AABS Presentation A7A - Heart Sutra - Final.

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This presentation concerns the Mahâ-prajñâ-pâramitâ-hridaya-sûtra, in

Japanese the Maka-hannya-haramitta-shin-gyô, usually referred to as the Heart Sutra
(Shingyô), translated by Chüang-tsang (J. Genjô) from the Sanskrit in the first half of
the 7th Century.

Many of you will be aware that in the Far East the Heart Sutra is perhaps the
best-known, ubiquitous and influential sutra for the adherents of the greater number of
Buddhist sects. It is chanted daily in temples and before home altars throughout Japan
and those who are addicted to temple viewing, as I am, won’t have to wait long in a
temple before individuals and groups of pilgrims or casual visitors will chant the sutra
in front of the honzon, the main image. It is an integral part of the lives of many
Japanese, known by heart by a large number. I believe that there are one or two
people in this room now who could recite the sutra for you, if asked. [In our collection
of Buddhist stuff, my wife and I have scrolls, wall plaques, head-scarves, tea cups, tee
shirts, a tie, and the necklace she is wearing, inscribed with this text.]

The sutra contains the famous lines that equate forms and emptiness, namely:
‘Form is emptiness; emptiness is form’
(shiki soku ze kû; kû soku ze shiki; 色卽是空、空卽是色).
My intention tonight is to attempt to elucidate this passage, by reference to some
writings by illustrious Chinese and Japanese monks, and by what might be called an
‘etymological archaeology’, trying to decipher the meanings of key terms by appeal to
their etymological origins. This is not as pedantic a procedure as it might sound, but
follows an established and common way of exegesis in China and Japan. The process
is helped enormously by the existence of splendid etymological dictionaries. [In
parenthesis, please note that in the following the terms ‘form’ and ‘emptiness’ are
from here on to be thought of as being in quotation marks to indicate that they are
used ironically. I do not wish to distract you with a repetitive gesturing with the first
two fingers of the two hands, a gesture I find annoying when used by others.]

To speak of etymologies is to speak of a study of language, and before

embarking on etymological explorations, I would like to place these investigations
firmly within a Buddhist context by way of a text on the subject by a most venerable
and influential monk, Kûkai (空海), known posthumously as Kôbô Daishi, who
established the Shingon (‘True Word’) Sect in Japan early in the 9th century. He does
not in his text refer to the Heart Sutra, but I suggest that what he has to say about the
nature of language is pertinent to the present project.

The work in question is the Shōji Jissō Gi (声字実義), ‘Voice, Letter, Reality,
Meaning’. Kūkai’s argument is complex and subtle and involves a large number of
technical terms deriving from the Shingon Buddhist doctrine. Here I can only give a
brief summary of those aspects of this most remarkable work that directly relate to the
present discussion.

Under the generic term ‘letter’ (ji, 字), he includes both spoken and written
words. These are able to convey meaning, he says, because they form patterns (mon,
文), like those in brocade. The voice produces vibrations, patterns of sound in the air,
literally figures of speech (mon, 文), and in this sense, Kūkai says, ‘Voice has first to

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be writing before it ceases to be a meaningless cry and becomes speech’. Written
letters are likewise patterns made up of visual elements. Taking this further, all things
perceived by the senses or the mind, and all events in time, are so many patterns,
made up of visual, aural, tactile, sapid, olfactory and mental components. The whole
world is thus seen as a text composed of ‘letters’, either written or aural. Everything
perceived by the senses or the mind is a form of writing.

Our ability to interpret these patterns depends on a process of differentiation

(shabetsu, 差別). For example, an object perceived by the eye is seen as something
different from other things in that it combines colour, shape and movement in a
particular, distinctive pattern that differentiates it from other patterns, that is, other
objects. The same is true for every entity perceived by the senses or perceived by the
mind. All things and events are characters (monji, 文字), marks forming an individual
pattern.

Differentiation is the basis of the meanings conveyed by language, both oral

and written, since these differentiations have names. Further, the letter is the primary
topos of differentiation and the differentiation articulated by writing makes possible
the articulation of the world by way of names.

That is, writing, in this inclusive sense, breaks up into discrete parts the
primordial state of nebulous non-differentiation (chaos in the original Greek sense of
a formless void, the indistinctness of complete con-fusion), thus giving rise to
cosmos, the world made meaningful. The text of the world is made legible. This
process has been termed ‘semio-genesis’, the genesis of the world by words or
language.

Objects are generated by the ability of language to articulate differentiation.

Language produces things from the ‘originally un-produced’ (honpushō) by way of
differentiation (or by articulation, which word comes from the Latin articulare, ‘to
divide into joints’ which is to say, into differentiated (shabetsu) pieces).

In passing, it is to be noted that this does not necessarily mean, as I once

thought, under the influence of Derrida, that language is ‘prior’ to existences, that
things only exist because they are named. It is not a question of which comes first,
‘things’ or language. It is not that things do not exist before we name them, or that we
are not aware of them until we name them, but that, for human beings at least, things
and language are mutually dependent, a case of dependent co-origination (pratītya-
samutpāda, engi, 縁起). In the absence of words, things don’t ‘exist’, and vice versa. I
will return to the concept of mutual dependence in the following.

Kûkai is saying that the ‘things’ that make up our world only exist for us in so
far as they are signs, letters, patterns, words, that arise from and depend on
differentiation from other signs, letters, patterns, words. They have no self-nature
(svabhava, jishō, 自性), no essence or self-presence, but are dependent for their quasi-
existence on differentiation from other signs. Things, that is to say, only exist for us in
so far as they are located in an inter-reflecting network of references. They arise, or
come to presence, as I said a moment ago, by way of ‘dependent co-origination’
(pratitya-samutpada, engi, 縁起). They are in themselves empty, and only appear to

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presence to the extent that they are differentiated by language from within a field of
interdependent allusions.

The burden of Kūkai’s exposition is that the things of the world are only to the
extent that language produces differentiation. What is the nature of this
differentiation? Two things can only be seen as different if there is a gap between
them; words are only heard or read as having meaning if there are gaps between the
letters that constitute them and between them and other words. Each gap is a
‘betweenness’, which is conveyed in Japanese by the word ma (間).

The character ma (間) depicts the sun, hi (日), between the leaves of a two-
leaved gate, mon (門). The etymological dictionaries say that it represents the light of
the sun shining through the gap in the gate. What is important to grasp at this point is
that ma is a contained space, like the space that forms a gap between the partially
opened leaves of a double gate. Ma is ‘space’, but not in the sense of a boundless
expanse in which objects are located. It is, rather, the space between two objects, and
therefore the dictionaries give it not only as ‘space’ but also as ‘interval’, ‘between’
and ‘among’. A neologism, ‘betweenness’, conveys the meaning of the word better
than does ‘space’.

I have written quite a lot on the Japanese concept of ma, showing not only the
significance of the sun in the ideogram, but what an important role ma plays as an
aesthetic principle in Japanese architecture, black ink painting, calligraphy, flower
arrangement, Kabuki, gardens, the tea ceremony, and particularly in the Nô drama,
which is called ‘the art of ma’. Here I wish to bring out its importance in
understanding aspects of the Buddhist doctrine, and in particular the way in which it
can be used to ‘explain’ Kukai’s analysis of language, and thence the formula found
in the Heart Sutra.

According to Kûkai, patterns of both language and things are dependent on an

interplay of forms and gaps. It will be noted that gaps can be metaphorically spoken
of as ‘empty’, so that in a metaphorical sense writing is intelligible and ‘exists’
because it is an interplay of forms and emptiness (or ‘emptinesses’). I say ‘in a
metaphorical sense’, because gaps are not so empty that we cannot see and hear them.
We see the blanks spaces between the letters on the page, and we hear the pauses
(also ma) between the sounds of the spoken language. Any ‘Emptiness’ other than this
tangible emptiness, is ungraspable, and can only be thought through metaphor, and
elsewhere I have written on the nature of metaphor and shown that it is intrinsically
self-contradictory and involves the fusion of ‘is’ and ‘is not’, and flouts Aristotle’s
logic of the excluded middle.

I am suggesting that rather than speak of ‘emptiness’, it is perhaps more

accurate to speak of ‘empty gaps’ and thus bring the whole discussion back into the
everyday world. ‘Gaps’ are made manifest by the forms of ‘letters’ (which are written
signs and spoken sounds; and, in reverse, letters, which are the forms of language, are
made manifest by gaps of emptiness. So whereas it is correct to say that the forms of
language and things are only meaningful, only ‘exist’ or ‘stand out’ (ex-sistere),
because of their differentiation by gaps, it is equally true to say that gaps only exist by
courtesy of the forms or ‘letters’ that differentiate them. In sum, forms and gaps are

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mutually dependent, and they come into being by way of interdependent co-
origination (pratītya-samutpāda, engi, 縁起).

An analysis of Kūkai’s text calls into question what could be called the
‘metaphysical’ interpretation of ‘emptiness’ that seems to be in play when the Heart
Sutra formula is given as ‘Form is Emptiness’, seemingly equating ‘emptiness’ with
the Cartesian Void, the infinite space of nothingness, extending forever. This is the
notion of space we have grown accustomed to in the age of mathematics and science,
of space travel, and so on. ‘Emptiness’, in this understanding of the term, is not of the
here and now, but is ‘out there’ in some otherworldly and super-celestial realm. In this
Cartesian view ‘forms’ or ‘things’ are placed in the never-ending vastness and vacuity
of the Void.

In this eminently modern and Western way of thinking, to say that ‘forms are
emptiness’ or ‘form is emptiness’ is to intimate that they are not there. They are
empty in the way that Cartesian space is empty. It is to be remembered, however, that
this way of viewing space and emptiness is comparatively recent. Chüang-tsang
translated the Heart Sutra in the first half of the 7th century, more than a millennium
before our present-day concept of infinite space was enunciated.

In Chüang-tsang’s time ‘emptiness’ had nothing to do with this metaphysical

notion of emptiness as infinite empty space, but to the more mundane meanings that
come into play when we say that a cup is empty. When we say that the cup is empty
we are not saying that the cup in itself is emptiness. We do not intend to imply that
the cup itself does not exist, is not, but rather that it contains nothing, that there is no
thing in the space between its sides. It is empty, and we can see that it is empty. That
is to say, we can see emptiness, but not emptiness in itself and as if it were a thing, but
only by way of and by reference to the sides of the cup. Emptiness, in this sense, is
dependent on something tangible that ‘defines’ it, in the same way that gaps between
letters are dependent on those letters. When examined closely, the words of the Sutra
themselves seem to support this non-metaphysical reading. Here begins the promised
exercise in ‘etymological archaeology’.

The first character in the formula is shiki (色), ‘colour’, which translates Skt.
rūpa, also ‘colour’. [That’s another story that maybe I’ll tell on another occasion.]
The character shiki is composed of a man (人), and a seal (卩), because, says the
etymological dictionary, the colour of the face corresponds to the feelings of the heart,
as the stamp reproduces the seal. Shiki, that is to say, is an external token of what lies
within. By extension, the character represents the flush arising from passion, sexual
pleasure, and colour in general. Shiki is not ‘form’ in the usual acceptance of the term
in English, but is the external appearance of the thing and a token of something
unseen and lying within.

This doesn’t necessarily seem to lend credence to the assertion that forms are
about gaps, but when we turn to other terms for ‘form’ in Japanese, we get a different
story. If you look up ‘form’ in an English-Japanese dictionary, the word it gives is
katachi (容), or yô in the kun reading. The character also means ‘container’, another
word for which is the compound yôki (容器), both characters of which taken
separately mean ‘container’. This confluence of ‘form’ and ‘container’ in the
character yô is explained when it is analysed. The character combines the radical for

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‘house’, shown by a roof (宀), with that for ‘valley’ (谷), represented by contour lines
and a mouth (口). The mouth in this context does not refer to the organ of speech, but
to the form of the mouth, which is that of an empty cavern, arched over by the palate.
This identification of mouth and cavern is one that is shared by many cultures, and
remains as a trace in many languages, including English, where ‘gap’ and ‘gape’, ‘to
open the mouth wide’, share an etymology tracing to ‘cave’. In the nature of a visual
pun, the character yō also contains the radical for ‘cave’ (穴), which I will discuss in
the following. In summary, the character yō shows a valley, a house and a cave. All
these are hollow, and therefore able to contain things. A ‘form’ (katachi) is a
‘container’; and to speak of form in Japanese is to speak of containment, of an empty
space, or gap, contained within.

The kanji for ki (器), the second character in the compound yôki and also
meaning ‘container’ when used on its own, shows four mouths (口) around a dog (犬).
This character has been given some rather bizarre interpretations, but its meaning is
clearer when it is realized that the ‘mouths’, having the shape of hollow caverns, are
empty vessels arranged in a pattern, perhaps on a table for ritual offerings.

Another Japanese word for ‘container’ is iremono (入れ物), literally ‘entered

thing’, a space that can be entered. These words for ‘container’ indicate that the Sino-
Japanese notion of emptiness is not necessarily the same as that conveyed in English.
In these languages the vessel is not what contains, the enclosing solids, but is what is
contained, the cave- or valley-like hollow between the walls of the vessel, the space
that can be filled.

When it is realized that ‘container’ and ‘form’ are the same word, this carries
images that are almost ‘unthinkable’ in terms of the accepted fore-structures of
understanding of speakers of English. In the Japanese outlook as conveyed in
language, the form of an object is not the shape defined by its external contours, but is
the between-space contained within those defining contours. Form is not solid, but
hollow; not the surround, but the surrounded; not the outer appearance or the material
presence, but the inner space and the ‘etherial’ absence. Forms are not solids
positioned in endless space, but spaces between solids. We are back among notions of
betweenness, ma.

Putting this together with Kukai’s analysis of the mutual dependence of forms
and gaps, it shows that emptiness is here and now, in forms. It is not in some other
place or non-place.

This is further reinforced, in a most remarkable way, when one examines the
character for ‘emptiness’ used in the Heart Sutra formula, ‘form is emptiness’, namely
kû (空). The character kū (空) is literally ‘sky’, and only by extension ‘space’, and
‘the void’ or ‘emptiness’. An etymological examination of the character shows that
the upper part of the kanji shows the radical for ‘cave’ (穴), previously mentioned in
the discussion of the character yô, ‘form’ or ‘container’. This radical is in turn made
up of the radical for ‘interior space’ (宀, the radical associated with the house),
obtained by the removal (八) of rock or earth. The other part of the character, 工, is
the ancient square used in building and by extension ‘work’. Hence kū is an artificial
excavation, an empty space in the sense of a cavern. It reads as ‘sky’ in that the dome
of the sky is cave-like.

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 The emptiness conveyed by the Chinese character has a much more tangible
sense than is conveyed by the words ‘emptiness’ or ‘empty space’. It has been noted
by writers such as Hajime Nakamura in his Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples that
Indian thinking tends to abstraction and the metaphysical and that Chinese thought, by
contrast, tends to concreteness of expression. This mirrors qualities inherent in the
Chinese ideographs, which portray what is presented by the senses and only
reluctantly dwell on whatever is beyond the immediately perceived. That is, they tend
to recreate the tangible world and avoid the abstract. One consequence of this is that
the Chinese written language is inherently indisposed to ‘metaphysical’
interpretations of emptiness like those betrayed in English by the use of the capital E
in ‘Emptiness’, which usage removes it from the world of everyday experience to the
level of the transcendental and abstract. Emptiness (without the capital E), in the
original Chinese understanding, is of the here and now. It is the emptiness of things
themselves, and not the emptiness of space in which they are positioned.

Archaeological delving into etymologies thus reveals that the characters for
‘form’ and ‘emptiness’ contain so many common characteristics that the formula is
well-nigh tautological, something like ‘the hollow emptiness within forms is the
hollow emptiness of the sky or cave’, or some such. The terms are variations on the
theme of inner hollowness, or ‘betweenness’.

There remains to be examined the copula of the formula, soku (卽). In a

previous presentation to the AABS I gave a detailed analysis of this term, to indicate
that to translate it simply as ‘is’ is a gross misreading, one that ignores the
considerable amount of literature that exists in Chinese and Japanese trying to give
the meaning of this term, which the great Chinese commentator Chi-tsang (J.
Kichizô), in his Daijōgenron, says is ‘loose’ and ‘slippery’. An idea of its complexity
can be gauged by the fact that Kûkai gives four definitions of its meaning (which can
be found in translation in one of my works). The Shikan Bugyô-dengu-ketsu gives
three interpretations of soku, and offers further elucidations concerning its meaning;
the Jūfunimon (十不二門), ‘Ten Gates of Non-duality’, gives three different
meanings; and so on. There is quite a lot more in the Tendai and Zen literature, and in
passing it should be noted that the Contemplation of the Six (meanings) of Soku
(rokusoku-kan, 六卽觀) is one of the main meditational practices of the Tendai
school.

It had been my intention at this point of the presentation to introduce the

Tendai doctrine of the Three Truths (santai, 三諦), namely, the truth of emptiness
(kûtai, 空諦), that all existence is insubstantial and void; the provisional truth, (ketai,
假諦), that things nevertheless have a provisional reality; and the middle truth (chûtai,
中諦), which transcends this dichotomy. This transcendence is realized in the
meditation practice called the ‘contemplation of the Three Truths in a single thought’
(isshin-sangan, 一心三觀). In that context the middle truth is interpreted in terms of
the word soku, which is posited as a synonym of ‘non-duality’ (funi, 不二, Skt.
advaita). Applying this to the Heart Sutra formula, the copula soku indicates that the
terms it connects and differentiates, ‘form’ and ‘emptiness’, are non-dual, which is to
say are simultaneously the same and yet different.

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 I have decided not to develop this line of enquiry here, for six reasons, Firstly,
the doctrine of the Three Truths was explicitly put forward to reconcile the Two
Truths enunciated in Nagārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamika-kārikā (Chūron, 中論), and was
not, to my knowledge, ever used to gloss the soku found in the Heart Sutra. Again,
while ‘non-duality’ is a perfectly valid interpretation of soku, it is, to say the least,
difficult to grasp, and there are simpler and more immediately understandable
meanings.

Secondly, because for lay people the doctrine of soku as ‘non-duality’ is

arcane and remote from the world of provisional truth (ketai) in which we dwell.
Meditations such as that on emptiness (kūgan, 空觀), or on ‘the Three Truths in a
single thought’ (isshin-sangan, 一心三觀), leading to the ‘samādhi of emptiness’
(kūjō, 空定, or kūsammai, 空三昧), are reserved for monks within the order. For
lesser mortals, we must take it on trust that these lead to a perfect understanding of
what ‘non-duality’ means. In the meantime, however, to say that form and emptiness
are simultaneously identical and different, for us, the ignorant laity, is not only to
flout the Aristotelian logic of the excluded middle, namely, that we are speaking
illogical and meaningless nonsense when we say that something is and yet is not, or
both is and is not. Also, as Leibniz pointed out, identity and difference are
‘unthinkable’, since if two things are identical, they are not two but one, and if they
are different, they have nothing in common, and are wholly incomparable. For lay
people the doctrine has no pragmatic bearing on the world in which we live.

Thirdly, on a more mundane level, I have presented materials on the Three

Truths and soku as ‘non-duality’ in some detail on a previous AABS occasion, and I
don’t therefore think it necessary to repeat what has been already said.

Fourthly, to read soku as ‘non-duality’, (funi, 不二, Skt. advaita) is a

metaphysical rendering, and therefore out of tune with what I have said earlier in
connection with the Chinese outlook expressed in the characters. A paper could be
written on the difficulties the Chinese and Japanese have had in making sense of such
a thoroughly metaphysical concept as the Sanskrit ‘advaita’.

Fifthly, a most compelling reason for side-stepping the discussion on non-

duality is that the materials I had prepared on the matter miraculously (I use the word
advisedly) disappeared from my computer during the night before last. I can only
ascribe this event to an intervention by the Guardian Deities of the Tendai, who found
fault with my handling of the basic doctrine of the Tendai Sect.

Sixthly, I have left out these materials because, on reflection, undertaken in

panic yesterday as I tried to reassemble the Three Truths, I stumbled across, in one of
those felicitous accidental stumblings, references to the term soku that are more in
keeping with the non-metaphysical observations offered by Kūkai. In the Tendai there
is also a meditation called the ‘contemplation of the perfect harmony of the Three
Truths’ (ennyū-sangan, 圓融三觀), based on the doctrine of the ‘perfect harmony of
the Three Truths’ (ennyū-santai, 圓融三諦). The character nyū (融) in this, rendered
in the English Buddhist dictionaries as ‘harmony’, is more usually given in ‘secular’
dictionaries as ‘melting’. It shows an insect and a three-legged cauldron, the
significance of which escapes me, unless it means that an insect ‘melts’ if it falls into
the pot – or something. [The word ‘harmony’, defined as ‘the combination of

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simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce a pleasing effect’, is from Gk.
harmos, ‘joint’, and with this we are back in the presence of gaps. I have gaps in the
head.] If we play the notes of a harmony one after the other, we are aware of the gaps,
both temporal and sonorous, that separate them; but when we play them
simultaneously there is a fusion, a melting together, so that we hear the harmony
rather than the notes that come together in its forming. Nevertheless, if we listen very
carefully, we can hear the individual notes, and the gaps between.

For want of time, I won’t show how this teaching fits into the Tendai doctrine
of the four kinds of teaching (kehō-no-shikyō, 化法四教), except to say that the
perfect harmony of the Three Truths is termed the ‘perfect teaching’ (engyō, 圓教),
and the final, complete summation of all the Buddhist doctrines. [See materials in
AABS Presentation A2.doc, p. 3.]

This appeal to ‘harmony’ or ‘melting’ rather than non-duality is further

elucidated by the Shikan Bugyō-dengu-ketsu. In its exegesis of soku, it teaches that
even when two things (such as the two truths) are merged in harmony (or ‘melted’
together), they yet remain different because they are mutually dependent (sōi, 相依).
Applying this to Kūkai’s analysis of language, it is to be noted that when we listen to
speech or read a text we are not aware of the repetitious juxtaposition of forms and
emptiness. Forms and the empty spaces that separate them fuse or melt together to
form a harmonious continuity, but yet, if we listen or read carefully, the gaps on the
page or between the sounds are perceptible. They are there, but familiarity has elided
their differentiation.

Further, the marks and sounds on the one hand and the gaps that differentiate
them on the other are ‘mutually dependent’ (sōi, 相依). Take away the gaps and the
marks and sounds merge into an inchoate, meaningless confusion; take away the
letters and the gaps are totally blank, imperceptible, and equally meaningless. Letters
and gaps, that is to say, go together, if meaning is to emerge.

Finally, and at last, bringing these considerations to bear on the Heart Sutra
formula, I suggest that the formula is perfectly comprehensible if it is interpreted to
mean the mutual dependence, or inter-dependence, of ‘forms’ and ‘emptinesses’, the
gaps between and within them. If it is objected that this interpretation of the Heart
Sutra formula does not sound as profound as that given in terms of non-duality, it can
be replied that notions of mutual dependence lead into the most profound doctrines of
Buddhism, such as that of Indra’s Net and Sudhana’s vision in the Gandhavyūha-
sūtra, in which he sees each thing in the universe reflected in each and every other –
the grand vision of the mutual dependence of all forms in their interplay of letters and
gaps of emptiness. That is a doctrine that has immediate applications in the everyday
world, one that gives indications how we lay folk are to behave when dealing with
‘forms’ or ‘things’, or, for that matter, each other. Ask an ecologist.

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