Thu, 11 Mar 2010
The Heart Sutra Explained
The Heart Sutra is more often chanted than understood. It was criticized by a Theravadin practitioner on a forum for preaching nothingness. I thought that was a misunderstanding of the sutra, but I wasn't able to explain the meaning there, so I am doing it here. I'll take the sutra a little at a time and explain what I can. The translation I am using comes from The Buddhist Text Translation Society and can be freely republished.
When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound Prajna Paramita, he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they are all empty, and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty.
Avalokiteshvara speaks every line in this version (the Chinese version) of the sutra. It's not clear why Avalokiteshvara was chosen, except that he is a bodhisattva and all bodhisattvas attain that state through seeing the truth of emptiness. Which is exactly what this verse says. Prajna is a Sanskrit word usually translated as wisdom. Wisdom here means the ability to see things as they are, instead of how we imagine them to be. This ability is the result of meditation. Buddhism classifies all forms of meditation into two types: calming and insight. The phrase "practicing the profound prajna paramita" refers to Avalokiteshvara's practice of insight meditation. Paramita is another Sanskrit word that has two meanings: perfection (from the root parami) and transcendent (from param ita, literally other shore). The rest of the verse suggests the other translation. "Other shore" refers the understanding of enlightened beings, as opposed to the understanding of ordinary persons. The five skandhas is a traditional way of classifying all conditioned phenomena, both mind and matter. Through his meditation Avalokiteshvara saw that all conditioned phenomena are empty. What this means will be explained later. And it was this seeing that changed him from an ordinary person to an enlightened being and removed all his suffering and difficulty. Suffering and difficulty are conditioned phenomena and when they are seen as empty, they melt away like shadows melt away in the daylight that we took to be phantoms during the night.
