Two Final Commentaries, Heart Sutra December 7, 2008
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Avalokiteshvara, dualistic ideas, fear, gate gate, Heart Sutra, illusion, interbeing, mantra, mindful eating, mindful hugging, mindfulness, peace, Prajnaparamita, skandhas
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This week we read the final two of Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra in The Heart of Understanding. Summaries follow:
Freedom
The obstacles which are our dualistic ideas and concepts about birth and death, increasing and decreasing, inside and outside, Buddha and Mara, are no longer obstacles when we see them with the eyes of interbeing. Seeing this way, we are free of illusion and fear.
Svaha!
When you dwell in deep concentration of body, mind, and breath, you can look into and see things clearly. Avalokiteshvara looked deeply into the five skandhas, saw the nature of interbeing, and overcame all pain. During his state of joyful liberation, he provided us with a mantra. A mantra is a statement which, when uttered with one’s whole being, has the power to transform the world.
Avalokiteshvara’s mantra is, “Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.” One translation of this is “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha! “ Gate means gone, from suffering and forgetfulness to liberation and mindfulness; paragate means gone to the other shore; sam means everyone. Bodhi means light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. Svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like “Welcome!” or “Hallelujah!” Study of the Heart Sutra with all body, heart and mind, accompanied by recitation of the mantra with all your being, will bring you real communication with Avalokiteshvara and will help to transform you in the direction of enlightenment. It is not just a chant or object of worship; it is a gift of Avalokita, a tool for liberation of all beings. This gift of non-fear is the heart of the Prajnaparamita.
The Prajnaparamita provides ground for making peace with ourselves. Peace and happiness in yourself help you begin to realize peace in the whole world. If you cannot give yourself peace, how can you share it with the world? When we do something as simple as eating a tangerine in genuine mindfulness, we work for peace. We do not struggle for enlightenment five or ten years from now. Each moment becomes real life. We eat a tangerine for eating a tangerine. We sit for sitting. We walk for walking, alive for each step in real life. This kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast or hold a child or look at another person. When we hug a relative, a spouse, or a friend, we should add conscious breathing to it. Three conscious breaths during a hug will multiply your happiness ten-fold. When eating, we can be happy to have such wonderful food, but we should also be mindful that many people, especially children, are suffering for lack of food. Seeing this way makes us sane, because it shows us that we can make peace with ourselves and the world.
“Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize…is a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world.”
The Way of Understanding November 2, 2008
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Avalokiteshvara, Heart Sutra, love, penetration, skandhas, understanding
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This week we read “The Way of Understanding” from The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra by Thich Nhat Hanh. Here’s a summary of this commentary:
When we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter into it deeply, be one with it, penetrate it. To understand a sheet of paper, we have to be the cloud, be the sunshine, be the logger, be everything that is in it. To understand a person, we have to feel their feelings, suffer their suffering, enjoy their joy. To understand a citizen of a country with which our country has a conflict, we have to be one with that person’s feelings, perceptions, mental formations. The Buddha recommended that we observe in a penetrating way; we have to enter in, participate, to be one with what we want to observe and understand. Love between people is impossible without this kind of understanding.
Avalokita saw deeply into the rivers of the five skandhas, discovered their empty nature, and suddenly overcame all pain. To arrive at that kind of emancipation, we too must penetrate deeply.
Empty of What? October 26, 2008
Posted by Alan in sangha.Tags: Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva, emptiness, Heart Sutra, interbeing, skandhas
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This week we continued our study of the Heart Sutra by way of The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra by Thich Nhat Hanh. This week’s reading was the second commentary, “Empty of What?”
The Heart Sutra is a gift to us from the bodhisattva Avalokita (Avalokiteshvara, also known as Kwan Yin, Quan Am or Kannon). Knowledge can be an obstacle to understanding. As we acquire knowledge or views, we have to be able to transcend them, one step at a time, in order to reach understanding. According to the concept of interbeing a sheet of paper contains everything, but according to Avalokita it is empty, and the five skandhas are empty. Empty of what? “Empty” doesn’t mean anything unless you know “empty of what.”
The five skandhas are like five rivers, all flowing together into one river in us: the river of form (our body), the river of feelings, the river of perceptions, the river of mental formations, and the river of consciousness. When Avalokita says they are empty, he means empty of a separate self alone. Each is made of the other four. They must co-exist, must inter-be. The components of our bodies – lungs, heart, kidneys, stomach, blood – cannot exist alone, rely on the existence of each other. A sheet of paper is empty of an independent self; it is all the things that make it up: sunshine, clouds, trees, logger. Empty of a separate self means full of everything. Form is empty of a separate self, but “full of everything in the cosmos,” as are feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
