Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a Candrakīrti verse on autonomy — the claim that anything pursued solely for this life undermines real independence — Geshe Pema Tsering spends the first half of this 45-minute commentary building motivation before reaching the Heart Sūtra text itself. He traces the rarity of genuine Mahāyāna practice through a descending pyramid: from casual Buddhists down to those sincerely aiming at Buddhahood for all beings, then covers the three levels of spiritual aspiration. He unpacks paramita as literally “gone to the other side” rather than “perfection,” contrasts the Madhyamaka school (perfection of wisdom as understanding emptiness) with the Cittamātra or Mind-Only school (perfection of wisdom as non-dual wisdom beyond subject and object), and enters the sūtra’s prologue — including a lively debate between two Indian scholars over whether Ānanda or the bodhisattva Vajrapāni compiled and preserved the text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 HS 2003 02 11.mp3
UUID: ce32a389-3612-4dff-b2c6-4e0c14b09331
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-02-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~4,053
Okay. Geshe-la starts with a quote from Mañjuśrī Mukhagama by a man called Candrakīrti. And I can’t actually find a translation for his quote, so it’s and it’s very difficult, so I I can’t give you a direct translation of what his the quote is, but initial explanation for it was that anything that we do in this life to try and make this life better actually takes away from our autonomy, because whatever we do in this life is only for this life. So when we die, we can’t take it with us. It doesn’t help us achieve anything.
It doesn’t help us achieve liberation. So what we should be concentrating on is anything that can give us real independence, real autonomy, anything that does do that, anything that’s the entry to that should be taken up, and anything that stops us having true autonomy to control over what we do should be abandoned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, So if I could try and translate the first line, the first line would be like, in any life, try and enter and accord with anything that will give you independence or autonomy. So it’s really difficult for us to do this and to practice the three levels of motivation, which is the motivation looking towards the next life, the motivation looking towards nirvana, and the motivation that looks towards enlightenment. It’s very difficult for us to do any of these to achieve any of these motivations. But if we can remember that we’re in a cycle where we’re born and we die, and we’re born and we die, then we’ve actually been born into a situation where not only do we have a human rebirth, but we have a human rebirth in which we are looking for things and we’re looking for answers, and we can recognize to a certain degree what’s right and what’s wrong, then we have to understand that we are actually capable of doing things because we were capable of creating the right causes and the right karma to be born into this situation.
So therefore, even though this may be difficult to abandon everything that isn’t going to give us our own independence or our own liberation. We have to realize we’ve already done quite a considerable amount of good things to get where we are now. So so we’ve achieved this this human rebirth, and what’s the what what we could have been born of what we could have been born as that would be worse than being a human are what’s called the three lower realms. The three lower realms are the hell realms, the the hungry ghost realms, and the animal realms. Now out of these three realms, we can actually see the animal realms.
So we have some experience of that. And if we think about the life of an animal, what they basically do is they wake up, they eat, they try and get food, and then they go back to sleep, and then they wake up, and then they try to get food, and then they go back to sleep. There is not a lot that they do apart from that, and we can see that see that directly that that’s what the life of an animal is like. These beings that are in the three lower realms are trapped within saṃsāra, and it’s really difficult for them to create any of the merit that they’d need to to in order to get out of saṃsāra. Anything that the Buddha would explain to them, they wouldn’t necessarily get.
So if you sat down and explained, you know, there’s a good things to do, there’s bad things to do, there’s negative states of mind like anger and, frustration and fighting and and, and pride, they wouldn’t understand that. Right? But when we hear it, we can actually understand it. So therefore, we have we are in the unique position where we have the opportunity to listen to what the Buddha taught and then be able to change their minds by doing that. Because and because they can’t do that, what happens is they get into this cycle of not knowing the difference between good and bad and not being able to clear their minds out by not being able to listen to what the Buddha taught.
And, therefore, all they do is create more negativity and more karma and more delusions and get more stuck in saṃsāra. So even though that we may have this experience where we’re born as humans, even even though humans have the ability to have the understanding of more of what’s right and what’s wrong and and what negative states of mind are and what negative positive states of mind. If we spend this whole life chasing after or being engaged in pursuit of things that will be of benefit just for this life, then this life just becomes another cause for saṃsāra, and we’re not that much different from the animals and the peep the other beings in the lower realms. So the way that the the population differs in between the six realms is that there is more beings in the hell realms than there is in the hungry ghost realms, and then there’s less beings in the animal realm than there is in the hungry ghost realm, and then and then less in the human, less in the demigod, and less in the gods. So that means that there’s a lot less humans than there are beings in the animal realms and in the in the hell realms and the spirit realms.
And even within those human beings that actually have human rebirth, even within them, there’s even even fewer number that that want to practice Dharma and that want to concentrate on that in this lifetime. So then we have amongst people that actually want to practice Dharma, there there is there is different types of these people as well. And there’s probably more people that want to practice Dharma for some kind of worldly gain, that is some gain that they’ll get back in this life. And then there’s so there’s the most Dharma practitioners are like that. And then there’s even fewer people who want to practice Dharma to to get a good rebirth or to have a good next life.
And then from that, there’s even less people that want to practice Dharma in order to achieve liberation or nirvana. And then even from those people, there’s even less that want to practice Dharma in order to achieve Buddhahood. So that makes the amount of people that wanna practice Dharma in order to achieve Buddhahood a really small number. So there’s there’s a lot of different dharmas as well when we talk about people who wanna practice Dharma. There’s there’s the Buddhist Dharma.
There’s Christian Dharma. There’s Muslim Dharma. There’s Bönpo Dharma. All of these different types of practice are all practicing a type of a Dharma. But amongst those people that actually are trying to practice these different types of Dharma or religious practice, the people that actually know about that religion, people that actually understand, the individual religions and understand what their goal is and what it is that they’re supposed to be doing, there’s not very many of those.
There’s there’s a lot of people that say, for example, I’m a Christian, but if you actually ask them what it meant to be Christian or actually ask them what the true meaning of being Christian was or the true philosophy was, then they wouldn’t they wouldn’t necessarily be very many people who could tell you that or who understood that. That so the the proportion of people that say that they’re Christian or Buddhist is is a lot bigger than the people that actually understand the the particular religion. So in the same way in the in the amongst the people that say they’re Buddhist, if you took out just the people who had actually kind of studied Buddhism and tried to understand it and had some understanding of what it was, then there wouldn’t be many left. If you only had those people, there there’s not that many of them. And then if you took out of those, the people that were so there’s so hang on.
I’ll try to try and say another there’s less peep no. There’s more people that say they’re Buddhists than there are that know about Buddhism, and there’s more people that know about Buddhism and then there are people who practice the Mahāyāna path, and there’s more people no. Sorry. There’s hang on. Scratch that bit from the tape, and I’ll try again.
Okay. So there’s a lot of people. Right? And there’s a lot of people who say they’re Buddhist. So amongst all the people who are saying they’re Buddhists, right, there’s a there’s fewer people that actually know anything about Buddhism.
And amongst those fewer people that know anything about Buddhism, there’s most of them will count themselves to be Hinayanas practitioners or to or people who are looking for liberation for themselves. So from those people, there’s even fewer people who are practicing the the Mahāyāna path. And then from amongst those who say they’re practicing the Mahāyāna path, there’s even fewer who actually understand it properly. So that means that there are very, very few people who are actually practicing the Mahāyāna path and understand what they’re doing. Right.
So if we are one of these people that is trying really hard to understand and to practice the Mahāyāna doctrine properly, then we are very, you know, very small minority. In the same way that if you went into other religions and talked to people from other religions, then if were to the the number of people who are actually practicing and trying to understand any of those particular religions properly would be a small minority. So amongst those that they we can call actual Dharma practitioners or actually practitioners of Buddha’s followers of Buddha’s teachings, that we usually divide them into three different types of people. They’re being the smaller the smaller aspiration, the middling aspiration, and the greatest aspiration. The smallest aspiration is those who wish to practice Dharma and to collect good deeds in order to to get for themselves a better rebirth or a good rebirth in their next life.
Those with middling motivation are those who wish to achieve liberation for their own sake so that they can be free from suffering. And those of the greatest aspiration are those who wish to achieve Buddhahood in order to stop all being suffering. So anytime that we think that we’re practicing Dharma, the actual motivation is that somehow this life will be better, somehow we will feel better in this life, or somehow we can get something from this life, then that doesn’t actually become a Dharma practice. So so what we’re trying to do is to try and set our our motivation in the right way. So either if if we if the or if all we can motivate ourselves to do is to try and work for a better rebirth in the next life, and that’s all we can focus on, then we should be trying to focus on that.
And if not, then we should be trying to focus on trying to achieve liberation for ourselves, trying to get to a state where we are completely free from suffering. Yeah. So yes. So in the same way that we want though, that we wanna be free from suffering, every other sentient being wants to be free from suffering as well. So if we’re going to look at this clearly, then we have to understand that it’s not only us that wants to be free from suffering, and we can’t ignore all the other people, all the other beings that want to be free from suffering as as well, especially when we consider this in all our lives, we’ve been had some kind of connection with them and that all these beings owe us we owe them a great kindness in one way or another.
So when we’re thinking like this and we think, well, what we actually wanna do is is separate all beings from suffering as well as ourselves. And then in order to separate all beings from suffering, we have to achieve enlightenment because there is no other way to separate all beings from suffering that rather than us achieving enlightenment. And then when we have this thought, then we will do any kind of practice in any type of Dharma or any type of religious practice in order to achieve this because it is so important that we separate ourselves and all other beings from suffering. Okay. So what whatever we’re doing, whether it’s studying the Heart Sūtra, we’re studying the seventy topics, we’re going for refuge, or we’re doing any kind of prayers, if we have this thought that I’m doing this in order to achieve Buddhahood so I can so all beings can be free from suffering, and then this becomes, like, the ultimate goal.
It becomes the the best the best thing that we can be focusing on, the ultimate thing we can be focusing on. So now we’re studying the Heart Sūtra. So what we should be thinking is that by studying this Heart Sūtra, may I clear away my obscurations and be able to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. And this is the kind of mind that we should have when we’re studying this sūtra, and this is the kind of motivation we should be setting before we study it. So if we just if we don’t think like this, if we don’t think that by trying to study the Heart Sūtra, we will be able to achieve enlightenment and then help all beings be free from suffering.
If we’re just any old how listening, if we’re not concentrating in any specific way, if we’re just, you know, listening any old how, then it doesn’t do us much good. I mean, there’s the benefit of of listening, but apart from the benefit of listening, there’s really that not that much point. Okay. So so what then we should be thinking that may all the the good deeds that all of the five different types of beings, which is Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and ordinary beings and us, all every single being and all the Buddhism, everything, all the good deeds that all of them have done, may they become a cause for us, to be achieving enlightenment in order to, separate all beings from suffering. And then thinking this, we should meditate.
Oh, yeah. I don’t know how to do it, Jampa. No. So in general, when we talk about the perfection of of of perfection of wisdom or just the perfection, it’s actually the the prajn the paramita. Yeah?
The the actual word paramita, which means the perfection of something. There’s different ways that, we can talk about this. First of all, I think it it should explain that the paramita doesn’t actually mean perfection as we know it. The literal translation would be something like gone to the other side or the other side of of something. And like they say, gone gone, whatever in the text.
So when they talk about, literally is like perimeter. Okay? So when they talk about these different types of perfections, what they are actually talking about is going to the other side. Right? So there’s different types of going to the other side or perfections or paramita.
The first one that’s often talked about is the understanding of emptiness, which comes from which is when we go from being an ordinary being into becoming an ārya being or a supreme being. There’s also the perfection, which is seeing ordinary appearances or ordinary reality as the ultimate reality, which is emptiness. There’s the the passing over or the going to the other side or whatever of Samsāra, which is actually achieving nirvana. So the the going to the other side of saṃsāra is achieving nirvana. And there’s the going to the other side of not knowing, which is knowing.
And this text is referring to the going to the other side of not knowing and and knowing, and what it is that we know is emptiness. So usually when we talk about this, the perfection of wisdom, if we’re talking about it from the Madhyamaka point of view, the perfection of wisdom from the Madhyamaka point of view is understanding emptiness. But if we’re talking about the perfection of wisdom from the Cittamātra point of view or the mind only school’s point of view, then when they say the perfection of wisdom, what they actually mean is understanding the wisdom of nonduality, that is that subject and object don’t exist separately from each other. So this is backed up by a quote from the, you know, the condensed meaning of the eight thousand line perfection of wisdom, Sūtra, by Dignāgā, which says the perfection of wisdom is the non dual wisdom. It is the Tathāgata.
And what this means is that from the Cittamātra, the mind only point of view, from their school’s point of view, when when they’re actually talking about the perfection of wisdom or the the perimeter or the the furthest part place you can take wisdom, they actually say that that is only understanding the the the nondifferentiation of subject and object. And they say that that, the nondifferentiation of subject and object, is actually or. So they because they actually possess they have these ways of trying to achieve the the understanding of the nonduality of subject and object. Because they say that understanding the non duality of subject and object is the final is final that ness is the final type of mind that you can develop. Then they also say that any of the causes for developing this mind are what they call the text perfection of wisdom and the path perfection of wisdom.
So anything that has the description of this of the nonduality of subject and object in it or is a teaching on it, they call the scripture perfection of wisdom. And any of the mind that arises which is understanding this, they call the path perfection of wisdom. So it’s anything that they think is a cause for either of those, they call it either the scriptural perfection of wisdom or the path perfection of wisdom, which they both say are a cause or a way of attaining this understanding. And so, it goes on to keep quoting the text of Dignāgā which says the term is used for text and path because they have the object as the goal, the object being the understanding of the non duality of subject and object. So what is the what they’re talking about is that even though the Cittamātra, this their mind only school says that these things are the path perfection of wisdom and the scriptural perfection of wisdom, they are so only by name only because they don’t actually contain any reference to emptiness as it is described by the Consequentialist school.
And so therefore, the Consequentialist schools say that they aren’t actually the perfection of wisdom’s text or path because they don’t have emptiness in them. And then the mind only school says that they are because the perfection of wisdom is actually the nonduality of subject and object. Okay. So that’s enough of the the introduction to the Heart Sūtra. And now we’re onto the actual text or and in the in the body of the actual text, that’s actually divided into two again.
One of those is the prologue, the normal prologue and no. The prologue and the actual base of the text or the the core of the text. Prologue is again divided into two. There’s the He’s he doesn’t know whether you’re getting it or not. But, anyway, the the text is divided into two.
There is the that sorry. The prologue is divided into two. There is the common prologue and the uncommon prologue, and we start with the common prologue because it comes first. So the uncommon prologue is the part of the text that says, thus I have heard at one time the blessed one was dwelling in Rajagriha on Vulture’s Peak mountain together in one with method with a great assembly of monks and a great assembly of bodhisattvas. And it’s I found four different translations for that.
So if that doesn’t fit yours, then it’s probably close. Oh, yeah. So the main reason that they gave there is a prologue to this text is to show that the person that was actually compiling it and compiled it, and didn’t add anything else to it. So by not adding anything to it, it becomes a direct utterance of the Buddha. So the reason that they explain this at the beginning of the text is that the people that are listening to it will will pay better attention to it because they understand that it’s actual direct words of the Buddha.
So the next section, which says at one time, the reason that there’s actually some discussion about why it says at one time, and one point of view about why it says at one time is put forward by Haribhādra, who is an Indian scholar. And his point his his reasoning why it says at one time is because he believes that by the blessings of the Buddha, the ear consciousness of Buddha’s disciple Ānanda actually heard the whole of the Heart Sūtra in one split second, and was able to store it without losing or forgetting a single word. Okay. So another Indian scholar called Bhāvaviveka, he disagrees with Haribhādra, and his reason for disagreeing is that Ānanda wasn’t actually a Mahāyānist. So because he wasn’t a Mahāyānist, he couldn’t understand the emptiness.
He he was what they call a Hinayanist, which is a Hīnayāna school person. So if he didn’t understand emptiness, how was he supposed to hear it and understand it properly? So he says that because the emptiness or the perfection of wisdom doesn’t exist within the, like, what they call the ground of a Hinayanist, which ground is like where they are. Right? The ground of a hero.
Therefore, it couldn’t have been Ānanda that was the compiler of this. It had to have been someone who was a Mahāyāna, and not only that, a Bodhisattva. So he says the person that did it was Vajrapāni, Okay. So Haribhādra’s retorts to this idea that it couldn’t have been, a Hinayanist that actually understood all of the Heart Sūtra was that he only did so by the power of the Buddha’s blessings. So it was actually the power of the Buddha’s blessings that made him understand the Heart Sūtra.
It wasn’t him understanding it directly. Therefore, Bhāvaviveka’s argument doesn’t hold. Alright? But there’s lot of this isn’t the only two discussion about it. There’s heaps of other arguments with people with different views about who was the actual, person who, stored in their memory, the Heart Sūtra so that it could be passed down to, later generations.
So the next part of the sūtra says that it mentions that that it was taught at both Rajagriha and Vulture’s Peak. So that’s taught at two different places. The reason that it’s it mentions two different places and says it’s taught at both is because the Rajagir actually represents the laypeople, and Vulture’s Peak represents the Sangha or the ordained listeners to the teachings. So there was a gathering of both laypeople and ordained people. And the reason so, yeah, so that’s why the the Rajagriha actually represents where the laypeople were at, and Vulture’s Peak is where the the Sangha were.
And it wasn’t just laypeople, though. It was, like, the people who had become Aryas from being lay laypeople. So it was people who had risen out of just being lay people. And their their side of the congregation is called the side of