Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Heart Sutra question
BonsaiDoug
Simply, on the path. Veteran
My readings/study are primarily Theravada. But I do like reading other traditions.
The Heart Sutra may be short, but it's a tough one to understand. For example, in all the things that are negated in that sutra, it seems to me that it also negates the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path.
This line is giving me problems:
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
Can someone either explain how this is not negating the 4 Truths and The Path, or perhaps point me to some reading material explaining this sutra?
TIA
The Heart Sutra may be short, but it's a tough one to understand. For example, in all the things that are negated in that sutra, it seems to me that it also negates the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path.
This line is giving me problems:
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
Can someone either explain how this is not negating the 4 Truths and The Path, or perhaps point me to some reading material explaining this sutra?
TIA
0
Comments
http://www.myspace.com/shivatao/blog/283271465
(Maybe chapter 24 is relevant)
My simplified explanation is:
The four noble truths do not exist from their own nature. If they did we would have a problem. Suffering – if it existed of its own nature – could not change or end.
Only when emptiness is properly seen, there is room for liberation, for Dharma. But the whole thing gets slippery. Language suggests phenomena to be substantial; it moves around in the realm of conventional truth.
The sublime meaning cannot be put in words adequately.
I hope I didn’t add to the confusion.
So from conventional truth, 'I' exists, Samsara exists, suffering exists, so path exists.
From ultimate truth, there is no 'I', no Samsara, no suffering, no path. it is all emptiness or it is nothingness everywhere.
But to tell something about ultimate truth, conventional speaking is used - so even though words or language cannot describe ultimate truth as it truely is, still some sentences are formed to give a little idea of what ultimate truth can be like - because if ultimate truth is to be explained only through ultimate truth, then nobody can speak and nobody can hear, as it is emptiness everywhere. So ultimate truth can only be directly experienced to realize it.
Well wishes,
Abu
On both gross and increasingly subtle levels, it lists the sticking points to watch on ones meditative journey. It is not about negation, but balance & freedom.
The prajnaparamita is not so much a description of truth, as a meditative roadmap.
I can seldom meditatively run through it without it illuminating the next ego pothole
on my path to address.
The great Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, in the deep course of wisdom beyond wisdom, seeing that the five aggregates are also empty of inherent nature, overcame all suffering and distress.
Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness. Emptiness is not other than form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.
All phenomena are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.
Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of eye, no realm of mind-consciousness, nor anything in between. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, no old-age-and-death, no extinction of old-age-and-death, nor any of the twelve links.
Likewise there is no suffering, no origination, no cessation, and no path; no understanding, no attainment, and no non-attainment.
With nothing to attain the bodhisattva relies on wisdom beyond wisdom and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, there is no fear. Passing beyond every upside-down view, the bodhisattva abides in Nirvana.
All Buddhas in the past, present and future, relying on wisdom beyond wisdom, realize unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.
Therefore this is the mantra of wisdom beyond wisdom, the mantra of great knowledge, the mantra that is unsurpassed, the mantra that is equal to the unequalled, the mantra that pacifies all suffering. Free from deception, it is the simple truth:
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha!
One of my favourites is by Roshi Jiyu Kennett of Shasta Abbey
When one with deepest wisdom of the heart
that is beyond discriminative thought,
The holy lord great Kanzeon Bosatsu,
knew that the skandas five were,
as they are,
in there self nature,
void, unstained and pure.
O' Shariputra, form is only pure,
Pure is all form; there is, then, nothing more than this,
for what is form is pure and what is pure is form.
O' Shariputra, here all things are pure, for they are neither born
nor do they wholly die.
They are not stained nor yet immaculate;
increasing not, decreasing not.
O Shariputra, in this pure there is no form,
sensation, thought, activity or consciousnes;
No eye, ear, nose, tonque, body, mind;
no form, no tastes, sound, colour, touch or objects;
Vison none; no consciousness; no knowledge and no sign of ignorance.
Until we come to where old age and death have ceased,
and so has all extinction of old age and death.
for here there is no suffering, nor yet again accumulation,
nor again annihilation, nor an eight fold path,
no knowledge, no attainment.
In the mind of the Bosatsu who is truly one
with Wisdom Great the obstacles dissolve
and going on beyond this human mind,
he is Nirvana.
All the Buddhas True of present, past and future they ARE all.
because upon Great wisdom they rely,
the perfect and most high enlightenment.
The prajnapararamita one should know
to be the greatest mantra of them all,
the highest and most peerless Mantra too;
allayer of all pain Great Wisdom is,
it is the very truth, no falsehood here.
This is the Mantra of great Wisdom, hear;
O Buddha, going, going, always going on beyond,
always becoming Buddha.
Hail! Hail! Hail!
Good luck.
"Chewing on the sutras with toothless gums" springs to mind from this particular lesson. I've notes somewhere, but I'm too lazy to dig 'em out. But understanding the concepts contained in the Heart Sutra is more than possible, because I've done it.
I just haven't done the realising of them though!
The only limit to our understanding of the heart sutra comes from what ever we hold to be more important than it.
Every loosening of attachments hold, simply illuminates a bit more of the heart sutra's truth.
This brief commentary kind of clears things up a bit for me:
The emptiness described refers to things as they really are - empty of all the concepts by which we grasp them and fit them into our world - empty of all we project upon them.