A Heart Sutra Journey | Part Seven

"...form is no other than emptiness; emptiness no other than form..."

Avalokitesvara looked down on the Skandhas and, after gazing intensely at them, pronounced them to be empty. Taking Shariputra aside, the Bodhisattva now continues her expounding of the Dharma by equating form with emptiness.

It may not be too controversial to equate the mental factors of vedanā (sensation), sañjñā (perception), and sanskāra (memory), as essentially empty - because we are acquainted with their fundamentally transient and impermanent nature. But to declare rūpa, form or material existence, as empty is hard to swallow.

The logic is that material existence is a construct of mind and exists only because mind asserts it. Form does not exist on its own - but requires the action of mind to cleave it into existence. Whatever measuring stick we use to define material existence is therefore dependent on something else, and is thus bereft of any self-existence. As such - it is essentially inseparable from anything else and empty. Remember: this is not empty like your gas tank. This is the concept emptiness we discussed on day five where we found it was very much like fullness, but noted that all attempts at description created more of a mess and missed the mark.

On its face this seems farcical - but consider the observer effect in quantum physics where it can be demonstrably shown that just the observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. It seems that the universe doesn't behave the way our dualistic mind believes it should.

This emptiness will thwart any attempt of mind to dissect its inner-workings, as the mere act of apprehending it with the thinking mind will necessarily fracture it. Any attempt at conceptualizing it requires a comparison to something else. It has to be experienced outside and before the action of mind. This is our essential nature, our pure and original face.

See the full text of the Heart Sutra at: https://oneriverzen.org/heart-sutra