Mushotoku MindThe Heart of the Heart Sutra

Taisen DeshimaruRevised and Reedited by Richard Collins

Mushotoku Mind

TA HAN MA NYASHINGYO HA RA

MI KA

The essence of the sutra of great wisdom which allows one to go beyond.

Mushotoku MindThe Heart of the Heart Sutra

Commentary on the Hannya Shingyo

by

Master Taisen Deshimaru

Edited with an Introduction by

Richard CollinsDean of Arts and Humanities

California State University Bakersfield

Based on the translation by Ilsa Fatt and the edition by ReiRyu Philippe Coupey

HOHM PRESS 2012

© 2012 by American Zen Association

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of quotes used in critical articles and reviews.

Cover Design: Zac Parker, Kadak Graphics, Paulden, Arizona

Interior Design and Layout: Kubera Book Design, Prescott, Arizona

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

Deshimaru, Taisen.   Mushotoku mind : the heart of the Heart sutra : commentary on the Hannya shingyo / by Master Taisen Deshimaru ; edited with an introduction by Richard Collins, Dean of Arts and Humanities, California State University, Bakersfield.        pages cm   Based on the translation by Ilsa Fatt and the edition by ReiRyu Philippe Coupey.   English and French; translated from French.   ISBN 978-1-935387-27-5 (trade paper : alk. paper)  1.  Tripitaka. Sutrapitaka. Prajñaparamita. Hrdaya--Commentaries.  I. Collins, Richard, 1952- editor. II. Tripitaka. Sutrapitaka. Prajñaparamita. Hrdaya. English. III. Tripitaka. Sutrapitaka. Prajñaparamita. Hrdaya. Japanese. IV. Title.   BQ1967.D47 2012   294.3’823--dc23                                                             2012016820

Hohm PressP.O. Box 4410Chino Valley, AZ 86323800-381-2700http://www.hohmpress.com

This book was printed in the U.S.A. on recycled, acid-free paper using soy ink.

Contents

Foreword viiByPhilippe Coupey

Introduction xiMushotoku Bodaisatta: The Practice of Radical NegationBy Richard Collins

PartOne:TheSutraItself 1Hannya Shingyo: Phonetic Transcription 3Hannya Shingyo: English Translation 4Hannya Shingyo: The Ideograms Line by Line 5

PartTwo:TheSutrainContext 9 1 Compassion Teaches Wisdom 11 2 Four Ways to Transmit the Hannya Shingyo:

Translating, Chanting, Copying, Doing Zazen 17 3 The Mind Sutra of Great Wisdom that Enables

One to Go Beyond 21 4 The Mind of Emptiness: Mujo, En, Shiki, Ku 26

PartThree:TheTextoftheSutra 33 5 How to Save All Suffering Beings 35 6 Shiki and Ku: Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form 43 7 Interdependence: The Cosmic Balance 53 8 Beyond the High Mountain of Impermanence 68 9 Bonno soku bodai: Ignorance, Illusion, Satori 75 10 The Four Noble Truths That Are Not 87 11 Mushotoku: The Heart of Zen Practice 96

PartFour:TheMantraoftheSutra 103 12 Going Beyond the Beyond 105 13 The Six Practices: Wisdom, Giving, Precepts, Patience,

Effort, Zazen 122 14 Zazen and the Five Forms of Wisdom 139

ContactInformation 145

Foreword

It all began as a series of oral teachings, or kusen, given in the Paris dojo at rue Pernety in 1977 and 1978. The master spoke in a rough-and-ready English that was translated on the spot into French. The note-takers typically sat close by, writing it down: Anne-Marie Fabbro or Evelyn de Smedt in French, Robert Livingston or myself in English.

At the time the teaching was being given on the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra), however, neither Robert nor I was available as a note-taker, and so it happened that the first edition of this book came out only in its French translation. In 1980 these teachings were published for the first time by the Editions Retz under the title Le Sutra de la Grande Sagesse. In 1988 the book was reprinted by the Association Zen Internationale (AZI) under the same title. In December 2007 the Paris-based AZI Committee had it trans-lated back into English by Ilsa Fatt and, to a lesser extent myself, as The Sutra of Great Wisdom. This so-called translation work also consisted of readapting, rewording and deleting certain unnecessary passages from the French edition.

Now we have it in a new English edition, greatly revised and reedited, thanks to Livingston Roshi and to his disciple Richard Collins of the New Orleans Zen Temple.

The master died in 1982, two years after the book first came out in French. And now, thirty years later it is being published by Hohm Press, founded by the American guru Lee Lozowick. My friend Lee was a great admirer of the Zen teachings of Master Deshimaru, and

viii  d   Mushotoku Mind

until his death in 2011 he had promulgated these teachings, par-ticularly in the book SIT: Zen Teachings of Master Taisen Deshimaru (Hohm Press, 1996). So, exactly three decades after Deshimaru’s death, his commentary on the Heart Sutra is being published in the United States.1 This is a fine homage to the master.

“The mind that does not seek profit,” or as the title has it, Mushotoku Mind (mu meaning “no,” and ushotoku meaning “prof-it”)—this, I think, is the one single word in the vocabulary of the world most capable of expressing the teaching of Master Deshimaru.

All this is thanks to Richard Collins, and to the dojo in New Orleans––in fact, one of the very few dojos in the Sawaki-Deshimaru lineage in the States––for his indispensible editorial work. Thanks to them, Deshimaru’s commentary on the Hannya Shingyo has appeared in the States. And again, thanks to this work, and to many other people in the larger scope of things, the power of Maka Hannya will bring us its own ki, its own mind and vision. I see this everywhere.

For instance, Collins has gone further into this matter than I had, just as I had gone further into it than those before me. Whatever one may think or say, no one can replace us, not even those who came before us, not even the old masters. The practice, the teaching, the spreading of Zen, and of Buddhism in the West, is going to places where only we can take it.

It is sometimes said that every generation surpasses the previ-ous one. In the practice, the teaching, and the spreading of Zen and of Buddhism in the West everyone and everything profits by it, un-consciously and automatically. This is the power of Maka Hannya,

1 Briefly, there now exist four versions of this text, two in French and two in English: Le Sutra de la Grande Sagesse (Editions Retz, 1980); Le Sutra de la Grande Sagesse (Edition AZI, 1988); The Sutra of Great Wisdom (Edition AZI, 2007); and Mushotoku Mind (Hohm Press, 2012).

Foreword d  ix

and what’s more, it’s the only normal and true way of practice . . .To look at new worlds from a higher plateau . . .2

Philippe ReiRyu CoupeyParis, FranceApril 2012

2 This is what is written on the last page of my American passport: “Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds, to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.” Ellison S. Onizuka, American astronaut.

Introduction

Mushotoku Bodaisatta: The Practice of Radical Negation

Taisen Deshimaru describes his first meeting with his master, Kodo Sawaki, as a shattering experience. He says the master’s room was “overflowing with books, sutras, and other works,” yet when he asked him if he could borrow some, he was told that “such stuff is useless” and his desire to read these works was “a childish whim.” That, says Deshimaru, was his first satori.

The written word has a checkered past in the history of Zen, which offers mind-to-mind transmission of wisdom without scrip-ture and without words. Still, it is difficult to imagine Zen without its literature. Poems, koans, anecdotes, autobiographies, commen-taries, sutras, all play a role in the transmission of Zen from the fifth century to the present. These written records, however, can always be only fingers pointing at the moon of zazen.

As an academic, I was fortunate to find myself in the New Orleans Zen Temple. As a reader, I had always been drawn to the cleverness of stories about Rinzai masters, and to the challenge of koans. But this attraction was superficial and intellectual. I was, af-ter all, a professor of English who spent his days in the realm of difficult ideas, poetic expression, and clever manipulations of lan-guage. The last thing I needed in the dojo was to break my head every morning, noon, and night against a curriculum of koans.

As a Soto sangha in the tradition of Dogen Zenji, the New Orleans Zen Temple asked something else of me: simply to empty

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my preconceptions and to live in the here and now, doing what needed to be done, with a mushotoku attitude, with no thought of personal profit or gain. I began to sit every morning at the dojo, gradually improving my posture and breathing, gradually learning the instruments for ceremony and chanting, and gradually memo-rizing the Hannya Shingyo.

My master, Robert Livingston Roshi, taught in the purist tra-dition of the Deshimaru-Sawaki lineage. He had no patience for clever Zen students. He was not impressed by brilliant questions during mondo. He was not impressed by what books we had read. In his dojo we practiced shikantaza, so my tendencies to want to be clever and to intellectualize were soundly chastened. Robert was more interested in our ability to come to the dojo every day and to do zazen. If we could garden, cook, or put up dry wall, all the better. These were not talents that being clever helped much with.

During rest periods at a sesshin in late September 2001, I recall reading parts of Deshimaru’s commentary on the Hannya Shingyo in a French copy from the temple library. My imperfect knowledge of French did not seem to hinder my understanding, which was due to the daily practice of zazen (gyoji) under a master for whom zazen was the heart of Zen. During sesshin the reading of relevant texts was allowed but not encouraged. Like Kodo Sawaki, Robert had read the books but felt that such stuff was (almost) useless. No fundamental understanding of Zen practice could come from read-ing alone. In fact, reading could sometimes delay one’s progress. As I tell my students, “don’t bring your reading to zazen; bring your za-zen to your reading.” In other words, let zazen illuminate the texts, not the other way around. If you bring the preconceptions born of your reading onto your zafu, you will always be disappointed by what actually happens during zazen.

Zazen itself is the best teacher. Zazen, however, as most of Robert’s students understood, was not limited to shikantaza: zazen was Zen practice, and Zen practice included concentration in ev-erything we did during the practice, from bowing and chanting to

Introduction d  xiii

cooking food and cleaning toilets. Chanting the Hannya Shingyo every morning after zazen was for us the physical embodiment of the concepts of shiki and ku (phenomena and emptiness), each inward breath and outward breath expressing the truth that shiki and ku are not different even though they are not the same, that one becomes the other in the ritual and biological enactment of the fundamental principle of the cosmos: mujo. So when Robert Livingston gave me the text of his master’s commentary on the Hannya Shingyo to edit for publication, I understood that this too was Zen practice; this too was samu; this too was zazen.

Interpretations of the Heart Sutra abound, from Xuanzang’s in the T’ang dynasty to Red Pine’s The Heart Sutra: Translation and Commentary (2005). Deshimaru’s unique contribution to the wealth of commentaries on the Hannya Shingyo is the central place he gives to two concepts: ku and mushotoku, especially the latter, which I call “the heart of the Heart Sutra.” His absolute insistence on these two concepts as the bedrock-abyss grounding of all ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, and ontology is the refrain that resounds again and again in his commentary. Dogen Zenji, of course, asserted in the twelfth century that mushotoku was the key to hishiryo consciousness, and Kodo Sawaki asserted early in the twentieth century that zazen is “good for nothing.” Deshimaru concludes that bodhisattva musho-toku is to be found above all in the ku consciousness of zazen prac-tice undertaken without expectation or anticipation, although it can also be manifested in chanting or copying the Hannya Shingyo with the same attitude, without expectation or anticipation. He demon-strates indeed that this thesis is developed succinctly in the sutra itself, especially in its concluding mantra. If zazen is the physical embodiment of ku, then chanting the Hannya Shingyo is the physi-cal vocalization of ku, and writing it is the physical inscription of ku.

Deshimaru’s mushotoku refrain is a clear bell signaling what he felt was needed in our particularly rational and materialistic Western milieu, and especially what was needed in the peculiarly intellectual climate of French culture. Arriving in France in 1967

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as a wandering monastic, an ambassador of Zen sans portfolio, Deshimaru founded his now formidable sangha in what he called “the ideal landing-place” for him after the death of Kodo Sawaki in 1965.

Thinkers and artists had long come to Paris to explore le Néant and its progeny. This would include figures throughout the twen-tieth century, from Tristan Tzara and E.M. Cioran to Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett, as well as Americans like Henry Miller, John Cage, and Jim Morrison. In his book on Beckett and Miller, the literary critic Ihab Hassan dubbed their work, each very differ-ent in its way, “the language of silence,” in which nothingness and plenitude echo one another, an evolving and fundamental paradox, circulating, alternating, resonating, and vibrating. The music of ku resonated with Deshimaru’s Parisian students and disciples in an intellectual climate conditioned by postwar existentialism and roil-ing with a number of ideas taking shape in the 1960s and ‘70s, including pragmatism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction.

The cross-fertilization between Deshimaru’s Zen teaching and the Paris intellectual scene abuzz with postmodernist constructivism will be ripe for future scholars to investigate. The parallels between these schools of thought and Zen include their view of language and culture as arbitrary systems of signs, and their view of personal-ity, society, and religion (including Buddhism itself ) as constructs that have little or nothing to do with reality. As constructs, these phenomena are therefore capable of being deconstructed wheth-er with the sledgehammer of Derrida’s différance or the invisibly thin scalpel of Deshimaru’s ku. Showing his acquaintance with the Western philosophical tradition, Deshimaru uses a Kantian term to define ku as “existence without noumenon.” Elsewhere he mentions meeting the psychoanalytical existentialist and father of hermeneu-tics Karl Jaspers and the intriguing intersection of their thought. Here, though, is not the place for such an investigation.

It may well be that Deshimaru was simply trying to speak the language of his listeners, the intellectuals of his French sangha,

Introduction d  xv

on their own ground, just as Avalokiteshvara in the Heart Sutra tries to address the concerns of the “sour intellectual” Shariputra. In any case, Deshimaru could hold his own in such conversations. Eventually, he grew from being one of the expatriate tribe of free-lance thinkers and artists who came to Paris on an unorthodox path to becoming an authority in his field, embraced and certified by such conservative credentialing committees as, in Deshimaru’s case, the Sotoshu of Japanese Zen which named him Kaikyokosan, or head of Japanese Soto Zen for all of Europe.

Deshimaru, a Zen master, nevertheless belongs in this company of philosophically attuned thinkers and artists for whom emptiness functions as the ground of their song, not of despair but of encour-agement. Their art, their philosophical speculations, and his Zen practice, are each a unique approach to what Deshimaru called the heart of Zen practice but which is really the heart of any profound life practice: mushotoku mind.

Mushotoku mind is the core of Deshimaru’s Zen. Throughout his commentary on the Hannya Shingyo, which is essentially a phil-osophical investigation on the futility of philosophical investiga-tion, Deshimaru returns to this chorus: the way of the Buddha, the way of the bodhisattva, the way of Zen, the way of zazen, and the way of the sutras (especially the sutra of sutras, the Hannya Shingyo) is the key psychic posture or attitude: mushotoku mind. This is the attitude in which any practice, art, or pursuit can thrive, but it is the key above all to the practice of zazen, the practice of giving, gener-osity, or charity (fuse), the practice of patience (ninnku), and so on. Each worthwhile practice, religious or secular (and in Deshimaru’s view there is no separation between the two), is undertaken for one purpose and for one purpose only, for one gain and one gain only, for one profit and one profit only: that is the purpose of no purpose, the gain of no gain, the profit of no profit.

This purpose of no purpose is one of the most difficult ideas for Westerners to understand. It is perhaps most difficult of all for Americans, for whom the profit motive (caricatured in its ugliest

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appearance as greed) is king. Yet we know that our most cherished values are based on mushotoku mind when it comes to love. When it appears as agape (Greek) or caritas (Latin), love forms the basis of the Christian ideal of selflessness, altruism, compassion, self-sacri-fice, charity. We value the unselfish love of family or country that is based not on what we can get from the relationship but on what we can give. We know, too, that these virtues are not accomplished di-rectly through our will but indirectly through dropping our expec-tations. This sort of love, mushotoku love, is a natural, spontaneous, automatic response, having nothing to do with whether a potential mate is good for our prospects of perpetuating our presence in the gene pool, or whether our children will support us in the future, or whether our country will make us rich or free. Those are the proper responses to the realms of business and politics, profit and gain, proper motives for worldly ambition, but these motives disap-pear when we understand that the world and its gains, its games, its structures, and its constructed values are ku, empty, just like our mushotoku mind.

It has been remarked before that the Hannya Shingyo is as much a work of literature as it is a religious text. In the West the distinc-tion is too often drawn as a rigid boundary between the private, fictional, and subjective texts of “literature,” whose primary virtues are those of aesthetics and the reflection of social and psychologi-cal realities; and the public, nonfiction, and objective texts of other forms of cultural significance, such as history, philosophy, and re-ligion, whose primary virtues are supposed to be based on their adherence to “truth.”

As a poem of ideas, the Hannya Shingyo has few rivals in the European tradition. There are exceptions, like Alexander Pope’s famously argumentative poetic essays which are famously out of fashion. His “Essay on Man” is still great poetry, however distasteful or dated its ideas.

The poem of dialogue, or colloquy, like those of Arthur Clough in the Victorian era, also has a long tradition borrowing on the

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philosophical dialogues of Plato. But even though the Hannya Shingyo is sometimes called a conversation or dialogue between Avalokiteshvara (bodhisattva of compassion) and Shariputra (rep-resentative of intellectual wisdom), it is not really a dialogue at all. It is a lecture, a sermon, a monologue; the silver-tongued Shariputra is, for once, left speechless. In this way it is more like the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning, in which the speaker hogs the stage and the voiceless interlocutor, while important to the drama of the interaction, has nothing much to say and is allowed to say nothing at all.

But more than any of these, the Hannya Shingyo resembles Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” a teaching on impermanence that features the wisdom that the speaker (Wordsworth) is able to im-part to his disciple (his sister Dorothy). The two works share several characteristics: 1) they are apostrophes: monologues spoken by the more experienced or enlightened speaker to the less experienced or less enlightened interlocutor; 2) the tone of both poems is gently didactic; 3) each poem is a perfect five-verse-paragraph essay, stat-ing the thesis in the scene’s set-up, developing the thesis in three stages, and concluding with an emotional appeal to what is essen-tial in nature or ku; 4) even the themes are similar, both poems reflecting on the nature of impermanence (mujo), change, mutabil-ity, and the vagaries of mental and social constructions, including perception, ideation, memory, and action in the world; 5) finally, though, each poem ends its reflections on the uncertainties of the world with a soaring celebration of the transcendent virtues of faith in something that is at the core of human experience and both grounded in and beyond the fundamental truths of Wordsworth’s Romantic notion of transcendent nature or for the closing mantra’s “beyond beyond.”

Deshimaru’s commentaries, too, are the verbal transmission of his wisdom to his students. These kusen, spontaneous oral teachings during zazen, were taken down by dictation or recorded and tran-scribed. Such teachings can lose the context of the tone of voice, the

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environmental conditions, the identity of the listeners, and so on. Since the written text exists in a contextual vacuum, it must be for-tified to travel to new locations and new listeners or readers without losing the focus of the master’s message along with the force of his vocalization.

Nothing can replace the power of hearing the kusen of a master during zazen. Yet that does not mean that published kusen are not valuable in many ways: 1) they serve as a reminder to those who have heard the master and sustain and perpetuate his voice; 2) they serve as a substitute for those who might never have heard the mas-ter but who have heard his disciples, or his disciples’ disciples teach, and who can thus hear the master’s voice through them; 3) they serve as a vague substitute for the kusen of a master for those who sit in zazen and can imagine the unmediated voice; and 4) they serve as an approximation of that direct experience for those who might never sit in zazen while hearing the voice of a master.

My guiding principles in editing Deshimaru’s text as it has come to me through the indispensable work of Ilsa Fatt and Philippe ReiRyu Coupey have therefore been to make a text that sounds like it is being spoken naturally and idiomatically and yet looks like it was written with clarity and order. This has meant that I have tried to maximize the accessibility and readability of the original transcription by rewriting and clarifying some passages, rearrang-ing and reorganizing whole paragraphs and chapters, providing new titles to chapters and book, and deleting a few brief obscure and irrelevant asides. I have, however, avoided inserting my own interpretations of the text, even where I felt that this would clarify an obscurity, just as I have opted not to add footnotes or endnotes. Those who take the time to compare this version of Deshimaru’s commentaries on the Hannya Shingyo with others that have ap-peared in English or other languages may be disappointed if they are expecting a verbatim transcription of his talks.

These editorial decisions have been made with the intended audience of the book in mind, namely the community of Zen

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practitioners, for whom the teachings of Taisen Deshimaru have for too long been overshadowed by more visible or more voluble teach-ers, especially in the United States. At his death Kodo Sawaki told Deshimaru to leave Japan and, like Bodhidharma, to take true Zen teachings to the west. Deshimaru considered coming to the United States but said that other Japanese teachers were already there, like Shunryu Suzuki in California. In the 1980s, Deshimaru asked one of his own American students in Paris to continue west with the teachings, and so Robert Livingston brought the Deshimaru lin-eage to New Orleans to teach about the essential nature of ku and mushotoku bodaisatta: the bodhisattva nature of mushotoku in the practice of zazen.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Master Deshimaru’s death, so special thanks are due to Hohm Press for publishing this key work in commemoration of that event, as well as for continuing to make Deshimaru’s other Zen teachings available in the United States. With this volume of commentary, I hope simply that the great dragon’s voice comes through as clearly as it does when the Hannya Shingyo is chanted in any one of Deshimaru’s two- hundred-plus worldwide sanghas on several continents.

Richard CollinsBakersfield, California January 2012

JIZAI

BO KANSATSU

The Bodhisattva of True Freedom

PART ONE

The Sutra Itself

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Hannya Shingyo: PhoneticTranscription

Maka Hannya Haramita Shingyo

Kan-ji-zai bo-satsu. Gyo jin han-nya ha-ra-mi-ta ji. Sho ken go on kai ku. Do is-sai ku yaku.

Sha-ri-shi. Shiki fu i ku. Ku fu i shiki. Shiki soku ze ku. Ku soku ze shiki. Ju so gyo shiki. Yaku bu nyo ze. Sha-ri-shi. Ze sho ho ku so. Fu sho fu metsu. Fu ku fu jo. Fu zo fu gen. Ze ko ku chu. Mu shiki mu ju so gyo shiki. Mu-gen ni bi ze-shin i. Mu shiki sho ko mi soku ho. Mu-gen kai nai shi mu i shiki kai. Mu mu-myo yaku mu mu-myo jin. Nai shi mu ro-shi. Yaku mu ro-shi jin. Mu ku shu metsu do. Mu chi yaku mu toku. I mu-sho-to-ku ko.

Bo-dai-satta. E han-nya ha-ra-mi-ta ko. Shin mu ke ge mu ke ge ko. Mu u ku fu on ri issai ten-do mu-so. Ku-gyo ne-han. San ze sho butsu. E han-nya ha-ra-mi-ta ko. Toku a noku ta ra san myaku san bo-dai.

Ko chi han-nya ha-ra-mi-ta. Ze dai jin shu. Ze dai myo shu. Ze mu-jo shu. Ze mu-to-do shu. No jo issai ku. Shin jitsu fu ko. Ko setsu hannya haramita shu.

Soku setsu shu watsu.

Gya tei, gya tei, ha-ra gya tei, Ha-ra so gya tei. Bo-ji so-wa-ka. Han-nya shin-gyo.

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Hannya Shingyo:EnglishTranslation

Essence of the Sutra of Great Wisdom that enables all beings to go beyond

The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara through the profound practice of Great Wisdom (hannya haramita) sees that the five aggregates are empty (ku) and thus helps all suffering beings.

Shariputra, phenomena (shiki) are no other than emptiness (ku), ku is no other than shiki. Shiki become ku, ku becomes shiki. (Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.) It is the same for percep-tion, thought, action, and consciousness. Shariputra, all existences are ku; they are neither born nor extinguished, neither impure nor pure, and they neither grow nor decay. Thus in ku there are no five elements, no six sense organs, no six sense objects, no six conscious-nesses, neither ignorance nor the extinction of ignorance, neither old age nor the extinction of old age, neither death nor the extinc-tion of death, no Four Noble Truths, no wisdom, no attainment, but only the attainment of no attainment: mushotoku.

Thus the bodhisattva, through this profound practice, has a mind at peace and is without fear. All illusion and attachment have been cast aside, and the bodhisattva attains the ultimate satori. All the buddhas of past, present, and future attain understanding of this Great Wisdom that delivers all beings from suffering and enables them to find nirvana.

Understand then that hannya haramita is the universal sutra, the great luminous sutra, the highest and incomparable sutra by which one can cut all suffering, allowing us to find reality in true ku.

Go, go, go beyond, Go together beyond the beyond, To the shore of satori. Hannya Shingyo.

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Hannya Shingyo:TheIdeogramsLinebyLine

Kanjizai bosatsu: the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Kan Jizai, also known as Kanzeon or Kannon. Avalokiteshvara (Sanskrit).

Gyo jin: profound practice.

Hannya haramita: Great Wisdom.

Ji sho ken: ji: when. Sho: to illuminate. Ken: to see.

Go on kai ku: go un (or go on): the five aggregates, five elements. Kaiku: everything is ku. All beings and all phenomena are ku.

Do issai ku yaku: thus (do), all things, all beings (issai), to help and save (ku yaku).

Sharishi: Shariputra, the clever disciple whom Buddha is address-ing in the sutra.

Shiki fu i ku ku fu i shiki: phenomena (shiki) are not (fu) different than the fundamental cosmic essence, emptiness (ku). Ku is not dif-ferent than phenomena.

Shiki soku ze ku ku soku ze shiki: phenomena (shiki) in themselves (soku) are ku. Ku in itself is phenomena.

Ju so gyo shiki yaku bu nyo ze: perception (ju), thought (so), action (gyo), consciousness (shiki), and so forth (yaku bu no ze).

Sharishi: Shariputra.

Ze sho ho ku so: all that exists has the aspect of ku. What is the na-ture of ku? The Hannya Shingyo goes on to explain:

Fu sho fu metsu fu ku fu jo fu zo fu gen: not born, not created (fu sho); not ended, not disappeared, and thus without beginning or end (fu metsu); not pure (fu jo); not increasing (fu so); not diminishing (fu gen).

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Ze ko ku chu mu shiki mu ju so gyo shiki: thus in ku there are no five elements (go on), namely sensations of form such as color, shape and texture (shiki); perception (ju), conceptualization (so), voluntary action (gyo), or consciousness (shiki).

Mu gen ni bi zeshin i: there are no six roots of perception, namely sight or the eyes (gen), hearing or the ears (ni), smell or the nose (bi), speech and taste or the mouth (ze), touch or the body (shin), or consciousness (i).

Mu shiki sho ko mi soku ho: there are no six objects of perception and knowledge, which are color (shiki), sound (sho), smell (ko), taste (soku), touch (ho), or concept (ho). Thus ku is not born and not end-ed, not impure and not pure, not increasing and not decreasing. In ku there are no five aggregates, no six sense organs, and no six objects of perception.

Mu gen kai nai shi: there is no domain of perception (gen kai) and so forth (nai shi). Nor is there the domain of perception, nor (by implication) the six objects of perception.

Mu i shiki kai: there is no world of six consciousnesses (of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body, and will, or consciousness of consciousness).

Mu mumyo yaku mu mumyo jin: there is no ignorance (mumyo) and no extinction (jin) of ignorance. This passage refers to the twelve interdependent causes (innen) or causal links.

Nai shi mu roshi yaku mu roshi jin: there is no old age and no death, no extinction of old age and no extinction of death, and so on for the twelve innen.

Mu ku shu metsu do: there are no (mu) Four Noble Truths, namely no suffering (ku), no source of suffering (ju), no end of suffering (metsu), and no way to end suffering (do). Suffering arises from bon-no, which may be the search to satisfy our desires, the descent into materialism, or conversely the flight from desires and the material

d  7

world, their negation. There are eight methods to return to the healthy condition of nirvana, and these are the Eightfold Path of Buddha’s teaching: 1) right view, 2) right thoughts and opinions, 3) right speech, 4) right action, 5) right livelihood, 6) right effort, 7) right faith, and 8) right concentration.

Mu chi yaku mu toku: there is no wisdom (yaku) and no profit (toku). This leads to the central, essential passage that follows.

I mushotoku ko: thus it is mushotoku. This is the key phrase of the entire Hannya Shingyo. There is no goal, there is nothing to obtain. All the preceding phrases have led up to introducing this concept through a succession of negatives. Everything that follows shows the crucial nature of mushotoku. The Great Wisdom, hannya haramita, is at once the direct consequence of mushotoku and the way to achieve it.

Bodaisatta e hannya haramita ko: thus the bodhisattva through hannya haramita.

Shin mu ke ge: has a mind without obstacle (imperturbable).

Mu ke ge ko: being thus without obstacles.

Mu u ku fu: fear has no existence.

On ri issai tendo muso: bodhisattva is separate from all (issai) dis-turbing emotion (tendo) and all illusion (muso).

Kugyo nehan: finally (kugyo) attains nirvana (nehan).

San ze sho butsu: the buddhas or patriarchs (sho butsu) of the three worlds (san ze) of past, present, future.

E hannya haramita ko: by means of (depending on) hannya haramita.

Toku a noku ta ra san myaku san bodai: attain the highest satori.

Ko chi Hannya Haramita: therefore (ko chi) you should understand that Hannya Shingyo.

8  d  

Ze dai jin shu: is the great universal sutra. (Jin or shin: God, the divine. Shu or ju: mantra, sacred word or phrase.)

Ze dai myo shu: is the great brilliant sutra.

Ze mujo shu: is the highest sutra (unsurpassable).

Ze mutodo shu: is the incomparable sutra.

No jo issai ku: it is possible to cut through all suffering.

Shin jitsu fu ko: in the authentic truth there is no error.

Ko setsu hannya haramita shu: therefore, I proclaim that the sutra of Hannya Haramita.

Soku setsu shu watsu: that this sutra says.

Gya tei gya tei hara gya tei hara so gya tei boji so waka: Go, go, go beyond, go together beyond the beyond, to the shore of satori.