I'm thinking again about the "philosophy" of the Heart Sutra this morning. It seems to me that we can only stick to the middle way, the avoidance of the extremes of existence (attitā) and non-existence (n'atthitā) when we deal with the world of experience.
It is entirely straightforward to assert that when I do not pay attention to some aspect of my sensorium I do not experience it. When the neighbours' builder starts drilling a hole in a brick outside my window, the apprehension of that sound very often drives the words out of my head and I lose my train of thought. Unless I pay attention to it, I don't notice the chair that I'm sitting on. The experience of nonapprehension occurs every time we become distracted. Things pop into experience and out of it.
However, not experiencing something is not the same as its not existing. We must carefully distinguish between experience and reality. If I close my eyes, the world does not blink out of existence. I just did it, and I doubt any of you noticed anything different. When I close my eyes and electrical impulses along my optic nerve stop arriving in the visual centre of my brain, then I stop having a vivid visual experience, and it just limits to mostly dark, but with static from my brain.
And this doesn't tell me anything about the nature of reality. Of course, minds are part of reality and insight into the nature of experience is, ipso facto, insight into the nature of reality. But only in a very narrow sense.
The meditation practices that characterise the Heart Sutra are those where we deliberately withdraw attention from our sensorium. Done progressively, we can, with relative ease, reach a state with no sensory experience (except maybe some brain static).
And in that state of emptiness, there is no experience, or in Buddhist jargon terms, no form, no feeling, no recognition, no volution, and no dualistic cognition (śūnyatāyāṃ na rūpaṃ na vedanā na saṃjñā na saṃskārāḥ na vijñānam = 是故，空中無色，無受想行識).
It is emphatically not the case that the Heart Sutra is denying the existence of form. Instead it is pointing to difficulties of defining what an experience is, and especially what the absence of experience (emptiness) is like.
Of course, other approaches to practice involve focussing on objects (mindfulness of breathing) or the cultivation of qualities (such as the dhyāna factors) and these also work. And the Prajñāpāramitā tradition upheld such practices. However, they specialised in anupalambhayogena, the practice of non-apprehension, i.e., of withdrawing attention.
The Heart Sutra has been badly misunderstood, partly because Conze made a number of mistakes in his Sanskrit edition and because his English translations are nonsensical. Conze was influenced, as many others were, by D T Suzuki, who was as much a Theosophist as he was a Buddhist: hence his obsession with "The Absolute". Obscurities emerge also because, when the first Sanskrit translation from the original Chinese was made in the 7th Century, the translator misconstrued the text and made some mistakes (not counting horribly unidiomatic Sanskrit). And this Sanskrit abomination became the standard for interpreting the Chinese text. Also, the most prominent (and oldest surviving) Sanskrit manuscript is full of scribal errors and editorial corruptions which influenced ideas about Prajñāpāramitā in Japan, where it is kept. Finally, the Heart Sutra was decontextualised and lost the connection to the practical Prajñāpāramitā tradition and was interpreted instead first through the Yogācāra and later the Madhyamaka Schools of thought. This led to gross distortions of the message of the text away from being experience-centred towards metaphysical speculation.
None of this is helped by the most prominent recent translations from Sanskrit being made by people who do not read Sanskrit beyond looking up words in dictionaries. They do not notice Conze's simply grammatical errors. Despite meeting passages that literally do not make sense in Conze's edition, they shoehorn them into some kind of sense that is unrelated to the text.
No wonder the Heart Sutra seems mysterious! But, really, it isn't so mysterious. It extends a kind of experience that we all have. When our attention wanders, the thing we were focussed on disappears. Harnessing this by deliberately withdrawing attention leads to some profound states of mind.
Emptiness is just over the horizon, not in some other universe. Emptiness as some kind of metaphysical absolute is meaningless and nonsensical. It appeals only to those who enjoy the sensation of being confused - just as a roller coasters and horror films appeal to some people for their intense sensations. A lot of people seem to want to revere something that they don't understand and which they consider incomprehensible. A garbled sacred text fits the bill.
My view is that we have to row back from metaphysical speculation when we formulate what we say to people about what we do. We pay attention to experience and we withdraw attention from experience. This leads to a healthier lifestyle, on one hand, and to genuine contentment unrelated to the experience of pleasure, on the other. It's not rocket science and its not mysticism either. It is deliberate and systematic exploration of the effects of paying attention and withdrawing attention.
It is entirely straightforward to assert that when I do not pay attention to some aspect of my sensorium I do not experience it. When the neighbours' builder starts drilling a hole in a brick outside my window, the apprehension of that sound very often drives the words out of my head and I lose my train of thought. Unless I pay attention to it, I don't notice the chair that I'm sitting on. The experience of nonapprehension occurs every time we become distracted. Things pop into experience and out of it.
However, not experiencing something is not the same as its not existing. We must carefully distinguish between experience and reality. If I close my eyes, the world does not blink out of existence. I just did it, and I doubt any of you noticed anything different. When I close my eyes and electrical impulses along my optic nerve stop arriving in the visual centre of my brain, then I stop having a vivid visual experience, and it just limits to mostly dark, but with static from my brain.
And this doesn't tell me anything about the nature of reality. Of course, minds are part of reality and insight into the nature of experience is, ipso facto, insight into the nature of reality. But only in a very narrow sense.
The meditation practices that characterise the Heart Sutra are those where we deliberately withdraw attention from our sensorium. Done progressively, we can, with relative ease, reach a state with no sensory experience (except maybe some brain static).
And in that state of emptiness, there is no experience, or in Buddhist jargon terms, no form, no feeling, no recognition, no volution, and no dualistic cognition (śūnyatāyāṃ na rūpaṃ na vedanā na saṃjñā na saṃskārāḥ na vijñānam = 是故，空中無色，無受想行識).
It is emphatically not the case that the Heart Sutra is denying the existence of form. Instead it is pointing to difficulties of defining what an experience is, and especially what the absence of experience (emptiness) is like.
Of course, other approaches to practice involve focussing on objects (mindfulness of breathing) or the cultivation of qualities (such as the dhyāna factors) and these also work. And the Prajñāpāramitā tradition upheld such practices. However, they specialised in anupalambhayogena, the practice of non-apprehension, i.e., of withdrawing attention.
The Heart Sutra has been badly misunderstood, partly because Conze made a number of mistakes in his Sanskrit edition and because his English translations are nonsensical. Conze was influenced, as many others were, by D T Suzuki, who was as much a Theosophist as he was a Buddhist: hence his obsession with "The Absolute". Obscurities emerge also because, when the first Sanskrit translation from the original Chinese was made in the 7th Century, the translator misconstrued the text and made some mistakes (not counting horribly unidiomatic Sanskrit). And this Sanskrit abomination became the standard for interpreting the Chinese text. Also, the most prominent (and oldest surviving) Sanskrit manuscript is full of scribal errors and editorial corruptions which influenced ideas about Prajñāpāramitā in Japan, where it is kept. Finally, the Heart Sutra was decontextualised and lost the connection to the practical Prajñāpāramitā tradition and was interpreted instead first through the Yogācāra and later the Madhyamaka Schools of thought. This led to gross distortions of the message of the text away from being experience-centred towards metaphysical speculation.
None of this is helped by the most prominent recent translations from Sanskrit being made by people who do not read Sanskrit beyond looking up words in dictionaries. They do not notice Conze's simply grammatical errors. Despite meeting passages that literally do not make sense in Conze's edition, they shoehorn them into some kind of sense that is unrelated to the text.
No wonder the Heart Sutra seems mysterious! But, really, it isn't so mysterious. It extends a kind of experience that we all have. When our attention wanders, the thing we were focussed on disappears. Harnessing this by deliberately withdrawing attention leads to some profound states of mind.
- Withdraw attention from the sensorium and all spatial boundaries seem to fall away.
- Withdraw attention from conscious mental activity and all mental boundaries seem to fall away.
- Withdraw attention from self and all limits to compassion seem to fall away
- Withdraw attention from attending and everything seems to falls away.
- Withdrawn from attending one dwells in emptiness (Pāli suññatā-vihāra).
Emptiness is just over the horizon, not in some other universe. Emptiness as some kind of metaphysical absolute is meaningless and nonsensical. It appeals only to those who enjoy the sensation of being confused - just as a roller coasters and horror films appeal to some people for their intense sensations. A lot of people seem to want to revere something that they don't understand and which they consider incomprehensible. A garbled sacred text fits the bill.
My view is that we have to row back from metaphysical speculation when we formulate what we say to people about what we do. We pay attention to experience and we withdraw attention from experience. This leads to a healthier lifestyle, on one hand, and to genuine contentment unrelated to the experience of pleasure, on the other. It's not rocket science and its not mysticism either. It is deliberate and systematic exploration of the effects of paying attention and withdrawing attention.
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