How We Can Understand Emptiness And The Heart Sutra

In this talk, we explore the Heart Sutra -- one of the central teachings of Buddhism that points to an alternate reality that is exactly the same as our consensual understanding of reality. But once glimpsed, emptiness completely changes our sense of what it means to be alive.

Transcript

For those of you who are new,

Sitting with us,

Our tradition when there's a Dharma talk is to sit in meditation posture.

If you like,

With the eyes down,

Just letting my words flow over you.

And then afterwards,

We'll sit comfortably and have our Dharma dialogue.

My understanding from Carolyn and Tom was that last week during practice reflections,

People spoke about the Heart Sutra and wanted to hear more about it because the Heart Sutra is both so central to the teaching of Mahayana Buddhism and so puzzling,

So confusing.

It seems typical that in Zen,

One of our core texts would be one of the hardest to make sense of.

So the Heart Sutra is recited every day in temples in Japan,

China,

Korea,

Vietnam.

It's been recited for 1,

600 years.

It first appeared in China in the 7th century.

And as you know,

It's filled with weird paradoxes.

It's like the ultimate crossword puzzle,

The ultimate difficult crossword puzzle.

And it was immediately a powerful chant,

A powerful text for practitioners,

Because the subject,

The nature of reality is the deepest subject that there is.

And it is what many of us come yearning to know about.

So why is this so difficult to grasp?

Well,

Actually,

What we're talking about is emptiness,

Which is something for which there really are no words.

We're talking about our complete interconnectedness.

And so by definition,

My words tonight are going to fail.

I am not going to be able to explain this to you,

And yet I will try,

Because we keep trying to approach emptiness through language,

Through concepts.

And there is some value in that.

But this is about experience that can't be captured with the thinking mind.

And of course,

There's so much of our life that can't be captured with the thinking mind.

I mean,

In Zen,

The famous phrase is,

We need to know for ourselves whether the water is warm or cold.

No one can tell you.

Think about so many experiences.

Think about sexual experience and how words fail in describing it.

Our experiences of emotion,

Our experiences of taste.

But I will try.

I will approach it with language.

This core teaching of emptiness is really an attempt in the Heart Sutra to say that what things are empty of is a separate,

Fixed,

Independent existence.

That things do exist,

But not in the way we think they do.

That nothing is separate.

Nothing stays the same.

Nothing is independent of anything else.

So,

There is this radical interconnection and fluidity and interdependence.

What that means is that despite the evidence of our senses,

Nothing can be ripped out of the fabric of being because it is all interdependent.

Now,

We know from good cognitive science that,

In fact,

Our minds do not perceive reality as it is.

And one way of trying to understand this is the idea that we evolved,

Our minds evolved,

To help us survive,

To help us pass on our genes.

Not to see reality as it is.

Now,

The Buddha didn't know about evolution,

But what he saw was that we're all deeply conditioned from the moment of birth to believe that we have a self that is fixed,

That stays the same,

That's separate from everything else,

And that's independent.

And,

Of course,

We do.

I mean,

I am the star of my own show,

Day in and day out.

I am the center of my universe.

And what the Buddha saw was that this is a source of enormous suffering,

That this self that we think we see is,

By its very nature,

So vulnerable in the world.

It's a self that can be hurt.

It's a self that can die.

And what the Buddha saw was that there is a different way to understand reality,

And that people can train themselves to see the self in another way,

And that this is the key to relieving so much of our suffering.

And so what he taught was looking deeply at what they called the five skandhas.

So you heard tonight in the Heart Sutra that all five skandhas are empty.

Well,

What are skandhas?

So skandhas literally are translated as heaps.

And that basically what he's trying to convey is that reality just consists of ever-changing heaps.

And what are the five skandhas?

They are the body,

Sensations,

Ideas,

Actions,

Consciousness.

And these heaps create the illusion of a permanent,

Unchanging self,

But they are not.

And so what the Heart Sutra does is it spends a lot of time saying what this reality is not.

Because it's impossible for our minds to conceive of what it is,

We can only experience it.

That it starts with saying what it's not.

That all these no phrases,

No eye,

No ear,

No nose,

Give us different angles or facets on this thing we think of as emptiness.

What does it mean that the eye is empty?

What does it mean that even wisdom,

Even enlightenment is empty?

Now,

It says in the Sutra,

And we hear it many times in Zen,

That form is exactly emptiness and emptiness is exactly form.

So form is the way the world looks to us.

It is what the ancient teachers called the 10,

000 things.

It's what looks like you and me and computer screens and Buddha statues on the altar.

And vegetables we eat for dinner.

It's everything.

It's all the separate things.

That is the world of form.

And what the Buddha is trying to help us point toward is another way of seeing exactly this.

All these forms as one big interconnected whole.

And this happens at times in our Zazen.

Master Dogen uses the phrase,

Body and mind fall away.

And perhaps you've had this kind of experience where there are moments where you're just there.

There's no me.

There's no body.

There's no thought.

There's just presence.

That's what he means by body and mind falling away.

And it is possible to come at this through thinking,

Through the thinking mind.

So,

One teacher used the example of a fallen tree trunk that she came upon in the forest.

It looks like a separate thing in the world.

This was a tree that was very much alive and that it lived completely connected with sun and soil and water.

And then,

As the tree died,

As the trunk fell,

It was relying on insects and bacteria to help it decay.

To help the wood turn to powder and the powder go back into the earth.

When does it stop being a tree trunk?

Is it like any other tree trunk fallen in the forest?

The idea is that these labels we give,

Like tree trunk or Bob,

That this is a useful shorthand for operating in the world.

And that our minds evolved to use this shorthand because it is so powerful as a way to make our way through the world.

But that the reality is complete interconnectedness and interdependence.

Think about your own body.

It can seem fixed and separate from everybody else and everything else.

And yet,

It is constantly changing.

We are constantly exchanging air in our lungs with the world.

And of course,

There are billions of bacteria living all over us and inside us.

How can we say that this thing I call Bob is separate or unchanging?

And of course,

The Heart Sutra is deliberately confusing because it's like trying to take a sledgehammer to our delusions.

Attacking it first from one side and then from another.

There's no eye,

There's no ear,

There's no nose.

And then,

Yes,

There is eye,

Ear and nose.

There's no enlightenment and there is enlightenment.

There's no ignorance and no ending of ignorance.

It's meant to be irritating and annoying and unsatisfying.

It's meant to pull the rug out from under us and take away our favorite toys,

Which are concepts and words.

That if we practice,

If we just sit,

It shows us the relief that we can experience when we actually start searching for or grasping at the next toy,

At the next concept.

How does the mind feel when we are not grasping at anything?

When we're not trying to entertain ourselves,

When there's no place to go and nothing to attain?

Now,

Language,

Of course,

Keeps us in separateness,

In dualistic thinking.

If we talk about existence,

Then there's non-existence.

If I talk about me,

Then there's not me.

If there's good,

Then there's bad.

Emptiness tells us to step away from language altogether.

So how does glimpsing emptiness help us?

Of what use is it?

Why all this practice in order to gradually come to the reality of this interconnectedness?

Well,

First,

It's essential that this interconnectedness inspire us with compassion.

Because we are all part of the same whole.

And that in fact,

The development of compassion is essential to the enlightened,

Awakened heart.

That if we don't develop a softer heart and compassion,

There's a danger that these teachings on emptiness could make our hearts even harder.

If we think we understand emptiness,

But our compassion is not increasing or even lessens,

We know we're on the wrong track.

Because that can lead us to the sense of,

Well,

It's all one,

It's all just flowing and changing as it's going to,

Nothing matters.

I can do whatever I like,

Because nothing's of any significance.

Actually,

Seeing the interconnectedness of it all can be an enormous relief,

Instead of some brain-teasing gloomy revelation.

Because there's a certain pressure that's released.

We don't need to feel alone,

Because we're never alone,

Because we're never separate.

We're not bearing the weight of the world.

And of course,

Many of the problems that we imagine are complete illusions made up by the mind that sees itself as separate and fixed.

And I find that this awareness actually makes me less afraid of death.

One of the metaphors that's often used is the metaphor of the wave and the ocean.

That we are like waves,

You know,

That we see ourselves as separate and moving and powerful,

But we are simply part of a much greater whole that we're never separate from.

And of course,

Eventually,

This form,

This waveform that I call Bob,

Will return to the ocean.

And while this understanding of emptiness provides relief,

It also provides a great deal of pressure,

Because this interconnectedness means that all our actions matter.

Because everything is interconnected,

Because nothing can be ripped out of the fabric of being,

Everything matters.

Everything we do,

Everything we say,

Even if we don't think it's important,

They matter.

In making the world,

Which is what we are doing,

Moment after moment.

This is what I think Diane Rossetto was speaking about so eloquently in our reading tonight.

Cultivating a clear mind doesn't mean we get rid of anything or try to transcend anything.

It just means we look life in the eye.

And in that direct meeting,

We come to experience clarity and wonder.

As the power and intelligence of that awareness does its work,

We stand in witness as the thoughts,

Feelings,

And sensations lose their form,

Dismantling and dissolving.

We rest open and alert in the power of impermanence.

And so my hope is that emptiness becomes a way of understanding how to be in this world that is a relief,

That eases suffering,

And that becomes the North Star of your practice.

Thank you.

Reviews

Very useful talk. Thank you, Robert🙏