A Heart Sutra Journey | Part Five

"CLEARLY SAW EMPTINESS IN ALL THE FIVE CONDITIONS"

Yesterday, we worked on the Five Skandhas. These form the basis of our awareness - and model the interplay of consciousness with the material world. It is an articulate and intricate model - and has a lot to commend itself.

But: Avalokitesvara looks upon them intently and sees emptiness. Remember - the Skandhasare not just facets of the mind that apprehend the material world, the first skandha is the material world. In all of this, Avalokitesvara sees emptiness. How can this be?

We could fill volumes with the conjectures of Buddhist scholars throughout the ages, but all words would fail to meet the mark. At a basic level - the assertion here is that nothing exists independently. Anything that is observed or thought is dependent on something else that can be observed or thought - and so on infinitely. So, in a way, emptiness is also fulness. But even these words miss the mark - in explaining it we create a mess. It is very interesting that Avalokitesvara's experience of this is summarized conceptually as emptiness when there is so much - infinitely much - here.

When new Zen students start koan study, they are often presented with Joshu's Dog from the Mumonkan:

"A monk once asked Joshu, does a dog have the Buddha Nature? Joshu replied: "Mu".

Mu means no or nothingness. This is not Joshu telling the monk that a dog does not possess the Buddha Nature - this is a calling to experience Mu. It is a call to experience and practice emptiness.

Avalokitesvara plumbed these depths. And what she brought back was nothing short of miraculous, as the next line is: "thus completely relieving misfortune and pain". More about that next...