The Heart Sutra: Emptiness Brimming with Love
Photo by Engin Aykurt
“In one sense, we can say that suffering is destroyed with wisdom. In another sense, we can say it’s destroyed with love. When we see things as they truly are—that is love.”
In this talk, Zuisei guides her students through The Heart Sutra, an essential text in the Mahayana school of Buddhism. Although it’s often chanted daily, its meaning can seem distant, even nihilistic. Focusing on the line, “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form,” Zuisei brings this emptiness into its true and brilliant focus.
This study of the Heart Sutra draws on the work of Kazuaki Tanahashi, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and Khandro Rinpoche.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
This is our third and final session on our Heart Sutra Study for this Summer 2023 ango. I don’t know what I was thinking when I planned on covering this sutra in three sessions—quite foolish of me, or quite hopeful, which is the same thing. But that’s okay; the thread of this teaching runs through everything that we do, so… we’ll carry on, fearlessly.
Let me begin with this quote:
As your bodhisattva practice begins to evolve, you realize that ego-pain can be overcome and destroyed. The source of the destruction is compassion, a bodhisattva approach to yourself. When you practice the Heart Sutra, you chant that there is “no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, and no mind.” But that actually means, “I love my eyes, I love my ears, I love my nose, I love my tongue, I love my body, and I love my mind. I feel sympathetic to all of that.” When you develop that kind of sympathetic attitude, all that ego-pain actually begins to dissolve.
This is Trungpa Rinpoche, in his commentary to the Heart Sutra, from a Tibetan translation called The Sutra on the Essence of Transcendent Knowledge—the heart of prajna paramita.
Needless to say, his commentary is not an ordinary translation of the text. In fact, it’s not a translation at all. It’s an interpretation culled from Rinpoche’s own understanding and a reflection of the teaching other teachers, including me, have expressed as: “emptiness isn’t really empty; it’s filled with love.” So, where does this love come from? It comes from seeing things as they are.
The most famous line of the sutra is “form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” But something can’t be empty of nothing; it has to be empty of something. If I drink the juice from this cup, the cup will be empty of juice but it won’t be empty of space, of air and the molecules that make up that air. Emptiness isn’t a void; it’s more like… a no that’s filled with the infinite potential of yes. A container brimming with possibilities. It’s zero, which both nullifies and multiplies.
We could do a cursory reading of The Heart Sutra and conclude that it’s pessimistic, nihilistic, but it’s not. It’s the expression of everything that can be, because of what it’s not.
What is form empty of? It’s empty of self, empty of our opinions, empty of our memories and associations. It’s empty of permanence, of all our hardening categories. So, you are not the fight we had last night. You are not a pacifier for my pain. You are not the parent I didn’t have. You are not the life I want to live. Then who are you? Life flowing, karma moving and changing constantly through this body, this mind.
The Heart Sutra is telling us that when we don’t get hung up on what we think we see—when we don’t get hung up on anything, then we can see what is actually there.
In one sense, we can say that suffering is destroyed with wisdom. In another sense, we can say it’s destroyed with love. That’s what Trungpa Rinpoche is saying. To see that not just our senses but everything that the senses perceive, which is everything in the world, is not fixed, but flows—that’s love. That’s seeing something as it is and nothing more. So, emptiness is love.
Another point I want to make is one that Kaz raised before about the union of wisdom and compassion in the sutra. Khandro Rinpoche says that the Sanskrit title of the sutra begins with the word bhagavati, which is sometimes translated as goddess or mother. But, she says, the bhagavati principle is also the union of two forces, wisdom (prajna) and skillful means (upaya).
My friend Yeshe was telling me that in Tibetan Buddhism, wisdom is seen as female, and skillful means (embodied primarily in compassion) is male. So we have: emptiness and love, wisdom and compassion, and knowledge.
Taking some liberties, we could say that Avalokiteshvara is compassion, the Buddha is wisdom, and Shariputra is knowledge (he wants to understand what is going on with prajnaparamita). The Buddha asks him to ask Avalokiteshvara about this wisdom beyond wisdom and the sutra is Avalokiteshvara’s answer (or, the Buddha’s answer, some commentators say).
What we’re doing here is engaging our intellect in order to understand this profound teaching. But I sincerely hope that every one of us is sitting deeply trying to realize for ourselves prajnaparamita. I sincerely hope that every time a concept pops up (I love this, I hate this, I don’t understand, this is magnificent, what’s for dinner…) we’re lovingly and firmly letting it go and allowing ourselves to sink ever more deeply into prajnaparamita—into the samadhi that is wisdom beyond wisdom.
This is Khandro Rinpoche:
Give yourself a break from thinking you have to do it, see it, achieve it, change it, or bring it to fruition. Give a break to the deep arrogance that assumes this world wouldn’t know how to function without you. You may not think about your world that way, but watch your behavior patterns. This is why all the Buddhist teachings and methods come to one single point: just sit still.
Then she says:
Try it. You will see that others around you are happier when you do not interfere in their lives. When you just sit still and, most importantly, just keep quiet. Silence is the best thing you can do for anyone else.
Which brings me to the point of the line that doesn’t appear in the Sanskrit versions of the sutra but was added in the Chinese: Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, doing deep Prajna Paramita, clearly saw emptiness of all the five conditions, thus completely relieving misfortune and pain. Apparently, the sutra went from “saw emptiness” to “Oh Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form”… But someone thought, Wait a second. Avalokiteshvara saw emptiness of the skandhas and that’s not nothing! Seeing that the skandhas are empty, the self is empty, what are you left with? You’re left with freedom from pain! (Avalokiteshvara’s and everyone else’s). Someone else could have come along years later and said, Hey! This isn’t in the original! Who put this here?! This isn’t right. But nobody did. Why? Because everyone who came after agreed that in doing deep prajnaparamita, in seeing the emptiness of self and other, of self and phenomena, there’s no one left to suffer. Suffering has no hold.
The Heart Sutra is effectively saying: you won’t find lasting happiness in the eye, the ear, the nose. You won’t find it in birth or in health, in thought or sensation. It doesn’t say but it implies: you won’t find it in money or fame, you won’t find it in anything that doesn’t last. So where can you find it then? Dive deeply into prajnaparamita. That’s where you’ll find out. Sit still and see that there is something that lasts.
“Far beyond deluded thoughts,” the sutra says, "this is nirvana.” But nirvana doesn’t exclude those deluded thoughts either. It swallows them right up. But without going past them, we'll never see that.
To take a mundane example, this is what Avalokiteshvara saw:
1. my hand (rupa or form), when it comes in touch with fire,
2. feels heat (vedana or sensation)
3. it perceives (samjna or perception) the sensation as hot!
4. it has an impulse (samskhara or volition, mental formation) to move away
5. it becomes aware through (vijnana or consciousness), Ouch!
But if any one of these parts was missing, I would not feel the fire. Rupa needs vedana, needs samjna, samskhara, vijnana. The skandhas inter-are, and when I understand that behind them there is no solid person, then who will be the one to suffer? Not only that, but every one of these skandhas also changes (and not only the skandhas, but also the 18 realms of perception and the twelve links of dependent origination, which here are implied by the first and last link (ignorance and death).
Essentially, all of reality changes and it depends on everything else. This means, pain hurts, but it doesn’t last. Change one of the conditions, and the pain goes away. This is what Avalokiteshvara saw: everything is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and empty of self. Therefore, lasting peace can only be found in nirvana, attained through annutara-samyaksambodhi. The Four Seals.
But don’t be put off by the big words. Every single one of us is capable of realizing this—realizing a little, or realizing a lot, it doesn’t matter.
In the Tibetan version of the Heart Sutra, Shariputra asks Avalokiteshvara: How should a son or daughter of noble family engage in the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom? And Avalokiteshvara says: they should see insightfully, correctly, and repeatedly. See what? that realizing emptiness makes us kind: it allows others to be as they are without our demands and expectations. It allows me to be me, and you to be you—truly. Is there something better, more conducive to happiness, than that?
Explore further
01 : The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism by Kazuaki Tanahashi
02 : The Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge (pdf) translated by the Nalanda Translation Committee
03 : The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion (II): The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma by Chögyam Trungpa