Won Buddhism of Manhattan

By Won Jee Ho-Luca Valentino

The Heart Sutra is a distillation of the Mahayana understanding of a core experiential realization of the Buddha – that all beings, things, and ideas (all dharmas), which we experience as being ‘real’, have no inherent ‘existence’ and that this ‘reality’ is nothing other than our own deluded construction.

The Buddha realized that the ‘realities’ of all sentient beings develop from the stimulation of the process of sensation, perception, etc. (the five skandhas) by way of the realms of color, sound, smell, etc. / eye, ear, nose, etc. / realm of sight, etc...

Once perceived, these categorized understandings are then melded into a single cohesive experience – our karmic ‘realities’ – full of likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, memories and plans, etc., imbued with and experienced as an inherently existing identity – a ‘self’. Our attaching to and holding on to them as being Real is the source of our suffering; however, as the Buddha realized and the Heart Sutra implies, the nature and characteristics of these ‘realities’ are our own self-creations, existing only in our minds. This ‘reality’, our ‘Realities’ are empty of inherent existence.

Yet, we do believe that everything, ourselves and everything else, is inherently real. Not only do we experience ourselves as being real, but also we experience all beings, things, and ideas as being real and take for granted that our experiences do have identifiable real effects on these ‘real’ selves. This reality, we believe, IS reality.

With the veracity our ‘reality’, confirmed by our experiences as seen through the ‘self’, we evaluate everything we experience according to how we think each experience might affect the well-being of that personal ‘self’. Experiences that we feel might be good for it are desired. Experiences that we feel might be detrimental to it are feared. Experiences we feel will neither benefit nor harm it are simply neutral. So, while acting to protect the ‘self’ from harm and loss, we struggle to enhance its stature and status in a world that, without our vigilance, threatens to diminish it. To us, the drama of our own theater production is not made-up.

Nevertheless, as the Buddha realized and stated on numerous occasions, living from within the base-consciousness ‘reality’ of an inherently existing, permanent separate ‘self’ is itself the source of all suffering. He explained that, in addition to creating personal ‘self’ identities, we create and attach ‘self’-identities to our experiences and, as a result, are dragged along by the vicissitudes of those ‘realities’.

As examples, he cited that we suffer within the ‘reality’ of things as being wonderful yet might be lost, the ‘reality’ of things we want but don’t have, that we don’t want yet do have, that we have lost and want back, etc., etc. Moment by moment, through identifying, we sell ourselves to the ‘reality’ with the greatest appeal, creating and recreating the basis of our own suffering.

Repeatedly, we go from ‘birth’ through self-identification with an interest, a want, a craving, a concern, an aversion, a fear, to angst within that experience, to decay of the intensity of self-identification with, and increasing aversion to that experience, and finally to its death and the death of the ‘self’ that has identified with that experience. It is the need to protect and enhance the ‘self’ at the core of these identities that leads us sentient beings to ‘rebirth’ after ‘rebirth’ within the delusions of our own lifetimes.

With each rebirth, arising from the consequences of our actions within previous cycles of craving and aversion, we are endlessly driven from suffering, through suffering, to suffering. Again and again while quite alive, we cycle in karmic ‘rebirths’ throughout the six realms of rebirth, our actions creating the grounds of future karmic rebirths in Samsara – the experiential world originating in the delusion of an inherently existing and permanent ‘self’. It is from this suffering that bodhisattvas vow to save all sentient beings.

In the Heart Sutra, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara, (who is depicted in India as male and in east Asia as female) while meditating deep within prajnaparamita (the wisdom that is beyond form, sensation, perception, etc.) and, in complete and perfect empathy with all existence, realizes, as the Buddha had, that the root of the suffering of all sentient beings is the delusion of a really existing separated world of ‘self’ and ‘others’. In realizing this, Avalokitesvara, at the base of his/her consciousness, beyond the realms of forms, ideas, and desires – the false and deluded realms of the experiential paradigm of a ‘real self’ – is perfectly and totally released from all suffering and distress.

Here Avalokitesvara turns to Shariputra and explains his/her realization – that even though ‘things’ engage with each other and we do experience ‘things’, nothing of itself possesses inherent ‘thing’-ness. Things – forms – are empty of inherent thing-ness; yet, simultaneously ‘exist’ in engaging all existence. Sensations, he/she says, likewise are empty of inherent thing-ness or self-existence. Neither do perceptions, volitions, or even consciousness inherently exist. Nothing has inherent existence. Without not existing, all things are without inherent existence; i.e., they are while simultaneously being empty.

Nothing, he/she continues, comes to be as an inherently existing entity and nothing ceases, nothing is inherently pure or defiled, nothing’s complete or incomplete, and nothing grows and nothing decays. Even though all existence seamlessly interacts with all existence – as expressed in the image of the ‘net of Indra’ – thereby manifesting all existence, existence itself has no inherent existence. It never is, was, or becomes a ‘thing’.

This not-becoming is not limited to sensory perceptions. Everything – all beings, things, and ideas – are empty of inherent existence, of inherent reality. To drive home this point, Avalokitesvara briefly states the central ideas of the Buddha’s two main teachings, the Twelve Stages of Dependent Origination and the Four Noble Truths, and says that they too are without inherent existence or reality. Nothing, not even the Buddha or his teachings or Nirvana, has inherent existence.

For those diligently chanting the Heart Sutra and earnestly thinking that studying Buddhism is a means of gaining the wisdom that enables one to attain Nirvana and to be released from all suffering and distress, Avalokitesvara even takes that away. He/She states that there is no inherently existing wisdom that ends suffering, that there is no Nirvana that ends suffering, and that there is nothing, not even Nirvana, to attain.

With the realization at the base of consciousness that the ‘self’ does not inherently exist and neither does the ‘other’ possess inherent existence, the bodhisattvas experientially realize that there is no separateness within and throughout all existence. They find that they and all existence are one; that nothing in existence is separate from anything; that all existence engages and, in that engaging, manifests; and nothing in existence hinders anything. Since nothing whatsoever is separate, the totality of existence expresses itself seamlessly in existence as existence in totality unhindered.

The bodhisattvas experience participating in this awareness of prajnaparamita, intimately inter-‘existing’ with and as all existence, fearlessly and compassionately, without separation, without hindrances, without suffering… In this awareness, bodhisattvas ‘transform’ Samsara and realize Nirvana – the end of separation and the end of suffering.

The Sutra further states that all of the buddhas – past, present, and future – gestate in prajnaparamita, the womb of buddhas, and are born in anuttara samyak sambodhi (unsurpassed perfect enlightenment) – the awareness without ‘self’-awareness of the complete non-separateness of existence, the complete ‘interpenetratedness’ of all existence, the complete expressive and compassionate nonduality of all existence.

The Heart Sutra ends celebratorily, saying that the prajnaparamita mantra is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra, the mantra without comparison, which relieves all suffering and distress; and, because it is not false and can be tested and experienced by each and every sentient being, is true and wondrous.

So, in prajnaparamita, the wisdom beyond wisdom, proclaim the mantra that says:

Gone! Gone! Gone beyond! Gone completely beyond! Now awakened!

Gate! Gate! Paragate! Parasamgate! Bodhi! Svaha!

August, 2006