The Heart Sutra Read online

  Jnanamitra says, “Regarding hridaya, there is nothing profound or sublime in the Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines that is not contained in this small sutra” (Donald Lopez, Elaborations on Emptiness, p. 142).

  Chen-k’o says, “This sutra is the principal thread that runs through the entire Buddhist Tripitaka. Although a person’s body includes many organs and bones, the heart is the most important.”

  Te-ch’ing says, “What is meant by ‘heart’ is simply the heart of great wisdom that leads to the other shore and not the lump of flesh of mortal beings or their deluded mind. But because mortals are unaware they already have a heart that possesses the light of wisdom, they only see the shadows that result from their delusions. Instead, they take a lump made of flesh and blood as their real heart and cling to this body of flesh and blood as their possession and use it to perform all kinds of wicked deeds. They wander through life after life and thought after thought without a moment of self-reflection. The days and months go by, they live and die and die and live, and always subject to karma, always subject to suffering. How can they ever escape? Because the Buddha was able to realize his original true wisdom, he saw through the body and mind of the Five Skandhas as never really existing and essentially empty, and he instantly reached the other shore and crossed the sea of suffering. And because of his compassion for those who are lost, he returned to lead them through this dharma door of self-realization so that everyone might see that they already possess wisdom and that their delusions are basically void and that their body and mind are empty and that the world is but an illusion. Therefore he taught this sutra so that they might not do evil deeds but escape sansara and the sea of suffering and reach the bliss of nirvana.”

  SUTRA

  The Sanskrit word sutra is usually interpreted as deriving from the root siv, meaning “to sew,” and as referring to a “thread” that holds things together, like the English word suture. However, some scholars have suggested that it might instead come from sukta, meaning “wise saying.” Whatever its derivation, sutra was used by Brahmans and Jains as well as Buddhists to denote a scripture. According to the traditional account, Buddhist sutras date back to the First Council, which was held in Rajgir in the months immediately after the Buddha’s Nirvana in 383 B. C. Many scholars now believe such an account was a later fabrication by early Buddhist sects anxious to authenticate their selections and interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings. But whether or not such an event took place, these early sects applied the word sutra not only to discourses of the Buddha but also to discourses on the Abhidharma by later followers as well. As time went on, however, the word shastra, meaning “investigation,” was used for Abhidharma texts, and the word sutra was reserved for sermons of the Buddha or disciples empowered by him to speak on his behalf.

  In the case of the Heart Sutra, the text before us was not considered a ching or “sutra” until Hsuan-tsang’s translation of 649. Prior to that, the text was considered a mantra or dharani, as reflected in the earlier translations of the title by Chih-ch’ien and Kumarajiva. Also, it is worth noting that none of our extant Sanskrit copies includes the word sutra in the title, and it is only reflected in the Chinese and Tibetan. However, since it has been customary for the past thousand years or so to refer to this as a “sutra,” I have retained this word in the title.

  Chen-k’o says, “A sutra points out what is constant and also points out a road. Demons and members of other sects cannot obstruct or destroy what is constant. Fools and sages all arrive by means of such a road.”

  Hui-ching says, “The purest emptiness has no image but is the source of all images. The subtlest reasoning has no words but is the origin of all words. Thus, images come from no image, and words come from no word. These words that are no words arise in response to beings, and these images that are no image appear according to the mind. By means of words that are no words, bodhisattvas spread their teaching. And by means of images that are no image, buddhas appear in the world. This sutra is thus the jewel of all teachings.”

  Part One

  Prajnaparamita

  1. THE NOBLE AVALOKITESHVARA BODHISATTVA: arya avalokiteshvaro bodhisattvo

  WITH THIS PHRASE the sutra begins, but nowhere are we told who heard or recorded these words. Most Buddhists attribute the memorization and recounting of the Buddha’s teachings to his attendant, Ananda. But this is not one of the Buddha’s sermons, and there is no mention of Ananda or any of the Buddha’s disciples, other than Shariputra. The longer version of this sutra begins with the Buddha entering samadhi and with Shariputra asking Avalokiteshvara how to practice the Prajnaparamita. The shorter version, translated here, is Avalokiteshvara’s answer. The longer version, however, did not appear until after the shorter version had become an established text. Hence, most scholars agree it was an attempt to establish the authority of the sutra by providing it with the standard introduction and conclusion in which the Buddha is present and the presence of his attendant with the unfailing memory is, thus, implied.

  The question of authorship was an important one for early Buddhists concerned with authenticity. But over the centuries it has become less so. Nowadays Buddhists resolve this issue by considering the teaching contained in the text on its own merits. Accordingly, the principle of the Four Reliances (catuh-pratisarana ) has developed to deal with this issue: We are urged to rely on the teaching and not the author, the meaning and not the letter, the truth and not the convention, the knowledge and not the information. Thus, if a teaching accords with the Dharma, then the teacher must have been a buddha or someone empowered by a buddha to speak on his or her behalf. For our part, all we can safely claim is that the author of this sutra was someone with an understanding of the major Buddhist traditions of two thousand years ago, the ability to summarize their salient points in the briefest fashion possible, and the knowledge of where buddhas come from.

  The word arya (noble) originated with members of the nomadic tribe who referred to themselves as Aryas (Aryans) and who crossed the Hindu Kush and occupied the Indus Valley around 1500 B.C. A thousand years later, during the Buddha’s day, the term arya was applied as an honorific to any person of high esteem, and among Buddhists it was used to salute bodhisattvas as well as the shravakas that Mahayana Buddhists would later denigrate as followers of the Hinayana, or Lesser Path. Thus, it was applied to heroes of early Buddhism regardless of their sectarian affiliation.

  The term bodhisattva is usually explained as “a being (sattva) of enlightenment (bodhi).” But sattva also means something akin to “warrior,” and a number of scholars have suggested the original meaning of bodhisattva was tantamount to “champion of enlightenment.” In either case, the main advantage in using the term bodhisattva was that it represented a change in the focus of practice from nirvana, which was the goal of shravakas, to enlightenment. Thus, it eventually became the standard form of reference for the paragons of Mahayana practice, as opposed to the shravakas of the Hinayana.

  Shravaka means “one who hears” and originally referred to those disciples who actually heard the Buddha speak. Later, it was extended to include the members of such early sects as the Sarvastivadins. And later still, it was used pejoratively by Mahayana Buddhists in reference to those who sought nirvana for themselves without concern for the liberation of others. It should be noted, though, that this depiction of the Hinayana was a Mahayana invention and doubtlessly included a certain amount of distortion of the actual practice of those at whom it was aimed, namely monks and nuns who followed the letter and not the spirit of the Dharma. Thus, a shravaka was often described as one who merely heard the teachings of the Buddha but did not put them into practice.

  In the longer version of this sutra, the term mahasattva appears in apposition to bodhisattva, as it often does in Mahayana sutras. Literally, this means “great being” or “great hero,” depending on how one understands sattva. Its earliest reference, however, was not to humans but to lions. Only later was it applied to
those who shared the courage of the king of beasts. Although the term bodhisattva was used by other religious sects before the advent of Buddhism, the compound bodhisattva-mahasattva was used exclusively by Buddhists. It appears in such early Mahayana texts as the Ratnaguna-sancaya Gatha, a Prajnaparamita text usually given a date of circa 100 B.C. But I have also found it in the Samyukt Agama (1177), a sutra compilation of the Sarvastivadins dating back to 200 B.C., if not earlier.

  The noble bodhisattva who delivers this teaching is not just any bodhisattva but the most revered bodhisattva in the entire Buddhist pantheon and the only bodhisattva with both male and female identities. The name Avalokiteshvara is compounded of four parts: the verbal prefix ava, which means “down”; the verb lok, which means “to look”; the suffix ita, which changes the verb avalok (to look down) into a noun (one who looks down); and finally ishvara, which means “lord” or “master.” In accordance with the rules of sound combination, ishvara becomes eshvara, and the four parts together mean “Master of Looking Down” or “Lord Who Looks Down.” Also, the short a at the end of ishvara indicates that the name is masculine. If it were feminine, ishvara would become ishvari. In Chinese texts, Avalokiteshvara is usually translated Kuan-tzu-tsai (Master of Looking Down), which was the rendering preferred by Hsuan-tsang.

  In some Sanskrit texts this bodhisattva’s name was also written Avalokitasvara. In such cases, it was translated into Chinese as Kuan-yin, meaning “He/She Who Looks Down Upon Sound (Cries),” or as Kuan-shih-yin, meaning “He/She Who Looks Down Upon the Sounds (Cries) of the World,” which was the rendering preferred by Kumarajiva. According to this variation, ava-lok-ita is read as above, but ishvara is changed into a-svara, meaning “low, indistinct voice,” or read as equivalent to ahrsvara, meaning “the sound of lamentation.” While such etymological gymnastics are always possible in the old Vedic science of nirukta, or word interpretation, the reading required to translate Avalokitasvara into Kuan-shih-yin does more than bend the rules. Relying on the notion that there is an etymological connection between lok, meaning “to look,” and loka, meaning “world”—the idea being that for most people the world is the visible realm—some early translator apparently wondered why we can’t have both meanings at the same time in the same word. Thus, while Kuan-yin is the expected translation of Avalokitasvara, Kuan-shih-yin, presto-chango, is two words in one, which is not out of keeping with the powers of this bodhisattva.

  Despite Avalokiteshvara’s stature in the Buddhist pantheon, we know nothing about his origins. The earliest surviving statues (all of which depict a male form) date back to the third and fourth centuries A.D., and his earliest recorded appearances are in Pure Land sutras, such as the Longer Sukhavativyuha, translated into Chinese in the latter part of the second century. Near the end of the Lotus Sutra, which was first translated into Chinese at the end of the third century, the Buddha says that simply hearing this bodhisattva’s name will free devotees from suffering and that chanting the name or thinking about this bodhisattva will save them from affliction, no matter how dire. For the sound of this bodhisattva’s name has the power to echo through the universe and to make visible all who hear it, recite it, or recollect it. And as Avalokitasvara becomes aware of them, they are graced by this bodhisattva’s infinite compassion.

  Given Avalokiteshvara’s appearance in scriptures as early as the second century, we can be reasonably safe in assuming that he joined the spiritual pantheon of Mahayana Buddhism no later than the first century A. D. and probably earlier. His origin, however, remains a matter of speculation. His earliest mentioned residence was on the mythical island of Potalaka somewhere off the southern coast of India, which is where he was living when he was visited by Sudhana in the Gandavyuha chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra.

  But if Avalokiteshvara came from Southern India, he gained his greatest following in the Northwest, where Mahayana Buddhism is said to have taken root in the century before and after the beginning of the Christian Era. This may have also been the area where this bodhisattva acquired several of his most prominent characteristics, and perhaps his female persona. One such source might have been the Persian goddess Anahita (the Blameless or Untainted One), who is often depicted, like Avalokiteshvara, holding a vase that bestows the water of life. Anahita is also accompanied by a peacock with a tail of a thousand eyes, not unlike Avalokiteshvara’s manifestation with a thousand arms and an eye in each hand. The earliest mention of this bodhisattva’s female persona, however, does not occur until the fifth century in China. Still, the fact that a woman could be recognized as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara at this date suggests that the association goes back much earlier, though perhaps not in written form. Thus, we will have to wait for archaeological evidence to emerge from Central and South Asia before we can say anything more on this.

  In addition to our ignorance concerning the origins of this bodhisattva, another question that has puzzled scholars is that Avalokiteshvara is invariably associated with Pure Land texts or with such millenarian scriptures as the Lotus Sutra. And this bodhisattva’s chief attribute is compassion, not wisdom. So what is he doing delivering this heart of the Prajnaparamita, or Perfection of Wisdom? Some commentators have tried to explain this by suggesting that since wisdom is based on compassion, it is only fitting for Avalokiteshvara to serve as the medium through which we receive this summary. I find such an explanation unconvincing. He is nearly invisible in other Perfection of Wisdom texts, appearing only briefly in the Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-five Thousand Lines and in the Purna-prabhasa Samadhi-mati Sutra, and then in the background. And nowhere else does Avalokiteshvara teach this teaching.

  Because no one has offered anything approaching an answer to this anomaly, and because of the reasoning I have outlined in the introduction, I cannot help but conclude that Avalokiteshvara appears here as an incarnation of Maya, the Buddha’s mother. Thus, Avalokiteshvara’s name, meaning Lord of Those Who Look Down from On High, refers to her rebirth as the deva Santushita on the summit of Mount Sumeru, where she gained the perspective and the knowledge that enabled her to look down upon such conceptual systems as the Abhidharma. That she now appears as a male bodhisattva is in keeping with the early Buddhist notion that such rebirth was necessary for the cultivation and attainment of buddhahood. However, Avalokiteshvara alone among bodhisattvas was also known for the ability to appear as a female, which was, no doubt, related to his previous incarnation as Maya. Another point worth noting is that Avalokiteshvara is known to have thirty-three manifestations, the same number as the number of devas at the summit of Mount Sumeru.

  Fa-tsang says, “This name is given to someone who has the power to see without being obstructed by concepts or objects and whose power to see how to aid those who hope to be rescued is also unobstructed. The first explains his wisdom, the second his compassion.”

  Chih-shen says, “Avalokiteshvara sees existence but does not cling to existence and sees emptiness but is not attached to emptiness. Bodhisattvas can suck up the ocean in a strand of hair or put Mount Sumeru in a mustard seed. A mustard seed and a strand of hair represent the mind, while Mount Sumeru and the ocean represent the world. Whenever a bodhisattva thinks about Mount Sumeru or the ocean, they are in the bodhisattva’s mind. Thus a mustard seed contains Mount Sumeru and a strand of hair the ocean. The reason this is so is because all dharmas come from the mind.”

  Chen-k’o says, “Beings have never ceased to be bodhisattvas. But because they don’t understand that individuals and dharmas are empty, and they become trapped by suffering, we call them beings. Once a person’s understanding is unobstructed, who isn’t a bodhisattva? Kuan-tzu-tsai (Avalokiteshvara) is another name for Kuan-shih-yin (Avalokitasvara). Someone like Chef Ting (Chuangtzu: 2), who could butcher an ox with his knife as if nothing was there, is called an ishvara.”

  Ching-chueh says, “As for ishvara, ordinary people are tied by dharmas to the pillars of the Five Skandhas and have no mastery over them. A bodhisattva sees within that the
Four Elements and Five Skandhas are completely empty and becomes their master. Seng-chao says, ‘The attributes of dharmas neither exist nor do not exist, thus there is nothing to point to outside. And the knowledge of sages neither exists nor does not exist, thus there is nothing to think about inside.’ If one can be like this, one dwells in existence without existing, because one doesn’t think about the existence of existence. And one dwells in emptiness without being empty, because one doesn’t cling to the emptiness of emptiness. When the mind is pure and unmoving, and the world is pure and unchanging, when one communicates without words and is obstructed by nothing, one is called an ishvara bodhisattva.”

  Hui-ching says, “Seeing the emptiness of greed, he is master of generosity; seeing the emptiness of sin, he is master of morality; the same holds for the rest of the paramitas; and seeing the emptiness of ignorance, he is master of wisdom. Seeing the Hinayana Path as a provisional teaching, he is master of the Four Truths; seeing the Middle Path as a sequential teaching, he is master of the Chain of Dependent Origination; and seeing the Mahayana Path as free of attachments, he is master of enlightenment and nirvana. Seeing form as empty, he is master of the eyes; seeing sound as empty, he is master of the ears; the same holds for the rest of the senses; and seeing the emptiness of dharmas, he is the master of the mind. Seeing the subject as empty, he is master of the interior; seeing the object as unreal, he is master of the exterior. Because he sees there is not a single dharma to be found, he is thus called a master. But any bodhisattva who is no longer bound by the twin dharmas of passion and nirvana is a master, not only Avalokiteshvara.”