The Heart Sutra Revisited. - 1

Namo Tasa Bhagavato Arahato Sama SamBuddha Sam.
Homage to the World and Time Honored One.

Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra, or The Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra is one of the most potent and insightful Sutras of the teachings of the Buddha Shakyamuni. I came upon the study of this Sutra when I entered the Zen Practice at the San Francisco Soto Zen Center at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County California. This morning upon sitting up for awhile on my bed sometime at three it came to me that i should do a revision of this Sutra which I used to chant at least twice a day along with fellow Zen Students in the Zendo or meditation hall at Green Gulch. We would chant the Sutra in its Japanese transliteration form which accordingly was adapted from its Chinese form which in turn was adapted from its Indian or Sanskrit form. Also known as,The (Holy) Mother of all Buddhas heart Essence) of the Perfection of Wisdom in countries like Tibet and Mongolia, the Heart Sutra is simply the most studied and recited of all Sutras in the Mahayana tradition of Budhhism around the world. In Japanese it is nkown as the Hannya Shingyo or Maka Hannya Haramita Shingyo. 

This Sutra explains human consciousness in the most esoteric form, it is actually the essence of  the Vedantic teachings of Hinduism. The Buddha cuts to the chase and placed all  the responsibility of discovering one's true nature and that of the nature of the perceived universe upon the practitioner. It is based on the nature of dependent origin that all is perceived as is. Nothing exist of its own as 'form is emptiness and emptiness is form' and to be able to see beyond form one sees the whole universe as a manifestation of one's ultimate and complete consciousness of being. Hence the universe is a mind projection for as the Buddha declared what you think is what you create in the external world but most of us are not fully awakened to this truth of the Buddha's teaching. Buddhism advise man to the fact that he is the one who is responsible for what his life will turn out to be and as such demands that man should come to truly understand the nature of his relationship to the whole of creation itself. 

The first crucial line of the Sutra is, "...all five skandas are empty of their own being." Which translated roughly means that all our human senses are nonfunctional on their own, and the 'same is true of feelings, perceptions impulses and consciousness.' Hence man himself dependent upon his senses interacting with one another in order to perceive what is reality that is being presented before him on the material plane. As am example without his sight he is not able to see the size, shape and color of the form before him and without his nose he is deprived of the sense of smell and so forth. Of their own the senses is of no value and nonfunctional as there is no interrelated connection to support and fully complete the purpose of the sensory perception. The 10 blind men describing an elephant is a good analogy of this concept although not a fully accurate one. Deprived of sight each perceives only the part he feels with his sense of touch and feeling and not the whole.

"…if we insist that the requirements of the logical mind be satisfied, we are missing the point. What the Diamond Sutra is actually delivering is not a systematic treatise, but a series of sledgehammer blows, attacking from this side and that, to try and break through our fundamental delusion. It is not going to make things easy for the logical mind by putting things in a logical form. This sutra is going to be confusing, irritating, annoying, and unsatisfying—and perhaps we cannot ask for it to be otherwise. If it were all set forth neatly and clearly, leaving no loose ends, we might be in danger of thinking we had grasped the Perfection of Wisdom." —Sangharakshita, Wisdom Beyond Words 
This view is common with the Heart Sutra where a logical explanantion is hard to come by and a more intuitive perception is called for.  The Buddha's Sutras are not for the weak minded as they are full of subtleties and it would take careful and in depth studies to fully comprehend what the Buddha was pointing out and a logical mind will be a hindrance rather than help in attempting to do this.
 # Heart Sutra, Buddhism.