Practice from the Heart

There are so many different aspects to the study of the Heart Sutra, but I will focus on two today: the historical-philosophical, and the devotional/magical element, as expressed in the Dharani or chanting. Actually the historical somehow leads directly to the devotional, at least for me, so let's start with that.

It seems that the oldest extant version of this sutra is Chinese, compiled by Xuanzang in the 7th century CE, which was itself based on an earlier version attributed to Kumarajiva. Much brainwork by various scholars has been expended trying to discover whether earlier Sanskrit versions were lost, or whether the first version was actually Chinese and later back-translated into Sanskrit. Actually this turns out to be a bit of a red herring, because it seems that at least some portions of the Heart Sutra were lifted, more or less whole, from one of the longer Prajnaparamita sutras — the perfection of wisdom in 25,000 lines — which was undeniably originally an Indian work.

So why did this wisdom appear? What was the context? As you probably know, in early Buddhism what was normally called the self was broken down into five elements: the skandhas — form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. This was to get away from seeing the self as an enduring entity. As Robert Thurman puts it, there is no platinum dog-tag inside with your name on it.

One school of Buddhism, which arose in about the 3rd century BCE, was the Sarvastivada. This means the ‘all things exist’ school — sarva means all; asti means it is; and vada is school or way (think Theravada, way of the elders). What they did was accept that the self as an entity was unreal, but said that reality could be broken down into constituent parts called dharmas which did have self-existence — so they all had their own little platinum dog-tags. It's a bit like how we used to think about the universe being composed of atoms as basic building blocks before sub-atomic physics came along. Red Pine (Bill Porter) also makes a distinction between an early preoccupation with knowledge (jnana) which is replaced in the Mahayana by the more experiential wisdom (prajna). I would not wish to demean the early Buddhists' experience by suggesting that they were all ‘in their heads’, but I do think the Heart Sutra is doing something quite radical.

What was this? It was getting rid of ‘thingness’ altogether. Not only is the self not a real enduring entity, but the bits that make up the self also have no real self-existence. No platinum dog-tags anywhere! Unsurprisingly, I think this is closer to what the Buddha intended; Richard Gombrich, in his excellent What the Buddha Thought, emphasises self-as-process. And it's all process…

Shariputra was held up as the epitome of the wise practitioner, and the Sarvastivadan ideas were attributed to him. So to refute what we could call the ‘dharma-atom’ idea, the authors of the Heart Sutra had Avalokiteshvara educating Shariputra in the underlying unselfness of things.

Apparently Nagarjuna's take on this was that if nothing has any self-nature or own-being, but is made up of other elements (as Thich Nhat Hanh has so eloquently pointed out), then there isn't any other-being either, as those elements also have no own-being, being made up of other elements, and so on ad infinitum. So everything is empty. At which point we might start holding on to things to check that the world is still here…

Just one more factor on the historical side. When Buddhism went to China, it encountered Daoism. And inevitably it absorbed some elements from Daoism. One of these was that they had a goddess of mercy, Guanyin. So rather than impose Avalokiteshvara (usually thought of as male), they quickly gave him a sex-change and adopted Guanyin as the same entity.

Another interesting shift is from, in Indian wisdom literature, particularly the Madhyamaka, the sense of just taking away ideas about selfness — everything empty of a separate self — to, in China, the pre-existent presence of the Dao, or Way, which is mysterious, nonphysical, and pervades all things. This was equated with the Sanskrit citta (mind) and became, if you like, the fullness of emptiness. By letting go of all our ideas of solidity and thingness we are opened to the Dao or Big Mind working through us. As Bruce Frantzis, the Daoist chi gong and taichi teacher, remarks, ‘Zen is 50% Daoist’. That may be an overstatement…

So, to the devotional side. Apparently one of the earliest Chinese versions of the Heart Sutra was known as the Prajnaparamita Dharani. This means it was primarily intended for use as chanting, a sort of long mantra. Of course it contains a mantra at the end: Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha. One commentator, Te-ch'ing, says, “The foregoing text is exoteric prajna. This mantra is esoteric prajna. There's no place for an intellectual understanding, only silent repetition.”

Because of this, in our second chanting of the Heart Sutra today, we're going to chant it in the Sino-Japanese version. No place for intellectual understanding!

In our women ancestor chant we acknowledge Prajnaparamita as one of our earliest female ancestors. Analytically, the word can be taken as ‘perfection of wisdom’ or ‘the wisdom that takes us to the other shore’. Both are good! But it can also be read as ‘she who takes us to the other shore’ — the personification of the goddess of wisdom being the ferrywoman.

I mentioned that the earliest extant translation of the Heart Sutra is Chinese. Xuanzang (7th century) compiled it, but how he came to it is an interesting story. Against imperial orders forbidding foreign travel, Xuanzang set off on a journey from China to India in 629 to better understand the doctrine of Yogacara, also known as Cittamatra (the mind-only school). After numerous adventures, he found himself tormented by grotesque evil spirits whilst crossing the Gobi desert. He invoked the name of his guardian deity, Avalokiteshvara, but to no avail. But when he chanted the Heart Sutra, they were driven away. So where had he found the Heart Sutra? I'll let Kaz Tanahashi take up the story: previously, while studying in Shu, Xuanzang came upon a poor monk who had festering sores all over his body. Pitying his sickness and stained clothes, the young Xuanzang took him to a local temple where he found money with which the monk might purchase food and clothes. As a token of his gratitude, the sick monk taught Xuanzang the Heart Sutra. Xuanzang continued to study and chant it for years.

I want to digress now and reflect on Avalokiteshvara, the speaker of the wise words in our sutra. This for me is very personal. As someone brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, the Virgin Mary was a more accessible focus of devotion than Jesus himself. Above the altar in our local church there was a stained-glass window featuring a beautiful Madonna and child in the Byzantine style, which was very comforting to look at. In the chapel at my boarding school, on the other hand, there was a really gruesome, more than life-size crucifixion. Too much for an eight-year-old child, especially in a tough environment.

It so happened that my first Zen teacher's sangha was called Kanzeon Sangha — Kanzeon being Japanese for Guanyin, which is of course Chinese for Avalokiteshvara. One figure that was often in the dokusan room was a very beautiful, stylised sculpture of Kanzeon or Guanyin. This resembled figurines I have seen of the Virgin Mary. For me, she's the same energy. At the height of the pandemic I wrote the following poem:

I particularly like John Daido Loori's explanation of how Avalokiteshvara operates — he uses the term Kannon Bodhisattva:

“Doing good in complete intimacy is the embodiment and activity of the ten thousand hands and eyes of Kannon Bodhisattva. Kannon Bodhisattva, for those of you who have not met her, is the bodhisattva of compassion. She is called ‘the hearer of the cries of the world.’ She is the bodhisattva who responds when someone cries out for help. When she responds, she responds in perfect accord with circumstances. She doesn't always appear in the form of a goddess or even necessarily in a female form. She may appear in male form or in nonhuman form. She may appear as a god or devil. She responds without mind. There is no thought. Kannon doesn't know about goodness. She doesn't know about doing. Compassion arises spontaneously out of wisdom; the realization of no separation. Someone falls; you pick the person up. No effort.

I've mentioned Kannon Bodhisattva many times before. People wonder about such an esoteric teaching. Where is this goddess? Why don't we see her? Every time a car breaks down on the highway or a lonely road and a motorist stops to give aid, that's Kannon Bodhisattva manifesting in the form of a motorist coming to the aid of another. If she's going to help a drunk in a bar, she'll probably appear as another drunk, not as a holy being glowing with light.”

Back to our story about Xuanzang. Once Xuanzang finally made it to India, he studied at the leading Buddhist university at Nalanda. Xuanzang's foremost disciple Kuiji later reported to the Chinese emperor that while he was at Nalanda, “Xuanzang met again the sick monk who had given the sutra to him, whereupon the monk revealed that he was in fact Avalokiteshvara and blessed him for his safe journey home.”

So we can see Avalokiteshvara/Guanyin/Kannon/Kanzeon appeared to Xuanzang to give him and us this priceless gift, and also perhaps to release the Sarvastivadins from their attachment to thingness, and to help us all be one with the interflowing Dao.

Finally, I just want to come back to the mantra, Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha. Literally: gone, gone, ‘higher’ gone, higher together gone, enlightenment, amen. But that can miss the feel of it.

During the first zazenkai, Chris Ryushin Roshi talked about Shostakovich and Gogol. I'll lower the tone a few notches by referring to Walt Disney's cartoon The Jungle Book. In one scene, Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther are hiding in the bushes, listening to the Ape King Louie sing ‘I'm the King of the Swingers’. Such a great song. Baloo is so moved by the music, he can't stay still and hidden any longer… just as he gets up to dance, he says, “I'm gone, man, solid gone” — completely moved by the music, no Baloo any more. That's what paragate feels like to me! Solid gone! Completely moved!

Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha!