Heart Sutra, 24 October 2000, part 1

So, along with the mind of altruistic intention or bodhicitta will set up proper motivation and by doing so practices of listening and giving teaching as well as meditation with a good motivation of altruistic intention, we accumulate a huge number of, yeah, huge merits, and as a result of that, it will produce great good will. Like us, wishing happiness and do not want suffering, all other sentient beings, animals, and so forth are the same as us wishing happiness and do not want suffering. But the human beings have a very good knowledge that they understand the happiness and its causes as well as suffering and their causes. They have a knowledge to distinguish the happiness and the suffering and understand how to cultivate the happiness and its causes and abandon the suffering and their causes, whereas animals, being like animals, have no awareness or knowledge to distinguish the happiness and the suffering, therefore they don’t have knowledge to cultivate the causes of happiness. So, if we perform a meditation here, meditation here of cultivating the compassion and the love, focusing on the sentient being as well as oneself, wishing them to have happiness in their causes and free from suffering in their causes, such a meditation is very beneficial.

Not just develop a wish of compassion and love, with it develop a special insight, it’s the wish taking the responsibility of bringing the sentient beings free or out of suffering and bring them towards the ultimate happiness. So in order accomplish such I shall here purify all the negativities and attain the entire good qualities and attain enlightenment. For that purpose, I shall here listen to the teachings of emptiness and bring all the hearer into contemplation and through meditation to develop certain motivation. We shall do a couple of meditations on such motivation. We’ll recite the refuge prayers starting from page one verse three and then do the same page one, the seven-limb prayers.

After this, do the Sattva prayer in English, which was on page number. Lord Buddha Śākyamūni has been, I said, twenty nine years in his kingdom and had a son called Rahula. He has stated this, the verse of homage to the emptiness, saying, I bow down to the mother of conquerors of the three times, the perfection of wisdom inexpressible by words or thought, which is unproduced and unceasing. It’s like the entity of the sky. The object of the wisdom is unique knowledge.

This verse of homage to the emptiness is set forth to be very precious that in the Sera Monastery before the recitation of Heart Sūtra or the perfection of wisdom sūtra, these verses have been said before. So it’s been the verse that said that the inexpressible inexpressible by words and thoughts which means it’s inexpressible in words which it’s, for example, like a sweet. We eat sweets and it’s very like chocolate and it’s very sweet and one tastes the sweet of the chocolate. One wishes to express how sweet it is as it tastes in one tongue, but the fact is one can’t express the sweetness of the chocolate by words. Likewise, the emptiness which is realized or tasted by the wisdom realizing emptiness.

It wishes to express but it can’t express in words how it tastes by realizing through the wisdom realizing emptiness. Also, it is very profound that it can’t be actualized or realized by the conceptual mind alone. Example: if you ask a question to somebody how sweet it is, and the person says it is very, very sweet. How sweet is it? It is very, very sweet. Can’t say.

So, the conceptual thought can’t actualize or realize the wisdom that realizes emptiness. Through the practices of meditation and contemplation, gradually one develops in one’s practice of meditation and finally realize the wisdom which directly realizes emptiness. Whenever one realizes the emptiness directly, then it’s called the wisdom gone beyond, which has gone beyond cyclic existence of saṃsāra being developed. Then that wisdom realizing emptiness can clearly see the nature of the empty or emptiness. And that wisdom directly realizing emptiness can see the emptiness clearly and pure without elaboration.

So, The explanation of the verse continues and it says that there was such a wisdom, the wisdom directly realizes emptiness, does not inherently exist by its own entity, and likewise other phenomena also do not exist inherently by their own accord. So therefore, not inherently existing is called the emptiness. Such emptiness is very pure and it’s like the expanse of the sky, therefore it can’t be negated — or rather it is a negation of being established by its own entity. And who realizes that emptiness is the wisdom — after having the wisdom which realizes the emptiness directly, such wisdom realizes the emptiness, and that wisdom which realizes the emptiness through deep meditation, through the meditative equipoise on emptiness. And that wisdom directly realizing emptiness is like a mother, in that in the past the numbers of Buddhas have passed, and there are many who currently attain Buddhahood or become enlightened, and there will be in future.

This wisdom is called mother because the wisdom directly realizing emptiness is the one, is the cause or a mother to produce all the buddhas of the present, past, and future. For example, the mother there had been A child has been born in the past, the children born in the past, those being born in the present as well as in the future — all the children of the past, present, and future — come, being produced from the mother and likewise the emptiness, the wisdom realizing emptiness is like a mother to give rise for the Buddha of present past and future Buddhas. So therefore it’s reason it’s been called the yum in Tibetan word, which is called mother, and ma and yum are same. It’s a synonym in the Tibetan word that the yum is an honorific word like the queen has been called yum of the prince, because of prince or princess. Without mother there is no child.

There’s no child, and the great master Padmasambhava is an exceptional case. He was said to be born from the lotus and it’s an exceptional case. Master Padmasambhava was said to be born through emanation, so was a great yogi born without a mother. The ordinary person can’t be born without a mother. So likewise without wisdom the Arhats, the superior beings of the great vehicle, the superior beings of the hearer school, solitary realizers can’t be produced, can’t be born without wisdom realizing emptiness.

Therefore, wisdom realizing emptiness is like a mother and without it all the Buddhists and so forth can’t be born or produced. It’s called superior beings because they are superior than the ordinary person. And if we bring it towards the sentient being or ordinary being, then in order to sentient being from the sufferings and free of disturbing emotions or afflicted emotions, one needs the wisdom realizing emptiness. Without wisdom realizing emptiness, the sentient being can’t be free from suffering and the disturbing emotions. So therefore, in order to attain happiness, one needs to have wisdom realizing emptiness.

So, briefly speaking, in order to overcome all the suffering and attain the happiness, one needs to have the wisdom realizing emptiness. So, the wisdom, the emptiness and view of emptiness is set forth to be very profound and the secret teaching, secret Buddhist teaching. Therefore, it was set forth that one should not teach the emptiness or a view of emptiness teaching to those who have no respect and faith in the emptiness teaching. So I hope everyone has a smart devotion and faith in the teaching of emptiness. And it’s been set forth that one should not teach emptiness teaching to those who have no faith in devotion.

It was not said with the lack of affection. It’s been because of his compassion and affection, it’s been said should not teach towards those people who have no respect in the teaching. So, yes, it’s been set forth, called the hard or risky practice and it’s set forth, it should not teach to those who have no respect in the teaching. That was set forth to be very compassionate means. It is because, for example, if someone has attained, have gained a certain powers within the person and he or she can play around with the snake through the magic.

They play with the snake and no matter how much the snake bites the person, the person can’t be harmed, and the person who tries to play with the snake without a magic or certain power just by one bite of the snake, the person will be gone. So likewise, if one has a good understanding, the teaching of emptiness very clearly and in the right way, then the person receives numbers of benefits from practicing the emptiness. If the person creates a wrong thought by saying this teaching is not a good teaching, it’s just exaggerated all the time. Saying something is because the teaching says something exists which is not in fact and it says something doesn’t exist which in fact it does exist. That sort of wrong thought comes out of the lack of understanding.

If one develops a genuine such thought, then one cultivates huge negativities. So you should try to pay good attention and listen to the teaching with a neutral state of mind and open ears. What is it? And the beginning of the teaching or beginning of the text, there are numbers of discourses about the history of how the teaching was set forth before or after the Ānanda and so forth. As we don’t have much time, we better not spend some time on all this investigation or discourses on when the teaching was set forth.

So we go to start from the main actual part. Now, with respect the second main subdivision, which is called the explanation of the parts, and it has two subdivisions: the actual, the preliminary and the actual parts. So now the first one is called the meaning of the title, and it’s been called in Sanskrit, which is called the Bhagavati Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya, whereas in Tibetan it’s called the heart of the victorious perfection of wisdom. So the translation of the Sanskrit word, Bhagavati is called the great destroyer. Prajñāpāramitā, the wisdom gone beyond, and Hridaya called the essence.

So it’s called the Chomden Dema, the great destroyer. So what it destroys is called the four maras, and called the maras of disturbing emotions, the maras of death, Mara of Devas, Mara of body, which means that the four Maras of disturbing emotions like hatred and anguish, which disturbance in our practices, as well as the second Mara is called the death, that without giving any time to practice and without independent one passes or one dies, and the amount of body, which means we face difficulty of tiredness to practice and feeling tired, getting sick, and so forth, and it’s called the body. The Mara of Devas, which means they are the external spirit or devil which causes harms. When one does the practice, they are the external causes like the devils which set forth to be sending arrows towards us, which encourages us to let us go through the sleep while in the practice and so forth. So the Tibetan word means, word for word, mother beyond destroyer, which means it destroys all the four Maras and it is endowed with qualities — which means the qualities, the teachings, qualities of the six perfections and so forth.

Gone means it gone beyond sorrow, which the way sorrow is called the disturbing emotion. Because of this having disturbing emotions and through ignorance and so forth we cultivate numbers of actions which lead us into suffering. So it’s beyond the suffering or beyond the sorrow and called mother. Here Chomden was one of the names of the Buddha in Tibetan words, but here the Chomden de doesn’t mean the Buddha. It means to us the wisdom realizing emptiness which we said before, which is the mother of all the Buddhas of three times.

Which means the mother of great destroyer, which is wisdom gone beyond. And it’s been called the heart. The teaching has been called the heart as well. It is because, for example, there are the numbers of awareness or consciousness which pervades our entire body, but the main source of that consciousness or awareness is at the heart. It emerges from the heart and also gathers at the heart.

So likewise, the emptiness, the wisdom realizing emptiness is the heart of the teaching. The numbers of teachings that have been set forth are taught by the great master Buddha, Śākyamūni, saying the sutras and the tantric teachings, but all the essence of the teaching is the wisdom directly realizing emptiness is the gist of the teaching. Therefore it’s been called heart. So, the reason why the title has been given to the text is because it helps realize what the teaching contains. It is, for example, like a person would be labeled or given a name to a person and because of that name we recognize who the person is and say he or she has arrived and such and such is gone.

It’s because the purpose of giving the name is to recognize who the person is. But this title of the text is not given or not set forth by the Buddha Śākyamūni Mumani, it’s been set forth or produced by the translators who translate it in Sanskrit as well as in Tibetan. So as for the wisdom going beyond, it’s set forth to be three types that call the path going beyond, the text going beyond, and the wisdom going beyond, or like the resultant going beyond of wisdom. So it has been set forth because the actual wisdom going beyond is the wisdom directly realizing emptiness is the main resultant one. So the parts — the bodhisattva parts — the five paths of the great vehicle, as the mantra goes Gate Gate Pāragate, which shows the five paths.

And if those parts have been called the wisdom gone beyond of through which, through those paths one attains or one realizes or gains that wisdom realizing truly and directly realizing emptiness. And the text which all the path has been instructed or been given is called the perfected or gone beyond texts. So the first two gone beyonds, the path and the text, are set forth to be a method to attain the wisdom directly realizing emptiness and the resultant going beyond which is the actual one that wisdom directly realizes emptiness. So, for example, if you go through the mantra itself, Gate Gate Pāragate Parasangate bodhi svaha, the bodhi svaha is the actual resultant going beyond, which is wisdom directly realizing emptiness. And up till Parasangate, from the Gathegate, Pāragate, Parasangate, those four are called the path, the going beyond, which is the path through which one attains the wisdom directly realizing emptiness.

And the text which consists of all these teachings of the five paths has been called the text gone beyond. So as for the texts, there are set forth to be numbers of texts that are more than one hundred volume texts. Within the one hundred, the main, there are the twenty one volumes which specifically set forth the teachings of emptiness. And within the twenty one topics or twenty one volumes, they set forth the three textual teachings, the wisdom perfection sūtra in three versions of the large, medium, and the short versions. So as for the three versions of the large, medium, and short wisdom perfection sūtra, the large one has one hundred thousand shlokas in Tibetan words.

So shloka has the different ways of counting. For example, like the one verse saying the refuge verse: the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, I go for refuge under the Three Jewels for the sake of all sentient beings. Such a verse, just the one four lines, is considered to be one shloka. So the large version of the wisdom perfection sūtra consists of one hundred thousand shlokas, and the medium one has twenty thousand, the short one has eight thousand. So the perfection sūtra that the Buddha Śākyamūni taught at the Vulture’s Peak at Rajgir in India was this perfection sūtra of large, medium, and short versions.

So the Essence Heart Sūtra is the text which consists of entire gist or the essence teachings of the large, medium, and the short wisdom perfection sūtra. Buddha Śākyamūni, at the Vulture’s Peak, he doesn’t teach only the Heart Sūtra there. He taught all the large, medium and short discourses of the perfection of wisdom sūtra. And how did Buddha Śākyamūni give the teaching of the perfection of wisdom sūtra at the Vulture’s Peak? If one asked that question, then there are different types of disciples at the Vulture’s Peak during that time — disciples of great, middling and the limited faculty, very sharp faculty and the middling and the lesser.

Normal. So as there are different types of disciple within the audience, those with the sharp faculty do not need to receive the very detailed teaching. There will be the teachings coming up on the later part of the text — teachings on five aggregates, twelve sources, eighteen constituents, and so forth. Those with the sharp faculties, just by explaining the first one of the five aggregates, the person understands the rest without explaining. For the middling one, has to be more explanation, and for the last one, then we need to go one by one.

So therefore, because there are the different levels, three types of levels of the faculty within the disciples, the teachings of great middling and the short version comes. But when Buddha gives the teaching, he does not need to give the teaching separate for the sharp faculty and the middling and the small faculty one? Buddha teaches all three types of disciples at once. For example, like saying, likewise, all the five aggregates are also not truly existent or not inherently existent. So just by the word saying, the reason of saying each and every word in Tibetan called de kyang, also not inherently existent — just by those words, the person with the sharp faculty understands the rest of the teachings because of the sharpness of the faculty, whereas middle and the lower faculty will not understand straight away but understand there are the remaining also are left some other topics as well, and they gradually train and take longer time to realize or understand, but the Buddha taught them all three types of disciples at once.

So, yeah, and for Buddha, Buddha has a very unique power that because he has achieved enlightenment, therefore he has omniscient wisdom or a mind which realizes all the teachings and has attained speech which can express all the teachings. So therefore, when he taught in the audience in number of hundred, if he said, the I is impermanent and within the disciples they have different thoughts or individual thoughts, and what they will hear, they will hear the teaching according to their wish or what they want to hear. For example, if he said the eye is impermanent, those who want to understand about the impermanence of the eye will hear the teachings on impermanence of the I, and those who wish for the I is suffering can hear about the suffering, and those who wish who want to understand on the selflessness nature of the will hear the selflessness teaching, and those who wish to know about the emptiness nature of the eye will receive the teaching on emptiness. So likewise, the hundred people can ask the question at once to Buddha and for him, by giving one answer, give the answer according to the different questions at once.

He doesn’t need to listen to each and every one in turn. So now there are numbers of discourses about establishing the size of the text, and it’s in Tibetan word called shloka, and the bampo — two words. The shloka is set forth to be one four-line verse, and the bampo is the size of the text. The bampo is the size of the text, so there are numbers of different ways of counting the size of the bampo. Some texts say one bampo includes three hundred verses, some say nine hundred verses.

According to the Heart Sūtra, it’s said to be consisting of twenty-five verses, which is one bampo. So the reason for explaining the size of the text or a bampo is to realize the greatness of the text — in ancient times, how many bampos are in this text, if it says five it’s a bit short one, if it’s got three hundred it’s a great one. It is like if we say, he or she has million dollars, he’s a rich person. So in terms of wisdom gone beyond, the four types of gone beyond. So it’s called superior, ultimate, the nirvana and the knowledge.

We set forth the superior is the going beyond a common being. It’s called the superior being who is going beyond the ordinary or common being that when one realizes the emptiness not realizes, say understands the teachings of the emptiness, called the person who has gone beyond the ordinary being, which is the first gone beyond. And the second one is called the ultimate, which is called the beyond the conventional. Beyond the conventional is the ultimate, the going beyond. And the third one is the attaining nirvana, which is called the nirvana which has gone beyond the cyclic existence.

And the last is the last going beyond is the knowledge, which is the going beyond the ignorance. So in terms of the wisdom going beyond, in the Buddhist schools of tenets they are set forth to be four schools of the Buddhist tenets called the Particularist and the Sūtra schools, and the next two are the Chittamatrin and the Middle Way school — so the mind-only school and the Middle Way school. About the wisdom going beyond, those first two classes are the schools of the Hīnayāna and the next two, the mind-only and Middle Way schools are the Mahāyāna school. So the wisdom going beyond is only set forth within the Mahāyāna teaching — the Mahāyāna schools of Chittamatrin and Madhyamaka, the Middle Way schools. There are two ways of establishing the view of emptiness within those two schools, the mind only school says the difference in considering the wisdom realizing emptiness or wisdom going beyond, Mind only establishes the wisdom realizing emptiness different than the middle way school.

The mind only schools, the wisdom of nondual subject and object is the wisdom which realizes emptiness or the wisdom going beyond. Whereas in Madhyamaka, the Middle Way school, the wisdom or the way of establishing emptiness is the emptiness nature of not inherently existing — that is the emptiness in the Middle Way school. So, today we spend our class to explain about explaining the meaning of the title of a name, and from next week we start the actual part of the teaching starting from the text Thus I have heard and so and so. And now, here we conclude the class and it is good to, know, very fortunate of you to have the chance to receive the emptiness teaching and the emptiness teaching is very profound and it is also that the wisdom realizing emptiness is also the seed or is like a mould to attain the enlightenment, so therefore for the betterment, if you realize the emptiness through the teaching, which is very, good, even if you don’t realize the emptiness directly by listening to the teaching, but there is still a huge benefit of listening to the emptiness teaching. By listening to the emptiness teaching you sow a seed inside or implant a seed within your mind stream and in future just by hearing the emptiness teaching, becomes like water to the seed — one of those seeds of emptiness — just by hearing a teaching one will realize the emptiness quickly and quickly and as a result of that one will overcome all this, get rid of the sufferings and attain happiness and become an arhat or attain arhathood, bodhisattvahood, and can become a Buddha.

And then in future, just by hearing the word emptiness, one feels very developed a huge joy and happy, and out of that joy and happiness, automatically tears come out of your eyes and then all the hairs of the body stand on end or stir and you have such feelings, and those who have such feelings have a seed to become enlightened. Okay. So at this stage it’s quite squashy here and it’s a bit hot and you have a bit you suffer a little bit here. But the result of bearing this suffering is huge. In the future you will have a great benefit of doing this, and we suffer a little by working hard outside for hours, but the result or happiness of that hardship is much, much smaller than what you did right now here.

Okay. We’ll take a couple of questions. The consciousness that moves on, the mind stream, does that exist with some sign? No. When they say Tibetan?

No, it doesn’t exist on its side. It’s not a single phenomenon. Which exists on its own accord. If it exists on its own side or its own if it exists inherently or by its own accord or entity, then there is no entities. Because it doesn’t exist on its side, therefore the entities come.

Comes. Does that mean that there is an observer part of my consciousness relationship, forming a relationship with the rest of my consciousness? The observer of the consciousness. Is there some level of consciousness which is observing and making a relationship with the rest of my consciousness? Emptiness is a relationship of mind In terms of listening, it sounds like the observer in the sense could be called the apperception or self-awareness which observes the internal phenomena.

So, there’s different ways of saying except for the middle way school, the rest, they agree with a word called rangi, the self awareness, realizes the internal phenomenons. Whereas the middle way school, they don’t agree with such. They say that the consciousness itself or the wisdom itself, the works or realizes the thing. It’s not different. Yeah.

It’s yeah. Middle Way, called the Consequentialist school. Consequentialist. Yeah. So, the emptiness here doesn’t mean the empty like a space and so forth.

What it means actually, its meaning is empty means it’s empty or free of its negation, is a negation. So if things do not exist by its own characteristic, it is called the emptiness in which it is free of existing by its own characteristic. That’s called the emptiness. It’s not something to do with the space. So therefore, in the Heart Sūtra text, all the five aggregates are not inherently existent.

It means one should see, see are not inherently existent or not yeah, inherently existent, which means the five aggregates who do not exist on their own characteristic or exist by their own accord, and such that doesn’t exist on their own accord is the emptiness of the five aggregates. Very good.