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The Pranjnaparamita-Hridaya Sutra
The Deep Perfect Wisdom Heart Sutra
called the Heart Sutra

This short sutra is the fundamental premise, the heart, of Buddhist wisdom. The Heart Sutra is universally used in Buddhist practice -- even Zen practice, which by tradition is "not contained in words or books and lies outside the scriptures."

In the Buddhist view, the cause of all pain and spiritual bondage is a misidentification of the "I" and its relation to the world. The mystical realization of Avalokitesvara in the Heart Sutra is a final statement of what the "I" is not. It is severe, unadorned and uncompromising.

The Translations


Many texts exist. In this work I have relied mostly on two of them

(1) The passages in upper-and-lower-case prose, set off in quotes, are from the White Path Temple, a Shin Buddhist temple, of Kyoto and cyberspace. I acquired this simple and elegant translation from the virtual Temple of the White Path, where it appears in Kanji characters, English translation, and Japanese transliteration.

(2) The passages in all caps are based on a word-for-word arrangement of the Sanskrit text with interlinear vocabulary prepared by Professor Michael E Moriarty, building on the work of Leon Hurvitz. I am grateful for this text, which I acquired from the great Australian electronic archive of Buddhist texts here. In Spring '96 Dr Moriarty privately printed his own poetic translation of the sutra, called "The Heart Sutra from the Silk Road." He can be reached here.

(3) The Heart Sutra is very short (about 275 words) and suitable for chanting. The transliterated Japanese version usually chanted, particularly in the Zen Orders, is here with translation. To download a chant-sheet, click here.

This text is based on the first known record of the Heart Sutra. It was transcribed by Hsuan-tsung (in Chinese characters) from a wall of The Monastery of Good Fortune in Lo-Yang, China -- a major site on the Silk Road. I don't know the original date, but Hsuan-tsung transcribed the text in the 7th c. A.D.

I have differed from Dr. Moriarty in the representation of a few technical Sanskrit terms, but everybody expects that.

Commentary


In Buddhist psychology, the composition of the human persona is seen as an "aggregate" of five functions, known as the "skandhas." The skandhas are:

Name-and-form

feelings

Perceptions

mental formations

Consciousness

Avalokiteshvara's mystical experience was that the "skandhas" were "empty." Empty of what? Empty of a separate Self.

That is, this aggregate of elements does not constitute a self-existent entity. The "I-persona" is an interdependent collection of characteristics; not a being-in-itself, separate from the Whole. each skahdha exists only because the others exist

Its ontological status is somewhat like the "I"-image you see in the mirror; quite convincing, but ultimately nobody is actually "over there." It is a trick of the senses;a reflection of the Real


In the West, where our most treasured perception of entity-ness and Being is the individual separateness of the personal "I", this is not altogether an agreeable view.

Still, we Westerners do have the logical principle of Occam's Razor, (usually misquoted) which is applicable to Avalokiteshvara's vision. In the original Latin, Occam's Razor began: "Entia non multiplicandum.....", i.e., "Do not multiply entities beyond necessity."

The Heart Sutra is a similar warning against fantasizing entities where none actually exist. This illusory entity is the source of the idea that we are separate from the rest of the Universe. The Heart Sutra reassures us that we are not separate at all: we are present in all of creation, and all of creation is present in us.

It also details the mechanisms by which the illusion of an "I" that is separate from the rest of the cosmos comes into being. And it follows that every concept or phenomenon rooted in the illusion of the "I-persona" is also illusory.

To pursue this line of reasoning at greater depth, please consult the superb essay "The Heart of Understanding," by Thich Nhat Hanh, published by Parallax Press.
It is self-evident that an intellectual understanding of this sutra, as philosophy, is not the same as experiencing it as Avalokiteshvara experienced it. Therefore the sutra also presents a method of practice, in the meditative mantram:

GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA.

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awakened, so be it.


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