Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Heart Sutra: Buddha's Mother: Perfect Wisdom

Perfection of Insight, Prajnaparamita (LACMA)
All hail the Goddess (DeviPrajna Paramita (of Java), the Mother of the Perfection of Wisdom, the most tremendous, the most excellent of the Ten Perfections (paramitas) which the historical Buddha cultivated for aeons as the Bodhisatta (the "being bent on supreme enlightenment").

The Heart Sutra is the world's most popular Buddhist sutra. Sadly, from a young age, even I recognized something in its magical wording (Edward Conze translation). It had a small tract of it in English and Chinese, and I would approach Chinese friends to translate some of the incomprehensible parts -- one line in particular: "until we come to."

Sveta Sofia (Wisdom) of Bulgaria
What in the world? It turns out that was just Conze's way of saying "...". And other parts were explained to me as having been written in an archaic form of Old (liturgical) Chinese few people spoke, which they were very embarrassed to admit. The Berkeley Zen Center was even more forthcoming, suggesting it was just something to chant, not something one could hope to make sense of, like a Sanskrit seed-mantra. So they just chanted it, on the one hand, rote, mindlessly, thoughtlessly, with no investigation that it might actually mean something sensible. I, on the other hand, was tenacious, spending years making sense of it. And every year it made more and more sense.

The lost meaning has been recovered. 
My Theravada study of it revealed exactly what it was all about after a few years due to some key phrases that do not make sense on their own but make perfect sense as references to ancient Buddhist texts, such as lists of the BASES (ayatanas). The final crowning explanation came from Alan Watts* making sense of the strange wording, which might trip one up for years. I attribute this to a flexible way of translating any Sanskrit or Pali word, all of which have much wider valence, admitting to a range of translations, not one fixed English word to serve all situations.
  • A bodhisattva helping living beings
    The key secret is to realize that Śūnyatā ("Emptiness," void) is synonymous with the Pali suññatā ("impersonal" = anatta). Then everything else falls into place.
  • This is because what the Heart Sutra (Prajñā-pāramitā-hṛdaya Discourse) is talking about are the Five Aggregates clung to as self, pointing out that every "heap" -- each one of the Five Aggregates -- is actually devoid of self. It is impersonal and is in that sense "empty." It has no "independent existence." What kind of existence does it have? It has a dependently-originated one. It is foolish to think there is nothing there at all as if all things were the void: There is no thing there, but there is something, some stuff, something is appearing. In the ultimate sense, "things" (dhammas, dharmas, phenomena) have an existence and so are called "things." The one thing that is not a thing is nirvana (the deathless, amata/amritathe unconditioned element). Nirvana, being free of conditions, does not bear the (three universal) marks of "things." This "self" we cling to is just such a "thing," a conglomeration of other "things" (aggregates, groups, heaps), bearing the universal marks of being impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal.
  • Avalokitesvara (in basalt)
    "Self" arises in this way, not as a real entity but an illusion brought about by the presence of the aggregates. When one grasps that all there has ever been are phenomenal aggregates -- impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal -- then the heart naturally lets go with no prompting and becomes free of all clinging and all further suffering.
  • It is called the "Heart" (hṛdaya) Sutra not because of emotions or sweetness but because it comes as the culmination, the brief summary, the pith, the essence of 100,000 lines or verses of detailed explanation. It is the essence of perfected wisdom. It is the key to stream entry, that which when not grasped keeps us as ordinary worldling but when grasped causes a "change of lineage" (gotrabhu) to the noble ones. The Buddha himself said it. There are not enlightened disciples to be found in other traditions, at least not in the Buddhist sense of the term bodhi ("awakened," "enlightened," "liberated") because nowhere else is this Doctrine of No-Self ever taught, ever revealed, ever explained, although all popular religions seem to have an innate understanding that being egoless is far wiser than being full of ego. For example, in popular Christianity, in the eyes of God, what is the worst sin? Pride.
Beloved Kwan Yin (Guanyin)
Better than [the Goddess of Compassion] Kwan Yin (the feminine form of Avalokiteshvara)? More beloved than [the Cosmic Buddha of Light] Amitabha? No, probably not, but what is higher and more exalted than wisdom?

The Buddha himself noted how popular and beloved Ananda was, whereas the monastics did not seem to realize the kalyana-mitta (noble/enlightening friendship) potential of Ven. Sariputta, the male monastic he declared foremost in wisdom. One can easily imagine the same thing must have happened among the females with the Buddha highlighting the value of the great bhikkhuni Ven. Khema, the nun he declared foremost in wisdom.

Sariputta and MM become disciples
Now, one may ask, Why is Avalokiteśvara -- who is later transformed into the Goddess or Personification of Compassion (Kwan Yin/Guanyin) -- addressing Ven. Sariputra of all people in this most famous of all apocryphal "discourses"?

UCLA Prof. Robert E. Buswell Jr. (who ordained as a monk in Korean Zen then Sri Lankan Theravada before becoming a Western academic) explained the reason to us in class. Brahminical/Chinese Mahayana is holding up the monk disciple (shravaka) the Buddha declared "foremost in wisdom" as a scarecrow, stick figure, or punching bag to mock his supposed "wisdom," as if he were a mere intellect, a clueless egghead, a Brahmin nerd, a clueless dork compared to their god (deva, deity) Avalokita, whom they declare an "enlightenment being" (bodhi-sattva) and "great being" (maha-sattva, a Mahayana maha-sthamaprapta).
How to make the Heart Sutra simpler?
Rewrite it in modern English so readers get it

Holding lotus, symbol of blossoming
Wow, this perfection of wisdom is cool! It's eye-opening!

Avi, awake and wanting to awaken others, was reviewing the wisdom that has gone beyond. He looked down from on high and saw just five heaps, saw that in and of themselves they are impersonal, NOT A SELF, empty.

Herein, Sali, form is impersonal and the impersonal is form; the impersonal is not different than form, and form is not different than the impersonal. Anything that is impersonal, empty, and not-self is form.
  • The Zen ensō (zero, circle)
    [Conze translates it as: "Form is emptiness, and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form; form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is emptiness, that is form; [whatever is form, that is emptiness;] the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses (cetana, volitions), and consciousness." What does this mean? "Form" (Rūpa) and "Emptiness" (Sanskrit ŚūnyatāPali Suññatā), Alan Watts explains below, go together, are inseparable, are relational, one revealing the other, making no sense without the other. The instant one arises, the other necessarily arises at the same time, for one cannot be without the other, just as pairs like being/nonbeing, birth/death, origin/cessation, figure/background. One would be meaningless without the other, for the other provides contrast and its very definition.]
  • What is an Enso? (Lion’s Roar)
And the same is true of [of the other four heaps/aggregates] sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousnesses.
Herein [here within this Doctrine], Sali, all phenomena are impersonal. They bear the mark of being impersonal, empty: They are not produced and not stopped, not dirty and not clean, not missing something and not full.

So you see, Sali, in the impersonal, there is no form (no body composed of the Four Elements), nor sensations, nor perceptions, nor formations, nor consciousnesses.

Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva as "Avi"
There are no bases for these things [that are all dependently originated]: no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, nor the things that impinge on them: forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, or objects of mind, nor the things these sense depend on for their sensitivity: no element (sensitive tissue) of sight, and so forth, until we come to: no element (sensitive tissue) at the heart of consciousness.

[Why? It is because, after all, all things are impersonal, empty, not a self, so a bunch of them together don't make a self either).]

Devi Prajnaparamita of Java
Likewise, really, there is no ignorance, so there is no end of ignorance [since it doesn't really exist except as an illusion), and so forth, until we come to: There is no aging and death, no end of aging and death. There is no disappointment, no coming into being, no extinction, and no path to the extinction of disappointment. There is no knowing, no attainment, and there is no non-attainment of this realization.

And so, Sali, because of one's not-attaining anything that a being-bent-on-enlightenment, perfecting this wisdom that has gone beyond, dwells free of discursive thoughts. In their absence, one is free of trembling. One has overcome all that can upset and so realized nirvana.

Sophia (Library of Celsus)
All those who appear as supremely awakened teachers the three periods of time -- past, present, and future -- fully awake to this utmost realization, right and perfect awakening because they have perfected the wisdom that has gone beyond.

So, Sali, everyone should know this perfection of wisdom as a kind of mantra, the mantra of great knowing, the utmost mantra, the unequalled mantra, the allayer of all disappointment and ill. It's true; I mean, what could really go wrong except that it be an illusion?

By perfecting the wisdom that has gone beyond, this mantra becomes clear, and it runs like this:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!
("Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, oh what an awakening, it's true!")

This is indeed the pith of perfect wisdom.

Self, in the ultimate analysis, does not exist
(Khenpo Sodargye's Teachings) If there is no self, who reincarnates? | National Taiwan U Q&A

*Alan Watts: "Form is emptiness, AND emptiness is form." Why?

We were happy just to CHANT it
Is enlightenment possible for everyone?
 
Icon of Holy Wisdom (Vologda)
(Dalai Lama) Can everyone be enlightened? Moksha ("liberation," vimutti, "freedom" from samsara and suffering, "deliverance," salvation) is of two kinds, two levels, a happy life here and now [with possibly a heavenly rebirth for moral behavior hereafter] or attaining liberating-insight and final emancipation here and now in this very life through moral behavior, stillness (samadhi, settled calm, concentration), and vipassana (comprehending and cultivating Dependent Origination sufficient in theory and complete in practice).

NBA Finals, Trump, comedy, slave to Israel


Spencer Pratt (Playboy t-shirt), Fats, Heidi Montag
(Jimmy Kimmel Live) Hated Pres. Trump gets BOOED and falls asleep in front of a sold-out crowd (NBA Finals), after turning MSG into a police state staging area, claims his War on Iran for Israel is almost over (for the 37th+ time) as he restarts bombings, and goodbye to L.A. Republican mayoral candidate and failed reality TV star Pratt

Who's my true SELF, false self? (Alan Watts)

  • WARNING: "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain" - the Great Alexander Pope (reddit)
O, those Greeks of Macedonia were something
This is in reference to the spring in the Pierian Mountains in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses. The first line of this couplet is often misquoted as "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

In Greek mythology, the "Pierian Spring" of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia was sacred to the mythological Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Pope's 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism:

A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts [sips] intoxicate the brain,
And drinking [more medicine] largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!


I don't know what I'm supposed to think.
(After Skool) Alan Watts, what is the Self (Ego), True Self, False SelfHigher Self, Eternal Atman, Soul, Invisible Spirit (Prana, Pneuma), Immortal Essence or Sine Qua Non of Me, Myself, and I?
  • Wisdom Quarterly says there was "NO self."
  • WQ says no such thing. What we say is that, in an ultimate sense, "self" (ego, atta, atman, soul, spirit) is impersonal.
  • So there IS a "self"?
  • In a conventional sense, of course there is. How else would we live in a squiggly universe without a sense of our boundaries and where we end and others start?
  • Oh, so I don't have to give everything a way, join a commune, get blasted, and do whatevers my guru tells me to?
  • Ugh, no, you do not. Be yourself. Think. Practice. Buddhism only really makes sense for those who practice the Dhamma.
Joe Rogan: some "drugs" are not drugs

Been Dazed 'n Confused for so long it's not true

Wait, then, so I'm as "real" as this chair? - Yes.
EGO DEATH is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity" [1]. The term is used in various contexts, with related meanings.

The 19th-century psychologist and philosopher William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender." Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term "psychic death," referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche (soul) [2].

So I can be responsible with a career? - Yes.
In death and rebirth explanations, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition [3, 4, 5, 6] as described by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his research on the "Hero's Journey" [3].

It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary Western thinking [6].

What if I can't get it to stop?
In descriptions of drugs, the term is used synonymously with "ego loss" [7, 8, 1, 9] to refer to temporary loss of one's sense of having a self due to the use or abuse of drugs [10, 11, 1], be they negative (deludedhallucinogens or positive (pro-realizationentheogens.

The term was used as such by Harvard Dr. Timothy Leary and others [1] to describe the death of the ego [12] in the first phase of an LSD trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self [Note 1] occurs.


Did the Grateful Dead know about this?
The concept is also used in contemporary New Age spirituality and in the modern understanding of ancient Eastern religions (such as Nondualism/Advaita/Oneness) to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self" [Web 1] and self-centeredness [13] (egoism, egotism, selfishness, conceit).

This kind of conception is a part of Eckhart Tolle's Buddhist-like teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and emotions, continuously identified with [and clung to], which creates the idea and feeling of being a separate entity from one's self, and only by disidentifying one's consciousness from it can one truly be free from suffering [14]. More

Life, break us to wake us? DRUNK

(T&H Inspiration & Motivation) I was disgusted, busted, and not to be trusted. I was a drunkard, an alcoholic. I wasted 33 years of my life in my head before Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins explained this

I'm going to go divinely mad: LOVE
The incessant chatter of the Self

Time Travel in Buddhist physics (video)


Always be mindful here and now.
Dr. Crazynovich(Dr. Crazynovich) April 19, 2026: John Titor and the Second American Civil War. On November 2, 2000, a user calling himself "TimeTravel_0" appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums and made a claim that should have been dismissed as obvious fiction. He was a soldier from the year 2036, sent back on a military mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer that his era needed to debug legacy systems inherited from the late twentieth century. He had been routed through the year 2000 for what he called personal reasons. He was there, he said, to observe the world before it changed. Within weeks, he migrated to the Art Bell forums under a new name, John Titor, and began posting with a specificity that no casual hoaxer has ever sustained for long. He described his time machine in engineering detail.

Thay (Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh): "To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again [like flickering stills in a series of connected frames in a film strip] in the storms that make life possible."
COMMENTARY: Mindfulness of Time Travel
Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S., Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly, Ananda, June 10, 2026

Man, Spinoza was as genius as Tesla!
It is deadly easy to laugh at "time travel." But what we are laughing at is not the real thing so much as all our assumptions about it. Is it real? We have reason to think so. Jewish science, for example, in the form of Alvy Einstein, Bibi Spinoza, and Dr. Brucey Goldberg. Alvy drew up no equations making it impossible, did he? Time might go in either direction, and there's the curious case of retrocausation, not to mention "spooky action at a distance," which Alvy doubted, now known as quantum entanglement.

What about God? Yeah, what about it? Alvy, possibly a JuBu, when asked about that it, stated that his God was Benny Spinoza's God. But who cares about science? If we cared, we might make more of fellow scientists raising an alarm in Pasadena about our planet/plane (video below).

Pederastic Jewish fantasy as Da Costa 'instructs'
little Ben Spinoza on his lap (Sam Hirszenberg)
However, Bruce Goldberg is the most interesting of the three named, for he says with absolute certainty that not only is time travel possible, we're already doing it. Who's "we"? We as in you and me. What? Here's easy proof. Close your eyes. Close them! Hold perfectly still. More still, samadhi-like stillness, quietude. Feel it?

Right NOW, right here, we're traveling into the future. It's true! Look at the calendar! Look at a watch! Oh, that doesn't count! No proof is good enough, and it never has been. Stubborn!

Which way does time travel? In a spiral?
So we are "traveling" in time, you admit? Yes, look, the real question is, Can we go back (or sideways) in time? That immediately brings up the problem of space, not outer space, not even inner space. I'm talking about the space right here. To go "sideways" is my way of saying bilocation or colocation. For instance, when "now" arrived the first time, I was right here. Might I, on the second occasion, have been somewhere else?

Can I go back to that now and be somewhere else that time? If so, that would be time travel! Can I, or all of us, go back at all? Goldberg says yes, and if you pay him, he'll take you back, so you can shut yer yapper and stop asking all these doubt-filled questions full of investigative energy and childlike curiosity. After all, what will that mean?
  • Ven. Thay, what time is it now?
    NOTE (WQ Fun with Philosophy): If time travel becomes possible, WHEN will we have it? WHEN will it be true? WHEN will I get to do it? - These questions were all answered in an instant when we gathered to protest at JPL's back parking lot near the head of Tovaangar's Gabrieleno Trail (JPL). We were all chanting, "What do we want!?" - "Time travel!" - "When do we want it!?" - "Whenever!" ("Whenever"? Shouldn't we have answered, "NOW!"? which is how protest chants usually go? Well, yes, but as many on the scene argued, it won't matter. Why? It won't matter because WHEN we have time travel (due to our ability to go back or forward to any time that's ever been or will be), we will have had time travel all along, and "all along" includes NOW, which is when we have it, if we EVER get it. Get it? See the problem? If not, refer to the increasingly inaccurate trilogy borne out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the genius Douglas Adams discusses the problematic grammar (tense constuctions) of having it.
  • [Eckhart Tolle, when is "NOW"? And, by the way, how many "nows" are there?]
Step into the Eternal Now
That is hard to say because it seems to mean various things -- and those things change our view and version of "reality." Sci-fi says going back and changing anything means changing it [and everything else due to the butterfly effect] for everyone.

What if it only changes for us? For example, I said "no." What if I went back in time and were to say "yes"? Just that change, what would it do? Would all the world and universe be different? Would it shatter our dimension? Would I be happy? Would the world regret it? It seems Brucey Baby is talking about not that but jumping timelines to a line (which is to say a time) where I did. And what happened?

I could go see. Would anybody else see? They would in that timeline, but I might like to come back to this timeline. Could I? Yes, Dr. Goldberg says, and he adds that that's what we're doing all the time anyway. (That may be the realization of reality we are not ready for).
Maybe we should just Be Here Now
So we already are time traveling! Jewish science. Is it a coincidence that those identifying as Ashkenazi Jews are the one who have made these speculations, advancements, and claims?

Maybe, but no one can say anything about it or risk being ostracized, listed, and categorized as an "antidentite." So grin and bear it and not just because our beloved Dr. B. Goldberg of LA is a dentist who may have inhaled some pharmaceutical fumes.
Wait then, what is "space"?

What is the absence of zero? (Enso)
In Buddhist phenomenology, akasha is divided into "limited space" (ākāsa-dhātu) and "endless [or boundless] space" (ajatākasā) [9]. The Vaibhāṣika, an early school of Buddhist philosophy, holds the view that the existence of akasha is real [10].

Ākāsa is identified as the first arūpa jhāna ("formless/immaterial absorption," dhyana in Buddhism), but that plane (among the four immaterial planes of the 31 Planes of Existence) and that absorption (by which one arrives at it) is usually translated as "infinite space" [11], with WQ preferring "boundless" space.

Space, space, what is "space"?
Sir, is 'space' fifth great element?
"Space" (Pali Ākāśa, Sanskrit, akasha) holds two primary meanings in Abhidhamma and Abhidharma analysis [12].

There is spatiality, where Ākāśa is defined as the absence that delimits forms. Like the empty space within a door frame, it is an emptiness (hollow) that is shaped and defined by the material boundary surrounding it.

And there is "vast space," where Ākāśa is described as the absence of obstruction (boundlessness), categorized as one of the nityadharmas ("permanent phenomena") because it remains unchanged over time.

Ether (aether) is real
In this sense, it is likened to the discarded Western concept of aether—a real but scientifically rejected immaterial, bright, lminous "fluid" (possibly like the Bible's "waters above" the firmament) that supports the Four Great (material) Elements (Buddhism's mahābhūta).
  • These "elements" (dhatus) are actually four major qualities of matter or materiality understood as various particles (RUPA-kalapas), exhibiting a predominance of one quality over the others, which amounts to more than a dozen major expressions placed for simplicity into four big categories.
  • Now listen up. This is verified Buddhist science.
    UNDERSTANDING BUDDHIST
    "PARTICLE" PHYSICS: A rupa-kalapa or "form particle" is a "corporeal group," a "material unit" that designates a combination of several physical phenomena constituting a temporary, flowing, functional unity.
  • Therefore, for instance, inanimate or so-called "dead matter" forms the most primitive group, consisting only of eight physical phenomena. These are called the "pure eightfold unit" or "octad" (suddhatthaka-kalāpa), comprised of: The Four Elements (solidity, fluidity, temperature, motion); color, smell, taste, nutriment (pathavī, āpo, tejo, vāyo; vanna, gandha, rasa, ojā). 
  • In The Path of Purification (Vis.M.) and elsewhere, it is also called ojatthamaka-kalāpa, "the octad with nutriment as the eighth factor." The simplest form of living matter is the "ninefold vitality unit" or "life-ennead" (jīvita-navaka-kalāpa), formed by adding "vitality" (jiva) to the octad. Seven decads, or "units of ten" (dasaka-kalāpa), are formed by adding to the ninefold unit one of the following corporeal phenomena: HEART (cittahrdayam, the physical seat of mind) [the physical seat of consciousness, not formally declared by the Buddha but understood to be located near the physical heart at a tiny spot at the upper part of it where it exhibits greenish hue and mirror-like function, reflecting conscious experience, which may sound preposterous but is personally verifiable by meditative-scientists, as are all of the claims made in this physics section], sex, eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body.
  • See Vis.M. XVIII, 4; Compendium of Buddhist Philosophy (PTS), p. 164, 250; Atthasālini Tr., II, 413f. Source
Oh, to know the world as the Buddha knew it!
Ether's radiant quality (aether meaning "brightness") often serves as a metaphor for pure luminous (or original) mind or buddhahood, which is described as shining like the sun or space.

In Buddhist samatha meditation, ākāśa is significant in the context of the sphere of boundless/infinite space (ākāśānantyāyatana), the first of the four immaterial absorptions (arupa-jhanas or dhyānas) [12].

Philosophically, ākāśa is considered one of the uncompounded phenomena (asaṃskṛtadharmas) in six Buddhist schools, including the defunct Sarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṃghika, and later the Yogācāra. However, three other schools, including the extant Theravāda, reject this interpretation [12]. More
Time in Greek mythology
Chronos and New Year Cupid
Chronos
(Ancient Greek Χρόνος, Romanized Khronos, lit. "Time," Modern Greek ['xronos], also spelled Chronus like the Wise Woman The Crone but not the Titan Cronus), is a personification of time in Greek mythology discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature [1]. His consort is the Goddess Ananke.
 
Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan Cronus in antiquity, due to the similarity in names [2]. The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance ("Rebirth"), giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe [3] like Death (Buddhist Mara).

Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel [4]. He is comparable to the deity Aion (kalpa, aeon) as a symbol of cyclical time [5]. More

Alan Watts: Atomic Theory (Tao/God)
(Official Alan Watts OrgAtomos ("uncuttable"), smallest material unit

Fired from JPL for reporting climate in Trump's America