Find The Heart Of Understanding: Commentaries On The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra Originated By Thich Nhat Hanh Document

short and thoughtful commentary on a sacred text that definitely needs commentary to be understood in any capacity as a modern reader with limited knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, Worth reading, as Thích Nhat Hanh's explanation and analogies are as poignant as ever in this little book,

I listened to this book, The heart of Buddhism with Zen leanings is encapsulated in this slim and poetic volume, but this book is for everyone, If you don't know Buddha from butter, it won't matter, It's probably the best introduction to the fundamental concepts of dependent origination and emptiness I have come across, without the didacticism or defensiveness that often accompanies more scholarly "explanations, " It's simple, the way it's supposed to be, The way it is! Ik denk dat ik met zekerheid durf te zeggen dat dit het mooiste boekje is dat ik ooit gelezen heb, Ik voelde het zo diep binnenkomen in de kern van mijn wezen, het raakte delen van mezelf die ik nog nooit op zo'n manier onder woorden heb kunnen brengen, De boodschap van de kracht van het interzijn, het loslaten van de vrees voor de dood of geboorte, het idee van geendualiteit, is zo'n intense bevrijding en verlichting, Ik voel me zo dankbaar!!! Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, In The Heart of Understanding, Thich Nhat Hanh offers a lucid and engaging interpretation of this core Buddhist textThe Heart Sutrawhich is one of the most important sutras, offering subtle and profound teachings on nonduality.

No one but Thay could make the Abhidharma technicalities and mindbending paradoxes of emptiness of the Heart Sutra read like simple breathing while looking at clouds, The highest wisdom, prajnaparamita, in Thay's hands shows you its immediacy and practicality for everyday living, After reading and reviewing six different books on the Heart Sutra, his was the one I chose to teach from,

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!

SeptemberUpdate
Don't miss Thay's new version of this book, now titled sitelinkThe Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries.
In it Thay provides his new translation and explains why it is needed and how the standard translation and its variations has often been the source of misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the central teaching of emptiness.
Ja, eens per paar maanden kom ik toch altijd weer terecht bij een boek dat over het boeddhisme gaat ofwel door een fixe korting in boekwinkels, ofwel omdat ik het van mensen in mijn handen gedrukt krijg, ofwel omdat het me zelf toch ook wel een beetje grijpt.
Zo ook deze keer, met dit boekje van Nhat Hanh, waar hij het 'gedicht' van de hartsoetra haarfijn en met passie uitlegt, Nu heb ik hier enkele dingen over te zeggen
Sowieso vind ik het superchill om een gedicht te lezen met meteen de interpretatie erbij, Zo weet je zeker dat je de boodschap min of meer door hebt, Dit is ook weer een training voor toekomstige gedichten,
Boeddhisme snijdt echt wel houd en het is zeker een interessante praktische filosofie, Echter moet je enkele premises wel aannemen om het écht in je op te nemen
Korte boekjes wekken de impressie dat ik echt keiveel heb gelezen, waardoor ik opdecember weer kan leven met de gedachte dat ik wél iets uitgehaald heb

Nou, bij deze.
Om het nog even met een pretentieuze noot te eindigen: Mijn boeken vanvolgen een beetje een Hegeliaanse dialectiek, waar het Christendom in the Antichrist kan worden gezien als de these, het boeddhisme in dit boekje kan worden gezien als de antithese, waardoor de tensie tussen die twee boeken het derde boek, Meditations van my boy Aurelius, als synthese vormt.
Toch fijn dat ik nog iets haal uit mijn studie filosofie, want een baan ga ik er niet mee vinden, Ach, pretentieus zijn op Goodreads gt Geld, Možda i najlakše, najlepše, najjednostavnije objašnjenje budističkih ideja praznine i promene i povezanosti svega i sve to na malom broju stranica,

"Praznina je temelj svega, zahvaljujući praznini sve je moguće" Nagarjuna,
i dalje:
"Praznina je prolaznost, ona je promena, Ne bi trebali da se žalimo na prolaznost, jer bez nje ništa ne bi bilo moguće" Thich Nhat Hahn,
i dalje:
"Tata nemoj da se žališ na prolaznost! Pa bez nje ne bih mogla da porastem!" neka devojčica, While not a flawless book, this rendition and discussion of the Heart Sutra is an accessible entrypoint for some of Buddhism's key philosophies, For those who find those philosophies resonant, this work is also replenishing and profound, "What/ who you think you really know"

Over the past one year, whenever encounter anyone who sounds wise and open, I always ask s/he that question, I wonder whether we ever truly know anything/ anyone in this world, since everything amp everyone change every single second, And if we hardly know anyone/anything, why we even bother trying to gettoknow or to learn because mastery of something or truly knowing someone are all illusions, This question arose from some personal experiences during my

Throughout that time, I got different answers:
One talked about the Known, The Unknown, The Unknowable
Some claim the only one person they know are themselves and the only thing they really know is what they want to do
Some said we know nothing
Some said they know their bff, their mother, their children.

Some just didn't answer

And, I stopped questioning since I thought it was enough and it might go nowhere, Getting other's answer doesn't really help me clarify my own,

But Thay made it so simple amp so clear, “Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block the way of understanding, ” "Understanding flows"

If I keep trying to know things, I will never know them truly, as they change constantly, and I will feel frustrated, But if I try to understand something, it means that Im aware of the context where it is, be one with it to look deeply into its nature, but never assume that it would remain unchanged.


Reading this small book was a really liberating experience for me :
simply incredible, quietly profound, changingThe way Ticht Nacht Han talks about death and impermanence has provided me with more peace during this period of immense, heartwrenching grief than the idea of a Christian heaven has.
Pondering why this is so, I just love his writing, It makes my heart feel settled, Oh my gosh. Profound. Everything contains everything else. When you really take the time to absorb the meaning of this book, it's quite life changing, Lovely short meditation on indivisibility, "We are not separate. We are inextricably interrelated. The rose is the garbage, and the nonprostitute is the prostitute, The rich man is the very poor woman, and the Buddhist is the nonBuddhist, The nonBuddhist cannot help but be a Buddhist, because we interare, The emancipation of the young prostitute will come as she sees into the nature of interbeing, She will know that she is bearing the fruit of the whole world, And if we look into ourselves and see her, we bear her pain, and the pain of the whole world, " I always read books like these and wish I could be more spiritual than I am, Or maybe not even more spiritual, but more able to harness these messages in my daily life, I love the ideas of Buddhism, but I'm pretty solidly enmeshed in my passions, : In any case, it's good to keep reading and thinking and trying, This little book has a lot about emptiness and interbeinghow everything contains everything else within it and nothing could exist without everything else, I like it. Thich Nhat Hanh's gift as a poet illuminates what might otherwise be impenetrable and abstruse, Emptiness, the central insight of the sutra, is a key to freeing us from concepts that get us stuck in life, such as the notion of impermanence or the notion of an independent and enduring self.


This edition has been supplanted in the Plum Village community by The Other Shore, which treats the same subject matter but uses Hanh'stranslation of the Heart Sutra, retitled The Insight that Leads Us to the Other Shore.
There's much to commend the new rephrased sutra and I appreciate the desire to use language less likely to be misapprehended, but I have misgivings about calling it a new translation.
Where Hanh believes the sutra's lines could lead to misunderstanding, he takes the liberty of changing them, This prerendering remains more faithful to the text of the Heart Sutra as it has come to us across the centuries and is known and chanted throughout much of the Mahayana Buddhist world.




It's possible to read this slim book in one hour, but not to assimilate it, Tich Nhat Hanh does his best to simplify the heart sutra for western readers, Maybe oversimplify is a better word, Some of his insights into Buddhist teaching are marvelous and clear others are maddening, 'This is, because that is' does little to explain, e, g. , how wealth consists of poverty and vice versa except in the grand sense of everything being part of everything else, Still, there are many lessons worth learning from the zen masters if we stay open and enter deeply into the things we want to understand, Na ruim een jaar mediteren heb ik de hartsutra zo'nkeer gereciteerd zonder de tekst te begrijpen, ''Vorm is leegte, leegte is vorm'', vormt de kern van de sutra, Wat betekent dat

Thich Nhat Hanh legt dat in dit boek duidelijk en beknopt uit, Wat overigens niet wil zeggen dat je de hartsutra daarna helemaal doorgrond, of zoals ze in het boeddhisme zeggen helemaal doorziet, Dat zit zo: de hartsutra is niet bedoeld om enkel rationeel te begrijpen, Het is bedoeld als bevrijdingslied: ''The Prajñaparamita Heart Sutra gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that.
''

Een hele belofte! Maar nakeer reciteren, vind ik het rationeel beter snappen van de tekst al heel fijn,

Dankjewel hiervoor: Thich Nhat Hanh en Willem, die een uitleg deelde in tekst: sitelink nlwijzen en audio: sitelink com/user Key Buddhist text. Lovely. Yu can't really threestar a sweet little treatisen hw tbe mre kind and mre awaref the heartsf peple arund yu, sthis gets fur, because Thich Nhat Hanh, I like yu mre in thery than in practice, yul' drytngued devil.
Short, simple, and deeply insightful commentary on the core sutra of mahayana Buddhism, The Heart Sutra is the heart of the prajna paramita literature, the great deepening of the Buddha's original teaching, This work demystifies the concept of "emptiness" by substituting the idea that we "interare, " no one if us, no concept, nothing exists independent of the rest of us, You could read this book in an hour, and keep returning to it for a lifetime, “To be is to interbe, You cannot just be by yourself alone, you have to interbe with every other thing, This sheet of paper is, because everything else is, ”

“In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding, You cannot love someone if you do not understand them, If you do not understand what you love, it is not love it is something else, ” I listened to the audio version on Audible and it turned out to be the original lecture recording, You may hear the analog buzz going trough the whole thing, somehow adding to authenticity, You hear the Thich Nhat Hanh voice using clumsy English and the sound of the bell as well as the noises of the audience, You get a sense of presence in a room with many different people who come there to hear about the interbeing, The paper, the forest, the cloud, the rain drops, the leave, So many teachers in one short lecture, It is beautiful, it encouraged me to open up and listen to see into and seek deeper understanding, I've started Thich Nhat Hanh's short interpretation of the Heart Sutra a few times, but it wasn't until I tried Edoardo Ballerini's audio version that it lit up for me.


It starts with the Vietnamese monk's frequent telling of how a poet can see everything the sun, the rain, the lumberjack, yourself in a sheet of paper, Then it takes a dive into emptiness and how there's really no birth and death, And then suddenly you find yourself in the shoes of a child in Manila forced into prostitution, This is some deep stuff,

One main point is that you are truly one with everything and until you grasp this deeply, you won't be able to do meaningful work toward peace,

Excerpt:

Perfect Understanding is prajñaparamita in Sanskrit, The word “wisdom” is usually used to translate prajña, but I think that wisdom is somehow not able to convey the meaning, Understanding is like water flowing in a stream, Wisdom and knowledge are solid and can block our understanding, In Buddhism, knowledge is regarded as an obstacle for understanding, If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that even if the truth comes and knocks at our door, we wont want to let it in.
We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge in the same way we climb up a ladder, If we are on the fifth rung and think that we are very high, there is no hope for us to step up to the sixth, We must learn to transcend our own views, Understanding, like water, can flow, can penetrate, Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block the way of understanding,

Now I need to try Thich Nhat Hanh's second attempt called "sitelinkThe Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries, This was my first of Thich Nhat Hanh's many books, read last weekend just a few days before his death, I thought it might be challenging material but in fact was very understandable, and enjoyable, You can't really understand Judaism without the Ten Commandments or Christianity without the Lord's Prayer both make it into any complete catechism and my impression is you can't really understand Buddhism without the Heart Sutra.
But to Western eyes its utterly mystifying with all its Sanskrit words and foreign concepts, so a guide from the inside is needed to open it up, Enter Thich That Hanh. His brief and elegant commentary expands the sutra and with it much of Buddhist thought, At every step through the sutra he gently invites the reader to question their assumptions:

"In Buddhism, knowledge is seen as an obstacle for understanding, If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that if the Truth comes and knocks at our door we wont want to let it in.
We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge in the same way we climb up a ladder, If we are on theth rung and think that we are very high, theres no hope for us to step up to the sixth, We must learn to transcend our own views, Understanding, like water, can flow and penetrate, Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid and can block the way of understanding, "

Similar to a certain proverb of Solomon, Hanh follows that passage with the Chinese proverb: "To say 'I don't know' is the beginning of knowing, "years into my life I'm finally finding the courage to utter those words truthfully and I take this challenge from Hanh seriously: to come out from under a restrictive box, to not stand constantly at the intellectual defensive, and to pick up the "key of openmindedness and willingness" as the AA Big Book would say.
On theth rung of the ladder I once stood paralyzed in fear of abandoning all I hold dear, but stepping up one more rung isn't abandonment, its seeing from a greater height, able to see more angles, further depth, and with more nuance.


One idea Hanh introduced from another angle was reincarnation, From a rational, Western perspective this is child's silliness and laughable, if not outright heresy, But Hanh encourages the reader to depart from philosophy and really consider "how long have you existed" Before you were born in the womb Before you were conceived in some part of your parents In your grandparents Looking at your hand you can see much of who you are came from those before you and even now the water in your body is borrowed from elsewhere.
If we are formed from dust and return to dust, then do you not go on living after you die in another Life and death, Hanh says, are but ideas mental formations which are

part of the five Skandas aggregates that make up a person and we get preoccupied with forms, fearing this form of us will die and we will no longer be human, yet taking for granted that we will continue on in a new form! Even from the standpoint of Christian doctrine on the Resurrection this isn't untrue: these bodies will not stay the same but "we will all be changed" and take on a new form.
These were expansive thoughts for me and I think they can be beneficially meditated on without devolving into relativism or pantheism,

If you are looking to understand this sutra or any Buddhist thought, I heartily recommend, .