Why Could Heart Sutra Change One’s Life?
The essence of Buddhism in the shortest form, leads to the ultimate enlightenment.
The Heart Sutra (Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya or Chinese 心经 Xīnjīng), is one of the best known texts of Mahayana Buddhism. It is a pure distillation of wisdom, also the shortest Sutra. An English translation can easily be printed on one side of a piece of paper.
The Heart Sutra is also the most frequently used and recited text in the entire Mahayana Buddhist tradition, which flourishes in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Bhutan, China, parts of India and Nepal.
The earliest extant dated text of the Heart Sutra is a stone stele dated to 661 CE. It was engraved three years before the death of Tripitaka Master Xuanzang by a monk located in Yueyang County located very nearby Daci’en Monastery where Xuanzang was doing his translation work at the time. According to the history, Xuanzang learned the sutra from an inhabitant of Sichuan, and subsequently chanted it during times of danger on his legendary journey to India.
Xuanzang (Chinese: 玄奘; pinyin: xuánzàng; Wade–Giles: Hsüan-tsang; Mandarin: [ɕɥɛ̌ntsâŋ]; fl. c. 602–664) was a Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator who travelled to India in the sixth century and described the interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism during the early Tang dynasty.
Although it is a very short text, the Heart Sutra could be highly sophisticated to those who read it for the first time. If you like the word “no,” you might like the Sutra because that is the MAIN WORD it uses – no this, no that, no everything. But that is actually where the wisdom is generated.
The Heart Sutra dramatically cut through and demolish all our usual conceptual frameworks of mind, and all our existing beliefs. The deconstruction of minds come from the most fundamental level, not just in terms of thinking and concepts, but also in terms of our perception – how we see the world, how we hear, how we smell, taste, touch, how we regard and emotionally react to ourselves and others, and so on.
Amazingly, with its iconoclastic teaching, the Heart Sutra could fundamentally change the way how people think and perceive the world. By learning the Heart Sutra, men and women suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks, are able to find opportunities to reinterpret what they have experienced in life, especially those caused negative impacts. To change how we perceive this world, is the first step towards the ultimate enlightment.
The essence of the Sutra is built on “Emptiness” (空 Kōng in Chinese), which leads to the central teaching of Buddhism. It could take years to develop a deep understanding of “Emptiness” by learning the Heart Sutra, but one would naturally open up his or her mind in this wonderful journey, and experience a fundamental change in the spiritual path.
The Heart Sutra
Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, was deep through the Perfection of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aggregates of human existence are empty, and so released himself from suffering.
“Sariputra! Form is nothing more than emptiness, emptiness is nothing more than Form. Form is exactly emptiness, and emptiness is exactly Form. The other four aggregates of human existence — feeling, thought, will, and consciousness — are also nothing more than emptiness.”
“Sariputra! All things are empty: Nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is pure, nothing is stained, nothing increases and nothing decreases. So, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no thought, no will, no consciousness. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no imagining. No plane of sight, no plane of thought. There is no ignorance, and no end to ignorance. There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to suffering. There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain.”
The Bodhisattvas rely on the Perfection of Wisdom, their hearts without delusions; they have no reason for delusion, no fear within, abandoning their confused thoughts, finally experiencing Nirvana.
The Buddhas, past, present, and future, rely on the Perfection of Wisdom, and live in full enlightenment. The Perfection of Wisdom is the greatest mantra. It is the wisest mantra, the highest mantra, the mantra of the rest. Remove all suffering. This is truth that cannot be falsity. The reason of the Perfection of Wisdom Mantra, The Mantra is thus: Gaté, gaté, paragaté, parasamgaté. Bodhi! Svaha!
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