Monday, June 22, 2015

The Heart Sutra (Sanskrit)

VisibleMantra.org (Prajñāpāramita-Hṛdayam Sūtra or "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Discourse"); CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Reading about meditating is fun the way counting other people's riches is fun (Bankrate/WQ).
Pronounced: Gaw-tay gaw-tay paā-ra-gaw-tay paā-ra-soṃ-gaw-tay boh-dee swaā-haā
"Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, oh what an awakening, so it is!"
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0042940907/qid=1149191989/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_2_7
Buddhist Wisdom Books
The calligraphy below is of the shorter version in Sanskrit in the artist's Siddhaṃ calligraphy (following Edward Conze's Sanskrit edition as it appears in Buddhist Wisdom Books).
 
See also the closing Heart Sūtra mantra (above), a paean that is the culmination, the very epitome of the sutra condensing an experience beyond words.

Sanskrit (translated from the original Chinese) version
Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya (visiblemantra.org)
Oṃ namo bhagavatyai ārya prajñāpāramitāyai!

ārya-avalokiteśvaro bodhisattvo gambhīrāṃ prajñāpāramitā caryāṃ caramāṇo vyavalokayati sma:

panca-skandhās tāṃś ca svābhava śūnyān paśyati sma.

iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ. evam eva vedanā saṃjñā saṃskāra vijñānaṃ.
 
Blank it. I don't get it!
iha śāriputra: sarva-dharmāḥ śūnyatā-lakṣaṇā, anutpannā aniruddhā, amalā avimalā, anūnā aparipūrṇāḥ.
 
tasmāc chāriputra śūnyatayāṃ na rūpaṃ na vedanā na saṃjñā na saṃskārāḥ na vijñānam. na cakṣuḥ-śrotra-ghrāna-jihvā-kāya-manāṃsi. na rūpa-śabda-gandha-rasa-spraṣṭavaya-dharmāh. Na cakṣūr-dhātur. yāvan na manovijñāna-dhātuḥ. na-avidyā na-avidyā-kṣayo. yāvan na jarā-maraṇam na jarā-maraṇa-kṣayo. na duhkha-samudaya-nirodha-margā. Na jñānam, na prāptir na-aprāptiḥ.

tasmāc chāriputra aprāptitvād bodhisattvasya prajñāpāramitām āśritya viharatyacittāvaraṇaḥ. cittāvaraṇa-nāstitvād atrastro viparyāsa-atikrānto niṣṭhā-nirvāṇa-prāptaḥ.

tryadhva-vyavasthitāḥ sarva-buddhāḥ prajñāpāramitām āśrityā-anuttarāṃ samyaksambodhim abhisambuddhāḥ.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0904766616/qid=1149243201/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_2_3
Wisdom Beyond Words
tasmāj jñātavyam: prajñāpāramitā mahā-mantro mahā-vidyā mantro 'nuttara-mantro samasama-mantraḥ, sarva duḥkha praśamanaḥ, satyam amithyatāt. prajñāpāramitāyām ukto mantraḥ.
   
tadyathā: gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā.

iti prajñāpāramitā-hṛdayam samāptam.

The Perfection of Wisdom
VisibleMantra.org
Heart (hrdaya) = essence, core
The bīja or "seed sound" in the center is dhiḥmma, which is said by the Shingon Buddhist tradition of Japan to be the essence of the Heart Sutra. And this sutra itself is said to be the essence of the "Perfection of Wisdom" literature tradition.
 
It combines dhīḥ, the basic seed-syllable for the Perfection of Wisdom (prajñā-pāramitā) with ma, the seed-syllable for Mañjuśrī in the Shingon tradition....

It is now generally believed by scholars that the Heart Sutra was composed in China. The part from the first "Iha Shāriputra" down to "Na jñānam, na prāptir na-aprāptiḥ" was extracted from the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit "Perfection of Wisdom in 25,000 Lines Sutra" or the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. (See Conze's The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, p. 61, Section I 2.2c).

An introduction and ending were added in Chinese, along with the epitome mantra at the very end, which appears in various other Chinese Perfection of Wisdom texts in various forms. It is even possible that the Chinese title was meant to indicate a text to be chanted rather than "Heart Sūtra," as the Chinese characters have some ambiguity.

About the time that Xuanzang was in India (mid seventh century) the Heart Sutra was back-translated into Sanskrit in India, and it was given the standard opening of authentic Buddhist discourses for a sūtra, "Thus have I heard" (evaṃ maya śrutaṃ), which represents that Ven. Ananda heard the sutra from the historical Buddha and reported it at the First Buddhist Council just after the Buddha's passing into final nirvana.

Also added were the standard praises from the audience at the end, which are also the mark of a sūtra in India, thereby creating the long version. It is possible that it was Xuanzang himself who composed the Sanskrit version that we have today as he was a great fan of the sūtra. More

Heart Sutra Essays

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