The Heart Sutra EXPLAINED

Reading from the Wisdom Quarterly TRANSLATION (https://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-heart-sutra-in-sanskritenglish-video.html), based on the archaic Edward Conze version (http://www.fodian.net/world/conze.htm), the translator will take us through this brief, popular, perplexing, and paradoxical sutra, the consummation of Buddhism's "Perfection of Wisdom" literature.

Meditators will learn the who, what, why behind this timeless discourse. Can we demystify it? Many think it is meant to be utterly incomprehensible. (This will be followed by serenity meditation, mindful walking, the cultivation of loving-kindness, vegan snacks, and socializing).

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THE HEART SUTRA
Honor to the sublime, noble perfection of wisdom!

Avalokitesvara, the noble being-bent-on-perfect-enlightenment, was moving in the deep course of wisdom that has gone beyond. He looked down from on high and beheld these Five Aggregates and saw that they were empty.

Here, O Shariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form. Emptiness does not differ from form, and form does not differ from emptiness. Whatever is form, that is emptiness, and whatever is emptiness, that is form.

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Here, O Shariputra, all phenomena bear this universal mark of emptiness. They are neither produced nor annihilated, neither defiled nor pure, neither deficient nor complete.

Therefore, O Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness. There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind.

There are no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, or objects of mind. There is no sight-organ element, and so forth...no mind-consciousness element. There is no ignorance, no cessation of ignorance, and so forth... There is no decay and death, no cessation of decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no cessation, no path. There is no knowing, no attaining, and no non-attaining.

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Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of this non-attainment-ness that a being-bent-on-perfect-enlightenment, through having relied on the perfection of wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings one does not tremble, having overcome what can upset, and in the end one abides in nirvana.

All those who appear as perfectly-enlightened-beings in the three periods of time fully awake to utmost-enlightenment because they have relied on the perfection of wisdom.

Therefore, one should know the perfection of wisdom by this great mantra, the mantra of great wisdom, the utmost mantra, the unequalled mantra, the allayer of all suffering, in truth for how else could it be? By the perfection of wisdom is this mantra arrived at thus:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, so it is!

This completes the heart of perfect wisdom.

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