This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Thank you all for coming again today. Yesterday, in case if you're interested in more of that Bodhidharma stuff, teaching, there's a little book with all his sermons translated into English. in a bilingual edition just called The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. And then today I'm going to be talking about the Heart Sutra, and if you're interested in more about it, there's this book called The Heart Sutra that I did some years ago, translated from the Sanskrit. And so I'd always thought, you know, the Heart Sutra is obviously the most famous, most common text you run into in a Buddhist setting. You see, you chant it everywhere, whether it's in Japan or Korea, China, Vietnam, everywhere.

[01:05]

Other than in a Theravadan country, you chant the Heart Sutra. I mean, I never paid any attention at all. I thought it was, you know, maybe a few lines, 30-some-odd lines long. And what's all this emptiness, form and stuff? It just confused me. You know, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. No eyes, no nose. What's all that about? It just didn't appeal to me as a text, and I ignored it. I never thought anything of it until about 15 years ago. The fellow who was the first director here and the first president of the San Francisco Zen Center is one of my neighbors in Port Townsend, a man named Silas Hoadley. And so Silas runs our Zen scene in Port Townsend because he knows how to do everything. you know, the chants and the bells and the, you know, all that, and tells us what to do. But one day he came to me and said, Bill, we're going to have a, and we had retreats twice a year, week-long retreats, at this huge barn that these two circus, these two brothers, they're called the Karamazov brothers.

[02:17]

They do high wire acts. And they had this huge barn that would be used for retreats. Silas came to me and said, you know, Bill, We use the Heart Sutra in our chants all the time. Could you translate it again for us? And I said, sure, I can do that. I'll give it to you next week. And I finally came up with a rough draft after six months. Because I had never realized what was in the Heart Sutra. Pretty much everything. It is Buddhism in a nutshell. That's what the Heart Sutra is. So... That's why it's so easy to talk about because it covers everything in just a few lines. What it does is it's a manifestation of that moment when Mahayana Buddhism became aware of itself and realized it had to distinguish itself as a teaching from other teachings that were popular at the time.

[03:24]

This would have been around the time of Christ or so, give or take, when the Prajnaparamita text began, was maybe the 1st or 2nd century BC. We don't have a copy of the first translation into Chinese, which was around 200, 250 AD, by a man who arrived from the Silk Road. And... Then we get another translation by the great translator Kumarajiva around 400. We also don't have a copy of that, but the one we all still have copies of is the one that Shenzong did, the monk who went to India and brought back text. So that's the one everybody uses in China is the text translated by Shenzong. And that's the one that's usually translated into Japanese and from Japanese or Chinese or Korean into English. When I was studying the Diamond Sutra, I had run into problems with the Chinese.

[04:31]

There were six translations of the Diamond Sutra, and there were all these, you might say, there were the kind of differences that I was unable to figure out the Diamond Sutra, how to translate it, by looking at the Chinese. I just happened to run into this series of six volumes, and published by a Taiwanese Buddhist nun, where she analyzed the Sanskrit version of the Diamond Sutra, word by word, phrase by phrase, line by line, all the grammatical stuff. So I didn't know any Sanskrit, but by reading her Chinese, I did. And so once I started reading and saw what was happening in Sanskrit, I realized that's the text. I understood what the Diamond Sutra was about. You know, when I ever asked Chinese people what the Diamond Sutra was about, they'd say, oh, it's about, you know, that Kajna Parmitas of the emptiness. And I could never get emptiness out of the Diamond Sutra.

[05:34]

But by reading the Sanskrit version, I realized it was about the body, the real body, the body of a Buddha, our own real bodies. And so when it came time to do the Heart Sutra, I... I took refuge in Sanskrit again, because it's so easy. It's this short Sanskrit text. You don't really have to know any Sanskrit grammar, which I don't know much of. So I was able to translate this from the Sanskrit. And that's what you have here today, is this thing I did for Silas back in, I think it was 05 or so. I don't know when it was published. This was probably published around 06 or... I never know when these things are published, but you can get this book. It's still in print. It was 1004. Wow. But what it does is it introduces... I'm a translator, and I do things differently than you do, because you read a text, and you're looking at the words.

[06:37]

But I'm looking at how to get those words, where to get them. I'm looking at a Chinese text. And... I need to find out what's behind those words in order to bring them into English. So I'm looking for things like structure. Structure is really important for a spiritual text. Not so much a poem, but for spiritual text structure. And so in the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra, it's really easy to see how important the structure is. And so you'll see I've divided it into four parts. Or in the first part, the... the interlocutor of the Heart Sutra, supposedly Avalika Deshvara Bodhisattva, introduces the teaching of Prajnaparamita. Prajnaparamita. And we'll talk about that later. And then contrasts it with the teaching of the Abhidharma. And then, which are basically in conflict, you might say.

[07:39]

There's this underlying conundrum between them. And then, as a result, introduces the synthesis of the Bodhisattva Path. And the Bodhisattva Path manifests in a technique called chanting, chanting a mantra. And so that's what the Heart Sutra structure is all about. The first two parts, Prajnaparamita and the Abhidharma, is the underlying drama going on to these... two people on stage, you might say. It's between Avalokiteshvara and Shariputra. And that was one of the hardest things for me to figure out, is what Avalokiteshvara is doing in this text. Because Avalokiteshvara has never, ever said anything about Prajnaparamita in any text. But Avalokiteshvara is sometime in the audience of the Prajnaparamita text.

[08:40]

There's about, there's 16 main texts. There's a series of Shenzong translated them all and in a series of 16 texts. But nowhere does Avalokiteshvara become the person saying anything. So here in the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara is in charge. And it really puzzled me for a long time until I started discovering the underlying tension in the Heart Sutra is a Mahayana critique of the Abhidharma. of this early Buddhist sect and explain how that takes place. When the Buddha was alive, he used the word dharma and dharmas. Indians have always used the word dharma based on the Sanskrit to grasp. If you can grasp something, it's a dharma.

[09:42]

And so... these spiritual texts started using it as what we consider real. What we consider real is a dharma. And naturally there's the dharma, that is our teaching as a whole, but there's anything in our teaching we think of as important. And so all the early Buddha sects start talking about dharmas. When the Buddha was teaching, he would teach people to meditate on something. And back before the Buddha's time, the early Hindu sects would also teach their disciples to meditate. And they all used one basic system. It was Nama Rupa. Inside, outside. You meditate on two things. Outside, you. And inside, you. And this was rupa, nama.

[10:44]

And of course, the idea was to find yourself. Where do you exist? Where's the real, the atman? The early quest was for the atman, the self. And so where is the self? Is it in form? Is it in the outside world? Or is it in nama, in the inside world? And if it is, what part of... So they started... dividing nama into different overlays, you know, at which the Buddha picked up on. And he made these into what we call the skandhas. The five skandhas, the outside world being the first skanda, and then we have the inside skandhas of sensation, perception, memory, and consciousness. But he would teach his disciples to go in search of a self. And you teach them to meditate on the skandhas. Then he'd come back to them and he would say, have you, did you find yourself? He said, no. He says, well.

[11:46]

And wait for them to have a certain breakthrough in that experience. And then sometimes the skandhas would be inappropriate. Because with the five skandhas, you have form on the outside and then you have sensation, perception, memory and consciousness on the inside. So you have That's sort of a way of addressing the problems of somebody who's really hung up on their inside self. You have one on the outside, four on the inside. And so he would run into people because the Buddha is just like a physician, using different medicines, different teachings for different people who have different problems. So then he would teach them the ayatanas, where you take form and you divide that into... Eight different categories based upon your organs of sensation and the domains in which they work. And then on the inside, nama, you only have two, the mind and thought. That's where you have all the eyes and the nose and all that sort of stuff is in the ayatanas.

[12:51]

And so that's sort of for people who think of reality as being the outside world. And he would do the same thing, teach them to look for a self in all this. They'd come back and say he couldn't find it. And then he would wait for them to have that moment where they can see, oh, that's right, no self. And there'd be other people who, well, they weren't really, they were sort of hung up in both realms. And so he would teach them the Dattus, the 18 Dattus, where you have basically the eight, you have the eight of the Ayatanas, the sense organs and the realms in which they exist. they operate, but then you have all these forms of consciousness that arise when organs, sense organs and domains come into contact with each other. So you have six forms of consciousness in the ayatana and the dhatu. So there are these three different ways he would teach people to meditate in looking for that self that was causing them all to suffer.

[13:56]

And then there were other people who had another problem, and this was actually the Buddha's own problem. And this was how he gave his enlightenment, was through, not through a spatial reconstruction or interpretation of reality, but a temporal one. And then, so he meditated on the chain, the nidhanas, the chain of dependent origination, you know, from ignorance and, you know, up to old age and death. This was, it was by meditating on this, that the Buddha was experiencing enlightenment. And then when he finally started teaching, his first sermon where he taught the Four Noble Truths was just a summary of the Twelve Naganas. So these were the sort of areas that the Buddha would use, the techniques he would use to teach people to meditate, the subjects of meditation, in order to

[14:59]

get them to break through that attachment they have to this self. And so that was the basic teaching of the Buddha when he was alive. And then when the Buddha died, the problem began when certain people said, well, it's true, the Buddha said there is no self. But when it comes to the subject of the Skandhas and Ayatanas and Datus and Nidanas and the Four Noble Truths, He didn't say they didn't exist. So there was this sect called the Sarvastavadans that became the most prominent sect in North India, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and in Saudia, what we call now is Vekistan. And they came to the conclusion that all of these things the Buddha taught us to meditate on had self-existence. They existed by themselves. In short, they were dharmas. that dharmas for the Sarvastavadans had self-existence.

[16:03]

And they created what we now call the Abhidharma. Abhidharma means dharmology, the study of dharmas. Because the Sarvastavadans believed if you could just learn the relationships between all of these dharmas, you could understand how the mind works. Because all are things about the mind. It's sort of like, for example, we believe that reality is material. And so we have a table of elements. I think 108, they keep discovering more. But we believe the world around us, the real world, is a series of elements. Well, the Abhidharma people said the same thing. They said the real world is a series of elements. It's the... Mine, for Christ's sake. And it's got 75 elements in it. And they're all based upon the Skandas and Ayatanas and Datus and Adanas and Four Noble Truths and three that aren't in there that are a space in two kinds of enlightenment or nirvana.

[17:14]

And so this was the real world of dharmas for the Abhidharma people. And when Mahayana arose, it... arose as a critique of that. And that's what the Heart Sutra is about. And the reason Avalokiteshvara, or the Shariputra, is in this Sutra is because he was the founder of the Abhidharma, the patriarch of the Abhidharma texts. The first Abhidharma texts in Sanskrit were all attributed to Shariputra. So if you were a Mahayana person and you wanted to criticize, write a text criticizing the Abhidharma, you would want to criticize Shariputra's understanding of what's real. Who would you get to do that? Well, the Buddha never, ever taught the Abhidharma on earth.

[18:17]

The seventh year of his ministry, seventh year after he was enlightened, He spent the summer in the Trayatrish Krishna heaven. He left the earth every afternoon. He would go up to heaven and teach his mother, which apparently all Buddhists do, they say in the early Theravadan texts. This is what Buddhists do. In the seventh year of the ministry, they go to heaven and teach their mother, who is dwelling in this heaven above Mount Sumeru. And so that is what the Buddha did during that summer, is he taught his mother to complete Abhidharma. And every day he would come down to earth and he would teach a summary of this to Shariputra. So when this person writing the Heart Sutra came up with, wanted somebody to represent this Mahayana view, they called on the Buddha's mother. And this is who Avalokiteshvara is.

[19:19]

Avalokiteshvara is a manifestation of the Buddha's mother. Avogadishvara is the only bodhisattva that I've ever heard about who is gender-free. It could be male or female. Again, because the early Indian philosophers believed you had to be a male to be a Buddha. But she had been the Buddha's mother, so she had to go through this gender transformation. So... That, to me, is why Avlaka Deshvara is in this sutra. She represents the Mahayana view of the Abhidharma in its true light through the view of Prajnaparamita. Incidentally, when Avlaka Deshvara arrived in China, she also arrived with the influence of a lot of the religious...

[20:22]

that existed on the Silk Road. And so she came, for example, with some of the symbolism of the great Persian goddess, Anahita. Anahita is always holding a vase that bestows the water of life, and she's always accompanied by her peacock with a thousand arms and an eye in each arm. which, of course, you'll always see Avalokiteshvara represented with all those arms and eyes, which is Amahita's symbol of the peacock. So anyway, this is how Avalokiteshvara comes to this sutra, representing this Mahayana view of dharma, of what really is the dharma. So that's how this begins. And so I'll just read through the first part. where we introduce this teaching of Prajnaparamita.

[21:23]

Because, you see, all these early Abhidharma sects, their goal was jnana. Knowledge. The knowledge of the mind. They use this word, J-N-A-N-A, or sometimes just J-N-A. Jnana. Knowledge. The acquisition. If we just know how the mind works, we will all become Buddhists. So, The teaching of Prajna, the Indians had always had this word, just like we always have the word wisdom. We just don't know what to do with it. That is, we have different kinds of wisdom. You can say he's a very wise person who's just a business person who makes a lot of money. Anyway, Prajna, when the Mahayana people started looking for a word to represent their view, They started using this word prajna in contrast to jnana, knowledge. So instead of knowledge, that is, instead of seeking the knowledge of dharmas, of this world of reality, of 75 forms of reality, instead of seeking knowledge, what we want to cultivate is what comes before knowledge.

[22:40]

Prajna, pre-knowledge. We still get, you know, a lot of Greek and Latin words were influenced by Sanskrit. We get prognosis is the, you know, you see a little bit of prajna in prognosis. But for the Indians and for the early Buddhists, prajna meant pre-knowledge. And the Mahayana people wanted to distinguish their prajna, their wisdom from anybody else's. So this is special wisdom, special pot, special stuff. So they stuck Paramita on the end of the word. And so that's why it has Prajnaparamita. It just means it's really great. It's the transcendental wisdom. And so that's Prajnaparamita. So here you get Avalokiteshvara, the noble Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, while practicing the deep practice of Prajnaparamita, looked upon the five skandhas.

[23:45]

and seeing they were empty of self-existence. Again, the Abhidharma thought these dharmas had self-existence. So, Avogadiswar looks upon the five skandhas and sees they're empty of self-existence, says, here, Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, blah, blah, blah. I remember when I was first chanting the sutra, that always stopped me from having any appreciation for the art sutra, was that form is emptiness, emptiness is form, emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness. Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form. That eighth line there, whatever, doesn't exist in the Chinese, so you won't see it if you're reading a translation from Japanese or Chinese, but it exists in all the Sanskrit versions. And what that is, those three lines, is a statement of set theory.

[24:51]

Remember, these Abhidharmas were incredible logicians. Because they constructed this house of cards, this incredible scheme of the world of reality of the mind, based upon the relationships between all the Skandas and Ayatanas and Datus and so forth. And so... This person who is writing this knows that if I'm going to present something that is convinced somebody that the Abhidharma is the wrong road, then we have to go beyond it. And so we have to talk to them in their own language. And so that's what these three lines are. And now if you... That's where I wanted this chart from. And some of you have studied set theory in mathematics. Some of you probably run into it, maybe in high school. I don't know.

[25:53]

If you have A and B, right? You have A here and B here. Would you want to describe a place where two sets intersect? You can make two statements. You can say A equals B, and you can say B equals A. Only about that spot right there where they intersect. So that's when somebody wants to say, when someone says emptiness is form, form is emptiness, what you're speaking of is the intersection of two sets. But then when you go on and you say, emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness, then you're saying A and B are one in the same set. The Sanskrit goes even further than this. and says, you can have many kinds of A, correct? You can have A, whatever. Lots of different kinds of A, lots of different kinds of B. You can have lots of different kinds of emptiness.

[26:55]

In fact, usually the Buddhists list at least eight. And you can have lots of different kinds of form. So that's why there's this third line. Whatever is form, whatever is emptiness, they're all identical. So this was Avila Kiddushvar's attempt to... Waken somebody up who is hung up on the self-existence of one of these dharmas. By saying, this dharma you think has self-existence, it is empty of self-existence. And the word emptiness is shorthand for empty of self-existence. Emptiness is not empty of water or air or this or that. Emptiness is empty of only one thing. Empty of self-existence. It's sort of like this. Emptiness has always been one of the hardest words to translate. When the early Indian philosophers were translating sunyata, they wrote volumes about the difficulty in expressing that.

[28:00]

And when sunyata was translated into Chinese as kong, the Chinese did the exact same thing. There's all kinds of books about what kong really means. And when we translate kong as emptiness, we do the same thing in English. And, of course, you'll see lots of books where people are talking about what emptiness really is. But basically, as represented in this text, emptiness is empty of self-existence. That's all. And so it's sort of like this. If somebody asks... you to make a list of the real things in this room, you write down shoes, floor, I don't know, table, sounds. You make a list of things that were real. What you do intellectually is you draw a line around them somehow. You put a line around them.

[29:03]

That person, that thing, it's a thing, has a line around it. I separate it from the universe. It has its self-existence. And so what emptiness is, is the ability, but you do this by practicing Prajnaparamita, is this incredible complex net that we've all passed around this world we live in. We are able to pull that net away. That's what emptiness is. So it's the exact opposite of nothing. It's everything without any distinctions. To take away that self-existence is to take away what separates one thing from another. So emptiness is empty of self-existence, empty of those lines, that net that we cast over everything. And of course, nothing changes in a world viewed with Prajna Paramita.

[30:03]

But what changes is This tendency to become attracted. And attached to that world. The elements of that world. So that's what. Yes. The eight kinds of emptiness. I don't know. It's in my diamond sutra. I don't know. I don't remember. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not there anymore. That's the trouble when I'm a translator. I keep moving. When I'm in China, all the time people are asking me, or even something in America, they'll say, could you recite a poem that you translated? No. I can't translate it. Because what I translate today won't be the same tomorrow.

[31:04]

I'm always, a translator is never done until the publisher says you're done. You can always be different. And so whenever I'm studying a text, I just, I learn what I need to learn in order to get that text translated. And then I move on. But I do remember there are different, there's lots of kinds of emptiness. The Lakavatar commentary also has, I listed kinds of emptiness. So you have to buy the book. Oh, you have the book? Oh, okay, well, it's in there somewhere, but I don't know. What kind of emptiness is in your mind where it's just empty of remembering the kind of emptiness? Yeah, the empty of emptiness. Yeah, certainly, that's maybe number nine. Anyway, so we have, what Avalokiteshvara does in this text is introduces Prajnaparamita in action, that is, viewing What other people think are real and having self-existence, viewing that from the point of view of the mind before it knows, before you know.

[32:16]

Zen became known as your original face. The face before you were born is prajna, this pre-knowledge. Mahayana texts or Mahayana sects all use different techniques for putting you in that state, getting you to that point. free knowing. Your mind before you know. Because once you know, you know something. And then there's you who knows. And there's the thing known. So it just turns the wheel again. So that's why these different Mahayana sects all use different techniques to get you there. So the Avila Kiddushwara is introducing this view of the Abhidharma to us from Prajnaparamitas as experienced by Avila Kiddushwara who is practicing Prajnaparamita, and who truly understands the Abhidharma, and therefore can teach Shariputra the right way to look at what he's been meditating on. And so, Avukadishvara says, so not only does this, is the world of form, this dharma of form empty of self-existence, so are the other skandhas.

[33:33]

you know, the perception, memory, sensation, perception, memory, consciousness. And then we go down through all the list of these other ones in the Abhidharma. And so that's why there's no nos and no world of scent and all these other things where you get lists from 12 through 20. Avalokiteshvara goes through these different categories of dharmas that the Stravastavadans thought had self-existence, one at a time. In fact, this list, in its order, is the list used by the Sarvastavadans. Every other sect used a different list. And so whoever was writing this text was using a Sarvastavadin text as the basis of drawing up this critique. First you critique the Skandas, then the Ayatanas, then the Datus, and then the Nidanas, the causal links. And then the Four Noble Truths. And then the attainment of anything from studying and realizing the truth of the Four Noble Truths.

[34:41]

And so this is having the view of the Abhidharma by Avalokiteshvar practicing Prajnaparamita and transcending the idea of any of these having self-existence. But having taken away this from the Abhidharma, what do you do now as a practitioner? If you can't rely on the self-existence of the skandhas and of your mind and the elements of your mind, what can you rely on? And so Avlaka Nishvara says, so what the Bodhisattva does is takes refuge in Prajnaparamita and this pre-mind, pre-knowledge mind. And, of course, what's also taking place is in all of these phrases, in every one of them, the Sanskrit uses the locative case. Like if you've studied Latin, maybe you have studied Latin, you have accusative and ablative and different case endings, where you just look at the end of a word and you know if it's going to be an object of a preposition or the object of a verb.

[35:58]

And here it's an object of a preposition in. So Prajnaparamita, this is all, you take refuge in Prajnaparamita for a reason. Because Prajnaparamita, this state of pre-knowledge is also the mother, the womb of all Buddhas. This is where all Buddhas come from. And Prajnaparamita has always been... one of the most important goddesses in India, in Tibetan Buddhism, where Buddhas come from. So you take refuge in this state of pre-knowledge, but also within this goddess who's going to be your mother, from which all Buddhas come from. And that's why it's always taking refuge in Prajnaparamita. And because you take refuge in Prajnaparamita, you've taken refuge in something that has no walls. Because remember, walls, when you give something self-existence, you create a set of walls, a set of separations.

[37:04]

But in the mind, before it knows, there are no walls. And because there are no walls, how can you fear anything? And so this is the state where bodhisattvas take refuge and thus practice this prajnaparamita. This Avukadishvara is practicing it, you can practice it too. You do it in Prajnaparamita, in the goddess that gives birth to all Buddhas. And thus you live without walls of the mind, without walls of the mind, thus without fears. You see through delusions, all of these things you think of as real. And finally, the final delusion is that of nirvana, which again is the 75th, the 74th and 75th Dharma in the table of elements of the Savastavadans are the two kinds of nirvana. But you see through those two, because again, it's just another Dharma. And thus, all Buddhas, having taken refuge in Prajnaparamita, realize perfect enlightened by doing this.

[38:11]

This is, again, as the Diamond Sutra makes clear, Prajnaparamita is the mother of all Buddhas. And so you take refuge in Prajnaparameta. She is your protector. And the fourth part of this sutra, this is to give you a technique to make this work for you. And so the idea of the technique of a mantra is introduced. Instead of a bunch of words, we get a bunch of sounds that have power and also have meaning. And so we get this mantra of great magic, the Because all the goddesses of ancient India had esoteric powers. And this Vidya, they had Vidya, an esoteric power that could do things. And the Sanskrit here, it's a mantra of Mahavidya, great esoteric power.

[39:12]

I use the word magic, and some people don't like that, but anyway, that's what it is. So this mantra is unexcelled, just like enlightenment is. And it has this function, too, of healing all suffering. And it's true, not false. And this is the mantra. Gathe, Gathe, Paragathe, Parasangathe, Bodhisattva. And Gathe is a very unusual word to use here because it should be Gathe. I mean, it should be Gata. It should be Gata. Gone. Gone. But it's not. The Sanskrit is very clear. It's gate, gate, into the God. Again, this case ending, into the God, ablative. It's like in Latin it would be ablative. Into the God, into the God beyond, into the God completely beyond. Because what you are doing, you are taking refuge in Prajnaparamita, the womb. You are entering the womb of Prajnaparamita. And by chanting the mantra, you are entering that sacred space.

[40:16]

And so that's why this sutra ends with this. At that time, mantras were just starting to be used in the Buddhist texts that were coming to China. In fact, the earliest translation we don't have that we know about of the Heart Sutra is called the Prajnaparamita Dharani. There's a Dharani and a mantra of the same thing. So this is, basically this text is a dharani, a mantra. And when Kumarajiva translated it, he called it the Mahavidya Rajnaparamita dharani. He also used the word dharani. It was only when Shrenzong translated it, he stopped using the word dharani and just called it the Heart Sutra. And I think the reason he called it the Heart Sutra is because the three most important Abhidharma texts, put together in ancient India were all called the Heart Shastra.

[41:17]

Different words of describing, like the complete Heart Shastra, the great Heart Shastra. So this is not just a Shastra, this is a Sutra. It's a Heart Sutra. Anyway, that's my way of dealing with this text. When I first started translating it, it was the discovery of this... background in the text, that this text was about the early history of Buddhism and how some people had interpreted what the Buddha was teaching as the teaching itself and the elements that he was teaching as having somehow existing by having self-existence, lasting forever, being timeless. And so the Mahayana arose to free people from that conception. They saw that as a hindrance. And so that's why the term empty of self-existence is used here.

[42:18]

And the shorthand word emptiness is used throughout Mahayana, always meaning empty of self-existence, empty of dividing lines is what emptiness means. And so that's the Heart Sutra. Do you have any questions? Yes? No. No. Yes? What? A paramita... There's two ways of looking at it depending how you... The Indians have this fascination with parsing. P-A-R-S-I-N-G. Dividing words. Because they... Their words could have certain ambiguities depending on case endings and little curly cues that they do in their language. So this could be what... Transcendent. It either means transcendent or it means what takes you beyond.

[43:23]

So that's why it's sometimes called the raft. The raft that carries you across Paramita, carries you across the river. That's why... Yesterday I was talking about the SS Paramita that I created in my mind one day to explain to me. What kind of rap would that be? The rap to the Paramitas. Yes? Prajna Paramita. Not Paramita. Prajna Paramita is a goddess. The name of a goddess. Yes. Well, my guess is it was a concept first. And then they decided to apply that concept. Because again, the Prajnaparamita, that phrase, was used to attack the people who focused on jnana, knowledge. And so they wanted to use pre-knowledge or prajna...

[44:29]

And they wanted to distinguish their prajna from just ordinary, everyday, mundane wisdom. So they added the word paramita on the end of it. So it only makes sense that it was a technical term first, prajna paramita. And then a goddess was invented or manifested. Because God can't give birth. And... I guess it also, to practice this, involves a lot of renunciation. It's very un-male-like. A lot of giving up and opening oneself to something. Not the acquisition of knowledge, but in a sense, the loss of knowledge. The turning away from knowledge because as soon as you realize that is knowledge, you realize that Knowledge is great, but it has its limitations.

[45:29]

And it's like a boomerang. It comes back to haunt you. But, yeah, and... Yes? I was really intrigued by the example of the periodic table. I'm curious, I'd like to give a rough sketch of what, from your perspective, it's our kind of contemporaries of Oscar God. It would be the table of elements. No, no, I think because, I mean, there's certain people who are exception, but I think 99.9% of all people in the, certainly in the Western world, think of the real world as being, you can ascribe any item to a set of those. In fact, they invented a word. for that table, the Abhidharma people did, that we still use today for anything similar, a matrika.

[46:30]

And the Greeks called it matrix. And so they invented this idea that the elements of the Abhidharma all existed within a matrika, where they're not just a table, but they all interact. Yeah. Yes, and so they used that word and they invented it. I don't know if they invented it, but they're the ones who made it famous, the Abhidharma people, Mantrika. Yes? In what sense do you think it's probably a time to see knowledge? In what sense what? It's probably a time to see knowledge. It's probably a time to see knowledge. Yeah. I'll give up because what it's about is just cultivating the state before you know. So you just do it today in the way you do it today.

[47:34]

And tomorrow you'll probably do it in a different way because you're dealing with a world in which you're living where you're attracted to this and that and people expect you to know this and know that and today I'm cultivating... getting away from knowing that and just going into a state before I would know that. And that's, you still, in a sense, you know that, but now you see it in a different light. You've taken away its self-existence. And so that's why I said, when you take away that net, nothing changes. Everything's still there, just they aren't things anymore. Yes? I have a question sort of general, I don't know how to phrase it, but the Bible of Pichita Bara is about compassion and serving and the life of a Bodhisattva.

[48:35]

And so much of the Sintras or the liturgy in Buddhism seem to be about wisdom and thinking in the mind and not, you know, empty of form. And then all of a sudden it's about It just seems like a step to be really about service. Where it feels like there's not a lot in the sutras or anything. Is that... What sutras have you read? I guess I've read some... I mean, there are a lot of sutras, but certainly compassion and service is essential. As the paramedas begin with charity, right? It's not service, but then morality, where you're in a sense you're giving something up because you're trying to maintain a way of life that doesn't harm others.

[49:40]

It doesn't give offense. But then you also have forbearance, where you meet with people who would normally piss you off But you break through that somehow. And your devotion is probably the thing that would be the same as such service. You get a lot of sutras that are about wisdom. It's true. There are... There are 16 Prajna Paramita sutras. They're all in one big, huge text that Shenzong translated. The diamond, for example, is number nine. the Diamond Sutra. Actually this summer I was going to give a presentation on the Eighth Sutra, which sets up the Diamond Sutra. Nobody really realizes, because nobody's ever translated the Eighth Sutra, where the Diamond Sutra comes from. Well, I'll talk about that tomorrow. But anyway, there are a lot of different sutras that

[50:48]

Whenever I run into great teachers in China, like hermits, I interviewed a lot of hermits and a lot of masters. Very few of them have more than one book. That is, they use sutras as a gateway. That's a text that opens something up. And I was telling a Somebody recently that in spiritual practice, you have to choose a door and walk through that door. There are lots of doors. Like in China, for example, there are three principal doors. There's Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. And they're all aimed at some sort of harmony. Social harmony in the case of the Confucians. Physical harmony in the case of the Taoists. psychic mental harmony in the case of the Buddhists.

[51:51]

Once you get to a door, it's all the same. But inside, it's all different. And the doors are all different. And so the sutras are like that. And when you meet these people who spend years studying one text, they can talk about anything. But the reason they're able to is because they use that text as their door to break through the something. But the language is all spiritual, so it is all based on a certain amount of renunciation and wisdom. I guess you can't get away from that. I guess my question comes from my background where this emphasis on Buddhism really, in order to be free, yourself from like egoic type of service. Wisdom is what you will be as a bodhisattva bringing to the world to be something.

[53:01]

That's true. Yeah, that's Buddhism. Sounds like it to me. Yes? Yeah, because when you chant it, it protects you. Or it protects your thoughts? Well, I guess there's not supposed to be any thoughts. It's protecting you. Protecting you from thoughts. Which, of course, is tantamount to knowledge. The recognition that something exists. Yeah, so it's like... A mantra is sort of like... It's sort of like... Well, this mantra is like... That's the Paramita's womb. It's like a magic lamp. Magic lamps are always shaped like a womb, right? And you rub the womb. You rub the magic lamp. Say the magic words. And the genie comes out.

[54:02]

In the case of this, you say the magic words and you go into the magic lamp. That's how it protects you. Giving you that You're protected from any extraneous stuff because you're chanting the mantra. And that's what mentors do. Daniel, did you have a question? It's like, not everybody can teach the chapter in God or in any town, wherever. Somebody, in the higher, can teach. And I remember once he said to me, a Dalai Lama, and said that compassion, compassion is born. It is born from God.

[55:06]

So what really could be from the soft activation of God, Yeah, it's sort of like the chicken and the egg with compassion and wisdom. You wouldn't have any wisdom if you weren't compassionate, if you didn't have a sense of compassion opening yourself up somehow. So it's the two legs we walk on in our practice. Yes? Yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Well, it's telling us to chant the mantra. The mantra? The mantra. Well, they're not saying you can't chant the whole thing. It's just the power part is the mantra.

[56:08]

That's the thought protector. The sutra... Again, the sutra is, in a sense, a philosophical argument. Very succinct, but very clearly directed at the Abhidharma of the Sarvastavadans and contrasted with the Dharma, the Prajna, the Prataparamita view of the Mahayana. Yes? Yes. No. Well, what they'll do, yeah. Well, what you do in the Chinese temple traditionally is you read the sutra, you chant the sutra, and then you chant the mantra, and then you chant the mantra, and then you chant the mantra. So you do the mantra three times at the end, but you do the lead up to it as well, the sutra itself. And they all use Shenzong's translation of it in China.

[57:13]

Yes? Yeah, most mantras were designed. They're like pills. They have certain effects. I'm not a teacher of that sort. I'm not a physician. So I don't know what the different mantras can really do. That's what people say they are, and I firmly believe it. They have powers. I remember when I was in 1989, I first met all these hermits in the mountains in China, and I decided I wasn't going to write a book or anything. I was just amazed. I went to China to find hermits because I translated the poetry of Cold Mountain, and I wondered if people like that really existed. And so I found all these hermits, and then I realized, I've got to write about this. I thought it would be a great encouragement to Westerners to know people are practicing in China like this.

[58:16]

And so I had met this one, I'd walked for four hours and met this one Buddhist nun in the mountains. And I went back to see her. And she says, well, now that I know you've come back, I know you've come for the Dharma. And so we had some really great, I had some really good interviews with her. And then My last day there, in the morning, she came over to where I was sharing a room with another Chinese fellow who'd come up to study with her, because many people go up the mountains to study with hermits. And she got it, asked the guy to come to my bed, and then she got into my bed, and we all got under covers, and she said, I want to teach you a mantra so if you're ever close to death, you can chant this mantra and you'll be reborn in a good state. Maybe California. And then after she taught us this mantra, she said, but maybe you're sick and you're thinking you're dying and if you chant this mantra, you'll die.

[59:29]

So this is the antidote. And so she taught me another mantra that was the antidote, in case it turns out I wasn't going to die. And I remember me and the young kid, we walked down the mountain, took about three hours to get down the mountain, and we chanted the whole way. And we went from dying, not dying, dying, not dying, because to get the words down, I've forgotten them now, but I have them on tape. If anybody's interested. So mantras have power, right? And they're presented as power. This woman, incidentally, she was 85 or 88 when she taught me that. She was one of the most famous Buddhist teachers in China. She had founded four Buddhist colleges and then went off to be a hermit. Usually you do the hermit thing earlier in life. Usually, I told people, it's this spiritual program for a PhD.

[60:33]

And once you get your PhD, you come down the mountain. Very few hermits stay more than five years in the mountains. But every once in a while, there's some people who spend... I met this one hermit who had spent 50 years in a cave. And he kept asking me, who is this Chairman Mao you keep talking about? He had never heard of Chairman Mao. Because... He had gone up there because he had a dream that the mountain needed protecting, and he went up there to protect it, and everybody brought him whatever he needed. So, why don't I get off on that? Anyway, yes? Well, yeah, permits are... It's a tradition in Asia and other cultures too. I know China really well. And so the thing about the hermit tradition in China is it's existed for, in records, we have records going back 4,000 years where we have stories about hermits.

[61:42]

And it's always been a respected part of society. Whereas our hermits are outside of society, the Asian hermit tends to be one of the most important parts of society. And so these people are going to the mountains for a period of time so they can help others. And so when you do, and most hermits, well, most people who go into the mountains probably don't last one winter. You get a lot of people dropping out in that first winter. I often will say that to, I'll be up in the mountains. I'll say, I saw some new huts up the trail. Yeah, but they're not going to last the first winter because, you know, the old timers usually have a sense of whether these people really can do it. Because a lot of people are great at meditation, but if they try to live alone in the mountains, they die. You know, either of illness or starving to death or whatever. So the hermit tradition exists as this experience that you need to have if you... It's not so much you want to be a teacher, it's just that if you... I can't think of a spiritual teacher in China who was not a hermit.

[62:49]

It's like... But you don't necessarily go into the mountains with that idea to be a teacher. You just want the experience of that, of that knowledge. But it's really hard to find a teacher who is not, because otherwise you're just teaching what your teacher taught you, or out of a book. But when you've experienced that period of solitude, people know what you're saying is your own voice. They can tell the difference. And so it's a respected tradition in China, and I expect... I'm sure in Korea and Japan it is too, but I just don't have any experience there. And even today, because all these hermits in China are living illegally on government land. And I was telling some people this morning at breakfast that the last time I saw this really famous woman teacher, this nun who's been a hermit for 35 years, last time I saw her alive, there were six Communist Party officials in her hut. They had heard about her, wanted to know what they could do to help. And she's living there illegally.

[63:49]

So all these hermits are living on government land. Government is not about to touch them because they're important people. Even though they're... In the ancient times, the emperor would often go into the mountains to seek these people out and ask them to come down the mountain to become a minister. So now these hermits are just spiritual people. They're not interested in social welfare. What they do is teach spiritually. But most hermits... 80% of the hermits who stay beyond winter come down the mountain after three to five years. Some people maybe stay up to 10 years, and you'll get a few percent that'll just stay there forever. But when they do, as soon as you're staying any period of time, then people start to come up to see you. Word spreads. Like the woman who I said was visited by the six Communist Party officials when she eventually died. She had a young disciple then, but she was only 19 years old when I met her. She had come up the mountain as a college student and told her friends to go down without her.

[64:52]

She was staying with this master. And she has been there for 35 years, and now she's the most famous teacher in the mountains. People come up from all over to study with her, to be with her. Anyway, it's a living tradition in China, and it's a very ancient one, and it's part of society. I think it's time to chant the... The after lecture. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[65:42]

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