With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
The Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra is a condensed statement of a Zen Buddhist understanding of reality. It should not be read as a statement of belief, but rather a reflection of one person's experience of awakening. It begins by pointing out that everything is "empty". Westerners really need a better translation of this (Ku) in the Sino-Japanese version. Empty refers to something without permanent substance. This is a very important reflection of experience. The Sutra is teaching us that when we practice deeply, we see clearly that everything comes and goes. It says that all forms are empty, but also that emptiness is form. Emptiness gives rise to form, but then, form gives rise to emptiness.
The Sutra makes a really big deal out of this, even breaking the factors that make a being human into parts that are, themselves, "empty". It suggests that the parts, empty of themselves make a whole, also empty of itself, yet dependent on the parts for its wholeness. This is another way of saying that everything is interconnected, deeply dependent upon, everything else.
Later the Sutra expresses the experience that even enlightenment itself is empty, essentially that there is no possibility of "attainment". Why? Because we already are enlightened. It expresses the experience that when we let go of the obstacles of mind (notions of permanence) through our practice of "prajna paramita" (wisdom perfection, a/k/a, a deep state of concentrated awareness, such as that obtained in the practice of shikantaza (just sitting), there is no fear.
The experience is that we have experienced "going beyond" without going anywhere.
A personal application of this experience is that we should live our lives with a present and clear understanding that nothing lasts forever. When we treat everything as a part of ourselves and that this self is transient, we can live without undue investment it keeping static what is actually dynamic. This, the claim is, reduces suffering.
Now, a broader implication is that even God is "empty". God is not of a permanent, unchanging nature; God is dynamic, ever-changing, and actually an expression of the entire universe, expressed both as a whole and as a part. In Zen we call this Buddha Nature (Big Mind/Small Mind as an interdependent unity).
We experience this in the practice of zazen. Sitting in stillness, focusing on being quiet and present, form drops away, emptiness drops away, only awareness in dynamic process remains.
When we live this way, we become models, bodhisattvas that teach through example, and as a result bring the Buddha Dharma into the world.
Be well.
