Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

 


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Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara,
Sitting in the depth of knowledge,
Lit the glow of his wisdom five elements
And saw that all of them are empty.
After this enlightenment he overcame the pain.

Listen, Shariputra,
Form - a void, emptiness - is the form
Form - is nothing but emptiness,
Void - it is nothing but a form.

The same is true for the senses,

Perceptions of mental activity and consciousness.

Listen, Shariputra,

All dharmas are empty properties.

They do not create and are not exterminable,

Are not dirty and are not cleaned,

Do not grow or shrink.

Hence, in the void

There is no form, no feelings, no perceptions,

No mental activity or consciousness.

There is no dependent origination

No eyes, no ears, no nose,

No tongue, no body, no mind.
There is no form, no sound, no smell,

No taste, no touch, no object of mind.

No sphere of elements, ranging from eye

And the ending of consciousness.

And it is not fading, from ignorance
And ending with death and decay.
There is no source of suffering and misery,
No Cessation of Suffering
And there is no way to end suffering.
There is no wisdom and no progress.

Since there is no progress, all the Bodhisattvas,
Relying on perfect wisdom,
No obstacles are in your mind.
With no obstacles, they overcome fear,
Forever exempt from error

And reach true nirvana.

Thanks to this perfect wisdom,

All the Buddhas of the past, present and future

Enter into a full, true and total enlightenment.

Therefore, to know that perfect wisdom

Expressed unsurpassed mantra,

The highest mantra, devastating suffering
Perfect and true.

Hence, the mantra Prajnaparamita
Must be declared.
Here is the mantra:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

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wonder(ful

with spoken introduction

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It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try --
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-- to live in harmony
with the "voice of Being," as I
understand it within myself
-- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.


—Vaclav Havel

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An ant hurries along a threshing floor
with its wheat grain, moving between huge stacks
of wheat, not knowing the abundance
all around. It thinks its one grain
is all there is to love.

So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.
This body, one path, one teacher.
Look wider and farther.

The essence of every human being can see,
and what that essence-eye takes in,
the being becomes. Saturn. Solomon!
 

The ocean pours through a jar,
and you might say it swims inside
the fish! This mystery gives peace to
your longing and makes the road home home.

—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

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largerloves
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what speaks in the blood

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Without stirring abroad,
one can know the whole world; 

Without looking out of the window
one can see the way of heaven. 

The further one goes the less one knows.

—Lao Tzu

...

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. 

It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. 

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.


—Linda Hogan

...

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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I am a fountain, You are my water.

I flow from You to You.

I am an eye, You are my light,

I look from You to You.

You are neither my right nor my left.

You are my foot and my arm as well.

I am a traveler, You are my road.

I go from You to You.


—Zeynep Hatun, 15th Century,
Murat Yagan translation

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wherever you go, there you are

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Just turn away from all that occupies the mind;

do whatever work you have to complete,
avoid new obligations;

keep empty, keep available, but resist not what comes uninvited.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

...
 

wherever you are is the entry point

—Kabir

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every luminous movement

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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods.
We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.

―Jean Cocteau

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I used to know my name. Now I don’t.
I think a river understands me.

For what does it call itself in that blessed moment when it starts emptying into the Infinite Luminous Sea, and opening every aspect of self wider than it ever thought possible?

Each drop of itself now running to embrace and unite with a million new friends.

And you were there, in my union with All, everyone who will ever see this page.


—Hafiz

...

I rarely let the word "No" escape

From my mouth

Because it is so plain to my soul

That God has shouted, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

To every luminous movement in

Existence


—Hafiz

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wait - what ?
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The Silence of the Stars

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When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.


—David Wagoner

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the potency of emptiness

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If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above,
I break down into three parts:

the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing.

the human soul, living forever within you.

the celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird.


—Carl Jung
liber novus/ the red book
(black book 6- 1916)

...

Subhuti was Buddha’s disciple.

He was able to understand the potency of emptiness,
the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of
subjectivity and objectivity.

One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness,
was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.


“We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness,”
the gods whispered to him.

“But I have not spoken of emptiness,” said Subhuti.

“You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness,”
responded the gods.

“This is true emptiness.”

And blossoms showered upon Subhuto as rain.


from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
Zen and Pre-Zen Writings
collected by Paul Reps, Nyogen Senzaki

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For days the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree without moving, without any urge to teach. The gods came and encouraged him but he replied, “What I have discovered will not be wanted by almost anyone. Those who are not ready can not be swayed with words and those who are ready can discover it for themselves.”

One of the gods pondered this for days and then returned and said “Great Buddha, what of those with only a little dust covering their eyes? What of those who are almost ready but only held back by a small hindrance? If you teach then these ones will enter the stream of wisdom.”

After a moment the Buddha rose from his seat and went to give his first teaching.


—Traktung Rinpoche

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i divide, in the sky, in the the seams, between the beams

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in a single teaspoon of ocean water one can find
a universe of plankton

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Is anyone there

if so

are you real

either way are you

one or several

if the latter

are you all at once

or do you

take turns not answering

is your answer

the question itself

surviving the asking

without end

whose question is it

how does it begin

where does it come from

how did it ever

find out about you

over the sound

of itself

with nothing but its own

ignorance to go by

—W. S. Merwin
To The Soul

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boil me

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A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot 

where it’s being boiled. 

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ 

The cook knocks him down with the ladle. 

‘Don’t you try to jump out. 

You think I’m torturing you. 

I’m giving you flavour, 

so you can mix with spices and rice 

and be the lovely vitality of a human being. 

Remember when you drank rain in the garden. 

That was for this.’ 

Grace first. Sexual pleasure, 

then a boiling new life begins, 

and the Friend has something good to eat. 

Eventually the chickpea 

will say to the cook, 

‘Boil me some more. 

Hit me with the skimming spoon. 

I can’t do this by myself. 

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens 

back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention 

to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver, 

my way to existence. I love your cooking.’ 

The cook says, 

‘I was once like you, 

fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, 

and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings. 

My animal soul grew powerful. 

I controlled it with practices, 

and boiled some more, and boiled 

once beyond that, 

and became your teacher.’

—Rumi 

The Essential Rumi, 

Coleman Barks and John Moyne version

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listen

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Listen.

Sit, be still, and listen,

because you’re drunk and we’re at the edge of the roof.

—Rumi

...

You and I are just swinging doors.

This kind of understanding is necessary.

—Shunryu Suzuki

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form(ation

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When you look at anything, it is the ultimate you see, but you imagine that you see a cloud or a tree. 

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realise that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelt, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. 

Even the sense of ‘I am’ is composed of the pure light and the sense of being. The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’. So is the pure light there whether you say ‘I’ or not. Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it. The beingness in being, the awareness in consciousness, the interest in every experience — that is not describable, yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

—Ramana Maharshi

...

If you are stone, be magnetic;

if a plant, be sensitive;

if you are human, be love.

—Victor Hugo

Les Miserables

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Only 

That Illumined 

One 

Who keeps 

Seducing the formless into form 

Had the charm to win my 

Heart. 

Only a Perfect One 

Who is always 

Laughing at the word 

Two 

Can make you know 

Of 

Love.

—Hafiz

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Paul Slyer photo

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