- III. THE SUTRAS
- I ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SHINGYO
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I ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE SHINGYO
When1 the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was engaged in the practice of
the deep Prajnaparamita, he perceived that there are the five
Skandhas;2 and these he saw in their self-nature to be empty.3
"O Sariputra, form is here emptiness,4 emptiness is form; form
is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form; that which is form
is emptiness, that which is emptiness is form. The same can be said of
sensation, thought, confection, and consciousness.
"O Sariputra, all things here are characterized with emptiness: they
are not born, they are not annihilated; they are not tainted, they are not
immaculate; they do not increase, they do not decrease. Therefore, O Sariputra,
in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no thought, no confection, no
consciousness; no eye,5 ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no
form,6 sound, colour, taste, touch, objects; no Dhatu of
vision,7 till we come to8 no Dhatu of consciousness; there is
no knowledge, no ignorance," till we come to there is no old age and
death, no extinction of old age and death; there is no suffering,10 no
accumulation, no annihilation, no path; there is no knowledge, no attainment,
[and] no realization,* because there is no attainment. In the mind of
the Bodhisattva who dwells depending on the Prajnaparamita there are no
obstacles;** and, going beyond the perverted views, he reaches final
Nirvana. All the Buddhas of the past, present, and future, depending on the
Prajnaparamita, attain to the highest perfect enlightenment.
"Therefore, one ought to know that the Prajnaparamita is the great
Mantram, the Mantram of great wisdom, the highest Mantram, the peerless
Mantram, which is capable of allaying all pain; it is truth because it is not
falsehood: this is the Mantram proclaimed in the Praynaparamita. It
runs: 'Gate, gate, Paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!' (O Bodhi, gone,
gone, gone to the other shore, landed at the other shore , Svaha!)"
1 There are two texts with the title of The Hridaya: the one is
known as the Shorter and the other the Larger. The one printed above is the
shorter sutra in general use in Japan and China.
The opening passage in the larger text in Sanskrit and Tibetan, which is
missing in the shorter one, is as follows: [The Tibetan has this additional
passage: "Adoration to the Prajnaparamita, which is beyond words, thought,
and praise, whose self-nature is, like unto space, neither created nor
destroyed, which is a state of wisdom and morality evident to our inner
consciousness, and which is the mother of all Excellent Ones of the past,
present, and future".] "Thus I heard. At one time World-honoured One
dwelt at Rajagriha, on the Mount of the Vulture, together with a large number
of Bhikshus and a large number of Bodhisattvas. At that time the World-honoured
One was absorbed in a Samadhi (Meditation) known as Deep Enlightenment. And at
the same moment the Great Bodhisattva Aryavalokitesvara was practising himself
in the deep Prajnaparamita."
The concluding passage, which is also missing in the shorter text, runs as
follows:
"O Sariputra, thus should the Bodhisattva practise himself in the deep
Prajnaparamita. At that moment, the World-honoured One rose from the Samadhi
and gave approval to the Great Bodhisattva Aryavalokitesvara, saying: Well
done, well done, noble son! so it is! so should the practice of the deep
Prajnaparamita be carried on. As it has been preached by you, it is applauded
by Tathagatas and Arhats. Thus spoke the World-honoured One with joyful heart.
The venerable Sariputra and the Great Bodhisattva Aryavalokitesvara together
with the whole assemblage, and the world of Gods, Men, Asuras, and Gandharvas,
all praised the speech of the World-honoured One."
2. From the modern scientific point of view, the conception of
Skandha seems to be too vague and indefinite. But we must remember that the
Buddhist principle of analysis is not derived from mere scientific interest; it
aims at saving us from the idea of an ultimate individual reality which is
imagined to exist as such for all the time to come. For when this idea is
adhered to as final, the error of attachment is committed, and it is this
attachment that forever enslaves us to the tyranny of external things. The five
Skandhas ("aggregates" or "elements") are form (rupam),
sensation or sense-perception (vedana), thought (samjna),
confection or conformation (samskara), and consciousness (vijnana).
The first Skandha is the material world or the materiality of things, while the
remaining four Skandhas belong to the mind. Vedana is what we get through our
senses; samjna corresponds to thought in its broadest sense, or that which mind
elaborates; samskara is a very difficult term and there is no exact English
equivalent; it means something that gives form, formative principle; vijnana
is consciousness or mentation. There arc six forms of mentation,
distinguishable as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking.
3. Hsuan-chuang's translation has this added: "He was
delivered from all suffering and misery."
4. "Empty" (sunya) or "emptiness" (sunyata)
is one of the most important notions in Mahayana philosophy and at the same
time the most puzzling for non-Buddhist readers to comprehend. Emptiness does
not mean "relativity", or "phenomenality", or
"nothingness", but rather means the Absolute, or something of
transcendental nature, although this rendering is also misleading as we shall
see later. When Buddhists declare all things to be empty, they are not
advocating a nihilistic view; on the contrary an ultimate reality is hinted at,
which cannot be subsumed under the categories of logic. With them, to proclaim
the conditionality of things is to point to the existence of something
altogether unconditioned and transcendent of all determination. Sunyata may
thus often be most appropriately rendered by the Absolute. When the sutra says
that the five Skandhas have the character of emptiness, or that in emptiness
there is neither creation nor destruction, neither defilement nor immaculacy,
etc., the sense is: no limiting qualities are to be attributed to the Absolute;
while it is immanent in all concrete and particular objects, it is not in
itself definable. Universal negation, therefore, in the philosophy of Prajna is
an inevitable outcome.
5. No eye, no ear, etc., refer to the six senses. In Buddhist
philosophy, mind (manovijnana) is the special sense-organ for the
apprehension of dharma, or objects of thought.
6. No form, no sound, etc., are the six qualities of the external
world, which become objects of the six senses.
7. "Dhatu of vision etc." refer to the eighteen Dhatus
or elements of existence, which include the six senses (indriya), the
six qualities (vishaya), and the six consciousnesses (vijnana).
8. "Till we come to" (yavat in Sanskrit, and nai
chih in Chinese) is quite frequently met with in Buddhist literature to
avoid repetition of well-known subjects. These classifications may seem
somewhat confusing and overlapping.
10. The allusion is of course to the Fourfold Noble Truth (satya):
1. Life is suffering (duhkha); 2. Because of the accumulation (samudaya)
of evil karma; 3. The cause of suffering can be annihilated (nirodha);
4. And for this there is the path (marga).
* Nabhisamayah is missing in
the Chinese translations as well as in the Horyuji MS.
** For varana all the Chinese
have "obstacle", and this is in full accord with the teaching of the
Prajnaparamita. Max Muller's rendering, "envelop", is not good.
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