Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen opens this 33-minute retreat by establishing why the Heart Sūtra matters: it’s the distilled essence of the Buddha’s teachings, a guide to perfect wisdom. Before reading the text aloud, he constructs the foundation by mapping how ethics enables wisdom. He walks through the ten virtuous and non-virtuous actions—killing, stealing, sexual misconduct; lying, slander, harsh speech, gossip; and the mental actions of greed, ill-will, and ignorance. He notes that most practitioners have controlled their physical and verbal conduct but neglect the subtle mental stains of attachment and aversion, leaving the mind unclear. He stresses reflecting on death—not to frighten but to motivate urgent practice—as the quickest way to understand that purifying the mind cannot wait. For practitioners familiar with Buddhist meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 04 24 Heart Sūtra Easter Retreat (2).mp3
UUID: 9a7a0e3a-9dd2-4baf-b44b-e105038e439a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Heart Sūtra Retreat (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2011-04-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 32.9 minutes
Words: ~3,666
So we’ll just relax for a few minutes a few moments. Not a few So what we’ll do next is just read through the Heart Sūtra. If anyone has a prayer book, it’s in the beginning of the prayer book. The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra. Thus did I hear at one time that Bhagavan was dwelling on Vulture’s Peak mountain in Rajgriha, together with a great community of monks and a great community of bodhisattvas.
At that time, the Bhagavan was absorbed in a concentration on the categories of phenomenon called profound perception. Also at that time, the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, looked upon the very practice of the profound perfection of wisdom, and behold those five aggregates also as empty of inherent nature. Then, through the power of the Buddha, the Venerable Śāriputra said this to the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara. Should any son of the lineage train to practice the activity of the profound perfection of wisdom? He said that and the bodhisattva Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, said this to the Venerable Śāriputra.
Śāriputra, any son of the lineage or daughter of the lineage who wishes to practice the activity of the profound perfection of wisdom should look upon it like this, correctly and repeatedly, beholding those five aggregates, also as empty of inherent nature. Form is empty, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, Form is also not other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors and consciousness are empty. Śāriputra, likewise all phenomena are emptiness, without characteristics, unproduced, unceased, stainless, not without stain, not deficient, not fulfilled. Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compositional factors, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no visual form, no sound, no odor, no taste, no objects of touch and no phenomenon.
There is no ‘eye’ element, also up to the including no mind element and no mental consciousness element. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so on, up to and including no ageing and death, and no extinction of ageing and death. Similarly, there is no suffering, origination, cessation and path. There is no exalted wisdom, no attainment and also no non attainment. Śāriputra, therefore, because there is no attainment, bodhisattvas rely on and dwell in the perfection of wisdom, the mind without obscuration and without fear.
Having completely passed beyond error, they reach the endpoint of nirvana. All the Buddhas who dwell in the three times also manifestly, completely awaken to unsurpassable, perfect, complete enlightenment in reliance on the perfection of wisdom. Therefore, the mantra of the perfection of wisdom, the mantra of great knowledge, the unsurpassed mantra, the mantra equal to the unequaled, the mantra that thoroughly pacifies all suffering, should be known as truth, since it is not false. The mantra of the perfection of wisdom is declared: Tadyatha Om Gate Gate Pāragate Pārasamgate Bodhi Svāhā Śāriputra, the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, should train in the profound perfection of wisdom like that. Then the bodhisattva arose from that concentration and commended the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, saying, well said, well said, son of the lineage.
It is like that. It is like that. One should practice the profound, perfection of wisdom, just as you have indicated. Even the tathagatas rejoice. The Bhagavan having thus spoken, the venerable Śāriputra, the bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, those surrounding in their entirety, along with the world of gods, humans, asuras and Gandharvas, were overjoyed and highly praised what the Bhagavan had said.
So we’re continuing with the sūtra, the Heart Sūtra. So it is the Heart Sūtra because Oh, okay. Do you we do. Nine to ten. Nine to ten.
It’s almost ten. I’m We didn’t know if you knew or not. I did, but I thought we might combine a little bit if that’s Oh, that’s okay. Well, I’m wondering what do you think is best? What time is it?
It’s about quarter to ten. So if you do this, I to go. Right. Do you just squeeze all of what you’re gonna say? You do.
We can do a little bit of a summary, I’m thinking. It might be useful. We’ll be doing a course on the Heart Sūtra, so and it’s merged in with the Sunday meditation. So, has anyone from the Sunday meditation done the Heart Sūtra before? Right.
Heart Sūtra is a teaching of the Buddha, it’s a sūtra means like a discourse. It’s just a recording of a conversation. And during the life of the Buddha, the entire all the teachings of the Buddha really come down to us as recordings of conversations that he had. And from the age of thirty five to the age of eighty, At the age of thirty five he attained enlightenment in the northern part of India. And then from that time onward, he carried out well, he started teaching.
And the teachings were just conversations. He’d walk down a road and he’d meet someone and he’d carry on conversation. And generally the conversations were recorded by his attendant. And over the period of forty five years in which he taught, he had a series of attendants. But the most famous is probably Ānanda.
Ānanda means joyous person. And sometimes you see him depicted in pictures of the Buddha. And so he had many conversations. For instance, when the Buddha first attained enlightenment, he remained in a particular area called Bodh Gaya, and then he decided he would walk to Varanasi. And when he started out on the walk, the first person that is recorded to have met was a sadhu, like a traveling mendicant in India.
India was a wonderful country in ancient times. It was full of people that had renounced the world and were seeking enlightenment. And often they would go and live in the forest, or they’d live in the edge of towns and eke a very meager existence from alms from the people. And of course, in those days in India, still even today, it seemed to be a good thing to give alms to renunciates, to mendicants, male or female. Anyway, the Buddha was walking along and he saw this renunciate, this sadhu.
And the sadhu saw the Buddha coming along. And the sadhu thought, oh, he’s a likely looking person. I wonder. He looks impressive. I’ll ask him who he is and who his teacher is.
So, he got up near the Buddha, he said, yes, I saw you coming and you look impressive. I wonder who are you and who is your teacher? And the Buddha said, I am awakened. So, really from that that initial conversation, he said, Buddha. Buddha in sort of the language at that day meant, I am awakened.
So he was given this name, Buddha. And then he said, In this life I have no teacher. And the sadhu said, Oh, oh, okay. And walked on. And perhaps at that point he was a bit disappointed.
He was hoping to get the name of someone who was to teach the Buddha so he could go and study with him. But when he found out he had no teacher, what that meant was that in this life the Buddha had achieved realization through his own effort. But of course the Buddha had previous teachers. In fact, even when he was engaged in six years of austerity, even prior to the six years of austerity, he had sought out two teachers who were living in the forest. And he studied with them until he achieved their level of understanding, and then realized that still wasn’t the deathless state.
They hadn’t actually attained liberation, so he departed from them. So, the Buddha attained well, these days, we regard the Buddha attained the state of the deathless, or the state beyond death, nirvana. And that is what he taught in that forty five year period after he attained enlightenment. And so we have a recording of these teachings due to the kindness of those that compiled them. And of all the teachings that he gave, and he gave many different teachings, it said the heart, the essential teaching comes up in what’s called the Heart Sūtra.
The heart there really means like the distilled essence. You took all the teachings and he gave many, many teachings. And in fact, up here we have a recording of all those texts there in Tibetan that have been translated into Tibetan from Sanskrit are the recorded teachings of the Buddha. And then there’s a larger section that’s also the commentaries on those. But for us it’s just about impossible to try and read through all of these texts.
Stuff they’re not translated. Most of it’s not translated yet. So, what we do is we rely on getting a condensed version, the abbreviated version, the Reader’s Digest version. We need something, the pith instruction, so that it’s something that we can use. Because if we can’t use it, then it just becomes, you know, like an academic exercise.
It’s, okay, the Buddha said something, it was probably useful, But it’s so difficult to understand, you know, I can’t really I just have some sort of regard that he did realize something. But for us, the work is trying to discern what a meaning the Buddha said. Does it is it useful, applicable to our lives today? Does it affect the issues that we’re dealing with? Is it of practical benefit?
In fact, if it’s not a practical benefit, they’re useless. They’re not worth having. They might as well be burnt. If we can’t apply them to our life in the present moment, then what use? They really It’s true anyway, isn’t it?
If we can’t use it, we don’t take any notice of it. So, the Buddha was kind in that way that he often made summaries of what he was teaching. And the essential issue that he did teach was the perfection of wisdom. Again, it’s like the statement in the bible, you know, of all the gettings you need to get, get wisdom. Of all the things that is really going to benefit us in the present is wisdom.
Wisdom as distinct from, perhaps, you know, other states of mind like cleverness and so on. Wisdom is really important. Not being sophisticated or even intelligent or knowledgeable and so on. What we really need is wisdom. And so the essential teaching is wisdom itself.
And not just on wisdom in general, but how we develop wisdom to its utmost level. Transcendent wisdom. And so that transcendent wisdom we call perfect wisdom. But then, to even identify wisdom is not easy for us. What is wisdom?
Do we know wisdom when we see it? If suddenly we had wisdom arise, would we identify it? Well, that’s wisdom. Oh, that’s not wisdom. Difficult.
But we need wisdom. And there’s many types of wisdom. The main wisdom Buddha was initially teaching was the wisdom that differentiates virtue from non virtue. So being able to differentiate virtue from non virtue is essential for us because continuously we’re confronted by the choice of what is benefit and what is not a benefit. What is a benefit is what’s positive, what’s virtuous.
What’s not a benefit is what is the opposite of that. So continuously in our lives, we’re confronted by choices. How do I react in this situation? How do I react in that situation? A person with wisdom is able to see, oh, this is what I should do.
This is the virtuous path here. Why do we need the virtuous path? It’s because the virtuous path leads to happiness. And that’s basically in our own interest to choose that path. That’s our self interest, our own benefit.
But discerning what is virtuous and what is not virtuous is extremely difficult. And we know that. We’ve got, you know, so much experience of this. We’ve made many wrong decisions about, oh, this in hindsight I should have done that. Why did I do this?
I was just attached at that point. Oh, my God. Why did I act in that way? Oh, I had aversion at that point, and that clouded me, my thinking. And with that aversion, I acted in that way.
And now at my leisure, I regret. And regret, you know, having acted in that way. So, wisdom sees the non virtue and avoids it. So, we need wisdom. But there are different levels of wisdom.
This sword of wisdom that protects us by showing us or clearly setting out the virtuous path exists on one level. That we need. It’s like a basis. That sword of wisdom is the view of ethics. That’s all of ethics.
In fact, from a Buddhist point of view, the Buddha spent a great deal of time teaching ethics. And in order to really teach it in-depth, he he introduced ordination. And the ordination there is for those who are training in ethics. Why does one train in ethics? Because one seeks to purify the mind, develop the wisdom that understands ethics.
And in the course of a number of years in India, he set down more and more training rules, like two fifty three vows for the fully ordained monks and so on. All of those rules were put in place to stop us from making a wrong ethical decision. To show us, oh, at this point, you know, you don’t act in that way. Why are the rules set down? Because it’s not often obvious to us what is right and what is wrong.
What is an ethically good path, what is an ethically unskillful path. And so the Buddha set down rules, which are like the ten commandments, similar. Don’t kill. Don’t lie. Don’t steal.
So, these are really these are ones that we generally have a sense about. We shouldn’t do that. We shouldn’t kill anything. And what’s even at present, before we have any idea of Buddhism or any other religion, often we have a sense that we shouldn’t kill. Right?
From a Buddhist perspective, that’s almost a proof of previous life. Because in Buddhism that’s inborn wisdom. That wisdom is coming from our past lifetimes of having, you know, thought about these issues in the past. And now we have that sense, that instinct, that, Oh, we shouldn’t do that. That inborn wisdom is extremely valuable.
But still, the Buddha had to put down those rules because amongst his students at that time there were those that engaged in killing and stealing and sexual misconduct, lying, slander, harsh words, gossip and so forth. So, all these rules were put down as guidelines to help a person act ethically, to help us act ethically. Why do we need to act ethically? Well, it’s in our own interest, because ethics is the cause of happiness. And also ethics practicing ethics means the mind becomes calmer and more contented.
Whether we like it or not, if we practice ethics, the mind is going to become calmer, happier, and naturally more contented. It’s like a universal law. And when the mind becomes calmer and more contented, it becomes clearer as well. It becomes the mind becomes clearer. And when the mind becomes clearer, then wisdom can arise.
It’s like seeing becomes possible. So ethics is the foundation of wisdom. The reason at present that we can’t see very clearly is because our ethics is not very good. Because our ethics is not very good, our mind is disturbed, a bit agitated, a bit muddied, muddied by attachment and aversion. And so when we look inside to understand what’s going on, we can’t see very clearly.
It’s like, you know, the water’s been clear water’s we’ve thrown mud into it and mixed it up and it’s murky. We can’t see. So this is an indication that our ethics is not good enough. Our ethics needs we need work on our ethics. Often we’re quite our ethics is generally not bad.
We don’t go around killing. We don’t steal. Large amounts, anyway. We don’t kill, but actually we may kill insects and, you know, we’re not that careful. Sexual misconduct, we’re generally okay, but, you know.
Lying, well, generally we don’t lie, you know, but we might be a white lie here and there, you know, we might lie to the government when we do our tax, or we might you know, so we’re generally okay, but on a physical and verbal level, we do reasonably well, but we could do better. On a mental level, we’re not very good. Actually, when the ten like, there’s ten virtuous or ten non virtuous actions. Three non virtues of body are not three non virtues are killing, stealing, sexual misconduct. These are all, what, conducted, carried out with the body.
Then on a verbal level we have lying, slander. Slander we’re really We’re not good. We do slander, because there’s true slander and false slander. True slander is when we tell the truth about something in order to divide two people. Very, very negative.
Two or more people. So slander. Harsh words, swearing, just using harsh words to other people to harm them with harsh words. We do this. Call people stupid or yell at them.
Why are we doing that? To harm them. And then just gossiping about things that are not really of benefit to us or the other being. Okay, then gossip is the you know, it’s not too bad. So they’re the negative actions of speech, but then we get into the negative actions of mind.
So then it’s really greed, thinking with greed, attachment and greed, thinking of harmful intent towards others, and then ignorance or wrong view. So those negative states of mind we indulge ourselves in with little restraint. Right? We do. We just allow ourselves to hate or to generate aversion without restraint.
Almost and greed and attachment, almost without restraint we allow ourselves to be attached to things, without seeing the danger. And in ignorance, we don’t even know we don’t know. So those things on a mental level, non virtues on a mental level, we don’t have that much restraint. We’ve got a lot of work to do. As it said, you know, if our mind was like a piece of dirty washing or if our actions were like a piece of dirty washing, The actions of body and speech, we’ve mainly sort of cleaned.
We put them through the washer to a reasonable degree and most of the stains of, you know, the worst stains we manage to get rid of. But the subtle stains, the stains especially of the mind, really deeply embedded. It’s like we’ve they’re there and we haven’t even begun to get rid of those. But why should we bother? We think we’re not doing too badly.
I’m a reasonably ethical person, why should I bother doing any more than that? Who else is doing more than me? Why should I bother? People will take advantage of me if I become too good. Why should I want to be too good?
I’m happy where I am. Actually, we’re not that happy where we are. Still we have this lingering dissatisfaction. Now, we The lingering dissatisfaction we have is all there. It’s mainly the way we think.
In the way we think. Ultimately we have no choice. We’ve got to clean it up. Because it’s only in cleaning it up are we going to achieve happiness. So it’s only a question of when.
Now, we’re a little bit indulgent. We sort of indulge ourselves and think, okay, eventually I’ll do something about it. But I’m alright at present. But really, we only have a certain amount of leisure in this because, of course, our death is sort of approaching in a distance. And we only have a certain amount of leisure to begin to deal with our faults.
We only have a certain amount of leisure to even recognize our faults. So, when the Buddha was talking on ethics, he advised us, therefore, to reflect on death. Meditate on death. Because if we meditate on death now, we don’t meditate on death just to scare ourselves. Just for the pure sake of scaring ourselves.
That would be a bit morbid. Why we meditate on death is to remind us that we have to practice. Remind us that we have work to do on ourselves and we can’t put that off. What work do we need to do on ourselves? The work we need is to purify the mind.
As the Tibetan one Tibetan lama says, if we don’t reflect on death in the morning, the morning is wasted. If we don’t reflect on death at midday, the afternoon is wasted. If we don’t reflect on death in the evening, the evening is wasted. So, reflecting on death is of utmost importance. There’s nothing better.
The Buddha said there’s two very beneficial types of meditation we should engage in is breath meditation. The breath meditation just clears the mind a bit so we can recognize what practice we need to engage in. And death meditation helps us to actually do the breath meditation. We don’t meditate on the death, we don’t meditate on breath. And then, when we do breath meditation, we begin to look at the mind itself, and that should remind us that, Ah, I need to generate wisdom.
And then, what wisdom? Perfect wisdom. And the essence of the Buddhist teaching is on the perfection of wisdom. And of all the teachings on the perfection of wisdom, it’s the Heart Sūtra which is the distilled essence of the perfection of wisdom. Okay, I think the meditation class goes through till ten, is it?
Is that right? Okay, okay, we’ll just leave that section there. And the rest