THE BOUNDLESS HEART Joan Halifax Center

I have chanted the Heart Sutra in various translations for nearly forty years. For many of those years, I simply chanted it, was quietly confounded by it, and let it sink into my practice, like a shiny penny sinks into a deep cool well. It held a kind of promise for me, for the promise of realizing “no fear” was a gleaming possibility that could be not taken lightly.

Several years ago, my colleague began to translate The Heart Sutra, and soon thereafter, he invited me to participate in the translation process. A short time after we had begun the work, he suggested that the translation for shunyata was boundlessness. I met his insight with great interest, as I had never felt at ease with the common translation of shunyata as emptiness. In contemplating the truth of boundlessness, I contemplated several qualities of this state beyond all qualities. These are elaborated in what follows.

Qualities of Boundlessness Even though space, emptiness, or boundlessness may seem to have no qualities, there are some characteristics that arise out of our experience in practice. These characteristics also form a basis for meditation practice, a support allowing or encouraging us to let go, be purified of or transform our grasping into openess.

Not Knowing An important characteristic that may meet us in practice is Not Knowing. The mind that is free of ideas, opinions, conceptions, the mind that is fresh, open, unmediated, the mind that does not grasp onto that which is solid and secure, the mind that does not seek a mooring.

The great “Don’t know” of , the “Don’t’ Know Mind” of contemporary Korean monk Seung Sahn, Beginner’s mind of Suzuki Roshi, the inconceivable of Vimalakirti are all ways of expressing the inexpressible when the mind is open and free. The ecologist Aldo Leopold gives us a sense of what Not Knowing opens for us: “ Of what avail are the forty freedoms without a blank space on the map.”

What is this nonconceptual spontaneous mind, the blank spot on the map, this wisdom beyond wisdom, one might ask? Frequently, in the literature of Zen it is pointed to through metaphors. For example. Daowu asked Shitou: What is the essential meaning of the Buddha ?” And Shitou replied: “Not to attain, not to know.” Daowu responded: If there is some turning place when going beyond or not?” And Shitou said: “The boundless sky does not hinder the white clouds from flying.” This boundless mind is not caught by thoughts, ideas, schemes, or themes.

Groundlessness The second aspect of boundlessness is groundlessness. Wisdom beyond wisdom and boundlessness is not grounded in anything at all. All is seen as impermanent, ever changing, not fixed in time or space. One of the ways that this is expressed is in the experience of enlightenment. In the Southern School of Chinese Zen, spontaneity, uncontrived unpredictability, and the absence of security were the order of the day. One way of looking at this order of disorder is that awakening can happen at any moment, in any circumstance, like the moment of seeing a peach blossom in the spring, the sound of a stone hitting bamboo in autumn, or the sifting of rice in the night.

Awakening cannot be arrived at through reasoning only and the dependence on the discursive mind. Reference points and preferences are often rooted in fear, the need of the small self to become more solid, more defined. The discursive mind that creates categories, conceptual schemes, and boundaries for self-protection is one that is caught in the net of fear. Andre Gide’s observation that one doesn’t discover new lands without losing sight of the shore for a long time suggests that we should let go of our moorings to realize the continuous present: this is the wonder of groundlessness, where we find the true path of discovery, the path of no path.

Immediacy A third aspect of boundlessness is our present situation. We cannot explain it. No scientist can unfold it for us. Yet each moment is the repository of the past, present and future; all the are contained herein. Our practice is to open to all of this present moment as the so-called object of our concentration and to not be separate from it. Or this present moment is completely open to us if we do not resist it. The once walked into a great assembly of Buddhas and . He remarked: “They have all found their original dwelling place.” This experience of immediacy is our boundless original dwelling place, the realization of wisdom beyond wisdom.

Not Knowing, Groundlessness, and Immediacy are intimately connected. In Zen, we find the word nen used in the Ten line Chant of Avalokiteshvara of Boundless Life. Nen means this very moment mind, or of the present moment, or being at ease and open with things as they are, just like hair which grows by itself. The feeling is of effortlessness and of selflessness is present in the unmediated present. Nen rests openly in the mind of the beginner, in the mind that is open and nonreferential, and the mind that is present.

Joshu asks Nansen: “What is the way?” And Nansen replies: “Ordinary mind is the way.” Joshu then says: “Shall I direct myself toward it or not?” And Nansen replies: “If you direct yourself toward it, you move away from it.” Nansen is telling Joshu to relax and open to the present moment. Striving kills the moment. There is no attainment, nothing to attain. When cold comes, let it kill you. When hot comes, let it kill you. Good old says it this way: “Good snowflakes/They don’t fall in any other place.” This is intimacy with the boundless present moment, unmediated immediacy.

Just before Shunryu Suzuki Roshi died at the San Francisco Zen Center in 197?, a close student went to his room. The old ’s skin was stained dark by his illness; he was thin and small in his narrow bed, his hands just over the covers. His student looked at him and asked: “Roshi, where shall we meet?” And the dying man raised one hand and made a circle, form is boundlessness, boundlessness is form, inviting his student to meet him in that very moment.

Interconnectedness A fourth characteristic of boundlessness is its expression in the endless connections that flow through our very lives. In this present moment, nothing is missing. We are all here. Yet often we feel as though something is lacking and the mind that grasps and holds onto beings and things finds its horizon shrinking instead of expanding.

Our tendency to discriminate, cut and parse our experience might seem to make us more secure, but we cut ourselves away from who we really are, a self that co-extensive with all beings and things. Avalokiteshvara reminds us that discernment or discriminating consciousness is fundamentally about limitedness. This quality of mind gives us the impression that we have a self and the rest is “other.” But without otherness, there is nothing to discern as there is no self nor other. Other and discerning are by their very nature not separate from each other. Rather they are completely contingent on each other. Realizing the contingency, or interconnectedness of perceiver, perceiving, and object of perception is to unify the world through our experience.

Giving No Fear By reframing the basic teachings of the Buddha through the perspective of boundlessness, the Heart Sutra may liberate us from all the hindrances, including the hindrance of enlightenment or awakening. Realizing boundlessness is a sword that cuts the root of self- clinging. If there is no self to become enlightened, then awakening is not something to get but is our very basic nature, including the dynamic aspects of our life. Indeed, boundlessness includes the dynamic aspect of all phenomena from the point of view of cause and effect and is complimented by causality or the world of dynamic form or phenomena.

Realizing boundlessness, the five fears are ended. The five fears include losing one’s life, mind, reputation, support, and fear of teaching. There is no life, mind, reputation or support to lose. There is nothing to teach, no one to teach, no one teaching. There is simply freedom from fear. This is the essence of the Heart Sutra, its power to free you and I from fear through the realization of great boundlessness.