Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 33-minute talk from 1987, Thich Nhat Hahn explores the Heart Sūtra’s core teaching of emptiness through interconnection and interbeing. He unfolds the sūtra’s enumeration of the six sense organs, their objects, and the resulting consciousnesses, then explains the twelve links of dependent origination—showing that nothing exists in isolation. Moving from abstraction to lived insight, he offers a luminous meditation on a falling autumn leaf, revealing how the leaf nourishes its tree, carries its mother within itself, and falls without fear because it knows it will become the tree again. He extends this vision to clouds, waves, dust, and ultimately to our own nature: we are not separate from anything in the cosmos; we are woven through with ten thousand stems connecting us to water, soil, sun, and all beings. He concludes that once we see this interbeing directly, fear of birth and death dissolves, and even returning to dust becomes joyful. A teaching for practitioners ready to move beyond abstract philosophy into embodied realization.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Side C.mp3
UUID: 01208d9d-13e5-4062-a3e0-10e8b857ea53
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: ~2,488
Are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor immaculate, increasing nor decreasing. It’s like the moon. We think that the moon gets bigger or smaller, but in fact the moon does not get bigger and smaller. What have we got yesterday, and what are we going to lose tomorrow?
We have to look in order to see. Therefore, in emptiness, there is neither form nor feeling nor perception nor mental formations nor consciousness. That means none of these can be by itself. No eyes or ears or nose or tongue or body or mind, no form, sound, smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. These are already enumerating realms of being, realms of existence.
There are six organs, eyes, nose, tongue, ear, body, and then form, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of mind. There are six organs of sense and then six kind of objects for these organs. The form is the object of the eyes. The smell is the object of nose, and there are six sense organs and six kind of objects of sense organs. And when these come together, born with eyes, smell with nose, taste with tongue.
Six other things are produced. They are called consciousness. And this six consciousness is eyes consciousness, which we call sight. Ear consciousness, which we call hearing and so on.
So all it may it make three times six, eighteen realms of existence. And here, it’s only enumerating this eighteen, you see, eyes, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, form, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of mind, and then the sight, hearing, and so on, and so on. No realms of elements from eyes to mind consciousness. Eyes is the first realm of element, and mind consciousness is the last realm of elements. No interdependent origins and no extinction of them.
You have in the list of twelve interdependent origins beginning with ignorance and ending with death and decay. And these twelve all have the same rule. None of these twelve can exist by itself. Everything has to rely on the being of others in order to be. Therefore, everything is empty, and because they are empty, they are there, really existing.
Let us do some breathing. Let us continue our meditation on the sheet of paper. In my former life, in one of his former life, this sheet of paper had been a leaf, a leaf. I think in my former life, I had been a leaf also, new also. In one of my former life, I was a rock and another life, I was a tree and I had been a cloud also in my former life and this is not something superstitious.
This is very, very clear. There was life on earth. You can look and to see and see. There was water and then there were single cell beings in the water and then there were fungus in the water, and there were small plants and trees on the earth, and then we had animals, we had many kinds of animals and plants, and then we have man species. Man is a very young species on earth.
And therefore, in his former life, man has been a rock. Man has been water, a tree, an animal. And therefore, this is not something very abstract. This is something very clear. And I’m sure that in one of my former lives, I was a cloud and I had a good time.
In one form of his former life, it was the sheet of paper was a rift. I think not very far long ago, just the life preceding it, it was a leaf. And one day I was standing alone by the door of the jungle, of the wood, by the wood, and I was examining a leaf that was about to fall down. It was autumn and the leaves were beautiful. So I looked at the leaves, and I particularly paid attention to one of them, a very beautiful, tiny leaf like this, like the shape of a heart.
And I was not an observer only. I penetrated into the leaf and this is what I saw I want to share with you. First I saw that the leaf is its mother because usually we think of the tree as a mother and leaves only as children. But looking deeply, I see that the leaf nourish the tree because the sap that is brought up by the roots is only water with some minerals. That kind of sap has to be transformed into another kind of sap, more elaborate in order to nourish the tree.
And it is the leaf that is given the beauty to do so. So when the water and the mineral is accepted by the leaf, the leaf use the sunshine and the chlorophyll and day and night work and transform that sap into elaborate sap and send it back to nourish the whole tree. Therefore, a leaf is a mother, and a leaf is connected with the tree by a stem. It seems that we are not connected with our mother with the stem, but we did have a stem when we were inside our mother. The stem is long like that and the stem is called umbilical cord.
Unfortunately, that was cut when we were born. That is why we had the impression that we are autonomous. But if we look deeply, we see that we still have a million kind of stems connecting us with everything else. Do we have a stem with the ground? Yes.
Between the ground up there and me, there is a stem, otherwise I cannot be alive. If there is no cloud, there’s no water for me to drink and you know that I’m made of at least ninety percent of the water. So the stem between me and the cloud is really there. And the stem linking me to the forest, the stem linking me to the sun. I have a multitude of stems linking me to everything in the cosmos.
Therefore, I can be. So we have to see that. And I saw the leaf as a mother. And I saw the leaf as a teacher because I learned a lot from the leaf. The leaf told me that life is not only in the leaf but also in the tree.
The leaf told me like this, you know, all my life, I have made efforts to nourish the tree. So I am in the tree. Not only I am in this shape of the heart, but I am also in the tree. And therefore, you should say something like this, life of life in the tree and life in the leaf. And you shouldn’t say life off the leaf because life at its ease, it is only one.
And as I look, this is the the words of the leaf, I see myself in the tree. Therefore, when the leaf is about to fall, it look at the tree and it see itself in the tree. This is only this heart shaped thing is only a part of it. And therefore, when it was about to fall, you know, I was standing there and waiting and it fell in front of me. And when it was about to fall down, it looked at the tree and it saw a step in the tree, and it wave and say, goodbye.
I will review soon because it really sees itself in a tree, and it is not scared at all because it it know that it is there. Therefore, when falling, it is not crying at all. I saw him dancing, falling to the ground dancing, knowing that very soon, that tiny part of life will be integrated into the soil and then come up into the tree again. So there is a lot of wisdom of insight within the leaf and that is why I said that the leaf was my teacher as I examined the leaf carefully. I have said that once I was a cloud and I enjoyed, And now contemplating the cloud, I can see that the cloud has not been born and is not going to die.
Sometimes the cloud will become rain, and at that time, the cloud is not scared. It knows that it’s going to be something else and it’s very exciting, going to fall down in form of drops of water. You can it might fall on the vegetables, it might fall on the Mississippi River, It can fall on the mountain, the peak of the mountain, and it’s a lot it is going to have a lot of fun. And when I fall into the ocean, I became a part of a wave. The wave, if you look at it, you can see that there is a beginning to the wave and an end to the wave.
You see? It looks like the wave has both and that. But the wave is very wise. It looks at itself, the way it contemplates our feelings and perceptions. And the wave see that it is the wave alright, but it is also the water.
You can say that the world has a beginning and an end, but you cannot say that the water has a beginning and an end. So a wave is just very like this, having a good time, not being afraid of being becoming a non wave. Once we know that we are water, we will be unscared any longer. So if we look into our own nature, the nature in the being, And there are a lot of lessons to learn from the world, from the water, from the cloud, and from the leaf. Anything, if you look at it carefully, deeply enough, if you discover the mystery of interbeing, and once we have seen it, we will no longer be subject to fear.
Fear of birth, fear of death. Many times we saw that man is made of dust and you are going to back to being dust. And it it does not sound very joyful. There is a discrimination that man is very valuable, but the dust has no value at all. I think that is a discrimination.
I think a piece of dust. We don’t know what it is. Even the best scientist doesn’t know yet what is a piece of dust. You know that an atom, an electron travel around with a speed of something like three hundred thousand kilometers one second. We don’t know yet the deepest nature of the atom.
The electricity retains a lot of mystery about itself. We also we still retain a lot of mystery about ourselves. So don’t look at another person and say that I understand who you are. Well, a piece of dust. If you do not understand it, how can you pretend to understand it personally?
Driving in the car, my husband played with the, the whole singing, not paying attention to his wife sitting nearby because there’s not nothing interesting about her. I know everything about her. I have lived with her twenty, thirty years. I know everything about her. That is a very arrogant attitude.
But you will not know well enough about a piece of dust. How can you pretend to know about a person? That attitude is the attitude of someone who who is not ready to learn anything. The person who sit close to you in the car is a mystery. You have to look, you have to see deeply, and you will discover a world of wonders.
So I wouldn’t mind going back to a piece of dust. It’s a very great adventure. It can be the kingdom of god, the piece of dust. It can be the pure land because I and the piece of dust move into art. Without it, I cannot live without me, it cannot live.
And therefore, I would have no inferiority complex. And as the cloud is laughing when it becomes drops of rain, chanting, singing, when I go back to a piece of dust, I will do the same. Now I come to Buddhism. What is Buddhism? Buddhism is made out of non-Buddhist elements.
Must be like that. And the Buddha also is made of non Buddha elements. Right? Must be like that. And the good and the evil, The good is made of non good elements.
The evil is made of non evil elements. Please believe me. And then look and you’ll see by yourself. I would like to send to you a line that is used to send in the Vietnamese tradition. Before you make a bow to the Buddha, you form a lotus with your two palms and you chant that silently in yourself or you can chant it aloud.
The chant is like this. It means the one who is bowing and the one who who who receive the respect, both of them are empty. And that is why communication is perfect. The one is who is bowing is me. The one who receives the respect is the Buddha.
And before bowing to him, I say that you and I, you know, we are all empty. That is why the communication between you and I will be perfect. It’s not really arrogance. Because if I’m not empty, how can I bow down to the Buddha? And if the Buddha is not empty, how could he receive the bow?
I and the Buddha are into are, and Buddha is made of non Buddha elements like me. And me, I am made of non me elements like the Buddha. Just look at this stick. This stick, if we look at it at a nondiscriminative mind, we see it. It’s a wonderful stick.
But as soon as we think that this is the right and this is the left, we are caught. Now we want to eliminate the right. We want to only to keep the left. It’s like the good and the evil. You want to eliminate the evil and you want to preserve only the good. Now I think if this stick has right and left, I would like to remove the right side.
So I divide into half and I remove this. But as soon as I do this, this becomes the right. You cannot As far as you have the left, you always have the right. And now if you make another step, you divide the rest into two and you remove one side, the right is still there Until you arrive at a piece of dust, still the left and the right is there. So with an evil, Buddha and Mara, we inter-are.
We need Mara very much in order for the Buddha to be. Don’t try to remove Mara from our life. That is the nonrealistic way of looking at things.