The Heart Sutra
In appreciating the The Heart Sutra, we might start with an understanding of Avalokiteshvara’s state of mind just before he starts speaking. He has been “practicing prajna.” According to a very handy source, the Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, “prajna,” wisdom, is “insight into emptiness.”[1] What is “emptiness”? A definition that seems to me to make sense of the sutra is from the collection of talks by Chogyam Trungpa called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, where Trungpa says that “emptiness” in Sanskrit (shunyata) means “void” or “space, the absence of all conceptualized attitudes.” [2]
So Avalokiteshvara, in “practicing prajna,” has been doing a meditative practice that puts him into a non-conceptualizing state of mind. To use more common expressions, he has been dropping the thinking mind, the self, or the “you” as it is expressed in the Bahiya Sutta. In that sutra, the Buddha says that when the “you” has disappeared from consciousness, “This, just this, is the end of stress.”[3] Avaloitshvara experienced the same when he was practicing prajna; he “relieved all suffering.” Nisargadatta, the renowned Hindu teacher, said that the key factor in spiritual achievement was “to cease taking yourself to be within the field of consciousness.”[4]
When something is seen or experienced by a non-conceptualizing or non-thinking mind, that mind does not identify anything and does not distinguish, compare, or evaluate anything. There is only non-thinking perception taking place. This condition of mind is also called “direct perception.” To appreciate this state of mind, it may be helpful to imagine yourself looking down on a small town from a grassy hill above it. Suppose you are not thinking about anything you are perceiving; you are not identifying anything, considering its use, evaluating anything, nothing, just looking. There is a street you can see, but you don’t think “street.” There is a car, but you don’t think “car” or that the thing transports people. So from your non-conceptualizing or non-thinking perspective, there is no tree on the hillside, no street in the town, no car.
Avalokiteshvara proceeds to tell Shariputra, a chief disciple of the Buddha, how things look from the perspective of this non-conceptualizing mind. Such a mind does not make identifications or comparisons. Therefore the Bodhisattva explains that there is no distinction between form and emptiness. Also, to a non-thinking mind, there are things, but no identified or evaluated things, so there is no purity or defilement (neither defiled or pure) and no impermanence (no arising and ceasing, no growing and diminishing). Since a non-conceptualizing mind does not identify anything, from its standpoint, Avalokiteshvara continues, there are also no skandhas; there is “no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness.” In the same way, being non-identified, there are no senses (“no nose”), no objects of the senses (“no smell”), and no realms of “consciousness” connected with these senses and objects (all together the so-called “eighteen elements”). Not identified at all, there is no ignorance or its opposite, and no aging and dying as well as no youth and no living. Also, outside the thinking mind, there are no Four Noble Truths (“no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path”). There is also no level of scholarly mastery (“no knowledge”) to be obtained, and there is no enlightenment (“no attainment”) to seek.
Avalokiteshvara continues, “With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna” and maintains a non-thinking, non-conceptualizing mind. In doing so, the bodhisattva does not strive to awaken (“with nothing to attain”) but simply sits in meditation with a clear mind and ultimately “realizes nirvana” or “unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.” Sitting without striving to awaken is now common Zen advice. The sutra ends with the “Gate Gate” mantra, which urges bodhisattvas to “go beyond, go beyond” the thinking and conceptualizing mind and obtain Bodhi, the awakened state. Horray!
To speak in general terms about the sutra, it could be said that in Zen it is a maxim that spiritual Truth cannot be discovered within the thinking process. Thinking must be entirely set aside for enlightenment to come. It seems to me that basically this principle is what the Heart Sutra is urging. It says that when observed by a non-thinking mind, the core elements of Buddhist philosophical thought are inconsequential. There are no skandhas, no Four Noble Truths, and so on.
This uncompromising approach reminds me of a sentiment in Sufism that I encountered when I followed this spiritual school. The Heart Sutra does not include the risibility inherent in the Sufi approach. In Sufism, there is the favorite image of a donkey carrying a load of books. The donkey is the spiritually ignorant scholar who thinks that he can wake up to the love of God through study. The donkey could benefit from the Heart Sutra’s mantra of Gate Gate and throw aside its rational thinking all together.
It might also be pertinent that 20 years ago I attended my first practice period at Green Gulch Farm, in which Reb Anderson, the chief dharma teacher there, was the coordinator. During an informal talk with the attendees, Reb was giving an account of some of the major areas in Buddhist philosophy, such as impermanence and interdependence, and someone asked him whether it was necessary to study all these areas to wake up. Reb said no, that zazen was the only thing necessary to find enlightenment. This is what the Heart Sutra is saying in a nutshell, it seems to me. Knowledge isn’t necessary to wake up, just clearing the mind of thought in meditation.
Footnotes
- The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, Shambhala, Boston, 1991, p. 171
- Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala, Boston and London, 2002, pp. 197-198.
- The very long Bahiya Sutta can be found at http://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.than.html. The words in the essay are in the 12th paragraph.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Durham, 1973, p. 148