UnMind 21. Heart Sutra Quartet 1: Avalokiteshvara & Shariputra

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Who were those two guys
talking through and to Buddha —
on that fateful day?

The Heart of Great Wisdom Sutra, the go-to chant ubiquitous in all Zen communities, begins innocently enough:

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva
when deeply practicing prajna paramita
clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty
and thus relieved all suffering

Avalokiteshvara is usually referred to as the “Bodhisattva of Compassion,” Quan Yin in China, and Kannon in Japan. S/he is highly regarded as the earthly manifestation of the self-born eternal Buddha of light and healing, Amitabha. The figure is represented with many heads, eyes and ears, to see and hear the suffering of the world; and with arms and hands filled with implements to help. S/he is said to guard the world in the interval between the departure of the historical Buddha, Gautama, and the appearance of the future Buddha, Maitreya. The iconography representing this being is usually androgynous in nature, as the male figure from India assimilated the female figure from China. This indicates the idea that buddha-nature, or our fully awakened self, is neither male nor female, or both. In other words, it is not gendered. A bodhisattva is an “enlightening,” and not an “enlightened” being. The difference being one of action, rather than statehood.

So what appears to be happening here is that Shakyamuni is “channeling” the bodhisattva, or, being a bodhisattva himself, transmitting the essence of the experience of the “all-seeing, all-hearing One,” in contemplating the endless, unremitting and ubiquitous suffering of the world. As enlightened beings in the modern sense of the word — meaning that we are not inclined to buy into mystical notions of invisible beings watching over and somehow controlling our world — we may regard this conception as metaphorical, and thereby defend, protect and preserve our fragile, rational take on reality.

“Prajna paramita” indicates the process of perfecting of wisdom, which is the default position of the bodhisattva, an “enlightening being.” This attitude relieves us of the necessity of having to actually perfect whatever wisdom may be available, but not of the obligation to penetrate, through direct experience, this so-called “emptiness.” Which, up close and personal, demolishes our most precious and closely-held belief in the reality of the self. Examining the five aspects of the sentient self, known in Sanskrit terminology as “skandhas,” five aggregates comprising our very being — namely material form, internal and external sensations, perceptual awareness, underlying motive or intent, and finally consciousness itself — we witness that they are ever-changing and transitory. Embracing this brutal truth, of the impermanence and insubstantiality of this so-called self, is, according to Buddha, the only way to truly relieve suffering.

The important point is the message that Buddha is delivering to his disciple, and to the rest of us, whether quoting from the mind and mouth of Avalokiteshvara, or not. It begins with the basics:

Shariputra
form does not differ from emptiness,
emptiness does not differ from form
form itself is emptiness — emptiness itself form
sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this

Shariputra, literally meaning “the son of Shari,” was one of the top 10 disciples of the Buddha, which resonates weirdly in today’s context of the “top 10” hits in music and other categories. It begs questions, such as, Who was the eleventh? Why did he or she not make the cut? I leave it to you to consult the scholars and historians to find out. Further, he is considered the first of the Buddha’s two chief disciples, and is the interlocutor in several of the teachings attributed to Buddha. So Shariputra was no slacker.

In communications design, the message is the message received, rather than the message sent. This indicates that, however well-crafted our words, analogies and illustrations, what actually registers in the mind of the audience is conditioned by their ability to hear and see the truth Buddha is pointing at. Traditionally in Zen, seeing is associated with reason, hearing more with intuition. A brief consideration of the two senses may give you a clue as to why. Seeing is the source of the vast majority of information absorbed and processed by sighted beings, capable of sharp distinctions of form, color, contrast, and spatial aspects of perception. Hearing is fuzzier of boundary, including internal and external sources of sound in its purview. It seems to have no clear dividing line where it begins or ends.

So whether of not Shariputra is getting the message is not clear. The important thing is whether or not you are getting it. And the way you really get it is in your own experience, informed by your own meditation. As an ancient Ch’an poem has it:

The meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth

The meaning of Buddha’s famous form versus emptiness duality is rather gnarly. Form is sometimes replaced by “appearance,” meaning our perceptual grasp of reality, primarily through the senses of seeing and hearing, but also through touch and thinking. Here, the Buddha is patiently explaining, as if to an 11-year-old, the basic truth of nonduality, that what we may perceive as different and separate are not so in actuality. That is, the form of our sensations and perceptions, and even the underlying mental formations, impulses and motives, are empty of substantial, permanent, and perfect being. Even consciousness itself is like this.

A modern analogy is found in Einstein’s famous E=mc2, where matter is related to energy in a formulation that was later demonstrated irrefutably by the atomic bomb — not exactly the message that the good gray doctor had intended to send. It is not the first time in history — and will not be the last — that the relatively innocent insights of science have been perverted to the power-hungry lesser angels of humanity. Gunpowder, discovered in China, was first used to create fireworks displays, tickling the retina. Western colonials said, “Hmmm… maybe this can be weaponized.” This is why Zen aspires to buddha-nature, not human nature.

So, form — all form or appearance — is not the essence, just as matter is not solid, but consists of more space and energy than it does actual stuff. Particles themselves break down further and further in the microcosmos, until there is no there there, like Buddha’s analogy of a monkey peeling an onion. At the very last cut, in the center of the being, poof! Nothing, nada, zilch. Of course, Matsuoka Roshi addressed this seeming dichotomy saying, “There is nothing. But in this nothing there are many things, there are infinite things.”

The one, “form,” defines the other, “emptiness,” as in all binary pairs. They are actually complementary in nature, not competitive. They are not opposites in that they do not obliterate each other, but have a co-arisen interdependency, characteristic of all the links in the Twelvefold Chain of Causation, or Interdependent Origination. All the links are causes, and all causes are effects, and vice-versa. It is not a simple, linear model, such as an algebraic equation, but more of a geometric relationship in simultaneity, emerging in, and out of, spacetime.

Shariputra
all dharmas are marked by emptiness
they neither arise nor cease
are neither defiled nor pure
neither increase nor decrease

Having dispensed with the intersection of form-qua-emptiness as the direct world of consciousness of a sentient — especially a human — being, Buddha then launches into quoting Avalokiteshvara out of context (which is what a quote is, after all), extending the metaphor to all beings, including ourselves, as well as those outside our ken. Not to worry; you, dear listener, and human beings in general, are not singled out for this kind of suffering, based on being born into sin, or merely ignorance, as is the Buddhist model; there is no being in existence that is exempt from this fundamental nature of being itself, anywhere, any time, or in any way. Any one who thinks they can escape this “wheel of birth and death” — or “wheel of suffering” — becoming the exception to the universal rule, has another thing coming.

All “dharmas” means all beings, but this expression would also relate to all dharmas as teachings. Even Buddha’s teachings are “marked by emptiness.” They are of necessity limited as to their ability to capture and express the truth, as the nature of the language is itself dualistic, added to that little problem of the ripeness and readiness of the hearer to assimilate their deeper, nondual meaning.

Some implications of this stanza are echoed in modern physics, which recognizes that physical entities, from the smallest micro-particle to the largest astrophysical objects, do not arise from simple causes, but in effect manifest an endless regress to an unknown — if widely speculated upon — beginning. And any such beginning must be the end of something else, even if only the absence of anything. The heat-death of the universe is one speculative prediction, but proponents of other possible future resolutions of existence itself have competing visions. And physics argues that the universe is finite. Nothing can be added or taken away, ultimately, but only rearranged. It is the biggest remix on record.

But the important point in Zen is not “How did it all begin, and where will it all end?” — and what the Buddha is presenting here, always comes back home, like chickens returning to roost.

You are a “dharma being.” I am dharma being. As such, you, and I, are also subject to this teaching. Your very being is marked by emptiness, at its core. You and I neither arise, nor cease. This is reinforced by Master Dogen in his Shobogenzo Bendowa Genjokoan tract:

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash
you do not return to birth after death.
This being so, it is an established way in buddhadharma
to deny that birth turns into death
Accordingly, birth is understood as non-birth.
It is an unshakeable teaching in Buddha’s discourse
that death does not turn into birth
Accordingly, death is understood as non-death.
Birth is an expression complete this moment.
Death is an expression complete this moment..
They are like winter and spring —
you do not call winter the beginning of spring
nor summer the end of spring.

Birth and death are both points on a continuum, and equally hard to nail down, as any medical person will tell you. What precedes birth is not birth, but there is no birth without it. What follows death is not life, but there is no life without it. There is no defilement in this process, nor is it exactly pure. We cannot reduce our existence to common understanding, nor can we paint it in black and white terms. In our coming and going, in a universal sense, there is no change, actually. Nothing increases, nor does it decrease. It is a zero-sum game. We do not increase in merit or understanding through our practice (even Buddha did not understand this), nor do we decrease our karmic engagement in reality. There is no exit in a closed system. But that should be a comfort.

Please investigate these primordial teachings thoroughly in practice. My poor words may have only lent to the confusion. At this remove, confusion is a necessary, even sacred, if not sufficient, state. Protect and preserve it well.