The First Lesson on the Heart Sutra Must Begin at the End
As I begin this study of the Heart Sutra, I do not intend to explain it mechanically from its first character onward. The Heart Sutra is extremely short, but understanding the words compressed within it takes a great deal of time. Almost every Buddhist has recited it at least once, and many can recite it from memory. Yet precisely because it is so widely chanted, it is also one of the most misunderstood sutras. Elements that depart from its fundamental point have entered the text itself. We must therefore ask how they entered and clear away those misunderstandings before the sutra can be applied to our lives.
So in this first lesson I begin, in reverse, with the conclusion. Some may choose “seeing that the five aggregates are all empty” as the key line, but the single phrase I choose to encompass the Heart Sutra is “depart far from inverted dreams and delusions”—wonri jeondo mongsang (遠離顚倒夢想). “Depart far” means to move away and separate oneself. “Inverted” means that front and back, top and bottom, have been reversed. “Dream and delusion” means being caught in thoughts and images fabricated in the mind as if one were dreaming. What we believe to be the real world may be a dream inverted from the way the world actually is, and the line tells us to move far away from it.
The beginning and end of the Heart Sutra are the departure from inverted dreams and delusions. Escaping the inverted thoughts I have believed to be facts is the alpha and omega of this sutra.
If Buddhism is reduced to one word, it is “release.” It observes what arises through causes and effects and what arises in relationship, understands it, and thereby releases what I have wrongly grasped. The Kalama Sutta we read immediately before this asked how we can know what is right among our own thoughts and the words of others. The Snake Sutta said that, as a snake casts off its old skin, we must leave both ora and param—the low and what lies beyond it. The Heart Sutra says nothing fundamentally different. It shows us what an inverted dream is and says that, once we understand it, we must leave it.
Liberation and Buddha Were Not Originally Exclusively Buddhist Words
Before entering the sutra itself, we must see how language arises and changes. As human beings perceive more and share more knowledge, the meaning of a word becomes subdivided and altered. A person in the tropics and a person surrounded by northern coniferous forests may not imagine the same thing when hearing the word “tree.” Today we see countless images together and may hold a more inclusive idea of a tree. If we miss the fact that a word changes with its era, region, and relation to other concepts, we read ancient scriptures through meanings familiar only to us.
Moksha, the Sanskrit word for liberation, and Buddha, an awakened person, were not words first invented by Gautama Siddhartha. People spoke of moksha and buddhas before Shakyamuni, and those words already carried the worldview of their time. Liberation was generally understood as escaping the cycle of birth, aging, illness, and death and entering a divine state beyond the human. In a society that connected caste order to the body of a god and explained a low birth through karma and rebirth, people searched for a way out of the cycle of life and death. Some believed that discovering an eternal essence within would unite them with the creator god and reveal the truth of the universe.
Gautama Siddhartha borrowed the old words liberation and Buddha, but wrote radically different meanings over them. Liberation was not becoming a god; it was release even from the dream of wanting to become one.
Jainism divides the eternal, unchanging soul, jiva, from the material world that is not soul, ajiva. Jiva takes another body after death and continues through rebirth; complete severance of attachment to body and world is said to end that cycle. In the most extreme practice, fasting to death becomes an image of liberation because bodily desire is extinguished. Other traditions regarded the discovery of atman, omniscience, omnipotence, and supernatural powers as awakening. Claiming knowledge even of unseen hells and the future is ultimately a claim to omniscience.
When Gautama Siddhartha left home, sought teachers, and practiced, he too searched for such transcendence and complete liberation. At some point, however, he saw that the goal itself was an inverted dream. Clinging to worldly things and suffering is an illusion, but imagining a transcendent state beyond the world is also an illusion. Within dependent arising there is no independent and eternal “this.” A Buddha is not a god who transcended rebirth and mortality, but a person released from the dreams at both poles—low and high, worldly and transcendent—and who began to see reality through causes and effects.
Before Reading Xuanzang’s Version, Look at the History of Translation and Scripture
The title most commonly recited by us is Mahaprajnaparamita Heart Sutra, generally in the translation of the Tang monk Xuanzang. Versions in the same textual family differ somewhat in title and wording. The Heart Sutra chanted in Korean ceremonies and services is mostly Xuanzang’s version. Xuanzang studied and gathered scriptures for many years in India and the Western Regions before returning to Tang China. His travel record, the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, later became a basis for the Journey to the West, with mythology and fiction added.
Xuanzang is called the Tripitaka Master because he brought and translated the three collections: sutra, vinaya, and shastra. Sutras are texts transmitted as the Buddha’s words; vinaya contains rules for the monastic community; shastras interpret existing scriptures and state a school’s arguments. Early writers could add their views in the form of a sutra, but once scriptures had become relatively fixed, named authors continued interpretation and debate through treatises.
Xuanzang returned in 645, the year Emperor Taizong of Tang invaded Goguryeo. The Silla monks Wonhyo and Uisang heard of the extraordinary monk who had returned from India and tried to travel to meet him. On their first attempt they were detained at the Goguryeo frontier and sent back. On their later attempt by sea, the famous story of Wonhyo drinking water from a skull is said to have occurred. We cannot verify whether it happened as told, but we can see how deeply Xuanzang’s fame and translations affected East Asian Buddhism.
Scriptural translation does not happen in a vacuum. The limits of language, the translator’s understanding, the goals of a state project, the politics of an era, and already established doctrine all enter it.
Kumarajiva’s earlier translations also exerted enormous influence. East Asian Buddhists mainly read Kumarajiva’s Diamond Sutra and Xuanzang’s Heart Sutra. Neither translation was the work of one person; many learned people participated in a state-scale project. They tried to create balanced phrases beautiful in Chinese and to communicate meaning, while political needs and the translating group’s views also entered, knowingly or not. Words difficult to translate were transliterated. Maha, prajna, and paramita are examples. We must therefore read with three premises: Xuanzang’s translation can be wrong, the Heart Sutra was written long after the Buddha’s death, and layers from different periods are present within it.
The Title Mahaprajnaparamita Heart Sutra Already Contains Change
In the title, maha means great; prajna means wisdom; “heart” means not merely the organ or mind but the core; and sutra means scripture. The difficult word is paramita. It is commonly read as crossing to the other shore or transcending through wisdom. Yet the older pattern we examined in the Snake Sutta was ora-param: do not be caught by either the low or what lies beyond it; leave both.
By the period when the Heart Sutra was written, however, paramita—crossing beyond—had itself become the goal of practice. Buddhism became a religion of crossing from this shore to the other shore and transcending through the six perfections of giving, ethics, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. The Buddha was increasingly elevated as a being who had acquired something transcendent, and practitioners tried to cross to where that Buddha was. The original voice that left both worldliness and transcendence had turned again toward transcendence.
The fact that paramita became the goal is a trace showing that the Heart Sutra was written long after the Buddha, when Buddhism was moving back toward transcendence.
Why did this happen? The ascetics and Brahmins around the Buddha before his awakening also pursued transcendence and omniscience. Those who became his disciples did not fall from the sky; they had lived within that worldview. While the Buddha was alive they could see what he actually said and how he behaved. After one or two generations, direct memory disappeared and imagination began to accumulate over teachings that were hard to understand.
I regard the stories that five hundred or 1,250 arahants in the Buddha’s time all attained awakening equal to his as exaggerations. If one person had produced hundreds of Buddhas and each produced even one or two more in every generation, the world would already be full of Buddhas. Sariputta may have been the one disciple regarded as nearly equal in insight, but he died before the Buddha. As generations passed, Brahmin intellectuals and new believers brought familiar ideas of rebirth, gods, and transcendence back into Buddhism. The more Buddhists competed with other religions and told the public that their Buddha was supreme, the more the Buddha was deified.
Prajna Is Not the Power to Predict the Future but Wisdom That Knows Dependent Arising
Prajna is panna in Pali and prajna in Sanskrit. Pra carries the sense of “forward,” related to English words beginning with “pro,” while jna is connected to knowing, as in English “know” or Greek-derived “gnosis.” In an old layer of the word, prajna meant knowing what lies ahead, knowing beforehand. In an agricultural society, a person who observed the night sky, the stars, and the position of the rising and setting sun and thereby knew the solstices, the time to sow, and the coming cold was wise. Knowledge of calendars and seasons, astrology, prophecy, and religious authority were not fully separated at the beginning.
Buddhist prajna, however, is neither prophecy nor omniscience. Predicting tomorrow’s chance of rain from evidence is necessary for life, but declaring the future fixed and claiming to know even Buddhas tens of thousands of years ahead is not Buddhism. If prophecy had been both possible and important, the Buddha could have gone on prophesying events hundreds of thousands of years into the future. We must not be taken in by such nonsense.
Buddhist prajna is not supernatural power that predicts the future. It is the wisdom that understands that because all things arise and change in relation, there is no independent and eternal “this.”
Buddhism redefined an existing word. When we understand dependent arising, we see that everything arises and ceases through causes and conditions. We then understand non-self, because there is no completely independent entity, and impermanence, because everything changes. Dependent arising, impermanence, and non-self are not three disconnected truths but different names for one phenomenon. Prajna in Buddhism is the state of knowing that what I took to be a fixed substance is a temporary phenomenon within relations.
Who Is Avalokiteshvara, the First Figure in the Short Version?
The Heart Sutra exists in an extended version with a narrative frame and a short version without much of it. Xuanzang’s text is short and begins immediately with Avalokiteshvara. The extended version adds a setting in which someone asks a question and the Buddha explains to Sariputta how Avalokiteshvara practiced. The openings and endings of many sutras were not fixed from the start but became standardized later. With time, splendid scenes were added in which light pours from the Buddha’s eyes and celestial beings gather. These are literary devices made by later authors. Since the concept of Avalokiteshvara did not exist in the Buddha’s lifetime, such a scene cannot be believed as a historical event.
Xuanzang’s version uses the Chinese name Guanzizai, “the Lord Who Observes Freely,” while Kumarajiva’s lineage uses Guanshiyin, “the One Who Observes the Sounds of the World.” One explanation says that because the character shi appeared in Emperor Taizong’s personal name, Li Shimin, naming taboo encouraged the shortened Guanyin or the alternative Guanzizai. The Sanskrit name behind both forms, Avalokiteshvara, can be read as a lord looking down: ava, below; a root related to seeing or the world; and ishvara, lord or sovereign god.
Avalokiteshvara was not a historical disciple from the Buddha’s lifetime. The old dream of a god who looks down and hears people’s wishes was given Buddhist form as a bodhisattva.
The lord looking down from the sky resembles the ancient sky god and creator. The idea of a self-existent ruler who makes and governs the world appears throughout old Indo-Iranian and European mythology. In India, gods such as Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma had many names and functions, and Avalokiteshvara also developed by receiving this mythic material. If an early bodhisattva was a sentient being seeking awakening, the figure later became an already awakened, powerful, divine bodhisattva. The thousand arms and eyes and the Great Dharani belong to this development; I read most of that dharani as praise made from names of Shiva and Vishnu.
Both Southern and Northern Buddhism Underwent Popularization and Deification
At this point, a Southern Buddhist who says, “Only Mahayana is not the Buddha’s word; we alone preserved pure teaching,” has failed to look at himself. As the Kalama Sutta teaches, one must examine one’s own school and scripture from an outsider’s perspective. Southern scriptures are also filled with Sakka, asuras, yakkhas, Mara, the three-thousandfold cosmos, Mount Sumeru, heavens and hells, and gods who live for tens of thousands of years. These words came from existing Indian myths and religions. It is difficult to believe that the Buddha who taught impermanence and non-self personally invented new worlds of eternal gods.
In popularization and deification, Southern and Northern Buddhism are not fundamentally different. Both accepted gods, rebirth, and cosmologies from existing religions after the Buddha’s death.
To spread among the public, Buddhism may have had to borrow what people already believed. We cannot determine whether this entered while Ashoka’s rule sought to bind a vast region together or through a more organic process of popularization. We can nevertheless observe that scriptures changed and mythic devices entered both traditions. Scenes in which Mara obstructs awakening or Sakka and other gods attend a sermon should be seen as later fiction rather than the Buddha’s literal reports.
Vinaya in particular needed a basis for making communal rules mandatory. In ancient society religion performed roles now assigned to law and ethics. Indian dhamma included both an order to be followed and a sense of good, while karma and rebirth supplied reward and punishment in place of divine judgment. Jataka and karmic stories—in which good acts led to good rebirth and bad acts to disability or suffering—were produced endlessly to reinforce rules and morality. A tremendous number of devices understandable to the public entered Buddhism in order to make communities obey.
The Word ‘Sovereign’ Itself Collides with Buddhism
The “sovereign” in the Chinese name Guanzizai means a lord who exists by himself and is not dependent on anything else. From the standpoint of dependent arising, however, nothing exists by itself. An eternal, independent being relying on no relation or condition is precisely the substantial self that Buddhism rejects. It therefore reverses Buddhist study to force a profound method of meditation into every character of “observing” and “sovereign.” We must first admit that the very word “sovereign” is the non-Buddhist language of a god.
There is no self-existent sovereign being in Buddhism. Rather than mystifying the name Avalokiteshvara, we should ask why people of a particular period needed such a divine bodhisattva.
This may be more uncomfortable for established Buddhists. Some become angry as soon as they hear that Avalokiteshvara or Amitabha was not a historical being. Familiar faith and repeatedly heard stories have accumulated too thickly. A newcomer may understand Buddhism easily when introduced well, while a longtime believer may react violently to the human voice of the Buddha. A deified Buddha is raised so high that we can no longer resemble him, and even the meaning of saying “I became a Buddha” is distorted.
Avalokiteshvara can be understood as the Buddhist embodiment of people’s wish for a god who hears their prayers. There is no need to grasp the name as historical fact or eternal substance. The important question is not whether this being literally existed, but what the authors of the Heart Sutra tried to explain by placing Avalokiteshvara at the beginning.
Clear Away the Later Shell and Read the Heart Sutra
We have read little of the body of the sutra in this first lesson, but we have established the standard for reading it. The key is departure from inverted dreams and delusions. Yet the title already contains the later goal of paramita, crossing beyond, and its first figure bears the trace of a divine bodhisattva who is said to exist freely and look down from above. These facts show that the Heart Sutra was written long after the Buddha’s death and contains thoughts from several periods.
I am not saying that we should discard the Heart Sutra. Once the shells of later transcendence and deification are removed, excellent teaching that releases us from inverted dreams and delusions still remains within it.
A scripture does not become worthless simply because it was written later. The Heart Sutra is extremely valuable when read after clearing away several misunderstandings and additions of its time. From the next lesson onward, we will examine what Avalokiteshvara saw while practicing the perfection of wisdom and how the text says that we can leave inverted dreams behind. We do not read scripture in order to believe it. We read while examining the conditions of language, history, and logic and test it in our own lives. That is where the study of the Heart Sutra begins.
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