The True History of the Heart Sutra and its links to MN121 / MA190

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If the factors leading to enlightenment, and the person who is seeking enlightenment, are essentially empty, then enlightenment is also “empty.” Yet, paradoxically, when we understand that enlightenment itself is empty, we become capable of attaining it in a real sense.

The prajnaparamita literature is deliberately paradoxical in its expression: it uses the same word in different senses, as here, where “empty” means both “really empty” and “understood to be empty.”

Personally, I find Mahayana thinking in general, and Zen thinking in particular, a bit like caviar. A little makes for exciting variation, but I wouldn’t like to have to live on it for any extended time. Honest, pragmatic, straightforward Theravada teaching is more to my taste, but Buddhist civilization is wide and deep, and one should at least try to understand all of it.

I don’t know anything about the general status of mantras in Buddhism, though it’s a very interesting question…

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Does mahasanghika prescribe mantra too to be used as the means to attain enlightenment @moderators ?

I wonder why Buddha didn’t prescribe any mantra in Pali canon

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You cannot understand the Heart Sutra on its own, since its just a kind of prayer or recitation that is supposed to encapsulate the meaning of the larger PP texts.

As someone who has spent some time studying the Prajnaparamita literature, I would highly recommend actually engaging with the texts if one wants to understand what they mean. I think this is true for anything, if you want to understand the EBTs, its good to read secondary literature of course, but primarily you want to really read the primary sources closely as well and see if they actually say what the interpreters say it says.

With that in mind, I highly recommend the translations of Matt Osborn (aka Shi Huifeng). He is probably the main authority on PP texts at the moment writing in English (when it comes to the Chinese materials anyways) and he has translated the first two chapters of the Kumarajiva version of the 8000 line PP sutra (and also the Avadana at the end of the sutra).

There is also a recent and carefully done translation of the 10000 line PP sutra from the Tibetan Canon at 84000.co. This is way better than the Conze translation of the Large Sutra (which is quite a mess I hear). This new translation is also quite shorter but covers the same material as the 25000 line PP sutra.

Both of these translations also have decent introductions and overviews of the sutra contents.

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These are valuable resources . I am grateful to you for bringing them to my attention. And you are quite right, the more of the context one knows, the deeper one’s understanding of any particular text.

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@Javier @Jake, is there a Sanskrit version of heart sutra ? What has sutra Sanskrit version ?

I am interested in sutras that has Sanskrit version because I think they are much earlier than the Chinese only sutras since Buddha spoke an Indo European language and Chinese is not an indo European language I think that Buddha spoke either Pali or Sanskrit or gandhari language

May you both be happy :smiling_face_with_three_hearts::smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
May you both be free from suffering
May you both don’t lose what you gain
May you both stay equanimious at pleasure or pain

Thanks

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It does exist in Sanskrit, but that Sanskrit was apparently translated from Chinese. Personally, I think the Chinese was itself translated from Gandhari.

Sanskrit was a later language in Indian Buddhism. Up until around 600 AD, Buddhists used vernacular languages (Prakrits like Gandhari and Pali, Central Asian languages, etc.). They translated texts from one language to another for centuries before deciding to translate everything to Sanskrit in north India. In south India, they settled on Pali as the primary language. This is how we ended up with Sanskrit and Pali as the two primary Buddhist languages from India. The traditions tended to forget this history and assumed that their Sanskrit and Pali texts were the originals from ancient times.

The oldest Buddhist texts that exist are in Gandhari, discovered in the deserts of Afghanistan. We can presume some of the Pali canon is as old as those archeological finds, but we don’t know exactly which parts of it are that old, or whether it was originally in Pali or translated to Pali. The Gandhari finds date back to 100 BC to 200 AD.

The next oldest texts that still exist are Chinese translations from Gandhari that were made between 150 AD and about 500 AD. Most of the Pali canon probably dates to this period, too (IMHO).

The next oldest texts that still exist are Chinese and Tibetan translations from Sanskrit that began in 600 AD and continued until Buddhism disappeared from India and Central Asia. We could also add all the Sanskrit texts that have been discovered that date back to that era, but many are not as old as the translations. Some late texts in the Pali canon appear to descend from this period, being very close in language or literary devices as this period of Sanskrit.

So, overall, Chinese translations are (IMHO) the window to the earliest period of Buddhist texts that we have today because the original Gandhari is almost completely lost, but that window gives us a view only of the northern tradition. The Pali canon would be a parallel early window to the southern tradition of Buddhism.

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One of the disputed opinions reported in the Kathāvatthu is that insight may be aroused simply by repeating, “Dukkha, dukkha, dukkha…”

Buddhaghosa’s commentary to this text attributes this view to the Pubbaseliyas (Skt. Purvaśailas or Aparaśailas), who appear to have been one of the smaller Mahāsanghika schools.

The Kv debate, as we have it, is uncharacteristically short and one-sided, with no record of how the Pubbaseliyas arrived at or defended their view:

Of Inducing Insight by Saying “Sorrow!”

Controverted Point: That induction of insight by the word “sorrow!” is a factor of and included in the Path.

Theravādin: Then you must also affirm that all who utter that word are practising the Path, which is absurd.

Or if you do affirm this, notwithstanding, then you must also affirm that the average foolish person, in uttering that word, is practising the Path, and, again, that matricides, parricides, murderers of Arahants, those that shed blood of Buddhas, those that cause schism in the Order, in uttering the word “sorrow!” are practising the Path, which is absurd.

https://suttacentral.net/kv2.6/en/aung-rhysdavids

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Some comment.

  1. Prajnaparamita sutras, and also the Madhyamaka treatises that explain them, is a reaction/ critique to Abhidharma.
    In my opinion, it is not that the Abhidharma is wrong, but their assertion that these “dharmas” have their own svabhava can result in wrong view. That there is a “self” or something that can be identified as a “self”
    svabhava = own being, self nature, intrinsic nature, self existence, etc.

Prajnaparamita sutras will shock the readers by saying, all those dharmas/ phenomena are empty, not exist etc. This is to counter eternalist tendency that arise in people who study the Abhidharma.

We can read the early part of longer prajnaparamita sutras, they are full of terms and concept that only known by people who study Abhidharma. So the target audience is clear.

When we study Abhidharma, our mind can be trapped in classification, categories, concept, and we can grasp at theories, rather than practice them. The teaching become new object of attachment. Here, Heart Sutra try to tell us not to be attached even to the Teaching. The difference between Heart Sutra and the longer Prajnaparamita sutra, is that the latter give longer list. Someone explain it well why the list is becoming longer and longer…

The Heart Sutra and the other Prajnaparamita Sutras talk about a lot of things, but their most fundamental theme is the basic groundlessness of our experience. They say that no matter what we do, no matter what we say, and no matter what we feel, we need not believe any of it. There is nothing whatsoever to hold on to, and even that is not sure. So these sutras pull the rug out from under us all the time and take away all our favorite toys. Usually when someone takes away one of our mental toys we just find new toys. That is one of the reasons why many of the Prajnaparamita Sutras are so long—they list all the toys we can think of and even more, but our mind still keeps grasping at new ones. The basic point is to get to a place where we actually stop searching for and grasping at the next toy. Then we need to see how that state of mind feels. How does our mind feel when we are not grasping at anything, when we are not trying to entertain ourselves, and when our mind is not going outside (or not going anywhere at all), when there is no place left to go?
The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever | Lion’s Roar

  1. You can trace the teaching back to Buddha himself. In longer Prajnaparamita sutra, (I check the 10.000 lines and 25.000 lines version), there is a saying at the beginning:

prajñāpāramitā prajñāpāramitety ucyate yad idaṃ sarvadharmānabhiniveśaḥ.
= that which is called the transcendent perfection of wisdom is the absence of fixation with respect to all things
translation by : The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Ten Thousand Lines / 84000 Reading Room (paragraph 1.10)

This is just a rephrasing of a famous sentence:

“sabbe dhammā nālaṁ abhinivesāyā.”
Nothing is worth insisting on
MN 37 SuttaCentral

The term abhinivesa is one interesting term. Bhikkhu Sujato explained it once in

Minute 38:50

So even in early sutta, Buddha teach “do not grasp at any phenomena, all phenomena (sabbe dhamma) is not worth insisting”
Prajnaparamita sutra is only expanding the list of what is considered “all phenomena”.

  1. Another interesting phrase that is repeated again and again in long prajnaparamita sutra, is the 3 gateway to liberation. They are emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness/undirectedness (sunyata, animitta, apanihita/ apranihita)
    And they dont explain what these means, because everybody already know what that means, they are repeated often in the early sutta.

Especially in MN 121 there is nice explanation on how to go from emptiness immersion to signless immersion. SuttaCentral

This link to MN 121 is already mentioned in original essay above, so I think there is strong evidence that Prajnaparamita sutra is a rephrasing and expansion of existing older teaching, aimed at Abhidharma students.

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That is a fascinating insight, and one that provides an essential key to the prajnaparamita.

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I think this is a really good point. The philosophical issues around the svabhāva doctrine are subtle, and open to misinterpretation, but that doesn’t mean the whole abhidharma is misguided. Indeed, even the later Mahayana schools studied the abhidharma as a basic curriculum. It’s more about being aware of the potential pitfalls in different approaches.

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It is not a new idea, Mn18 Madhupiṇḍikasutta already has similar exposition of emptiness. No eye, no sight, no consciousness etc.

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