It is said that Essence of Prajnaparamita (commonly known as the Heart Sutra) alone can really go to the very core of the Buddhist teachings on emptiness, void or Voidness and by analyzing its historical existence and by restoring its component parts to their context in the Prajnaparamita Sutras, we can gain all the necessary understanding on emptiness, void or Voidness. As Buddhist learners and practitioners, we can never ever undervalue Buddha’s teachings on the nature of emptiness, the negation of the inherent existence of all things and phenomena. Leaving the religious aspects aside, this very nature, or this natural functional mode of all things, is the very backbone of our current beingness which includes our physical and mental aggregates. Moreover, it is actually based on this lack of inherent self-nature that we can put a stoppage to our grasping and can come to directly see how everything lacks an independent existence. Although things seem to appear independently, they actually come into being interdependently. We call this the wisdom of emptiness of self-nature or the wisdom of emptiness based on illusive interdependent conditions of relative phenomena. This emptiness of relative, conditioned, constructed or fabricated phenomena, can be the basis for our understanding of the lack of inherent nature of all things;however, we should expand and go beyond this view if we truly want to fathom the Voidness or Signlessness of the state of ultimate reality in the very vivid presence!
Thus, as far as the Essence of Prajnaparamita (Core Essence of the Perfect All-Transcendent Wisdom) scripture is concerned, Zen Master Thich Tue Hai has been single-minded to take on the argument that there is so much more we can learn from this scripture than simply presenting it as an abstract discourse and solely relying on the theoretical abstruse aspects of emptiness as it has been taken for granted for generations. Such an approach will only give us theoretical and analytical answers, and will not allow us to fathom the perfect truth – the utter emancipation which the realized masters have reached, and we, too, are aspired to reach. Through his meditative absorption and wisdom insight, Zen Master Thich Tue Hai single-mindedly wants to bring out from this scripture is the experiential aspects of true realization of the state of pure Voidness or true existence in the very vivid presence, which, for so long, have been avoided or neglected in contemporary discourses on the so-called Heart Sutra.
PRAJÑĀPĀRAMITĀ: EMANCIPATED FROM THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE!
“Translating these words as “in the very vivid presence, the moment the Noble Awakened Being deeply immersed in the Perfect All-Transcendent Wisdom, he thoroughly penetrated all five aggregates, and had a lucid, direct knowing of their essence as being Void” means that we have been emancipated from the very first sentence! As such, the content of the Prajñāpāramitā text is now describing something very transcendental at the wisdom level of an expert, realized practitioner. The contextual meaning has been brought to a highly specialized level in Buddhism, and is no longer simply a theory of the mind as it has mostly been depicted in the past. Therefore, after we finished editing this rendition in the summer of 2019 according to our aspiration, I said that since I was very content with this Buddhist work, and had I passed away right then, I would still feel perfectly complete, because in this lifetime, I was able to contribute such a rendition of this marvelous scripture to the world of Buddhism.” (Zen Master THÍCH TUỆ HẢI)
Commentary by Zen Master Thích Tuệ Hải
Compiled and translated by Milam Sudhana
Edited by Oliver K. Luu
Published by Ekayana Zen Publications (8/2023)
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