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. I thought it'd be sort of fun to talk about the Heart Sutra because this particular translation is intimately linked with Tassajara. In fact, it was caused by Tassajara. A friend of mine, a neighbor, lives in Port Townsend, was instrumental in buying this property. He was the first president of the San Francisco Zen Center. And he was also later a director here. Silas Hoadley is his name. In fact, Niels Holm and Silas Hoadley were the first two directors of Tassajara. And Silas left the Zen Center organization, went to live on the Navajo reservation for 16 years, And then came up to Port Townsend, I don't know, I guess around 91 or so.

[01:04]

And he organized our retreats. And so I've been living there since 93, and we've become good friends. And so he's been leading. We have these two retreats where we use a barn that was specially built by a circus act called the Karamazov Brothers. So they built this big barn where you could do high wire and stuff. So Silas would organize our retreats. We'd have a December one and a June or July one. And he knew all the stuff, you know, because he knew the rituals and we didn't. And so we were very indebted to him. And one year he asked me if I would do a new translation of the Heart Sutra that we could use. He wanted, you know, to do something different. So... So I naturally agreed. I said, I should have it ready for you in a couple weeks. And it took about eight months for me to translate the Heart Sutra because I had no idea what was in it.

[02:08]

I had no idea it was such an amazing work of art. I thought it was just a simple little summary of some Buddhist stuff. But it's actually very cunningly conceived. And it introduces just about everything you need to know about Buddhism, in a sense. There's just so much here. And so later somebody asked me to give a talk on the Heart Sutra, I made up this card. I made it up about seven or eight years ago. And I've used it just so I can break up the different lines for people and also... In small, what do you call it, non-bold type, I've put a running commentary. If some of you have studied maybe Latin and read Caesar's Gallic Wars, you can read a text in Latin or Greek, and then you have the interlinear translation, as it's called.

[03:09]

And so this is sort of an interlinear translation of the Heart Sutra to give you some comments. That'll be basically the comments I'm going to make today. So basically you have everything. You can leave now. It's a nice day, though. So anyway, I'm very honored to be able to represent Silas's good karma and bring this back to Tassahara. Again, I had no idea what was in the Heart Sutra. I had no idea what I was going to discover there. And there's so much about... Every time I read a book about Buddhism, I find out either I've been doing it wrong... Or at least I could do it better. And so with the Heart Sutra I found out a lot of that. So I had no idea what people were doing, for example, in ancient India. A lot of this has to do with the beginnings of Buddhism and where the Mahayana believes Buddhism went wrong. And that's what the Heart Sutra is.

[04:11]

It's a critique of a certain way of looking at Buddhism. In India, they have a karmic advantage we don't have. In ancient India, there are very few materialists. We have to approach Buddhism with our materialist background and we have to go through all of these stages of trying to accept the fact that we have a mind. It takes a long time before we get there. because we keep thinking we live in a world where the things that are real are this table, and that table, chair, and this body and stuff. In ancient India, though, it was taken for granted by most people that that was not the case, that the preeminent reality had to do with mind somehow. And, of course, there were different ways of addressing that. In the Buddhist time, the way that had been used by other sects before him,

[05:12]

was summarized by the concept Nama Rupa. Nama Rupa. Inside, outside. We all think that whatever's going on, there's got to be an outside and there's got to be an inside. There's definitely an inside. And probably an outside. And so that Nama Rupa became the concept that all the different sects use, the Jains, the Hindus, everybody at that time. So what the Buddha did is he refined that concept and he added another Jain concept called the word skanda. I told Silas when I was trying to translate, I told Silas, I said, if I ever figure out what the word skanda means, I will understand the Heart Sutra. And it's true. When I finally figured out what the word skanda was about, it all fell into place. And the word skanda is always translated by Buddhist translators as aggregates, pile of stuff.

[06:16]

Well, the word never had that meaning. The original word meant a tree trunk. And then it was used for a pillar. And it was also used for a tree seen at a distance. And the Jains picked it up and they used it exclusively to mean the person. Skanda is the person. But the Buddha took the word skanda and this Nama Rupa idea, combined them, and came up with the five skandhas, where we have an outside form and we have an inside, you know, sensation, perception, memory, consciousness. We have four skandhas on the inside and one skanda on the outside. So he sort of refined this. And the reason he wanted to obviously use the word skanda is because we think we are a person on the outside. And that's our form skanda. But we also are a person in terms of our sensation, our perception, our memory, and our consciousness.

[07:19]

These are sort of like overlays in a biology textbook that encompass the entire organism that you're analyzing, but to show you different layers of it. And so for the Buddha, he liked that. And it satisfied a certain need he had, and that was to show people that there is no self. And so this was simply a convenient way for him to say, go look in the skandhas, you know, because for him the problem with suffering came down to desire, which was all about the self, meeting something, wanting something to establish its identity. And so he would tell his disciples to find the self and go meditate on the skandhas. And they would do that and they would come back and say, I couldn't find any self in the skandhas. And they think, well, there you go. Okay, my work is done here. And that worked with a certain class of people.

[08:22]

That is, people who think most of their own personal reality is inside. Because with the skandhas, you have one external skanda, one external person, the form, and then four inside. And when we say form, the word rupa has never meant material. It does not mean the material world. It just means something outside is what rupa means. So the Skandas worked with that category of people. There were other people, though, who were more materialistic in their background. And so he came up with a different set called the Ayatanas. Instead of looking at reality, our own personal reality as five skandhas, he came up with the twelve ayatanas. We have six sense organs, as the mind is treated as a sense organ, powers of sensation, he called them. The nose, the smell, the vision, and so forth.

[09:27]

And then the mind. And they have the objects or realms in which they function. Um, so his sense, uh, the senses are, the sense of smell and hearing and all that stuff. And so he would tell people to go meditate on the 12 Ayatanas. Um, and Ayatana is an old, the Indian word that meant the most sacred place in your house. Uh, in ancient India, they would keep the fire in a certain, usually the Southwest corner of their house. That was the Ayatana. So the, when you're looking for the self, you're looking for that sacred fire within you. Um, wherever it is. Is it in my nose? Is it in my sense of smell? Is it in my sense of thought? And so he would tell these materialist-minded people to go look for the self. And they would come back and say, couldn't find it. But he'd have other people, because again, Buddhism is all about the audience. It's not about theories and stuff. So he had other people who were sort of a little bit of both worlds. So he came up with the concept of the 18 Datus.

[10:29]

18 realms. So you have the six sense powers of sensation, the six realms of sensation, and then when they come together you have six kinds of consciousness that arise from that. And so those he called this 18 Datus. And so he would tell people to meditate on that and they'd say he couldn't find it. And so he had done his job by at least presenting them with an analysis of who they thought they were and then showing them that wherever you look in what you think you are, you find no self. But these were approaches that all were based on, say, as I said, like a biology overlay book, on a spatial sense of oneself. So he came up also with a, from his own personal experience, came up with the chain of dependent origination. From ignorance, you have memory, memory, consciousness, you have to curve backwards from old age and death you have birth and from birth you have existence and so forth.

[11:34]

So you could take any moment of your existence of what you perceive as your existence and analyze it temporally as this thought represents which of these chains because our thoughts are also constantly involved in this constant chain of rebirth until each chain Each thought dies and is reborn. And so he presented that scheme for people looking for the self in one of these links on the chain of causation for people who are more temporally attached to their sense of reality of time, of being real through time. Again, there was a scheme that worked quite a bit in it. When it finally came to give his first instruction, he made a simple version of the chain of causation, and he called it the Four Noble Truths. Instead of old age and death, you have suffering.

[12:40]

Suffering arises from thirst or desire. And so there's a causation of suffering. And then, of course, he added to that a path. There's a way of ceasing from suffering and so forth. And then the Eightfold Noble Path. So all these categories appear in the Heart Sutra, one after another. And the only sect in ancient India that used all of these sects in this order was a sect called the Servastavadans. And they arose about 200 years after the Buddha's nirvana. And their idea was this. Well, the Buddha, yeah, he said to meditate on the skandhas. Yeah, he said to meditate on the links of the chain of dependent origination and the ayatanas and the dhatus and all this stuff. And we proved, yes, we were satisfied that there is no self. But he never said that the skandhas don't exist by themselves. That the skandhas aren't real or the ayatanas aren't real.

[13:44]

He never said that. It's true. He never addresses that issue. And so the sect of the Sarvastavada, Sarvastavada means those who believe everything is real, said, well, then all these things that he's been teaching us to meditate on are themselves real. And they came up with, they started using the word Dharma to apply to this. Dharma's. So we think this is a real thing, this book. But Dharma's had to do with our... you might say, a higher level of reality, where we identify reality at a higher level, a metaphysical level, you could say. And they came up with a scheme that later became known as Abhidharma. Abhidharma means dharmology. And just like we think that we live in a material world, and we have convinced ourselves that the material world is made up of a little bit over 100 elements.

[14:45]

These are 100 elements, and that comprises what's really real. Well, the Abhidharma school, the Sarvastavadins, did the same thing with the mind. They made the mind into a matrix. In fact, we get the word matrix, in Greek it's matrika. We get the word matrix from the Sarvastavadins. They came up with this scheme, a periodic table, not of the elements, but a periodic table of the mind. which included the Skandas, the Ayatanas, the Datus, the Four Noble Truths, all that, including nirvana, space, they added space. I think they had 75 elements of the mind. These are the things that are really real. And the Mahayana, the origin of the Mahayana is a critique against this. The Zavastava says, if we can just know If we can just, just like a scientist says, well, if we can just know these elements on the periodic scale or table, if we can just know these 75 dharmas that comprise the reality of the mind, then we will know how to gain enlightenment.

[15:59]

And so to them the most important word was jidana, knowledge. They were after knowledge and the attainment of knowledge of the mind. And so Mahayana arose as a critique of the Savastavada and Abhidharma and they took the word a word that actually already existed but they contrasted it with jnana and they added the word pra in front of it. So you get prajna. Pra means before and jna is the root of knowledge. So prajna in contrast to jnana means before wisdom instead of knowledge. We often translate it as wisdom, but actually if you really look at the word and think about it, prajna means before you know. So when we say wisdom, we mean before you know. And so this is the root of Mahayana, the Mahayana revolution is trying to get back to meditating on your, as they later said, your original face, who you were before you were born.

[17:12]

before you know. Once you know, there's a you and a no, and an object of knowledge. You get involved in the old dialectic again. And that was the problem that these early Mahayana people saw in this Abhidharma matrix. So they started talking about prajna, but they realized that the word prajna as wisdom had already been used, just to mean really smart, really intelligent wisdom. They wanted to distinguish their special brand of wisdom, of pre-knowledge, and so they added the word paramita, prajna paramita, or transcendent, really great prajna, really great wisdom. And so that's what this Heart Sutra is about, about introducing this special kind of wisdom, which is your mind before you know. And this is, of course, what we still do today on a meditation cushion, is try to put ourselves in that space before we know.

[18:18]

And so the Heart Sutra introduces this dialogue, not a dialogue, but this talk between Avalokiteshvara and Sharipudra. And there's a reason why these two people are in this sutra, Shariputra was the founder, as looked on in later centuries, as the founder of Abhidharma. The most famous early texts of Abhidharma call him the founder. And there's a reason he was the founder. It's because the seventh year, according to Pali texts, early Pali texts, the seventh year of the Buddhist ministry, he spent the entire summer monsoon on the top of Mount Sumeru. He disappeared. and went to the top of Mount Sumeru and taught his mother the Abhidharma. And every day he came down and taught Shariputra, his wisest of disciples, a summary of what he had taught his mother.

[19:22]

And then, at the end of that monsoon, he never spoke about the Abhidharma again. There is no sutra where the Buddha speaks about the Abhidharma. But according to these early Pali records, he told his mother all about the Abhidharma. And then he gave Shariputra a summary. And so Shariputra becomes the man who is the founder of the Abhidharma. And so if you were going to criticize Shariputra, you would want his mom to do it. Because his mother was the one who heard the entire Abhidharma in its real meaning. And so she appears here as Avlokiteshvara. She's sort of the incarnation, the representative. of the Buddha's mom is Avalokittasvara. And Avalokittasvara, the meaning itself is based upon criticizing Shariputra. Ishvara just means a master of, somebody who's a master of something, is a something-something Ishvara.

[20:27]

Avalokittasvara means to look down from on high. And if you're sitting up at the top of Mount Sumeru, which is the Buddhist mom's position, you're looking down from on high and looking down at the world of desire. Sort of like, who was it? I think it was Heraclitus who said if he had a place to stand and a long enough lever, he could move the earth. And so Avalokiteshvara has a place to stand and has a long enough lever and looks down upon... In fact, the sutra begins the noble Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva while practicing the deep practice of Prajnaparamita, this pre-mind wisdom, looked upon the five skandhas. And the verb in Sanskrit for looked upon is avalokayati. That is, Avalokiteshvara does what she is named to do. She looks down from on high at this world of desire. As it's from my perspective, from the perspective of pre-knowledge,

[21:28]

I'm looking upon your skandhas, these dharmas that you're talking about, and you think that make up you, and I see that they're empty of self-existence, from this point of view. And self-existence was the key word for the Sarvastavada and Abhidharma. These dharmas don't have a self, but they have self-existence. They exist by themselves. And so Avogadishwara sees that they're empty of self-existence, and then says, So here, Shariputra, and the word hear is this big shout. It's hard to translate in English, but in Sanskrit it's iha. It's a shout. It's like the slap in the face by the Dharma master, or maybe a poke in the ribs or something, or have a cup of tea. Here, Shariputra, from this point of view, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is not separate from form, form is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, this has often impressed people as a bit confusing, and it's not at all.

[22:35]

It's simply a Venn diagram. That's why I want to use one of these things. When you have this statement, form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Let's say this is A and this is B. Maybe I should have said One is emptiness, one is form. But anyway, when you say form is emptiness, emptiness is form, all you're saying are these two sects intersect in a logical world. And you have to remember that this sutra is a critique of these logicians of the Sarvastavadis. So the sutra is addressed to them in their own language. So form is emptiness, emptiness is form, means what you think is yourself in terms of an external world, the Skanda form, is emptiness. And emptiness... is form, it says these two sects overlap. But that's for a logician. They say, well, but form has a lot of other relationships other than emptiness.

[23:36]

And emptiness has a lot of, potentially, has a lot of relationships other than with form. So if you just say form is emptiness, emptiness is form, leave it at that, you haven't really convinced anybody. But so when you say form is not separate from emptiness, emptiness is not separate from form, then you're saying this, A and B are identical. And that's why this is the second statement. And again, the Chinese and thus the Japanese vary a little bit here because the Japanese will only have two of these lines, this one and this one. But the Sanskrit adds another one here. Because you could say, in logic, you could say, yeah, okay, A and B are identical. But you can have different kinds of A. And different kinds of B. A prime. B prime. So the Sanskrit adds a third one. Whatever is form is emptiness. Whatever is emptiness is form.

[24:37]

And thus pulls the rug out from any logical attempt to defeat this argument. And so that's why this little litany of form is emptiness, emptiness is form, is really pretty simple. If you realize it's just a statement of what we call set theory, where if you have two sets and they intersect, a statement about them depends upon how far you carry that statement. And here, Avalokiteshwar has carried it to its extreme, that what you think of as the external world is emptiness. And... is one with emptiness. You can't get away from emptiness. Wherever you look outside, you're looking at emptiness. Let me just pause with the word emptiness, too, because the word emptiness has caused people a lot of grief, and it did in ancient India, and it did in China, too, when the word sunyata was talked about,

[25:43]

There are long discourses in Sanskrit about the meaning of shunyata. Because it's often misunderstood. People think emptiness means nothingness. It means void. And, of course, it means the exact opposite. But you have to use a word. Shunyata seemed like the right word in Sanskrit. In Chinese, the Chinese love the word kung. for using the same thing. And in English we generally use the word emptiness to mean the same thing. And the word emptiness is shorthand for empty of one thing, empty of self-existence. So emptiness is not about empty of water or empty of the sky or empty of clouds or anything. It's about empty of anything that might separate it from anything else. There's no self-existence. So emptiness is like let's say just for example that in a very small universe that we had a net and we cast that net and lo and behold all the interstices of the net came down over our bodies and tables and chairs and like that and this is the so-called world of real objects we think of, we live in in terms of the material world well emptiness is simply taking that net and pulling it away that's the meaning of emptiness so we're still here, table's still here

[27:06]

It's all empty. That is, it's empty of one thing, empty of self-existence. The table's not empty, but it is in terms of, if you want to say the table has self-existence, it exists by itself. It doesn't. It exists because there's a floor, and so forth and so on. Everything is dependent on something else. So nothing exists by itself. Nothing has self-existence. And the skandas don't have any self-existence. They all depend on one another. And therefore, they are empty of self-existence, and that's what we mean when we say the word emptiness. It doesn't mean nothing. It means the exact opposite of nothing. In short, it means everything. It means everything all at once without a heavy emphasis on the thingness. It's an attempt to get rid of the divisions. It's no more divisions. Because what self-existence does, when you establish the existence of anything, you have denied the rest of the universe.

[28:08]

In order to establish that thing, you had to draw a line around it, and thus the rest of the universe is not invited to the party. And so emptiness is a removal. It invites everybody to the party. There's no more lines. Real lines. Naturally, we live in a material world, and Buddhism has never come up and never attempted to make an ontological statement. It's not interested in the world. as we might perceive it as material. Buddhism is interested in suffering, and the suffering takes place in the mind. And so that's why Avalokiteshvara begins by introducing this concept of prajnaparamita, which is based upon the essence of prajnaparamita, is the understanding that nothing is... If you're... There is no knowledge. If you're in the state of no knowledge, of pre-knowledge, then there can't be any things. There can't be any... anything that exists by itself. And therefore, the essential quality of prajna is emptiness.

[29:12]

But again, not nothingness. And so that's why Avalokiteshwaras is everything that is thus defined by emptiness and not by some spatial dimension or a moral dimension or a temporal dimension. And that's how I've divided this Heart Sutra into four parts. And so that's the first part. Just introducing prajna And then applying Prajna, Paramita, to all of these Abhidharma, the essential Abhidharma qualities that you think are real. And then the second part is just going through the Abhidharma qualities elements in this matrix one by one. Whether the Skandhas or the Ayatanas or the Datus, you know, that's why you get the no-nos. It says... in Sanskrit, or in English, it says, therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form. In. Sanskrit uses a case called the locative. In. In emptiness. In this realm we're now talking about, in the world of prajna, pre-knowledge, you can't talk about the nose as being real.

[30:21]

We're not denying the existence, in a sense, of the nose, only that the nose is not in itself, doesn't exist by itself. It's attached to my face, presumably. So anyway, and that's why the second part is just going through these categories one by one. And again, in the same order that the Sarvastavadans used them in their sutras, or in their shastras, rather, again, for these different audiences. The Buddha used them all for different audiences, so that the Sarvastavadans kept that same order, and Avakadishvara denies their reality. that none of these things that you think exist by themselves don't exist by themselves. They don't exist in emptiness, in pre-knowledge. Only once you know them. Once you know them, then of course they're real because you've established their reality, but it's a dualistic reality based on something that itself is unreal. That's part two.

[31:22]

So what does the Heart Sutra do then? It says, well, if none of these dharmas are real, what are we going to do? And so the Heart Sutra... introduces an alternative to enlightenment through the acquisition of knowledge. Instead of the attainment of knowledge, it advises us to take refuge in this state of pre-knowledge, to take refuge in Prajnaparamita. And as you look at this Heart Sutra, you keep seeing this locative, this in, in Prajnaparamita. The Diamond Sutra says Prajnaparamita is the mother of all Buddhas. What the Heart Sutra does, it tries to manifest the mother. That's why Avila Kiddushvara is here acting as the mother. The incarnation, you might say, of Prajnaparamita. Prajnaparamita is one of the oldest goddesses used in Mahayana Buddhism to represent this sort of mind that gives rise to liberation.

[32:29]

to enlightenment. This mind, before it knows, that's the mind that can result in enlightenment. And so, bodhisattvas take refuge in the goddess, in Prajnaparamita. And the whole Heart Sutra is about being reborn as a Buddha. So you take refuge in this womb, in Prajnaparamita, that has no walls. It has na'avarana. Avarana means a wall that you... sometimes it's translated obstruction or hindrance but the root meaning of avarana is a wall it's an odd kind of womb it's a womb without walls again because it's emptiness if it had walls it wouldn't be empty and so prajnaparamita you take refuge in prajnaparamita and live without walls of the mind that's without fears and so forth this is what buddhas have done ever since time memorial and And how do you do that? Well, part four introduces how do you get inside the womb of Prajnaparamita?

[33:32]

And the answer is not with anything intellectual. It doesn't replace one conceptual scheme with another. It introduces a mantra. When the Heart Sutra, or we could say a Dharani, the Sutra itself uses the word mantra. when the sutra was first translated into Chinese, the first translation called it the Prajnaparamita Dharani. And when Kumrajiva translated it, he called it the Maha Prajnaparamita, Mahavidya Dharani. Mahavidya is the name of all the ancient goddesses in India were called Mahavidya. Another name for them, Mahavidya, the great magician. Vidya has two meanings. It means magic, where it means esoteric knowledge, knowledge that nobody else knows, is Mahavidya. Therefore, this mantra is like that. It comes from a realm that is not subject to knowledge.

[34:37]

And this is sort of the technique offered by this particular sutra. Well, if you're not going to use conceptual knowledge, how about this? How about just chanting a mantra? this particular mantra that in its meaning means, again, according to the Sanskrit grammar, it means, it's gate, gate, paragate, you know that? Well, because it's not gata, it's gate, so according to Sanskrit grammar, it has to be the masculine locative. Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond. Again, the mantra is getting you into the womb. which is beyond, which is emptiness, which is before there's any knowledge. And chanting this mantra creates this sound wound, you might say, like a shell. The mantra means protector. It protects the mind.

[35:40]

That's what the original meaning of mantra means. And so that's what this mantra is doing at the end. It's a substitute that replaces an attempt to get to this state through knowledge. But to try to do so before your mind knows, just by chanting the mantra. So that's what the Heart Sutra does. And that's why I've made up this little thing, these little comments in between the lines for you to take away. Do you have any questions? Yes. What does the word thought protector mean? How can I explain that? Well, because, again, a mantra is an attempt to get away from thoughts. It's to make you stop using thoughts to get somewhere.

[36:41]

And in a sense, it protects you from your own thoughts. Yes. I don't know what the word dharani means, though, because dharani and mantra are used interchangeably. I forgot what the word dharani means. But anyway, the sutra is often referred to as the Heart Sutra, dharani, and the mantra is sort of the key, the thought protector. Yes? I've heard dharani translated as spell. Would that possibly be accurate? Oh, I suppose. Yeah, I'm a translator. And so, yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, the problem with words is attachment to words. And sure, people have criticized me for using the word magic, the mantra of great magic, because they're really bothered by the concept of magic, because they think now that we're Buddhists, now that I'm a Buddhist, I'm beyond that magic stuff.

[37:43]

But in fact, this is the most magical thing in the universe is the birth of a Buddha, enlightenment. I think spell works. I'm not sure I'd use it. You have to think about these things as a translator. But it all depends on the audience and what they're going to do when they hear that word or read that word. But the thing about a Durrani and a mantra is, sometimes they are a spell in terms of them not having any meaning. And sometimes they do have meaning. And so I probably, I don't know, I think I would use a spell for one that didn't have any meaning. That just was effective for the sound. Whereas the mantra, this particular mantra has both meaning and is powerful with its sound. Yes? I'm putting a little paradoxical here. You know, you translate them, you say this is how you're a translator.

[38:48]

You started translating Chinese poetries, and you translated the Buddha's Sutras, and you translated Taoist documents, and you're talking about, there is a pond that you want to do his stories and his histories. And so, and I'm very, very, like I said, we talked before, I'm very impressed with your writing and the volume of what you've done and how detail, you go into the source material, which version, which side do they figure out the sutra from, and compare text. And all of that is really embedded in language. How you understand language, how you translate a word, how the language works. But here, this particular subject is knowledge before knowledge before language almost. Language, if you think about the postmodern concept, is all about signifiers, signifying, and a language that becomes your own reality.

[39:51]

But your strength is language. You're using language to analyze a pre-language concept. And you're talking about it very assuredly about what you're saying. But I'm having a little disconnect there. How does a linguist become such an authority? I'm not challenging you, but I'm just having a disconnect on this pre-knowledge business. Well, I think I can't speak to that. All I can say is speak to me as a translator. I think as a translator, I've done my job if you don't notice the words. You know, if you read what I've translated and you don't notice the words. I think then I've done my job. Because I don't translate just anything. I translate texts and poetry that has a, I don't know, I just have a, I feel there's a great depth to. And I'd say most translators translate on a very superficial level.

[40:54]

They translate the words. But for me, my interest in the words is because they come from a very deep place. And I'm more interested in where that place is. I've told people that when I translate, for example, poetry, the metaphor that I keep using is that I see this beautiful woman dancing on the dance floor and I want to dance with her, but I'm deaf. And I don't hear the music she's dancing to, but I want to dance with her. And so I have to get really close. But I can't put my feet on top of her feet. and I can't dance across the room. Most people think it's your feet on top of somebody else's feet, and then that translation is accurate. It's literal. But it's killed any spiritual or any poetic literature that you're trying to translate. And so for me, a translator has got to get underneath the surface of the words. It's got to find out where the words are coming from.

[41:57]

I've come to the conclusion that when I translate a text, the text I'm translating is not the original text. The text I'm translating is the author's failed ability to communicate and has no choice but to stick it on a page with some language stuff. But I feel something in that language stuff that takes me to a place that is profound. And I want to translate from there. And so I think I've done a good job if you don't notice my words. And do you feel something of what I felt when I, say, read a sutra or a poem? But of course, attachment, as I say, with the word spell, you never know what people are going to trip on in terms of the words. I mean, I grew up reading Chinese poetry, so when I read your translation in English, I was very moved by those.

[43:02]

It was very difficult. the finest translation that actually recaptured the sensation you gave when you read the language. I'm sure everybody who had multiple languages have that kind of experience. And that's why I said, I love your stuff, I'd like to read them, because that can compare the Chinese to the English. I don't read Sanskrit, I don't have the background Buddhism, and so I don't have a first-hand reaction to how you're trying to reverse what my perception of the text was. But, you know, The whole thing, but when you try to get to the deep feeling and the intent of the author behind the written word, there's a whole school of literary criticism that... challenges that? How did one read into it? Who's the reader? Who's the writer? There's a whole bunch of stuff going to albums there. Sure, but I don't care. I don't have a job. I've never had a job. I've never taught. I don't care what people say.

[44:02]

Of course, that's what they do. I know they do that. I have a question about text. So if someone were an Abdi Dharma supporter or an Abdi Dharma sect, you know, it says, whatever is formed is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is formed. Yes. And then it goes on to kind of say, emptiness precedes formed. Emptiness kind of encompasses everything. Well, it doesn't precede anything, but it defines everything. It's the ultimate definer. Yeah, and so, I mean, but with this line, whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form, you could kind of reverse it all. And say emptiness is form? Form is emptiness? Well, you could say that seeing everything is formed in self-existence, and, you know, you could kind of reverse...

[45:10]

everything and say everything is defined by form? Well, I don't know. If they're the same. Well, but then form, then there'll be emptiness, though, still. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, it's true. And we could say, because from our point of view, there's always form. Because there's always something outside us. We always think that there's something outside us, and that's form. So, yes, you could say everything has form. But only from our point of view. You couldn't say it ontologically. In terms of an ontological argument, but only in terms of our psychological argument. What do I feel? Everything is verified and made real by me knowing it or feeling it or something. And so, yeah, everything has form, but form is emptiness, and so everything is emptiness.

[46:14]

Yes? Can you define mental formations, define that phrase, or formations as it relates to... Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I translate it memory. Memory. As memory. And I remember I was reading your... parts of your translation and you've listed or enumerated how other people have defined mental formations and what were some of those like? Mentation? Mental conformations. And I don't know why people have gone to such great lengths. If you open any Sanskrit dictionary the first word that comes out is memory. Mental formations are simply memory. Faculty of memory? Yeah, yeah. I think what they're trying to do with that is because they're... Well, the thing about it is the mental confirmations, it's just all the things that have made it likely for you to think in a certain way right now.

[47:28]

Dispositions? Yeah, dispositions is another one. But disposition... I didn't like any of these words much. And again, the first word, just like I translate the words skanda as a body or it's a tree trunk or a pillar. The first word in the dictionary is memory and it works for me that I have all these memories. That's why I think in a certain way right now or at least I have access to them. It limits my possibilities certainly because I have certain mental confirmations. I do a lot of poetry and I just couldn't do mental confirmations. I like the word memory. It's a nice word. Just a quick follow-up. Imagination or creative extrapolation, is that also a mental formation?

[48:28]

No, because what they're talking about with this word is is what is underneath the mental extrapolation? What got you to begin that mental extrapolation? Because in this extrapolation, there are going to be certain feelings or certain, what shall I say, logic. It's a universe with certain things going on in it. And it just depends upon how that universe got created by memory. There's a memory, just like metal can have a memory. And... plants have a memory, you know, all kinds of reasons why a certain thing happens today is because what happened yesterday. And of course, what's the another reason why I think memory works better when you get into the Yogacara and establishing a link with the Yogacara and the storehouse consciousness concept that all of our thoughts today are sprouts from the seeds that we've sowed in our

[49:35]

in our storehouse or repository consciousness. So again, it's a choice a translator makes. And technically, I don't think one's better than the other. But again, I'm always looking for something, a word so you won't notice my words. Yes? I remember Alan Watts, when you were talking about emptiness, he said that If you can think back to a time like maybe when you were 10 or 11, and you went out with your friends, and it was a perfect day, and you found a swimming hole like this one here, and, I mean, you had the greatest time. And you walk in the door of your house, and your mom says, well, what were you doing? And you say, oh, nothing. Because it was everything. But how would you ever begin to explain it? Yeah. It was perfect, you know? So would you think that's right? Yeah, but I don't remember having any friends when I was 10 or 11.

[50:38]

We had a big fence around our property. But yeah, it's true. And we're often in that state where language often gets us into trouble because once we think we've said it, we've defined it, then it's real. And when we can't express it is actually what's real. yes what's the word heart heart is actually it's the translation of the Sanskrit which means the same thing as heart in English and the two are related etymologically it means the heart inside the body and also the core of something and it was probably used as a title for the Sanskrit the Heart Sutra because this is a critique of the Sarvastavadin Abhidharma and the three most important texts used by the early Sarvastavadins around the time of Christ and just after that were called the Heart Shastras.

[51:48]

So the Heart Sutra is a critique of the Heart Shastras, the Viridaya Shastra. There's a series of three of them and so I think that's why Xuanzang translated it. Yes, good question. Two. One, I was wondering how, or what you meant by the word magic earlier, and then you mentioned that often when you read some new book on Buddhism, you find out you were doing it all wrong, or it changes your practice. I wonder how your practice changed after this exercise. Okay, well... The magic. Well, I mean, there's often things that we do that people don't understand. Like when I was... I remember when I... My son, who's here with me today, he's 33 now, but when he was a couple years old, I could do this. And he didn't know what the hell that was happening. That was magic. That was magic. And so that's what I mean by magic.

[52:52]

It's something that is actually quite understandable. But at a certain level of awareness, it's not. And so, at a certain level of awareness, this sutra is not understandable. And certainly the mantra is not understandable. Another layer of level of awareness it is. And so, what was the second question? How did your practice change? Oh, yeah, I started chanting the mantra. Yeah, and plus it... I had dismissed this sutra and I felt embarrassed that I had, it gave me a, what shall I say, because sometimes I'll read a Buddhist text and I'll think it's so superficial. And now I don't do that anymore. I've had my hands slapped by this thing. Because this is so simple, but yet it's really so profound. And so, yeah, you had a question? Well, I don't have anything else to say.

[53:57]

Great. On the topic of that mantra, I'm really curious about this great promise of being without fear. Without hindrance, there is no fear. And I've heard other teachers lecture on the hindrances. Our time here gave a lecture on how to work with walls of karma, walls of passion, walls of knowledge. Yeah, there's four of them, the Viparyasas. Yes, yeah. And from your talk, it sounded more like the way that we live without fear is we chant this mantra. And I'm wondering, I mean, we do a whole lot more here at Tal Sahara in terms of practice besides chant that mantra. Sure. That's not a big part of our practice. And so... I'm wondering if you could speak to how the Heart Sutra, if it really is only suggesting that in terms of approaching fearlessness, maintaining fearlessness, or if it's actually suggesting that there's more practice that can be done or lived in order to be fearless.

[55:13]

Well, there's lots of things one can do to be fearless. And this is just suggesting one way. washing the dishes is a good way but I don't want to make light of that it's all about getting yourself to that pre-knowledge state and there's different ways of doing that by taking refuge in this pre-knowledge in the state where you don't recognize knowledge as knowledge you recognize knowledge as more of a problem than as a solution and in recognizing that the walls these walls fall away the walls as you said the walls of knowledge walls of passion and so forth all fall away but this sutra is just suggesting just chant the mantra but it's also doing it in a sense intellectually too by telling you this it's saying if you do this

[56:21]

then all these walls fall away. So if you take refuge in Prajnaparamita, and then it says, how do you take refuge in Prajnaparamita? It says, by chanting this mantra. I mean, there's no reason why you couldn't take refuge in Prajnaparamita some other way. But that would be a longer sutra. And it is. In fact, the Prajnaparamita literature is the... the biggest section of the, of the Buddhist, uh, Tripitaka, the, [...] the Prasthaparamita in 25,000 lines, uh, it goes on forever, but, no, it, but it, it, it just, trying, it, this is just an example of trying to, uh, let people know that, that you, you could do things to help, uh, spur that moment on, and certainly, uh, the meditation cushion is an important, a part of that practice, but, But actually, since this is a Zen center, Zen didn't amount to a hill of beans anywhere until about the year 600 or 650 when Zen became your daily life.

[57:38]

And that's when Zen became communal. There are lots of scholars who will tell you Zen didn't exist in India because there's no records of Zen in India. And when Zen comes to China, they say, well, this guy Bodhidharma brought it to China. But do we know he really existed? Because he only had a couple of disciples. And his second patriarch, his disciple, only had a couple. The third patriarch only had two disciples. So when Zen finally makes its historical appearance, it's with the fourth patriarch, who has 500 disciples. So something happened. with these two, one disciple of the third patriarch, this one guy, Dao Sin, he made Zen your daily life. He took Zen off the meditation cushion. He built the first Zen commune. And that's when Zen became the religious force, spiritual force it is today. Whereas before, Zen was simply, and the word Zen is just short for Zena.

[58:39]

And Zena is the Tang Dynasty pronunciation of Diena. Diena, You know, meditation. Diana just means meditation. Zenna just means meditation. And when meditation came to China, it was just meditation. And then with the fourth patriarch, he makes it into your daily life. And ever since then, it's been Zen. That's modern Mandarin. That's modern Mandarin. If you go to the two watersheds in Jiangxi province, if you go to the Gan River watershed in China today, everybody, I mean, not everybody, Buddhists say Zen. They don't say Chan. The local dialect, since the Tang Dynasty, they still have the pronunciation in Jiangxi province, where they still say Zen. And that is the Tang Dynasty pronunciation. Although, according to Victor Merritt at... at Pennsylvania, he says, there's a slight D sound.

[59:41]

Zen. It's like with a D. Zen. He says it was Zen in the top. Now it's Zen. And so that's when Zen became this force that we have today, when it created all these possibilities for pre-knowledge, for putting you in that mind. making Zen, not just when you're chanting a mantra, not just when you're in the meditation cushion, all those things help, but put you to work in the garden and washing the dishes and doing everything. And so, yeah, the sutra doesn't mean to make light of other possibilities. Definitely not. Yes? I'm sorry if you said this and I didn't catch it. I said it. I already said it. Well, it appeared, yeah, it's in the book.

[60:46]

It appeared, the earliest record we have of it, assuming we have that we believe the record, is around 250 A.D., somebody translated something purporting to be the Heart Sutra and called the Prajnaparamita Dharani. Because mantras and Dharanis are used interchangeably. And then about 150 years later, Kumrajiva, the great translator, translated the same text and called it the Prajnaparamita Mahavidya Dharani. And then around the year 650, Shrenzong, the monk who went to India, came back, translated it, called it the Heart Sutra, the Sinji. the Heart Sutra. And presumably he was working from a slightly different text than the earlier. There's a few lines that are different. Not much, just a few lines. So that's the historical providence. There's this woman I know in Kyoto, Jan Natie, came up with the theory that the Chinese translated or wrote the Heart Sutra and then transmitted it back to India where it was translated into Sanskrit.

[61:56]

And Jan has an interesting theory why that's true. But I told Jan that the biggest problem with that whole theory is that the Heart Sutra is a critique of the Servastavadins, the biggest sect on the Silk Road in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there weren't any Servastavadins in China. So why would you compile the text in China critiquing somebody who didn't exist? But anyway, that's what you might say the scholarly... look at the Heart Sutra. Either you believe it appeared around 250 or you believe it appeared around 650 invented by the Chinese. And the Prajnaparamita literature began around the 2nd century BC, around 200 BC. We see the Prajnaparamita in 8,000 lines and some other short texts that start talking about Prajnaparamita with this intent to tell you that this is this pre-knowledge stuff. This is a denial of knowledge.

[62:57]

Do you know if there are any records of this mantra being an established practice for some period? Yeah, yeah. In fact, it became famous by Xuanzang, the monk who went to India. When he got back, he told the emperor about it. And he told how chanting this mantra had saved him from bandits and thirst and dust storms that had this great magical effect. Maybe I shouldn't say magical. Yeah, magical. Why not? And so he's the guy who started... But he had learned it from somebody in the town of Chengdu who also taught him that mantra as having certain effects. Yes? In a deep revolution in the 20th century in science and culture was through the relativity, the idea of relativity and notion of space, time and so on.

[64:05]

So I wonder whether this idea that any concepts, any formulations can be, whether it's a way to realise the absolute through the relativity of everything. For example, there is no way to define reality in some sense. So I don't know whether we, for example, we can describe the organism as cells or as atoms or as thoughts as we experience them, but none of this probably is a reality in itself. It's just the level of Yeah. Right. That people commonly accept. Either, you know, like this table is real or like Sarastavada said, that dharmas are real, that these elements of our mind are real.

[65:07]

So people can establish a relative reality. But the approach of Prajnaparamita and also later Yogacara, was to pull the rug out from under that concept of relative reality, or at least to admit that it's relative reality and shouldn't be attached to it. And then I see also your magic, because if we cannot define and grasp any reality also, what is magic then? Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes? Say something about your experience. Chanting this mantra helps you experience this pre-knowledge? I don't know. I don't know. It's kept me off the streets. I mean, you know, I guess, you know, in a way, I'm better for it.

[66:09]

Put it that way. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of, I mean, How would you know you're enlightened? How would you know pre-knowledge if it's before knowledge? I don't know. Yes? Would you change your interpretation in the book if you were writing it today? No. No, this is a good one. I mean... I don't think I'd hardly change a word there's only like two or three words I'd change not in the sutra but in my commentary because this book was translated back into Chinese and it sold a lot of copies in China and the translator was so accurate and he asked me so many questions he found several of my mistakes and so the Chinese is actually a little bit better than the English so I would change a couple words but I'm too lazy and they weren't important words yes

[67:16]

I have a somewhat but not completely unrelated question. So if you read texts that are attributed by Bodhidharma, there's a certain feeling about them that's expressed in things. He says stuff like, he says stuff like, if you don't know the nature of your mind, even if you wear roads and shave your head, you're just a fanatic. And he kind of says stuff like that with some level of frequency. Um, and also with like Huineng, also like really early Zen, um, there's like a similar like concentration on this. Know the nature of your mind. Don't worry about the other stuff. Um, however, by the time Zen gets to, by the time Dogen studies Zen in China, um, it's a very different, you find very different things, um, regarding, um, the formalities of practice, very, very different.

[68:20]

And some, an argument about this that I hear sometimes, just like speculation, is that, well, all these guys already like have read the Buddhist canon, their storehouse consciousness is just like full of all this, all these teachings and like Bodhidharma was just like, doing his best, like the Sperly guys are just doing their best to clean up the Dharma. Um... I don't know. I... Yeah, I don't know. Do you have anything to say about that? Well, yeah, I don't know either. But... I've never read Dogen. So I can't speak about that. Um... But all these Zen texts that I've read by the early Zen teachers are pretty much the same thing. And, of course, they're all referencing the Lankavatara, which is about the teaching about nothing but mind.

[69:28]

It's all about the mind. And all these Zen teachings and Yogacara teachings are all just attempts to get back to basics, which is just... It's all about your mind, stupid. It is what Bodhidharma or the Lankavatara is saying. It's all about your mind. And all this other stuff that you're talking about is just distracting you from dealing with the mind. So the Lankavatara over and over and over says you have to realize it yourself. It's all about self-realization. But it never tells you what self-realization is. Because it is... As I said in my introduction, it's all about tasting the tea. You have to taste the tea. So the Lankavatara, for example, is about these two teachings. First, it shoves the... It's the Zen master shoving the cup of tea in your face. Have a cup of tea! Getting your attention to change your perspective so that it's about the mind, stupid.

[70:31]

But then the Lankavatara tells you to taste the tea, damn it! And not just to look at the tea... And so these are the two teachings you see in early Zen texts, like the Bodhidharma texts. Just understand the nature of mind. But you have to understand them. You have to taste the tea. You can't just think about it, because you'll just think thoughts. Well, yes, are we done? Somebody had a question? Yes, okay. Have you ever practiced with people who were fanning the Parasutra without reciting it? Fanning it? You know, the accordion book that... Oh, no. I've never seen that. Oh, no. I think it's the 50,000 line or something like that. It's sort of like a prayer wheel kind of thing.

[71:36]

Oh, I did go to one sort of event. I write about it in my book, Zen Baggage, sort of near the beginning. I go to this big Buddhist temple and everybody is chanting a chapter from that text. Simultaneously. And as I described in my book, it sounds like a pet shop. But I've never heard of this. I've never heard of this. But I have seen in China where simultaneously people will chant the same different parts of the same sutra, and it just, like I say, it just sounds like a bunch of... Well, anyway, I think it's maybe, you probably have something else on the schedule. Anyway, thanks a lot for coming. Tomorrow at 3.30 at the retreat hall, I'm going to show a bunch of slides about Chinese, introducing the Chinese tradition of solitude and the beginnings of Zen. So you're welcome to come...

[72:39]

3.30 to 4.30. Thanks a lot. 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.

[73:01]

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