A group of people in Santa Cruz, I just started doing it last week, filling in for Catherine Thanos who went to Japan. been chanting the Heart Sutra for years now, as many people have, and I've studied it, I guess I've taken a class or two in it, but generally we don't think about it so much, we just chant it. So it has been a real great opportunity to plunge into it, try to understand more about what's in there, all of the dharma that is explicated, and also to think about how the Heart Sutra works, how we use it, and how we're used by it, and how it works in our life, and how it connects with our zazen. what I'd like to talk about this morning.

[01:06]

I'm sure, I know that I've bitten off more than I can chew here. And what also seems to be, there are many, many commentaries on the heart in all different traditions. in the Tibetan tradition, in the Zen tradition, in various other Mahayana traditions, and while they don't disagree with each other, they tend to emphasize one aspect or another until, if you read a lot of these commentaries, your brain turns to mush, filled with all of these ideas, which of course is completely against the grain of the Heart Sutra itself. So, the more I study and so-called learn about it, the less I feel I understand about it. It's kind of overwhelming. So I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

[02:09]

I'm sure that I have here today. But I think I'd like to start by... We usually chant the Heart Sutra. I'd like to start by reciting the Heart Sutra and think of it in sentences, as thoughts and words. Usually we just chant it and feel it, feel the sound, feel the vibration. But here I'd like you to just taste the words as we're doing it. And let's not chant it, let's recite it. So people who know it, can do it and people who don't know it can listen along. Let's try it. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering.

[03:09]

O Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness, form. O Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They do not appear nor disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease. Therefore, in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes and still no realm of mind consciousness.

[04:10]

no ignorance and also no extinction of it, until no old age and death and also no extinction of it. No suffering, no origination, no sobbing, no path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain. The Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita, and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. far apart from every perverted view one dwells in nirvana. In the three worlds, all Buddhas depend on prajñāpāramitā and attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore, though the prajñāpāramitā is the great transcendent mantra, is the great right mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra, which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the prajñāpāramitā mantra.

[05:15]

Proclaim the mantra that says, gāte gāte pāra gāte pārsaṁ gāte bodhi-svabha. The oldest sutras were assembled at the first Buddhist council, which took place just after the Buddha's death, which was around 480 BC. And you had a gathering of all the arhats, the enlightened disciples of Buddha, who numbered, well the arhats numbered 499, the assembly numbered 500. because they invited Ananda, who was not yet an arhat, not yet fully enlightened, but he was the person who had traveled with the Buddha for years and remembered all of his words. And there was a big debate about whether to invite him because he wasn't

[06:19]

because he was the guy that knew all of the sayings of the Buddha. So they did. I don't think they regretted it. And so he, in the course of this council, he recited everything that he had heard. And that's in the forms of the sutras that you often see. Thus I have heard. It's often, it's Ananda's speaking, his recitation of what he remembered. So that's historically, or... mythologically, where all these sutras come from. But be that as it may, the Heart Sutra was probably composed in the form that we chant it, somewhere between 100, 150 AD and 350 AD. And it sort of arose with a whole body of literature known as the Prajnaparamita literature, which focused on this idea of emptiness.

[07:26]

And there were, evidently the earliest form of this Prajnaparamita Sutra was the Perfection of Wisdom. Prajnaparamita is one of the perfections. Prajna is wisdom and there are six perfections at the Bodhisattva's practice. and Prajna is the one that flows through it. I'm going to try not to give you lists of lists here today because it gets kind of overwhelming, but Prajna is wisdom and the Prajna Paramita sutra, the Prajnaparamita in 8,000 lines is the earliest text, and then there were expansions and contractions. It was one in 10,000 lines, rather in 25,000 lines, in 100,000 lines, in 18,000 lines, and then short texts like the Heart Sutra and some Some fellow actually composed the Heart Sutra in one syllable, which was just...

[08:40]

And that's also a text, the most condensed version of the Prajnaparamita literature. So if you understand that, actually you could possibly stop studying right there. But since most of us don't get it, they spun out larger and larger and more and more elaborate texts. The version that we chant was translated into English. What we use is sort of a composite of a number of different texts. We got it from Chinese by way of Japanese. And the Chinese translation was done in about 650 A.D. by Xuan Chuang, who was a scholar who went to India and brought back a tremendous amount of the Prajnaparamita literature and gathered a crew of 3,000 monks who then translated all of this stuff.

[09:51]

and they translate hundreds and hundreds of texts, actually only a small portion of which have been translated into Japanese and certainly a small portion into English. But the Heart Sutra has, over the years, over the centuries, become a central text, and particularly a central Zen text. And it's interesting to, it's really interesting to think about it, to consider why has that come about. In every Zen temple, they chant the Heart Sutra. We chanted it twice this morning, actually. We chanted it in English and we chanted it in Japanese. It's really interesting because our Zazen practice seems to point in another direction entirely.

[10:56]

Our Zazen practice tends towards to be an experience of who we are, an experience of emptiness by just experiencing our own lives directly, and not so much a devotional practice. And yet, during the service, we chant this sutra every day. And so the question comes up, why? And for some people it comes up really strongly. When I first came to Berkeley Zen Center, which was a really long time ago, actually well before I really started to practice. I remember sitting on Dwight Way up in the attic, and sitting was hard enough. Just sitting still was really hard. But when it came to service, we were handed out these cards, and we chanted in Japanese these syllables.

[11:59]

and they were meaningless to me. I, they pushed every, all of the bells and lights went on from my past religious training, which was, I had a long Jewish education, which was basically forced upon me. It was not of my choosing. And this reminded me of it. I mean, I would, we would do these prayers in Hebrew and nobody ever bothered to tell us what they were, what they were about. Sometimes we did it in English, but it wasn't of my choosing, and here was another situation like that. So actually, I went away for quite a long time. And when I came back, not so many years ago, and came to service I realized that actually I enjoyed it. I just enjoyed the feeling of chanting and the sound of chanting and the sound of the voices, everyone trying to blend together.

[13:09]

I was thinking about that yesterday and I suspect that what that means is that over the course of a number of years I had let go of some things. I had let go of some ideas about religion, I had let go of some attachment of my own to my aversions from the past and my own history, and so I was able to come to to service with a freer mind and just appreciate the sound. And not everybody can do it. Different people relate to different parts of the practice differently. There is no rule or reason that says that everything needs to be equal. But I was grateful for that. I really found that I enjoyed it.

[14:10]

But I didn't think about it much. I just enjoyed it. I just would do service, and we'd chant this Heart Sutra. And actually, to tell you the truth, I like chanting it in Japanese better than I do in English. Because it just feels better. It's more resonant and rhythmic. I think that what my experience was in those intervening years has to do with the actual text of the Heart Sutra. What we practice here, when we practice Zen, is a Bodhisattva's way, which means that we want to realize our own lives and save all sentient beings, which means help all sentient beings to realize their own life. even though the Heart Sutra itself actually doesn't say anything about saving all sentient beings.

[15:21]

It's actually very unusual as a Prajnaparamita text in that respect, because most of the Prajnaparamita texts talk about saving beings as the center of Bodhisattva's path. But the Prajnaparamita doesn't say much about that, and it doesn't talk much about compassion, which is the means, the skillful means of the Bodhisattva. And when I thought about that, it puzzled me a little, and the more I thought about the more it occurred to me that actually the Heart Sutra and our chanting of it was not so much a description, but actually saving all beings. In other words, when you're chanting it, you are

[16:24]

you are doing an activity that is itself filled with compassion and that is itself helping people, it's helping yourself. So it's both a short course, we'll get into this later, it's both sort of a crash course in Mahayana Buddhism, but like many sutras, there's an aspect to it that is beyond one's understanding. And that's beyond just the words. That the words are actually the words, as Nell said several times recently, it's a language of non-duality. So when it says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, that doesn't necessarily mean we don't have eyes and ears and noses. I mean, everybody can see that. And yet, it forces us to look at what we take to be reality.

[17:30]

And so there's both the sort of explicative aspect of the Sutra, but I think the real core of the Sutra is that it does, just by chanting it, it helps to engage you with reality, engage all people with reality. And that's kind of the, maybe for lack of a better word, the magical aspect of it. And it's also the faith aspect of it, the devotional aspect, the faith aspect of it. And that was another concept that when I thought of it, I had trouble with, and I think it's a central question for me. Somebody said to me at work, after work we had a party one day.

[18:32]

And they were saying, so you live at the Zen Center, right? And I said, yes. They said, well, what do you do there? I said, well, I'm a priest and I take care of various things around the Zen Dojo and try to help people. And they said, well, gee, you don't seem like a religious person. And it was a big question for me, actually. because there's a certain way I don't feel like a religious person. I don't even know what that means to be a religious person. And I thought, but wait, I'm supposed to be a priest. And if I don't look like a religious person, then maybe I'm really screwing up. But the more, again, I've thought about it, actually I talked with Mel about it, I feel like I don't want to be a religious person.

[19:47]

That that's not my idea of being a priest and that's not my idea of helping people. That I want to be just myself and not necessarily apart from people because I feel that that's again, at the center of the Heart Sutra, and it's at the center of Buddhism and Zen, in a sense, in the same way that it's at the center of Christianity, is that realization is available to everybody. Regardless of what clothes you wear, how long or short your hair is, what gender you are, what you, how smart you are, how much money you have, that it's a universal religion. And in the course of chanting the Heart Sutra, the Heart Sutra makes this realization available to everybody without distinction.

[20:58]

Of course, you have to practice to do it, but that realized nature is available to every one of us at every moment. If we can just let go of the things that we're holding on to that prevent us from seeing it. So, I actually was happy that she asked that question, but still faith I don't feel myself a person of faith. I think we usually have lots of images of what that looks like from movies and from books and from our own experiences in various places, various religious circumstances, including here. There's this devotional side of Zen, which is chanting the Heart Sutra.

[22:06]

But if you look at the language of the Heart Sutra, which we'll get into in a moment, some of it anyway, what it's advocating is radical doubt, actually. It's questioning everything. It's questioning all the things in your daily life that you take as real. that you want to hold on to. Your mind, your body, your car, your job, your loved ones, your furniture, all of these things. That's a list that, in a sense, cuts across the board. And all of these things are to be questioned very seriously. And so the question of faith is pretty interesting to me because you have to have some faith to question these things.

[23:21]

If you don't have faith, you can find yourself in a very desperate hole. Faith in Buddhism is one of the five cardinal virtues, and the other side of faith is skeptical doubt, which is one of the hindrances. And you need this doubt, but if the doubt it's rooted in a sort of poison that's going to color everything that you do and everything that you feel. And so we're always balancing between this faith, which keeps us moving forward, which keeps us practicing, which keeps us living, and doubt, radical doubt,

[24:27]

questioning everything, looking at our feelings, looking at all the things we take to be real, looking at our clinging, looking at what we're trying to hold on to, and seeing where the pain is in that. So we're balancing these things and ultimately in Zen you actually don't take things on faith. that faith is a very useful tool. But we're not urged to take things on faith. Actually, we're urged to take things on experience, on our real experience of life, on our real experience of ourselves. And so faith and doubt are both tools to get to this point where we actually experience something that we can consider reality.

[25:36]

And that is, I'll talk at the end, I think that the Heart Sutra divides up in, well actually I can talk about it now. I feel like the Heart Sutra falls into several sections. There's a first section which talks about Avalokiteshvara practicing Prajnaparamita. Now, Avalokiteshvara is one of the Bodhisattvas and he or she is also known as the hearer of the cries of the world. And Avalokiteshvara is sitting and doing a meditation on perfect wisdom, on emptiness. And in that meditation, Avalokiteshvara perceives that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering. So I'll go back to skandhas.

[26:41]

Anyway, it falls, the sutra itself can divide up into several sections. You can divide it into, first is the experience of emptiness, of looking looking at one thing after another that we take to be real. Skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness. There's form and then all the rest are mental mental categories. And we take these to be real. We take our feelings to be real. They control us. We take the things, the objects of the world and our body as real. And in every sense, Avalokiteshvara is suggesting to Shariputra that he questioned that. So, in the first part, there's just this radical questioning.

[27:45]

And then somewhere towards the middle, there is the lines, with nothing to attain, the Bodhisattva depends on Prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. So there you've moved through this doubt stage to the point where you're actually free. You begin to experience some freedom. And in the freedom, you're free from fear. You're free from these hindrances. You're free from the things that are holding you back from experiencing your life directly. Which doesn't mean that you're without feelings. That in fact, the only place that this stuff is going to come up is in the mud of your feelings.

[28:54]

that if you have this, you know, if everything's going along like nice and smooth, and everything's going well, and your family, everybody's healthy, and your job is going good, and you live in a nice house, in a nice place, well, that's all, that's wonderful. I mean, it's not to be criticized, but it's not going to, that doesn't throw you up against your own pain. It's only in the context of being thrown up against that, that you can begin to see through these things. So, the encouraging part of the Heart Sutra, the second part that we lay out, is just that once you have experienced this radical doubt, then you have some real encouragement about some way to live your life that is free from being caught by all these feelings.

[30:00]

And the third part of it is really the transcendent part. It's that the last Last section says, therefore know the Prajnaparamita mantra is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the supreme mantra which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the mantra that says, gate gate pargate parsamgate bodhisvaha. I was reading a book last night that said you're actually not supposed to translate that. that you're making a big mistake if you translate it. You're undercutting its transformational energy. And yet, we want to know, right? I mean, there's a number of different ways that you can translate it. A rough translation would be gāte, gāte is like gone, gone, and then pārsaṁ gāte is gone beyond or gone to the other shore.

[31:13]

Bodhisvaha, well, one of the translations, Parasamgate means completely gone beyond or altogether gone beyond, everyone together gone beyond. And then Bodhisattva can mean perfect enlightenment or praise enlightenment or wow enlightenment. One way of looking at this is as even a further condensation of the text. to the other shore, crossing for yourself, and then gone again, crossing for everyone. And then paragate is crossing to the other shore, it's where you go to, to nirvana or to freedom, as you like it.

[32:24]

And then parasamgate is everybody, all together, we're all we're all crossing into realization and then Bodhi Svaha. So that part is just, I feel like when you get to that stage of the sutra, you are, it's Avalokiteshvara just, he's not talking anymore, he's singing. He's just singing this praise and these words that come out of his deepest understanding. And it's a really magical moment. And it's also a very, very unusual moment in Prajnaparamita literature because actually there's very little material of this Durrani or Gata type in the Prajnaparamita literature.

[33:27]

It's usually very analytical, question and answer, and very theoretical, dealing with an analysis and a undercutting of of anything that one would take to be real. So, it's an unusual intrusion here, and it's what, I think it's what makes, it's the heart of the Heart Sutra, it's what makes it something that we chant, and what gives you a sense of, that there really is something beyond just this analysis of skandhas and dharmas and perverted views and all of this technical buddhism. That beyond this technical grasp of the dharmas you have just song. Just someone being completely free and

[34:31]

singing from the deepest part of his or her heart, and it's moving. I am tempted to stop here, actually. I had a lot more to talk about. What I was going to talk about, or what I could talk about, and maybe we'll do this in another circumstance at another time, is to talk about some of the technical material because I think it's really it's helpful from time to time for if you realize that in a sense that these are these aren't just nonsense words they're not just kind of sometimes we can think of religious texts as words that are just strung together and they don't necessarily mean something to us but actually you can I mean it's a very

[35:43]

thorough going analysis and a complete negation. Again, again, each time an idea is raised up and then it's undercut. But it's good if you want to have, if you want to understand Buddhism as a religion It's nice to be able to know what these ideas that are being undercut, because they come from someplace, and they're really embodied in all of the old literature of Buddhism. But it's interesting if your mind goes in that direction to be interested in it. But Zen doesn't demand that, actually. what our practice here is just zazen. And actually that's sufficient. That's just sitting and constantly returning to your breath and to your posture and to your intention is enough to

[36:59]

to come into contact with yourself, and it's enough to understand on an intuitive and on an experiential level all of the things that may be laid out in this technical sense. Well, to me it's interesting, actually. I have a lot of ambivalence about it. The intellectual part of me thinks, well, this is really interesting and I'd like to learn more about it. And the other side says, well, why should I bother learning about this stuff? It's not real. It's not real at all. And in fact, it just seems like a bunch of really abstract ideas that are Indian. They're Indian ideas from over 2,000 years ago and they don't necessarily seem so relevant to my life. But Zazen seems relevant to my life because with Zazen you can gradually perceive the feelings, perceive the thoughts, perceive all that stuff

[38:25]

clearly as it's arising, and little by little, you can be less caught by it. And that's the thrust of the Heart Sutra, is not to cling to these feelings, not to take anything as real, and to let go of it. And when you let go of these things, then you experience some freedom, and then you can follow your true mind. And also, you can help other people, not necessarily by helping them, by doing anything particular, but just by being who you are and moving in the world with even a small amount of freedom. It has a ripple effect and it affects everyone. So I think I'll leave the explications of the skandhas, the dharmas, the hindrances, the five cardinal virtues, the perverted views, we'll leave that for another occasion.

[39:31]

I'd love to discuss that with people, but maybe not now. And I'll stop here. And if there are any questions or comments, let's talk about it. I know it's a small thing, but I'd like to get it out of the way. Who is Shariputra? Ah, Shariputra. Shariputra is one of the arhats. And he was known as the arhat who is foremost in wisdom. And in the Theravada literature, he's the arhat who's foremost in wisdom, and he gets a lot of points for that. In the Mahayana literature, he is Well, he's a bodhisattva because he'll ask the dumb questions. He'll ask the questions, he has all of this knowledge, see he's the one, he knows about the skandhas, he knows about the dharmas, he knows about all this stuff, but somehow he doesn't get it.

[40:36]

So he'll ask the Buddha some question, or he'll ask Subhuti, who is another one of the Arhats, some question, and they will very patiently explain everything to him. I identify with him a lot, actually. He represents somebody who really studies stuff and thinks that he has some grasp of it, and then will constantly reveal that he doesn't. But, in the non-dualistic side, he's also a bodhisattva for us, because he's willing to put himself out there and ask the dumb questions. And if the dumb questions weren't asked, then we wouldn't hear the answers. And we need the answers, because we're not arhats.

[41:38]

So, maybe he is foremost in wisdom. You don't know. So that's what I know about Sharaputra. Well, even if I knew the answer to something, I might still want to hear Buddha's take on it. Well, yeah. I'm sitting here reviewing the six paramitas, and I can only remember five. I wonder if you would be surprised. Oh, yes. The first one is giving, dana. Let's see. Dana is giving, then there's sila, which is morality. Then there's morality, or what we call precepts, as well. It's sort of the rules for life, for how we live.

[42:41]

Then there's kshanti, which is patience. Right. Virya, which is enthusiasm or vigor. Jhana, which is meditation. And then Prajna, which is wisdom. And they all, well there have been many talks about that here, they all completely interpenetrate each other. You really can't have one without the other. Which one did you forget? Patience. Patience, oh yeah. I wonder from time to time, Alan, why it's called the Heart Sutra? And only today, listening to you, do I mantra at the end as just pouring forth from Avalokiteshvara's heart.

[43:51]

Is there, have you read in your, or have you heard from another teacher, another or a different explication of why we call it the Heart Sutra? Is it called that in Japanese? I mean, is that a translation? Yeah, it is. It's also kind of like the core. Yeah, the core, I think. The heart of wisdom. Right, it's the heart of wisdom. So the Japanese use that in the same metaphorical sense we do, meaning the core or center. Yeah. I think they use it because they don't The other word for heart that we use is shin in Japanese, which is heart or mind. Sometimes, I mean, they're interchangeable, which is great to remember, actually, that they're interchangeable. But I think that the Japanese, I'd have to look it up.

[44:54]

I think it means more the core. Again, I feel like this language is, if I try to think of it non-dualistically, then I will bring in my own experience and association. So I feel like the song rising from the heart, that's the heart of it. That's the core of it. And that's an apt characterization to me. Thank you. Well, intention is... When we're sitting Zazen, we have the intention to pay attention to our posture and breathing. And we have the intention to sit there. We've come here to sit. And what you find, or what I find, when I'm sitting is that there are many things that take my attention away from my posture and breathing.

[46:04]

Anything, the sound of ladders being set up outside, the light as it plays on the wall in front of me, my thoughts of what I have to do later, what's for dinner, all those things. So that I can become attached to any of those thoughts. And those are all kind of light things. Those are not even serious things. There are much more serious things that can pull you away. And so your question of intention is a central one that what you've decided, you've come here to sit, and if that's what you've come here to do, then you should remember your intention and sit and try to do one thing completely wholeheartedly. And if you're thinking about what's for dinner,

[47:08]

you're not going to be able to do that. But again, it's human, it's completely human and natural to think about that stuff. So it's like we recognize these desires as they come up and when we recognize them we can just bow to them and blow them a kiss and let them go away and return to our breathing and our posture. So that's my view as intention. And gradually you can apply that to your life, so that if you have a force in your life and an intention with it, you follow that intention. And so we're not pulled off one way or other by a desire or a thought or a feeling. So the idea is to be able to move freely, not that these things won't come up, they're going to come up, but to move freely in them.

[48:18]

I hope that's a brief answer. Yes. Thank you very much. Heatings are numberless.

[48:38]

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