This interpretive rendering of the Heart Sutra arose from my wondering, during an Emptiness and the Heart Sutra retreat, ‘what would the sutra look like if it was seen from a first-person perspective? So here, ‘the bodhisattva’ is ourself – after all, we’re all on the bodhisattva path in one way or another. The first version I finished is immediately below, but then I also produced an even more interpretive version with notes explaining some of my choices of terms, together with a short evocation of how the Heart Sutra might be pointing us to awakening.
The Heart of Perfect Wisdom
From the compassionate heart of our own deepest nature,
Letting-go of all things and dwelling as complete natural openness,
Seeing directly that the constituents of fixated experiencing are totally open and unfindable, all delusive suffering drops away.
Right here, right now –
Appearances of form are only openness – openness is what ‘form’ actually is.
Form is just openness, openness is just form.
It’s the same with feelings, recognitions, imaginings and separating-consciousnesses.
Right here, right now –
All experience is just natural openness
Which doesn’t arise or cease,
Isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’
And doesn’t develop or fade.
In complete natural openness there’s just direct knowing ‘Forms’, ‘feelings’, ‘recognitions’, ‘imaginings’ and ‘separating-consciousnesses’ are gone.
Separate sense-organs, sense-objects and sense-consciousnesses are gone.
Dependent-arising and its cessation are gone.
Suffering, cause, cessation and path are gone.
‘Wisdom’ as something to attain is gone.
There was never anything to attain.
If anyone who has begun to wake up remains free of ‘attainment’ and holds on to nothing at all, they know directly with unfiltered awareness: there is no fear. Free of confusion, afflictive views and emotions drop away of themselves.
Anyone who has already awakened, awakens now or will come to awaken only does so by relying on complete natural openness here and now.
So know this complete natural openness as the ‘dharani’ of great undeluded awakeness: unsurpassed unequalled and pacifying all suffering;
It’s the real deal!
In complete natural openness, the dharani goes like this:
gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha
An even more interpretive version, with some notes
From the depths of our suffering, the compassionate heart of our own deepest nature begins to awaken us.
There is a spontaneous letting-go of all supposed ‘things’ and a dwelling as the flow of complete natural openness[1].
Seeing directly that the constituents of fixated experiencing[2] are totally open and unfindable, all delusive suffering drops away[3].
Right here, right now, there’s just this knowing:
Appearances of ‘form’ are only openness[4] – openness is what ‘form’ actually is.
Form is just openness, openness is just form.
It’s the same with ‘feelings’, ‘recognitions’, ‘imaginings’ and
‘separating-consciousnesses’[5].
Right here, right now it’s recognised –
All experience is just this natural openness
Which doesn’t arise or cease,
Isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’
And doesn’t develop or fade.
In complete natural openness there’s just direct knowing[6].
‘Forms’, ‘feelings’, ‘recognitions’, ‘imaginings’ and ‘separating-consciousnesses’ are gone.
Separate sense-organs, sense-objects and sense-consciousnesses are gone.
Dependent-arising and its cessation are gone.
Suffering, cause, cessation and path are gone.
‘Wisdom’ as something to attain is gone.
It’s known directly that there was never anything to attain[7].
If anyone who has begun to wake up in this way[8] remains free of ‘attainment’ and holds on to nothing at all[9], they know directly, with unfiltered awareness and fear is gone. Free of confusion, afflictive views and emotions drop away of themselves[10].
Anyone who has already awakened, awakens now or will come to awaken only does so by relying on complete natural openness here and now.
So know this complete natural openness as the amazing ‘magical spell’ of great undeluded awakeness: unsurpassed unequalled and pacifying all suffering;
It’s the real deal, not some shoddy imitation!
In complete natural openness, it goes like this:
gone … gone … super-gone … really totally super-gone – AWAKE – Yay! 🎉🎉🎉[11]
How does the Heart Sutra point us to awakening?
Form is emptiness / form is illusory is the bit of the Heart Sutra which people remember, and it’s an excellent pointer to awakening, that is, waking up to the non-conceptualised, ineffable ‘this’ which is our true nature.
‘Form’ encompasses all five skandhas, which are the conceptualised world, the world literally made up by the mind, from Nothing[12].
If we try to get our head round this – and we do of course – we just end up mentally spinning round and round endlessly. It’s not a pointer to thinking more, studying more or maybe learning Sanskrit so that we can understand the sutra better (as I once did!) – it’s a pointer to the actual condition of things (no-things) – the awakened ‘non-state’ which is and has always been ‘here’. In this context it’s labelled ‘prajñāpāramitā’.
Buddhist words and concepts don’t always help, because people fixate them with a kind of ‘Holy Dharma Meaning’ – this is the 3rd fetter at play – and even worship the printed texts of the Prajñāpāramitā[13]. There’s nothing wrong with this in itself, as a devotional practice, but it needs to be as well as, rather than instead of, honouring their true purpose: they point us directly to how we may wake up.
It seems likely to me that the Prajñāpāramitā began as an attempt to get out of this literalistic kind of tendency. ‘Form is emptiness’ means, in effect, ‘don’t conceptualise forms, look at what is really here’- what is the actual experience of what we take to be ‘forms’? Emptiness is the completely undefinable, indeterminate openness that what we regard as‘forms’ actually are. Forms as such don’t come into existence (and, of course, the same applies to the other skandhas).
How to put this into practice?
Look at, feel – be aware of – your own experience right now. There’s probably a stream of thinking, commentary and mental imaging going on. That’s fine – just don’t pay any heed to whatever it’s ‘saying’.
Settle into the experiencing. Notice that the experiencing is always changing, always fresh, and happening of itself. Notice that there is just experiencing – there is no ‘experiencer’. And notice (with ‘awaring’, not thinking) that there is no experience of past or future – there’s just this, whatever ‘this’ may be – a sound, a sight, a thought, a body sensation.
Is there a sense of aliveness, awareness, presence or a simple being-ness, always here? Notice that totally inseparable and intimate with this, at no distance, stuff is happening – seeing, hearing, thinking, imagining and so on. But also notice that the stuff that is happening isn’t happening in time, at all. There is no experiential continuity, experience has no duration and no ‘things’ (including ‘me’) are being constructed, unless the conceptual mind comes in and creates a sense of time and space and ‘things’ – especially the separate ‘me’ thing – persisting in time and space. There’s just this pure, knowing, timeless presence inseparable from these incredibly ephemeral and spontaneously arising sense impressions.
Experientially, there is no persistence of anything, and ‘this’ can’t be labelled or described, which is why, as well as prajñāpāramitā, it’s sometimes referred to as ‘suchness’, as in ‘is is such as it is and that’s all you can say’!
In this way, opening to openness – without any attempt to ‘do’ it – could suddenly resolve into the immediate awake presence which is always here but usually well covered-up by mental proliferation. There is just ‘this’, empty of any fixation – it’s not ‘forms’, not ‘feelings’, not ‘recognitions’, not ‘mental stuff’, not ‘me conscious of something’. In fact, there is no sense of ‘me’, or ‘other’ at all. There is just a relaxed, non-referential complete openness in which, in Milarepa’s words, ‘just about anything can happen’[14].
Awakening (bodhi) is suggestive of a process, not a state that is finally ‘attained’. The end of the process is the end of awakening. Awakening is gone – ‘awake ’ / ‘not awake’, along with all other dualities, simply no longer applies.
[1] Prajñāpāramitā is complete and total openness right here-now, empty of any mind-made division, separation, reification or fixation. It is devoid of any opposites whatever. The indivisible timeless ‘moment’ is always here, inseparable from the ungraspable ‘this’ arising here-now, which is totally embraced-released, loved, let go (by no-one) and lasts no time at all. Knowing-known are one. Knowing is relaxed, resting back, peaceful and unconcerned. There is no evaluation or investment for or against. The soma is already of this nature. What is known is gone already, spontaneously and timelessly self-arisen self-liberated. This process can take some time to open up, but is always timeless.
[2] Skandhas
[3] I.e.’secondary’duhkha.
[4] Openness – śūnyatā. “The open dimension of being”. Dwelling as openness is non-determinate unmediated awareness without even the slightest mental projection or imputation; it is what it is – a completely unimpeded natural flow.
[5] Vi-jñāna. The five skandhas are simply conceptual labels we unknowingly put onto direct unmediated (or unfiltered) experience
[6] As in the Bahiya Sutta – ‘In seeing just seeing, in hearing just hearing’ etc.
[7] All this was just concept
[8] ‘Bodhisattva’, ‘awakening being’– that means us
[9] With the conceptual mind
[10] But not necessarily all at once or without being ‘helped on their way’ with more inquiry.
[11] The rendering of the last couple of lines of the sutra and the dharani are intended to undermine any kind of ‘spiritual solemnity’ – the sutra, and especially the dharani, are expressions of the joy of liberation.
[12] I’ve capitalised Nothing to indicate that it’s not ‘just nothing at all’ – a non-thing, it’s the ineffable, ungraspable nature of ‘this’ as it is – the Unborn, the Deathless, the Unconditioned, etc.
[13] The rendering of the last couple of lines of the sutra and the dharani are intended to undermine the kind of ‘spiritual solemnity’, a kind of ‘Buddhist Puritanism’ – the sutra, and especially the dharani, are expressions of the joy of liberation.
[14] Anything at all, in fact.
As Milarepa sang:
All these servants of worldly attachment
Fill the earth with their to and fro,
Their master drives them on and on,
And I the yogin watch them.
Here on Kun-sal Rin-chen Drak,
The precious peak where all is clear,
I remember appearances
Are examples of impermanence.
I see sense pleasures as a mirage,
This life like a dream and an illusion,
And I cultivate compassion
For all who do not know this.
I eat the food of empty space,
I meditate without distraction,
I have different experiences,
Just about anything can happen!
E ma, the phenomena
Of the three realms of samsara,
While not existing, they appear,
How incredibly amazing!
