Friday, August 13, 2010

Heart Sutra

A few of us had taken to memorizing and regularly citing the Heart Sutra earlier this year. I continue citing it in my head whenever I want to slow down and focus. Recently, I happened to read through its translation carefully again. And one more time I thought to myself - what beautiful words they are. I especially like this part:

... in the void there are no forms and no feelings, conceptions, impulses and no consciousness: there is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind; there is no form, sound, smell, taste, touch or idea; no eye elements, until we come to no elements of consciousness; no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance...

I understand that it's called heart sutra because it's the heart of all teachings in Chan Buddhism.

When I attended a meditation retreat in Thailand earlier this year, I was taught that meditation is a way to achieve exactly the same thing. To realize that all earthly things, tangible or not, are not real. And therefore, to keep my heart and mind empty of distractions and emotions.

This might feel impossible and impractical for our today lives. But to me, just realizing that there's such a teaching helps me to keep my heart flat (more on heart flat in the next post) and put things in perspective.

Life is basically very simple.