Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 38-minute teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh introduces the Heart Sūtra through the concept of interbeing, using a simple sheet of paper to reveal how nothing exists independently. He shows how a piece of paper contains clouds, sunshine, a logger, and wheat—all non-paper elements that interdepend to create the paper itself. This leads to the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, not as absence but as freedom from a separate self, and therefore fullness of interconnection. He then explores the Heart Sūtra’s central passage on the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness), demonstrating how each element depends on all others, using examples from the body: lungs and blood cannot exist separately. Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes that true understanding requires penetration and non-duality—becoming one with what you seek to understand rather than observing from outside. He reframes both emptiness and impermanence not as causes for fear but as the very conditions that make life, growth, and transformation possible.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Side A.mp3
UUID: 72be687a-0b9c-4178-860d-1c12f3a42ad6
Teacher: Thich Nhat Hahn
Collection: Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra (Thich Nhat Hahn)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~2,609
And to formally welcome Thich Nhat Hanh to this visit, expression of our Sangha at Green Gulch, and we look forward very much to this morning’s teaching and for this time you can spend with us. Shall we begin with the bell? And every time during the talking, if you hear the bell, please breathe deeply, enjoy your breathing, and smile. This is the most wonderful way of being together. Thank you for smiling.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to ask you to to participate in this meditation. Here is a piece of paper. Piece of paper. Usually, we don’t pay very much attention to this piece of paper because when we take out one piece of paper, we think of other things than the piece of paper itself. If we look at this sheet of paper carefully enough, we can see that there is a cloud floating in it even if we are not a poet.
And this is very real because if the cloud is not there, the paper is not there. If there is no cloud, there is no rain, and the forest cannot grow. And there is no paper because we we need the trees in order to make paper. And every time you pick up the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, you have to see the cloud in the newspaper. You see you have to see the forest In order to print a Sunday edition of the New York Times, something like a forest because the New York time is very heavy.
Two kilograms, I think, the Sunday edition. And we don’t look at the newspaper in that way, so we should learn to look at the newspaper like that. So someone who looks carefully at a piece of paper can see a cloud floating, And he knows that if the cloud is not there, and then the paper cannot be there. And this is what is called interbeing in Buddhism. Interbeing.
Interbeing is not a word in in the dictionary yet, but I hope that sometime later we shall include that word into our dictionary. To be means to inter be because nothing can be by itself. Everything has to inter be with other things. Therefore, the cloud and the paper inter are. If we look more carefully, we see the sunshine in it.
You agree? Because without sunshine, nothing can be alive. The trees cannot grow, and therefore, there is no paper. So this sheet of paper interare interease with the the sun sunshine. And if you look a little bit longer, we see the earth.
Without the earth, a tree cannot grow. And we know that in the earth, in the soil, there are many things, not only water but minerals and so on. And we see a logger, a logger in here because without a logger, we cannot have a paper, a sheet of paper. Therefore, a logger and a paper interare also. And if you continue to meditate, to look, we see that everything is in here, like the wheat that is needed to make the bread for the logger to eat.
Without the wheat the wheat, the logger cannot be. And then also the grandfather of mister logger. He must be here. Without him, we have no logger. And therefore, looking deeply at the sheet of paper, you see that everything is there.
The sheet of paper is full of everything. In our daily life, we used to distinguish between paper and non paper. For instance, you would call me a non paper element. The bell is a non paper element. This is a non paper element.
But there is one thing I would like to remind you is that a sheet of paper is made of only by non paper elements. Sunshine, the cloud, the forest, the logger, all are non paper elements. Without non paper elements, a sheet of paper cannot be. Suppose I send back these non paper elements to their source. The rain to the cloud, back to the cloud.
The sunshine back to the sun. The logger back to his grandpa. The paper can no longer be there. And therefore, in Buddhism, they say that the sheet the paper is empty. Empty of what?
Empty of a separate self. Empty of a separate entity. That means a sheet of paper cannot exist by itself. It exists because of the existence of nonpaper elements. You agree?
Yes. But the word empty and emptiness does not sound to be like a nice word because so many of us are afraid of being empty. Many of us get scared when thinking that he or she is empty. But emptiness is a very nice word because without being empty, a sheet of paper cannot be. If a sheet of paper is not empty and then the sunshine cannot come in, the cloud cannot come in, and therefore there’s no paper.
That is why thanks to emptiness, everything is there. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible. But we have to be be precise. To be empty always means to be empty of something, like a cup. This cup how do you call this?
Bowl. This bowl. This bowl is is empty or not? Empty. Empty of what?
Empty means empty of what? Do you think it is empty of air? Oh, therefore, it is not empty of air. Empty means empty of something. Can you say again?
It’s empty of what? Of rice? Rice. Soup. Soup.
Yes. Wonderful. For outfit. Wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen, you will see that the children can understand the Heart Sūtra.
So this bowl is empty of food but but full of air. You think that air is not food? I am not so sure. Nothing. Because air is very important.
Then you breathe. But you breathe it. Without the air, you would die. So it’s kind of food, but you don’t eat the kind of food that you breathe in. Air is a very, very important kind of food.
But sometimes we don’t eat the food. We just breathe the food in, and air is the first class food. So to be empty means to empty of something. The word emptiness does not mean anything if we do not know what is lacking, what is not there. So if I say that the sheet is empty, a sheet of paper is empty, it is only empty of a separate self, but it is full.
Reality in reality, it is also full. It is full of what? Food or air? It is full of everything. Everything is here.
The sunshine, the cloud, the logger, the wheat, the soil, everything here. So to be empty of a separate self means to be full of everything. So if you want to be optimistic, you can be optimistic. If you want to be pessimistic, you can be also. So the word empty and full means the same thing.
I know a Buddhist in Great Britain. He had been a Buddhist for five years, and he always talk about emptiness, impermanence. And he complained that life is empty and life is impermanent. And one day his daughter, about fourteen year old, she said, why do you complain about impermanence? Because if things are not impermanent, how can I grow up?
I think she’s right. If things are not impermanent, how could she grow up to be a lovely lady? Therefore, impermanence is very much needed. If you put a grain of corn in the soil and if the grain of corn is not impermanent, how can it grow into a plant of corn? And how can we have corn flakes to eat in the morning?
Therefore, impermanence is very important. And therefore, instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say something like long live impermanence. Okay? Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. That is a very optimistic note.
And when you hear about the teaching of impermanence, you should look like that. And emptiness is the same. Emptiness is to be empty of a separate self, but also it means that it is full of everything else. And the sentence that I just made, thanks to emptiness, everything is possible is not made up by me. It it is a statement made by Nāgārjuna of the second century.
And he wrote that in his very famous treatise on famous treatise on Buddhism. That book is the Prajñāpāramitā, Maha Prajñāpāramitā Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible. So I welcome emptiness in me because because of emptiness, of being empty, I can be alive. In the Heart Sūtra, there is a sentence that contain the word emptiness. Listen, Śāriputra, form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness. Emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true with feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. There are five elements that we can find in our person.
These five elements flow like a river in every one of us. In fact, there are five rivers flowing together in us. The river of form, that means our body, the river of feelings, the river of perceptions, the river of mental formations, and the river of consciousness. It’s always flowing in us. And Avalokiteśvara, the name of a person who practiced meditation, when he look deeply into the streams of form, feelings, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, he suddenly saw something very important.
He saw that all these rivers are empty. Empty of what? Empty of a separate self. That means the five things. Form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
These fives each of these five have to be made by the other four. It cannot be by itself. That is why one of the five elements has to be made by the all other four. By itself, it cannot be. Therefore, it has to inter be with the five others.
I would like to bring you an example like the dice, that kind of thing that have six dice. Dice. Yeah. You have one dot, two dot, three dot, four, five, six, you see. Five and yet one.
If we lack one, it cannot be a So the six inter are. We cannot take one away, and we still have a dice. Another example, in ourselves, we have lungs, heart, kidneys, stomach, blood. And you know that these five or six things, they cannot exist by themselves. They have to coexist, like your lungs and the blood.
These two things cannot exist separately. The blood without the lungs cannot continue to be, because the lungs take the air in and enrich the blood, and the blood nourishes the lungs. Without the blood, the lungs cannot be alive. And therefore, lungs and blood, they can only interare. And the same thing is true with kidneys, the stomach.
If the stomach is not there, and then the blood cannot be, the lung cannot be, the heart cannot be, and therefore, they all interare. They are all empty. That is why they are possible. You understand? No.
It’s not conceivable that the the blood can exist without the presence of the lungs and the stomach. Therefore, form is empty because without feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, form cannot be. Therefore, form is empty. It’s so simple. And because of its emptiness, form is there.
And the same thing can be applied to feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Consciousness. So this sentence should not inspire fear. It should inspire confidence. If we practice looking at ourselves, at our body, at our feelings, at our mental formations, and look deeply and deeply, someday we will discover the truth about emptiness, which is the truth of interbeing, the truth of impermanence.
And this is very important. The Heart Sūtra is a text dealing with fear. And we liberate ourselves from fear by looking looking deeply into things in order to see. Once we really arrive at the vision of interbeing, emptiness will be emancipated from fear. Bodhisattva Avalokita is a person who have shed light on the five elements of the person.
And because of his meditation, his effort effort to look deeply into his person, he have he has found that all elements, the five elements are empty. But he is not sad about emptiness. Instead, he’s very happy because because of the fact that he can see the nature of emptiness in his person, he become liberated. He transcends birth and death. Bodhisattva Avalokita, while moving in the deep course of perfect understanding, shed light on the five skandhas five skandhas, the five elements, and found them equally empty.
Not one is empty, but all the five are empty. After this penetration, he overcame all pain. Penetration means you get into it. You understand from within and not from without. Because Buddhist meditation is not to look and observe things from the outside.
You have to guard into it, to be one with it in order to really understand. For instance, I just look at you from the outside. I cannot understand you. I have to enter in yourself in order to really feel your feelings, to really be your being, and then my understanding will be called a good understanding. Therefore, penetrating and being one with it, you can understand.
In the French language, there is the word. It means comprehend, understand. Means to be one with it, and prendre means to take it, to pick it up. To understand something is to pick it up and to be one with it. There is no other way of understanding one person one thing.
Let us return to the sheet of paper. If we only observe the paper as an observer, we cannot understand it completely. We have to go into it. We have to be a cloud. We have to be a sunshine.
We have to be a locker. And if we can enter it and be everything that is in it, our understanding will be perfect. In India, they talk about a grain of salt, A grain of salt that like very much to know how salty is the water in the ocean. A grain of salt that would like very much to know how salty is the water of the ocean. How?
And finally, the grain of salt decided to jump into the ocean and to be one with the water of the ocean, and understanding is perfect. Therefore, you cannot understand something or someone without becoming that someone or something. Like, if you are concerned with peace and if you want to understand, a citizen of the Soviet Union, you cannot just stand outside and observe. You have to be in the skin of a citizen of the Soviet Union in order to understand the feelings, the perceptions, the mental formations within an American citizen, maybe you don’t understand yet because you have not really penetrated in your feelings, your perceptions, your mental formations. How can we expect to understand the feelings, the perceptions, the mental formations of a Soviet citizen if we just stand outside and observe superficially.
So in order to understand a citizen of the Soviet Union, we should not rely on the fruit of research of political scientists. We have to deal with the Soviet citizen like a person. We have to be one with him or her in order to really understand. And that is Buddhist meditation. To penetrate, to be one with him or her or it in order to really understand.
And any meaningful move for peace should follow the principle of penetration, non duality.