A Heart Sutra Journey | Part Four
"CLEARLY SAW EMPTINESS IN ALL THE FIVE CONDITIONS"
We'll dwell on this line for a couple of days - starting with 'all the five conditions', then how Avalokitesvara clearly saw emptiness in them tomorrow.
The five conditions mentioned here are translated from skandhas in Sanskrit and the word classically refers to the trunk of a tree. In the context of Buddhist doctrine, the Five Skandhasare the trunks or pedestals that prop up our awareness. Specifically:
Rūpa - Form, material existence - comprised of the four elements: earth (matter), water (cohesion), fire (heat) and wind (motion).
Vedanā - Sensation, the sensory experience of form.
Sañjñā - Perception, the action of mind that apprehends and labels sensation.
Sanskāra - Formations, or memory. The recorded contents of perception with the linkages between them we create, or conditioning. This drives the will, or action.
Vijñāna - Consciousness, what separates forms from one another. What discriminates and categorizes into various types. Good and bad, heavy and light, etc. are formed here.
Vedanā, sañjñā, and sanskāra are mental factors or processes that bring vijñāna, orconsciousness, to bear on rūpa - the material world. This is a very advanced phenomenological view. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on how this compares to your experience...
The passage uses vya-avaloka-yati to explain Avalokitesvara's examination of the skandhashere - meaning 'to look upon intently'. What she sees is emptiness, or shunyata - which is the subject of tomorrow's journey!
See the full text of the Heart Sutra at: https://oneriverzen.org/heart-sutra
