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The Heart Sutra: Buddhism in a Nutshell
By Sifu Anthony Korahais September 6, 2011
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In Christianity, there is The Bible. In Islam, there is The Koran. In Judaism, there is The Torah. In Taoism, there is the Tao Te Ching. In Buddhism, there are…over 5000 scriptures! Not many people know that Buddhism has the most extensive collection of spiritual scriptures in the world. The amount of written material is staggering. Even Buddhist scholars cannot hope to read all of these scriptures in a single lifetime.
Luckily, they don’t have to. And neither do we. There is a simpler way. And in the spirit of Buddhism, simpler
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Although these characters are more saturated with meaning than a single English word, this Sutra is short in any language. And yet, despite its brevity, the Sutra contains everything a person needs to know about Buddhism. It also contains everything we need to know about cosmic reality!
Of the 5000+ scriptures that I mentioned above, the Heart Sutra is the most widely translated into English. Some of these translations are good, and some are not so good. In Chinese, the Sutra is poetic, succinct, and meaningful. Translating this into English is not an easy task.
An Inspired Monk
Why is the original Sutra in Chinese? Wasn’t the Buddha from India? Yes. And the original Buddhist scriptures were written in the Indian languages Pali and Sanskrit. But Buddhism spread to China very early on, and many scriptures were translated into Chinese.
The Heart Sutra was translated by a Chinese monk named Xuan Zang (AD 596-664). He traveled all the way to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures. The Heart Sutra was his favorite, and his translation is inspired an ingenious. There are several ancient translations of the Heart Sutra, but the one done by Xuan Zang is widely believed to be the best.
My Teacher’s
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Avalokitesvara – (Chinese: 觀 世 音 Guan Shi Yin or 觀 自 在 Guan Zi Zai); The Bodhisattva of compassion. Known as “Guan Yin” in Chinese, and “Kannon” in Japanese. In India, Avalokitesvara was depicted as male, but in China, she is usually depicted as female. The changing gender of Avolitesvara points to the non-duality of cosmic reality, where there is no gender.
Bodhisattva – (Chinese: 菩 薩 Pu Sa); a highly developed spiritual being who has taken a vow to help all sentient beings to reach enlightenment. In Sanskrit, the word means “awake existence”.
Buddha – (Chinese: Fo 佛): any being who has become fully enlightened. In Buddhism, there are countless Buddhas of different ages and realms. The Buddha of our age is the historical Buddha named Siddhartha Gautama, who lived c. 563-482 BCE.
dharma – (Chinese: zhu fa 諸 法); in the context of the sutra, dharma means “things” or “phenomena”, but in the larger context of Buddhism it often refers to “the teachings of the