Teaching on the Heart Sutra, Part 1

Before you recite the sutra, first pay homage to all the Buddhas of the three times.You need a respectful heart.Only then does reciting the sutra actually do something.But when people just recite the sutra in the ordinary way, they can't picture the scene when the Buddha was teaching it: how this practice should be done, and with what attitude you should practice it in order to succeed.You have to look at the complete version first (where the sutra comes from, who was present, who spoke it).Only after you have seen the complete Heart Sutra do you come back and practice it.That is what it means to have a root.Many people (including Dharma teachers) don't know that the Heart Sutra has an upper volume, a middle volume and a lower volume.Many people also don't know that the upper volume has mantras, the middle volume has mantras, and the lower volume has mantras.And many don't know that the upper volume is not a mantra but admonition.Remember all of this.To practice the Heart Sutra, you must practice all three volumes, upper, middle and lower, the complete Heart Sutra.Only that is called the Great Prajñā Sutra.How do we explore the realm of the Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra)?The Heart Sutra, through wisdom, dissolves the eight sufferings of human beings: birth-suffering, old-age suffering, sickness-suffering, death-suffering, the suffering of parting from loved ones, the suffering of meeting those we hate ("meeting" means coming together; "meeting those we hate" means constantly running into people you can't stand and resent), the suffering of not getting what we want, and the suffering of the raging five aggregates (the fire of ignorance, getting angry for no reason at all).You all come to the mandala to learn the Dharma.The mandala is the dwelling place of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.You can't bring your personal moods and tempers in here.We don't want any meeting-those-we-hate or raging-aggregates business showing up and polluting this solemn, sacred mandala space.This is for your own good, too.The fourteen root vows of the Vajrayana say it as well: vajra brothers and sisters who study the Dharma together must not have any meeting-those-we-hate situations among them.No criticizing each other, no saying bad things about each other.When you open your mouth, talk about the Dharma.When you come into the mandala, don't talk about private matters, don't act out your personal emotions, and don't judge other people.The war hasn't come yet.But when war comes, there is parting from loved ones.The best lover, the best husband, has to go off to the army and fight.When the air raid comes and the bombs fall, people flee, everyone runs for their lives.That is parting from loved ones.There is the suffering of running into obstacles in your practice.The suffering of things not going smoothly in your life, your business, your money.At home, the suffering of children who don't listen and aren't filial.Lots of sufferings.It's not only these eight.And your own suffering?If you haven't practiced the Dharma, then in the bardo you get hunted down by your karmic creditors.Second, you take rebirth.Third, you go to the underworld or to hell, and for Vajrayana, to vajra hell.When you die it's bitter for you, and it's bitter for the living people around you.Everybody suffers together.Parting from loved ones: the deeper you love, the deeper the suffering.There is no eternal love.Heartbreak is the most painful thing, and that is just loving too much.Love includes the love of family, the love of children, emotional love, romantic love between men and women, the love between husband and wife.All of it is in here.You will not stay together in love forever.An old couple, and one goes first.The other can't bear it.Do you call that affection?That is torture.Suffering!Not getting what you want: everybody has run into that.You seek wealth and can't get it, suffering.You seek anything and it doesn't go smoothly, suffering.You can't get the thing.And if you do get it?How long will it stay with you?It will leave you, it will disappear, and that is even worse.Getting it is suffering, not getting it is suffering.Things won't stay by your side forever.Seeking is suffering, not seeking is suffering.Meeting those we hate: whatever you see, nothing goes right, whatever you see, you complain."Resent" is to complain, "hate" is to loathe, and "meeting" is to gather together, to run into each other.When complaining and hatred come together, you are dissatisfied with everything.That is just looking for suffering.These sufferings are all self-made.Nobody handed them to you.You are asking for it.You bring this bitterness on yourself.How do we break through these eight sufferings?Through the Heart Sutra.So the preface to the Heart Sutra is about how to break through the eight sufferings of human life.The suffering of the raging five aggregates is the fire of ignorance."Fire burning the forest of merit": this is exactly that raging of the aggregates.You recite the sutra beautifully, you know the Vajrasattva mantra by heart, and while you are reciting, your kid comes and makes noise, the anger flares up, and you slap the child.That is called fire burning the forest of merit.The suffering of the raging five aggregates is anger that appears for no reason.In a single day, flying off the handle for no reason happens all the time.The raging aggregates are fully there, anytime, anywhere: I run into this person and I don't like him, and the raging aggregates come.Not getting what you want and parting from loved ones depend on how much weight you put on them.However much love, that much hatred will arise.However much affection, that much resentment.In the same proportion.This is called love, hate, affection and enmity.Isn't it on TV?When she breaks up with him, he stabs her 24 times.That is love turning into hatred.If I didn't love her, what would it matter to me if she found another boyfriend?Birth, old age, sickness and death: maybe it's me, maybe it's the people around me.Birth-suffering: you have a baby, you have to raise it.The moment a child is born it makes you suffer.This suffering can be your problem or the problem of those around you, but it clings to you every moment.So, how do we break through this suffering?Why does this suffering arise?Then you have to look into where the suffering comes from.Suffering is not the problem.The problem is me!You have to learn to let go, rather than have the ability to hold on to suffering.Birth, old age, sickness, death, parting from loved ones: they all unfold naturally and have nothing to do with me.Is it inside the realm or outside the realm?You have to jump yourself outside the realm.The child came by chance, like thunder from the sky striking the fire in the earth, and he came.When he is going to leave (die), I can't keep him.If he is going to die, I can't tell him not to die.This is nature.Everything is just nature.Everything has to accord with nature and follow nature.What should come will come, what should go will go, and you accept it with a humble heart.Within the Dharma practice, look at these things through emptiness (śūnyatā).What is emptiness?It is just nature.What should come comes, what should go goes.When you love each other, that is called the arising of conditions, good affinity.When you no longer love each other, that is called the ceasing of conditions."All things are only the arising and ceasing of conditions." The Buddha, at the time of his parinirvāṇa, taught the Fundamental Heart Sutra: 'Because all dharmas are by nature pure, view every appearance as illusion.Because of the complete, supreme bodhi, view with a heart of compassion.Because self-nature is wishless luminosity, do not cling to any appearance.' It is speaking of the arising and ceasing of conditions.In the world there are only two things: arising of conditions and ceasing of conditions.One is getting, one is losing.Nothing else.Why is everything called empty by nature?It goes from nothing to something, which becomes a "burden, a baggage," and then from something back to nothing, but it was nothing to begin with.Ceasing of conditions is arising of conditions, arising of conditions is ceasing of conditions.This is called samsara.This is cause and effect.Arising is birth, ceasing is death.When the Buddha awakened, he saw all the myriad things of the world as birth and death, birth and death, birth and death.That is samsara.That is the cycle of cause and effect that never dies out.It is all just swapping back and forth between birth and death (having and not having).The eight sufferings are produced between the arising and the ceasing of conditions.If you are in the middle of suffering, you have to see through the eight sufferings.Look from the arising, look from the ceasing, and the eight sufferings are gone.The practice realm of the Heart Sutra is right here.When you run into any problem, first go look at the arising.Why am I suffering?In the end I brought it on myself.Don't cling to too many things in this world.Today, your problems all spin around inside the eight sufferings.The biggest reason anyone is not free from the eight sufferings is being tangled up between arising and ceasing and unable to leap out.To solve these things, look at the cause from the arising, look at the result from the ceasing, and then these eight sufferings will disappear.When we practice the Heart Sutra method, we are looking at the process between arising and ceasing.The Diamond Sutra verse: 'All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew and like lightning.Contemplate them in this way.' And what the Heart Sutra says: 'Far removed from inverted dreams, ultimately nirvāṇa.The Buddhas of the three times also are thus.' This is the method.Everyone who became a Buddha or a bodhisattva used this method to practice, to see through the arising and ceasing of conditions, to see the process in between where the eight sufferings come from.Then you can be liberated and free from suffering.Originally it was emptiness, śūnyatā.In essence it was "empty," nothing, and it became the "something" we have now.If it's nothing, there is no suffering.Having happiness is still suffering.Five minutes of pleasure (making a child) may be paid back with fifty years of pain (a grown child who lives off his parents).When you think of the cause, think of the effect.All of the above is the preliminary of the Prajñā Heart Sutra.The preliminary is the attitude I take in practicing the Heart Sutra, how my mind should think.Whatever happens, I brought it on myself.I can't blame other people.Then you won't have meeting-those-we-hate.It is because your mind holds so much of the raging aggregates that all these unhappy things come and hit you.If your mind doesn't have the poison of these eight (sufferings), which you created yourself, you won't suffer.Your mind is calm.The eight winds can't move you.You enter samādhi.The Heart Sutra is a truly great sutra.Everyone goes through these eight sufferings.That is why we practice the Heart Sutra.Everyone has experienced these eight sufferings.The only question is whether you keep this suffering, or don't keep it, or don't treat it as suffering at all.That is created in your own mind.If you don't create the antidote, this suffering grinds you down until you die, grinds you into your next life.This suffering follows your karma into the next rebirth.So in this lifetime you must put an end to these eight sufferings.Then in the next life you practice your way into a wealthy family.If not, at least into a family that practices the Buddha and bodhisattva path.If not, into a good-hearted family.If not, into a peaceful, kindly country like Bhutan, and not into a country at war.If you carry meeting-those-we-hate into your next life, you will be reborn into a country at war.If the raging aggregates are strong, you run off to the asura realm, ready to fight at any moment, brawling all day long.The eight sufferings also decide the road you take at death.Not getting what you want and parting from loved ones sometimes turn into a house-ground spirit: clinging, unable to bear leaving, and if the love can't be had, a heart of revenge.So when we practice the Heart Sutra, we must root out sufferings that did not exist in the first place.Excerpted from a Dharma teaching by the Venerable Master Urgyen Topden, August 15, 2020.