The Heart Sutra is my favorite Buddhist scripture. It is profound and beautiful. As Buddhist scripture goes, it’s remarkably concise.
Still, I think it could stand to go on a diet.
The Heart-Healthy Sutra
Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. All phenomena are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no increase. In emptiness, there are no sense objects, sense organs, or sensory awareness, and no Four Noble Truths.
Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear.
inspo
I would not dare to make fun of the Heart Sutra if it were not for the example of […], one of the all-time greatest Zen Masters. His […] is a satirical, word-by-word commentary on the Heart Sutra.
For most of the book, Hakuin insults the author of the Sutra as a con man and idiot. Toward the end, you realize that this was a pretense: for Hakuin (as for me) the Heart Sutra is the one essential Buddhist text, for which he has boundless reverence and devotion.
He’s got some good lines:
Profound prajnaparamita? Yeah, right! Bring me some shallow prajnaparamita, then.
Nirvana and samsara? […]
No eye, no ear, no nose? Well, I have them. They do exist.
It would obviously be fair for someone offended at my treatment of the Sutra to point out “You’re no Hakuin.” Undoubtedly true. But we can’t pretend punk hasn’t happened since then.