Talk Notes:
Meeting the Heart Sutra 4: Form is Emptiness
Good evening. I noticed in my calendar that today is Yuzan Nancy Welch's death day. She was an important early member - a great spirit and brave bodhisattva. She used to listen so intensely to Norman's talks - just glued to every word - and she didn't always have a lot of impulse control and would sometimes interrupt him and ask questions right in the middle of his flow. He was always very gracious with that. Sometimes I'd be annoyed to be honest but as the years go by I just feel nothing but love for Nancy and her passion for the Dharma. I miss her and I'd like to ded
"Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita, perceived that all five skandhas are empty and was saved from all suffering and distress."
At our last Heart Sutra exploration we explored the early Buddhist teaching of the five skandhas. As you might recall the Buddha suggested that a way to unhook from our attachment to our usual idea of "me" was to take a look at every moment of experience - look at the data in other words - and see if all of those experience moment can be explained with five categories - five heaps or aggregates. And if they can then it's logical that the self doesn't exist in the way we think it does. This all sounds a bit abstract but it's an experiential process of letting go of this rigid protected self we're burdened with as conditioned beings.
So have you been able to explore this a bit? Form, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.
Seeing form - the stuff-experience of your body - as just form.
Sensations - The way the mind flickers back and forth evaluating what's pleasant and unpleasant - that hard to translate but very important second skandha of feeling-tone, vedāna, which we have here translated sensations.
Perceptions - To notice that we're constantly perceiving and evaluating based on pretty limited data.
Formations - That the thoughts come and go - that we think of as my thoughts and my ideas - the great plans that propel us forward and the aversions and confusions that hold us back. But are they really "me"? Can we see them as just thoughts and impulses floating through the mind.
And consciousness. That all of this is happening in some kind of consciousness-space that's just a the space where we perceive it to be happening but also not so clearly a separate "me" either. Can we see it as mental space?
This is a really worthy exploring for the rest of our lives. It's a kind of radical depersonalizing and letting go process which is pretty much what we're up to in the Dharma.
Well, here the Heart Sutra - through Avalokitesvara here - says that the power of the true Dharma is even better than the early Buddhist teachings suggested. Not only is re-imagining our sense of self as five heaps of stuff radically freeing we can go even further: that those five heaps themselves are empty. Are free. And this realization leads straight to complete liberation from suffering it says.
So next we need to explore more that this means for something to be empty. Last time I brought up the idea that, without realizing it, we narrow down our selves and our lives to the things we can conceive of - that our concepts and thoughts become the building blocks of reality and we use them to construct our self too - that the study of emptiness is intended to open us up to the inconceivable nature of us and all of this. The beyond of it all.
So the term "empty" should always bring up the question, "empty of what?" The what is solidity, separateness, permanence, a kind of "realness" that's rigid and well... real in the way we think about "real." So if all things are empty of all that what are they? Here sadly we only have more words and concepts to try to describe the true reality that's beyond words and concepts, but maybe something like free, fluid, interpenetrating, interconnected, wide open, or boundless.
It's an odd way of talking, this "emptiness" talk, and a lot of modern students of Buddhism really actually just don't like this word "emptiness." Which is fair enough. But maybe because of how deeply we default to believing in the non-empty separate distinct categories of ourselves and everything around us, we actually need something a bit jarring and confuzzling to help shake us loose! I often think about these kinds of teachings as a kind of yoga of the mind. They stretch and challenge our minds to become more flexible and open in a radical way. Our minds get pretty fixed and rigid, right? So here are teachings to limber us up.
This next part is the most famous part of the Heart Sutra and is a distillation down of a much longer set of teachings in the Large Sutra on Prajna Paramita in 25,000 lines. Our Heart Sutra has 25 lines when it's looked at in Sanskrit verse so that's an intense distillation.
"Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this."
So form here is that first Skandha. Everything physical and tangible, including the senses, and remember the meditation we did on the four great elements - form is "stuff" in all of it's manifestations and experiences.
Instead of saying "Form is empty" it says "form does not differ from emptiness".
This seems to be pointing to a rich two-way relationship between form and emptiness. It's not just that form is empty of separate, inherent existence, it's that when there's form that can be perceived we know there is emptiness here. That emptiness isn't just a kind of "dead" quality of form, it's what allows form to manifest. And the other way too: we'd have no experience of emptiness it it didn't show up as the true nature of form.
The next two lines just underscore this: Emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form."
The "is" there is a bit provocative and seems to make something solid where there is not real solidity but let's leave that for another day.
The whole point here is that things aren't "real" in the way we think they are, but there are manifestations. There are experiences we can name. But when we see them as solid and real and somehow satisfactory and complete we'll suffer. These teachings are saying that is the inevitable result of misunderstanding the nature of things - thinking them to be not empty, thinking ourselves to be not empty - to be separate and lasting in a certain way. That's why the huge statement shows up early that in understanding the emptiness of all, Avalokitesvara was saved from all suffering and distress. That's why all of this matters. That it's not just a complex and interesting bit of philosophy that it's a path to liberation.
There's a wonderful chapter in the little book on the Heart Sutra by Thich Nhat Hanh I'm recommending, The Heart of Understanding which he entitles "Long Live Emptiness" - that these teachings should inspire celebration not just head scratching.
Because things are not fixed there can be change. If a seed wasn't empty of a permanent kind of seed-nature it could never transform in the many ways it does to become a sprout, a plant, eventually even a 100' tall tree. Did that tree exactly "come from" the seed? These teachings say well you can't see a seed isn't necessary but it's not the whole story. Maybe you remember way pack to when we were unpacking the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo about "in" and "en"?
How in that teaching the root cause of all existence - "in" - is compassion as embodied by Kannon - by Avalokitesvara (she keeps showing up!) - but that for anything to manifest there needs to be some affinity - supporting or proximal causes which are pointed to by the character "en". They sound similar to our ears but maybe that's good as they are so interconnected.
With our tree the seed is "in" - the root cause - no seed, no tree. But the "en" the proximate causes and affinities are equally essential. No sun, no tree. No water, no tree. No undisturbed habitat, no tree. It's just a trick of our mind to think the seed is the only thing that really matters even though we know better.
And that everything's like that. We know this intellectually. And the journey here is to know it in our hearts, in our bones, and to really understand that we are no different.
One thing that helps is to shift perspective from the thing - whether it's a tree or an idea or a personality - to shift perspective to the space all around it. And even to imagine the space within it. If you're a science geek you could even take that inner spaciousness down to the atomic level where every atom in every physical thing is almost entirely space. The little nucleus in the middle and the electrons bouncing around are tiny. In hydrogen, the simplest atom, there is 99.9999999999996% space. That was 99 point 12 9's and a 6 percept space.
But let's see if we can perceive that in the realm of form - the spaciousness. Look around the room here for a bit. See if you can soften the mind's tendency to lock into the objects - oh that's the lectern, that's the altar cabinet, that's a piece of trim, that's a light. And see the space instead. Try really softening your gauze and look around. Dropping into the inner stance of meditation is a help.
[pause]
Mostly this room is space right? And if we add the truth that even the solid looking objects are almost entirely made of space - 99 point 12 9's and a 6 percept space - really there's not much here but space.
Emptiness is not the same thing as space but they interconnect deeply. Or you could say understanding spaciousness supports understanding emptiness.
Seeing the space helps us feel the empty nature of all that is. It's more possible for our minds, as bound by concepts as they can be, to see how it's the space that makes it possible for there to be things. If there was no space in here none of this stuff could be here and we couldn't be here.
This funny phrase, form is emptiness, emptiness is form reminds us that even at this deep level everything interconnects, co-arises. That everything has this quality of inter-being. Even emptiness itself is empty of any inherent anything. There's not a "thing" that's emptiness. Emptiness is a pointer - a finger pointing to the moon, a reminder that none of this really fits into our ideas and concepts and none of it is fixed or steady - it's all a flux of co-arising that we are a part of in our constantly changing body-mind-hearts.
But let's put our attention back to the whole passage in the heart sutra.
"Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this."
See the five skandhas there? So this section is an abbreviation. What it means is that the other four skandhas relate to emptiness in the same way: "Sensations do not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from sensations. Form itself is sensations, emptiness itself is sensations." In early Buddhism they tended to write out all of the permutations but here we're spared that which is nice for chanting but we have to mentally re-expand it to understand what they're saying.
According to Donald Lopez, the scholar who put together this interesting deep dive book The Heart Sūtra Explained the early Indian pundits felt like the Heart Sutra emphasized Form first because of how tangible it is. He wrote:
* the heart sūtra explained* p 57
According to Praśāstrasena, form is mentioned first because it is the most easily recognized of the five aggregates and because, as the only physical aggregate, it provides the material support for the other four. Form is like a vessle; the other four aggregates are like the water contained in that vessel. When the vessel is destroyed, the water is easily dispersed...when it is understood that form is empty, it is easy to understand that the other four aggreagates are also empty.
So let's do another exercise. Let's look at mental formations and see if we can see how the concepts we apply can limit us. This is called Peeling off the Label--noticing an uncomfortable sensation in the body, say, and seeing if we can release our words and ideas around it. Can we pee off the label? For example we might be labeling sensations painful, uncomfortable, tension, axious etc. Can we drop that and feel the sensations more directly?
Here's a poem by Jeff Foster inspire us first:
What would happen
if we removed the word ‘anxious’
and just paid attention
to these flickering sensations in the belly?
What would happen
if we took away the concept ‘lonely’
and simply became fascinated
with this heavy feeling in the heart area?
What would happen
if we deleted the labels ‘sick’
or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’
and just got curious about
the tightness in the throat
the pressure in the head
the ache in the shoulders?
What would happen
if we stopped looking for solutions
and checked to see
if there was actually a problem here?
Let’s come out of the exhausting storyline.
It’s not true. It was never true.
Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment.
Come closer to yourself, Now.
Bring warmth to the tender places.
Infuse sensation with the light of attention.
It’s never as bad
as we think.
And always,
always more alive.
Okay, let's take a little stretch first and then drop into a reflective meditation.
[bringing the mind to something difficult, noticing that impulse to describe, label, categorize and see if we can set it aside and feel pulsing, temperature, tightness/softness, etc. - these are words for areas of experience can we get even more curious and just open to the is-ness of the experience?]
The idea here being that when you label something you are fixing it in place and stop really experiencing it as it is. If we just say "anxious" to understand complex set of sensations tied into deep psychological stuff and history and feelings we are blocking our own awareness. To go even further we can say that anxiety is empty of the concept of anxiety - there's an experience there made up of many many many components in a rich soup of being. Everything totally inter-penetrated and each component coming and going according to conditions. Anxiety might be a useful shorthand but does it fix us as an anxious person?
And don't worry if you think you aren't "getting it" with this stuff. The goal here, always is understanding suffering and freedom from suffering. For some of us these deep dives into the sutras will be quite helpful. For others maybe it's actually the experience of chanting the heart sutra itself that's helpful. For others zazen itself is helpful and exploring sutras seems less so. For others the joyful and sometimes challenging interactions we have with other people here at the temple and everywhere else in your life shows you the truth of freedom. But the thing is we received all of this as a complex package from our ancestors. So it's good I think to engage with every part. And you never know when the penny's going to drop or the seed that we've planted with one or the other aspect of this way will germinate. It all takes time.
So next week we'll look at the ways even the qualities of all experiences are empty. The part about "all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease."
Any thoughts of questions before we go?
