The Heart Sutra is one of the most representative and basic Buddhist texts. Yet, when you compare this sutra with other religious materials, you find very different characteristics, different feelings. Unfortunately, none of the English translations is very satisfactory, but basically we understand all the translations, in their choice of words and style, as a somewhat slight interpretation by each translator. The original authors of sutras, we cannot find, although translators’ names appear. With literal translation and literal word order in the translation, it would be impossible to make a readable text, so it is not word-by-word translating. Each translator has made great effort to make it meaningful, as is true with all kinds of religious materials. They cannot be read like novels or magazine articles, because, without exception, in the beginning you don’t understand them.
Somehow, the nature of a sutra is like a mirror. It is empty, actually, and whoever reads it sees a mirror of their own figure, so the mirror is one of the best metaphors to explain the nature of a sutra. Consciously or unconsciously, the action of reading a sutra contains the courageous mind to face to yourself. When you pick up the sutra there is already a strong inner need to see yourself. It doesn’t have the sense of seeking enjoyment, though maybe in a deeper sense there is enjoyment. A sincere interest in your own reality, a clear eye to see your world, is necessary. You think, “If I have made a mistake, I won’t ignore it,” or if I see goodness, I can say to myself, “I am good.” You see these things without judgement, allowing them to be as they are, keeping a strict attitude. There has to be some kind of tension in the author and in the reader. If the sutra is not written with this attitude, you cannot stand to continue to read, because the tension of the reader and the tension of the author has to come together. If the author wrote each word with a tear, the reader really sees that tear in reading the words. If the author writes with cigarette in hand, the reader discovers it. This is how we face the sutra.
Between the sutra and ourselves, we cannot tell which is new, which is old. Hopefully, we are the same age. If it was written ten centuries ago, you don’t face it as old stuff. You don’t read it as a twentieth century person. You have to go beyond that sense of old and new. This is a point to test whether you can really meet with yourself and whether you can open to meeting with ancient people. So if you understand the sutra as the footsteps of old people, it is the sound of your footstep, too. In Chinese and Japanese, “old” points to long, long life, throughout many criticisms and many disastrous occasions. This “oldness” has the same feeling as “old friend.” Even if you are twenty years old, you say, “This is my old friend.” It has the feeling that this man is closer to me than I am to myself. An old mirror is like that. Instead of writing a new sutra, your own sutra, you read the old sutra. You read it as your sutra. You chant it as your sutra. For this reason the old manuscript doesn’t have a name. It can be anyone’s when someone is ready to make it their own.
The sutra was written by blood, so if you really see what was written, it is the same as your body. It is not a matter of believing what they are talking about, it’s a matter of making it yours, finding yourself in it. Many novels have a similar nature, because some authors avow their whole life in their novel. Even though the people are fictitious, each person in the novel is part of the author’s body and mind. Sutras have a similar nature. When you read them, you really see how the authors lived, how they saw things.
This Heart Sutra is very short, and is strange in that the whole sutra is one little dream of the Buddha. There is no mention of Shakyamuni Buddha. In another original Sanskrit text, in Tibetan translation, there is a different set-up: Shakyamuni Buddha meditated, and in his meditation this Avalokiteshvara and Shariputra appear and speak to each other. Avalokiteshvara is teaching something to Shariputra, and at the end of this sutra Shakyamuni Buddha says, “Avalokiteshvara, you did a good job. Wisdom is spoken in this way.” Since the Buddha was usually meditating, our text omits that part, and begins with Avalokiteshvara having a conversation with Shariputra. Strangely, Avalokiteshvara is a bodhisattva, and Shariputra is an actual historical figure, the most intelligent, intellectual disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is beyond a historical figure - this “beyond” also means “beneath, below, within” a living person.