited as long as he persisted in having
a fear of
samsara (the world of desires and becoming) and felt that
samsara
had to be overcome by attaining nirvana. This is a
dualistic approach and,
according to Mahayana, cannot lead
to the Transcendent Wisdom which is essentially
non-dualistic
and in which samsara and nirvana are not
distinct from each other. Nirvana
is not to be considered as
"something," a category, which exists
as a separate reality
apart from everything else; nirvana is not the result
of
doing something or attaining something but of not-doing: the
not-doing
of not discriminating. The bodhisattva does not
"attain" nirvana
(since any attainment is empty of
time-endurance or self-nature) but having
the unclouded
vision of non-discrimination, in other words, of sunyata, he
is
always immersed in tranquility and is at peace with
himself or herself. Nirvana
is sunyata and sunyata itself is
nirvana. Nirvana is sunyata because it has
no graspable
nature; any thought of nirvana as an attainable object would
therefore
be an error. Nirvana is not something to be
striven for but to be intuited
in the unfolding of each
moment where sunyata plays itself out unceasingly.
Through
his intuitive wisdom (prajna), the bodhisattva knows that in
sunyata
all things are just as they really are i.e. full of
Thusness or Suchness (Sanskrit:
Tathatha).
"In
the three worlds all Buddhas depend on Prajnaparamita
and attain Anuttara Samyak
Sambodhi."
============================================================
The
"three worlds" are the worlds of past, present and
future (sometimes
also referred to as the worlds of form,
formlessness, and desire.) The vehicle
through which the
Buddhas attain their Buddhahood is the Transcendent Wisdom
of
sunyata.
Anuttara
Samyak Sambhodi means "Perfect Unexcelled
Awakening." It is the enlightenment
of a perfect Buddha, one
who has by himself rediscovered the teaching that
leads to
liberation. Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi also means possession
of the
"ten powers" (Sanskrit: Dashabala) of a perfect
Buddha:
1)
knowledge of discernment in any situation of
what's possible and what's not;
2)
knowledge of ripening of deeds in oneself and
others;
3) knowledge of superior
and inferior abilities of
other beings;
4) knowledge of tendencies in other
beings;
5) knowledge of the manifold constituents of the world;
6) knowledge
of paths leading to rebirth in various
realms of existence;
7) knowledge
of what will lead to purity and what to
impurity;
8) knowledge of various
meditations (dhyana) and
concentrations (samadhi);
9) knowledge of death
and rebirth;
10) knowledge of when the defilements are completely
eradicated.
The
"attainment" of these ten powers in Anuttara Samyak
Sambodhi may
seem, on the surface, a logical contradiction
since the sutra has just declared
that there is "no
attainment, with nothing to attain." The implicit
message
here is that in and of itself Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi too
is empty
but the ten powers arising out of deep
contemplation on the wisdom of sunyata
can be used as
"skillful means" (Sanskrit: upaya) which, along with
wisdom
and compassion, are the hallmark of a bodhisattva in the
Mahayana
literature. Having these ten powers at his or her
disposal, the bodhisattva
works tirelessly to save all
beings, knowing fully well that all is inherently
empty. The
effort is directed toward helping individuals change their
karmic
legacies and patterns rather than "saving" any
solidity called "being."
Anuttara
Samyak Sambodhi changes the complexion of the sutra
from a mere negation of
Hinayana categories to a positive
fullfillment of the bodhisattva vow ("Sentient
beings are
numberless; I vow to save them all.") The bodhisattva treads
on
this path immersed in the intuitive wisdom of sunyata
rather than the rational
categories of the Hinayana model or
having the illusion that there is someone
who can "save"
someone. The wisdom of sunyata is not an opinion or
a
category but an experience; it is an experience in which
"sunyata
is" rather than "sunyata is something." The
experiencer and
the experienced are inseparable,
indistinguishable from each other. The bodhisattva
and those
he or she is trying to "save" are inseparable from each
other.
In
the sense of celebrating the insight into sunyata, the
sutra ends here. Historically,
however, by the time the
Heart Sutra was given its final shape, the influence
of
Mantrayana (the vehicle of mantra practice) and Tantra was
clearly ascendent
within Mahayana. The following passage is
to be seen, therefore, in historical
context as an addendum
and proselytizing in nature. The assertions made here
clearly
contradict the insights presented earlier in the
sutra. Commentators through
the ages have taken opposite
positions on the inclusion of the mantra in the
sutra;
perhaps the best way to sum up the place of the mantra in
the sutra
is to note the historical context and leave it
entirely up to the reader--to
use this mantra as an
incantation, as a tool of power; a more discerning inquirer
may
see the mantra as a linguistic and symbolic summation of
the central teaching
of the Mahayana wisdom schools.
A
very positive view of this mantra is offered by Thich Nhat
Hanh, the contemporary
Vietnamese Zen master:
When
we listen to this mantra, we should bring
ourselves into that state of attention,
of
concentration, so that we can receive the strength
emanated by Avalokitesvara
Bodhisattva. We do not
recite the Heart Sutra like singing a song, or
with
our intellect alone. If you practice the
meditation on emptiness, if you penetrate
the
nature of interbeing with all your heart, your
body, and your mind,
you will realize a state that
is quite concentrated. If you say the mantra
then,
with all your being, the mantra will have power
and you will be able
to have real communication,
real communion with Avalokitesvara, and you will
be
able to transform yourself in the direction of
enlightenment. This text is
not just for chanting,
or to be put on an altar for worship. It is given
to
us as a tool to work for our liberation, for
the liberation of all beings.[18]
"Therefore,
know that Pranjaparamita is the great
transcendent mantra, is the great bright
mantra, is the
utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra which is able to
relieve
all suffering and is true, not false."
===========================================================
Clearly
this message is intended for the unconvinced and the
uninitiated. It asks for
faith and trust in the efficacy of
the sutra (which was the hallmark of Mahayana
methods of
veneration) rather than the critical-analytical faculty of
self-investigation
which Hinayana demanded from its
followers. A faith in the power of a mantra
is a further
development in Mahayana and complementary to the growing
popularity
of the Lotus (Saddharam-pundarika) Sutra and
other sutras from the Pure Land
School; this trend in
Mahayana would give rise to Tantra and become all-dominant
in
Buddhist cultures in Tibet, China, Japan and Korea where
missionaries from
India made remarkable gains in the course
of their religious adventure treks.
The
magico-mantrik culture which these missionaries brought
with them found receptive
soil in the countries of north and
east Asia and led to tremendous religious-social-cultural
realignments
in these lands.
"So
proclaim the Prajnaparamita mantra, proclaim the mantra
which says:
"Gate,
Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha."
=================================================
Gate,
gate means gone, gone; paragate means gone over;
parasamgate means gone beyond
(to the other shore of
suffering or the bondage of samsara); bodhi means the
Awakened
Mind; svaha is the Sanskrit word for homage or
proclaimation. So, the mantra
means "Homage to the Awakened
Mind which has gone over to the other shore
(of suffering)."
Whatever
perspective one may take on the inclusion of the
mantra at the end of the sutra,
it does not put a blemish on
what the sutra has tried to convey earlier: the
richness of
intuitive wisdom coming out of the pure experience of
complete
stillness, of complete cessation, away from all
concepts and categories.
Zen
masters, in echoing the theme of emptiness, like to
agree with existentialist
thinkers that "life" has no
meaning or reason. The Heart Sutra uses
the methodology of
negation as a way of pointing to this lack of any inherent
meaning
or reason in the phenomenal world, including the
world of the mind. It takes
each of the existents, holds it
up under an unflinching gaze and declares it
to have no
sustaining self-nature. This is the wisdom teaching of
sunyata
of the Mahayana tradition. But, at the same time,
compassion is the other and
equally important teaching of
Mahayana. How do we then bridge the gap between
sunyata as
ultimate reality and the conventionality of human condition?
The
existentialist thinkers agonized over this problem and
were led to despair
and anarchy. In Mahayana, compassion,
which is a natural, unforced by-product
of a deep state of
meditation, supports the wisdom of emptiness, yet allows
the
individual to have empathy with the conventional appearance
of the world
without getting lost in it. It may be that
compassion works best as a post-enlightenment
existential
crisis, but nontheless without compassion as a guiding
paradigm,
the unrelenting precision of sunyata can make life
unbearable.
Zen
masters insist that our true freedom lies in the choices
we make, and each
one of us has the power to change "no
meaning" into Great Meaning,
"no reason" into Great Reason.
This is possible because in the pure
experience of sunyata,
one realizes that one is intrinsically endowed with
Buddha-nature
and that this Buddha-nature in oneself is not
different from Buddha-nature
in all living beings. To see
others as separate from oneself is to live in
delusion and
deny one's own Buddha-nature; to see others as sharing in
one's
own Buddha-nature is to affirm one's essential
humanity. In making the free
choice of compassion for all
beings, we are doing no more than giving expression
to our
own Buddha-nature. It is only in compassion (Sanskrit:
karuna) that
wisdom (prajna) finds its fullest expression.
Graphically,
this way of understanding the Heart Sutra in
the Zen and Mahayana traditions
may be presented as a
circle:
Experience
of Complete Stillness
of Cessation
+
180
|
Attainment of the Dry
cognition;
ten powers of intellectual;
Anuttara Samyak 270-- --90 apprehension
of
the
Sambodhi nature of
suffering
Turning
the wheel of
Samsara/Karma through lust,
hatred & confusion
0
|
360
Turning
the Wheel of Dharma
through compassion and wisdom;
seeing things just as
they are
At
0 degree is samsara. Here the Wheel of Karma keeps
turning on and on, fueled
by anger, greed and ignorance. An
urgency to change, to get out of the realm
of suffering
leads one to
90
degrees. Here one has an intellectual awareness of the
Four Noble Truths and
the Chain of Dependent Origination in
the Hinayana-Abhidharma sense, but this
is dry cognition.
When one follows this dry cognition with a deep experience
of
meditation samadhi, one reaches the experience of
180
degrees. This is the experience of Complete Stillness,
of sunyata, of cessation.
Here the mind becomes completely
silent and personal and societal conditioning
disappears. In
Zen terms, this is the realization of Buddha-Nature. A
thorough
absorption in this samadhi leads to
270
degrees where one acquires the ten powers of Anuttara
Samyak Sambodhi. This
is the attainment of Buddhahood in
traditional Buddhist sense. At the same
time one understands
from one's wisdom-eye that in themselves these powers
too
are empty; this wisdom leads one to
360
degrees. This is nirvana in action, Buddhahood
manifested in functioning in
the world. Here the Wheel of
Dharma is turned by employing skillful means (upaya),
rooted
in wisdom and compassion. Here one finds validation of one's
bodhisattva
vows, which is a continuation of what Shakyamuni
Buddha did in his forty-five
years' teaching career.
More
than two centuries ago, Voltaire wrote, "Man makes his
own gods, forges
forever new chains for himself." Today, we
live in a post-religious society;
our psychological and
spiritual needs have transcended the making of gods and
forging
of new chains for ourselves. Our need today is to
find a new paradigm in which
the intellectual and the
intuitive meet, a paradigm which is rooted in the
wisdom of
our own meditative experience. Today, researchers in the
field
of consciousness use terms like "holographic" to
describe a new model
of the universe in which an individual
is a "hologram" and exists
in a state of "holonomy" in the
so-called "holographic"
universe.
The idea
of the universe as an overachieving unity
repeated somehow in each of its parts
bears a
majesty and elegance all its own....The holonomic
formulation...resonates
with one of the most
ancient intuitions of the race, expressed with
eloquence
and force in Eastern philosophy. It
helps account for the essential meaningfulness
of
existence, the coherent, repeated patterns that we
keep discovering at
the deepest structure of
language, mathematics, and the physical world. It
is
a necessary consequence of modern quantum
theory taken to its logical extreme.[19]
The
"holographic" model of the universe cannot be replicated
in individuals
by turning it into yet another ideology for
societal realignment. Without an
experience of sunyata,
which allows us to get in touch with our basic humanity,
it
will be just another concept, subject to disputations and
dissertations.
But if we are wise enough to learn from the
experience of Mahayana mystics
and the findings of quantum
theory, we can find that:
A
world of connectedness, potential, and evolution
turns us toward a vivid sense
of community along
with the acceptance of personal responsibility;
toward
a de-emphasis on competing and winning
along with a re-emphasis on participating
and
experiencing; from aggression toward gentleness
and enjoyment; from
dominance of nature to
blending with nature; from exponential growth in
production
and consumption to a more moderate,
more ecological standard of living along
with a
powerful intentionality; toward social justice
throughout the world.[20]
Compare
this to the sentiments echoed by a contemporary Zen
master in the context of
the Heart Sutra:
The
Prajnaparamita gives us a solid ground to
making peace with ourselves, for
transcending the
fear of birth and death, the duality of this and
that.
In the light of emptiness, everything is
everything else, we inter-are, everyone
is
responsible for everything that happens in life.
When you produce peace
and happiness in yourself,
you begin to realize peace for the whole world.
With
the smile that you produce in yourself, with
the conscious breathing you establish
within
yourself, you begin to work for peace in the
world. To smile is not
to smile only for yourself;
the world will change because of your smile. When
you
practice sitting meditation, if you enjoy even
one moment of your sitting,
if you establish
serenity and happiness inside yourself, you
provide the
world with a solid base of peace. If
you do not give yourself peace, how can
you share
it with others? [21]
References
==========
[1]
Leonard, George, The Silent Pulse, p.xii.
[2] Capra, Frithjof, The Tao of Physics,
pp.197-98.
[3] Conze, Edward, Buddhist Wisdom Books, p.18.
[4] Dumoulin,
Heinrich., Zen Buddhism, A History, Vol.1,
p. 35.
[5] Conze, Edward quoted
by Donald Lopez, Jr. in The Heart
Sutra Explained, p. 3.
[6]
Lopez, Donald, Jr., The Heart Sutra Explained, p.7.
[7] Leonard, George, The
Silent Pulse, pp.32-34.
[8] Kornfield, Jack, "The Smile of the Buddha,"
Ancient
Wisdom and Modern Science, p.101.
[9] Leonard, George, The Silent
Pulse, p.176.
[10] Capra, Frithjof, "The New Vision of Reality,"
Ancient
Wisdom and Modern Science, p.138.
[11] Ibid, p.138.
[12] Capra,
Frithjof. Tao of Physics, pp.198-99.
[13] Chang, Garma C.C., Buddhist Teaching
of Totality,
pp.60-61.
[14] Abe, Masao, Zen and Western Thought, p. 94.
[15]
Govinda, Lama Angarika,Creative Meditation and
Multi-Dimensional Consciousness,
p.11.
[16] Ibid, pp. 60-61.
[17] Heisenberg Werner, quoted by Frithjof Capra,
"The New
Vision of Reality," Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science,
p.
137.
[18] Hanh, Thich Nhat, The Heart of Understanding, pp.
50-51.
[19]
Leonard, George, The Silent Pulse, p.89.
[20] Ibid, p.177.
[21] Hanh, Thich
Nhat, The Heart of Understanding, pp.51-52.
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============
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Masao. Zen and Western Thought. Honolulu: University of
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------"The
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in Ancient Wisdom and
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Press,
1984.
Chang,
Garma C.C. Buddhist Teaching of Totality.
University Park: Pennsylvania State
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Edward. Buddhism: Its essence and development. New
York: Harper and Row, 1975.
------Buddhist
Thought in India. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1967.
------Buddhist Wisdom Books. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
------Selected
Sayings from the Perfection of Wisdom.
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------Thirty
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Govinda,
Lama Angarika. Creative Meditation and
Multi-Dimensional Consciousness. Wheation,
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Thich Nhat. The Heart of Understanding. Berkeley:
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Jack. "The Smile of the Buddha: Paradigms in
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Donald S. The Heart Sutra Explained. Albany: State
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* * *
Primary
Point Press isthe publications division of the Kwan
Um School of Zen. It has
published Gathering of Spirit:
Women Teaching in American Buddhism, edited
by Ellen Sidor
(1987) and Ten Gates: The Kong-an Teaching of Zen Master
Seung
Sahn (1987). It has reprinted Only Don't Know: The
Teaching Letters of Zen
Master Seung Sahn (1982) and
Thousand Peaks: Korean Zen--Tradition and Teachers
by Mu
Soeng Sunim (1987).
The
Kwan Um School of Zen is a network of centers under the
spiritual direction
of Zen Master Seung Sahn and senior
teachers. The school publishes Primary
Point, an
international journal of Buddhism. More information about
the
Kwan Um School of Zen, including a list of centers
worldwide, may be received
by contacting the school at:
528
Pound Road
Cumberland, Rhode Island 02864
Telephone (401) 658-1476
Fax
(401) 658-1188