Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 32-minute commentary, Thich Nhat Hahn unpacks the Heart Sūtra’s central insight into emptiness and non-birth-and-death through intimate, concrete examples. He opens with the practice of mindful breathing and smiling, then shifts to exploring what “penetration” means: not observing from the outside but becoming one with what we seek to understand, so we can truly love and be free from fear. He walks a young student through probing questions about the date of birth—was it nine months before birth, or at conception, or when the parents were even younger?—to illustrate that we have never truly been born. Using the example of a leaf, a cloud, a piece of paper, he shows that objects and beings cannot be reduced to nothingness; they merely transform. He then applies this to the teaching “neither defiled nor immaculate,” examining how we discriminate between a rose and garbage, between the “clean” and the “prostitute,” revealing through interbeing that these divisions collapse. He closes with a call to responsibility: because all things interare, our daily choices shape the world, and we cannot claim innocence. Suited for practitioners seeking to ground abstract Buddhist philosophy in lived understanding.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Side B.mp3
UUID: ef243d4b-85d5-4a29-bd43-f6de31904ad3
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: ~2,727
Deeply, when breathing is not enough, smiling. You will be very happy when you practice breathing and smiling while listening to the bell. So the word penetration is a very good word. To penetrate and to be the same same thing with the object of your understanding. In the basic in the sūtra of the four foundations of mindfulness, the Buddha recommended us to observe, to contemplate that way.
He said that we should contemplate the body in the body. We should contemplate the feelings in the feelings, the mental formations in the mental formations. What does it mean? Why that kind of repetition? Because to meditate is not to stand outside as a mere observer.
You have to enter in order to be one with what you want to observe and to understand. Now scientists of our time begin to see that, the nuclear scientist. When you enter the world of a elementary particle, you have become to become a participant in order to understand something. You can no longer stay outside in order to be an observer. That is why people like David Bohm or Capra, they now prefer the word participant to the word observer.
In our effort to understand each other, we should do the same. We should not only be observer. We should also be participant. Wife and husband, in order to understand each other, has to be in the skin of each other to feel otherwise you cannot really understand. And in the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding.
You cannot love someone if you don’t understand him or her. That’s very simple, very clear in Buddhist meditation. If you don’t understand and you love, that is not love. That’s something else. And understanding brings about love.
So Avalokita, after having seen deeply in the rivers of form, feelings, mental perceptions. He discovered the nature of emptiness in all of them, and suddenly, he overcame all pain. And all those of us who would like to arrive at that kind of emancipation has have also to look deeply to see that nature of emptiness. Here, Śāriputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. That means anything we look at deeply would reveal the nature of emptiness to us.
Take for instance, a leaf or a flower and look at it carefully. You will discover the nature of emptiness. And if you discover it, you become liberated from your pain and from your fear. Here, Śāriputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed.
That means the concept of birth and death cannot get along with emptiness. In the light of emptiness, nothing is born. Nothing can die. That seems to be the opposite of what we are thinking and seeing. But if we observe, if we penetrate profoundly into the nature of things, we will see differently.
Like like the scientist, now they look at the elementary particle of matter, they see they see that it is empty. They say that one elementary particle is made of all other elementary particle. There is no real essence in matter exactly like in the Heart Sūtra. And because of the fact that an electron is empty, it is possible. This young man, we think that he he has been born how many years ago?
Eight years ago. Now let us penetrate him. Could you help me? Could you help us? Could you tell us when on what date were you born?
November fifteen nineteen seventy eight. Very good. And there is a birth certificate in which these things are mentioned. I think so. Otherwise, we cannot go to school without a birth certificate.
Now I would like to ask you a very profound, difficult question, and this this question is addressed to every one of you, whether you are born on the same in the same year or before. Do you think that before you were born, you already existed? You were already there? Before you were born, were have you been have you been really there? Were you already there?
For instance, this is time. This is the moment when you are you were born from your mother. And from now, you go on and one year old, two year old, three, four, five, six year old. This is the birthday. I like to ask you whether before that you were already there.
You were already there? I think so. Because if you were not already there, how could you be born here? To be born, you have to be there in order to be born. And if you had been there, what is the use of being born?
Because to be born in our mind is from nothing, you become something. Right? To be born according to the definition that we usually have, that that means from a nothing, you become a something. Here, production, nothing is produced. That means from nothing, you become something.
That is the meaning of being born. But if you had been there before you were born, and then what is the use of being born? Therefore, I think you have to reexamine and to tell me the more exact date about of your your birth. I think before you were born from your mother, you already existed in her. So can you go back and try to tell me what is a better date for your birth?
Maybe our friends here can help. The rest can help. How many days backward? Usually, we think that you are born the moment you were conceived. Father and mother come together, and then you are born.
Right? And that day, maybe nine months and ten days in advance not in advance, but back work, back before. So if you want a better date of birth date, you add you you just subtract. Yeah. And then can you give a approximate date for his birth?
February fifth. So we have to to to to take care of that. We have to to to to change a birth your birth certificate. It was not very correct. Therefore, we have to and I think you need a lot of work to do in order to change like that, a lot of arguing with the attorney and people like that.
It’s very difficult. It will create a huge debate. About the date is the date when father and mother come together and you are conceived. But the question the same question can be applied. Well, before the arrival, the meeting of father and mother, whether you had existed or not, you had been there or not.
The answer is that you had been there half in your father, half in your mother. And even before mother and father were born, you had been already in grandpa and grandma. It seems that if you look more deeply, more deeply, you see that you had been you have been there for a long time for a long time. Maybe from the beginning, but the beginning of what? The beginning is always the beginning of what?
Like empty means to be empty of what? What if there is no beginning? So if we look more deeply into this reality, if we penetrate him, we find that he has never been born. He has been always been there. So it goes along with the Heart Sūtra.
And every one of us is the same. No one of us has been born. We have been we have always been there. Just look at my hand and your hand. Look deeply to see and to tell me how long this hand has been around.
It’s difficult. It has taken so many forms, and now it is here. And I have always been there, and I have never died. If I have died once, how could this hand is still here? That long, long continuation.
Well, let us look at something else like a cloud. Do you think that a cloud can be born? How could a cloud be born? Can a cloud just be born like that out of nothing? No.
I think you are correct. Because the sun shine on the water, and the water become the vapor and then the cloud. So the cloud itself has never been born. It was the water. Before becoming a cloud, it was the water.
It has always been there. And the water, you think that a water a cloud can die? To die means from something you become a nothing. Do you think that we can make something becoming a nothing? Like this sheet of paper, can we can we can we make it into nothing?
Suppose I strike a match and burn it up, it cannot become nothing. It can it will become smoke, heat, and ash. The smoke will go and continue to be. The heat will penetrate other things and continue to be. The ash will become part of the the soil.
So you are not capable of transforming this sheet of paper into nothingness, into a nothing. It’s impossible. A piece of dust is also like that. You cannot make a piece of dust into nothingness. So this sheet of paper, if we look at it carefully, we see that it has never been born and it will never die.
It can take other forms of being, but it cannot be reduced to nothing. So that is why the Heart Sūtra Avalokiteśvara said, Here, Śāriputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed. Everything is like that. Everyone is like that.
We are not subject to birth and death. If we care to look carefully, we transcend birth and death. Birth and death are ideas we have in our mind. Birth and death cannot be applied to reality. It is like the idea of above and below, you know, that is in here.
Because we are quite sure that this is the above and this is the below. And we are very sure that heaven is in this direction and hell this direction. But the Indonesians or Japanese who are sitting on the other side of the planet, they don’t agree. They think that this is the above and heaven is here. Right?
And if we disagree with them, we have a fight, and we can kill each other. We don’t realize that the idea of above and below cannot be applied to the cosmos. So birth and death are like that also. The idea, the notion of birth and death are created by our mind cannot be applied to being because nothing can be be born. Nothing can die.
To be born means from nothing you become something. To die means from something, you become nothing. And if we have never been born, if we have never died in the past, why are we going to die in twenty or thirty or fifty years? We have to look carefully. They are neither produced nor destroyed.
They here means everything, everyone. Neither defiled nor immaculate. It means neither clean nor dirty. Because the idea of immaculation and defilement are also created by our mind. Suppose we contemplate a rose a rose freshly cut from the garden, we put it on a flowerpot and look at it.
It’s so immaculate, so fresh, so beautiful. And then we look at the garbage can. We see that the things out there are not as immaculate, as clean, as fragrant. But if we look more deeply at the rose, we see that the rose and the garbage can the garbage, they inter-are. Without the garbage, it cannot be a rose.
Without the rose, it cannot be a garbage. Looking at the rose deeply, you see that you see that it is garbage. In a week, the rose will become part of the garbage, and in a few months, if you know how to garden organically, and then the garbage will become a chrysanthemum, chrysanthemum, or a rose. Therefore, while you are looking at the rose, look deeply. Look deeply to see also the garbage in the rose.
And when you look at the garbage, look deeply in order to see the rose in the garbage. That way you don’t discriminate any longer against the garbage. You think that the garbage is very needed for the rose and for us. And the rose and the garbage are completely on equal footing. And the garbage is as precious as the rose.
And rose and garbage, they interare, and they need need each other very much. In poor society, maybe in rich society also, there are ladies who have to sell themselves in order to feed the family. They call them prostitute. In communist countries, also, there are prostitutes. In anti communist countries, there are also prostitutes.
Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, these two cities have prostitutes. And then the younger who has to sell herself in order to support her family will feel very sad, ugly, defiled. And when she look at other people, she have the complex of being impure, and she suffer very much. There there was no other ways for her to help her family. That is why she listened to the arguments of some people, and she became a prostitute.
And she lived that kind of pain all day and night, and she is not emancipated from that complex of being defiled. But the other people who are not prostitutes, who are living who go to churches, or who have the feeling that they are spiritually very clean, they should look at themselves and see the nature of interbeing between them and the prostitute. Because according to the light of interbeing, this is like this. That is why that is like that. And the people, the so called clean people, they are responsible for the being of the so called defiled people.
Because this is because that is. This is, that is why that is. This is like this, That is why that is like that. It’s like the rose and the garbage. They interare.
And nobody among us can claim to be immaculate because of our way of life, that these young girls had to become prostitutes. A society that consumes a lot of goods and a society that is deprived of everything, these two societies inter are. The rich the wealth of a society is made of the poverty of the other society. And therefore, wealth and poverty inter-are. And if we care to look at things in the light of interbeing, we see that we are responsible for everything.
It is like the story of the young girl who was raped on a small boat by sea pirate, And the sea pirates continue to inflict a lot of pain and sufferings on boat people today, last night, the day before, tomorrow also. Every time we hear of a pirate killing people and raping women and children, we feel angry. We want to punish. We want to kill the pirate. But the fact is that the coming into existence of these pirates, we are responsible.
Last night, on the Gulf of Siam, many hundred babies were born. And if these babies are not properly brought up, if they will have a drunk father and a mother who knows nothing about raising a child properly. And then in twenty or twenty two years, a number of these babies born last night will become a pirate. If the educators, economists, politicians in Thailand and in the world don’t do anything at all for them, for the babies who were born last night, Number of them will become sea pirates in twenty or twenty five years. This is like this.
That is why that will be like that. So we are co responsible for everything. We cannot say that our hands are clean. Our hands can never be clean because we interact with everybody else. If forty thousand children die every day because of lack of food, we are responsible.
The way we live our daily life, make that possible. In order for that not to happen again, we have to change. We have to be aware of what is going on. And Buddhist meditation is to look in order to really see what is going on.