Buddha taught many individual followers and later on people made a very good theory to study: Suffering, origination of suffering, stopping of suffering, and a path to stop suffering. This is the famous four noble truths.
These truths are seen, in this sutra, in emptiness. Suffering is the reality of existence. Even if we don’t feel suffering, to exist is suffering, and to not exist is also suffering. So this is not the ordinary sense of suffering, but it is a very natural word. For instance, to have big wealth is suffering because you have to take care of it. To have nothing seems very fantastic, but it is suffering, too. Buddha spoke about suffering, pointing out a very important point, that as far as something exists, it has to be responsible for itself. In the Buddhist way of thinking there is a kind of hell, the wish to exist forever. This is one reason for suffering. When you go into this hell, you cannot die, you cannot disappear. Even if you get very sick, you cannot die for a very long time. A man called, saying he had a bad pain and was planning to commit suicide. “That’s fantastic! When?” I said. “I don’t know!” On and on he spoke, “I am so weak. I am so tired. I must die!” Like a little baby he was crying and crying to be noticed, and I knew that he didn’t have such a strong sword in his hand. He just thought he wished to die, but he didn’t know how to die… So every existence has the basic misunderstanding: “I will exist forever,” and at the same time, “I do not want to exist at all.” It means one being is constantly dying, constantly appearing and constantly disappearing. In other words, it is an empty existence, like dew from the night into morning sunshine, it exists. As a form it appears between night and daytime, arising and falling between dark night and sunshine. Actually, dew doesn’t exist. It’s just night and day.
Dew exists. You’re staring at dew. You see a blooming flower, even though you know it is empty. You stare at it, and it actually stares at you. Many times you experience, in this one life, very clear and very surprising sensations. You see no differentiation between particularities. We live in this world of impulses, consciousness, and if we skip this word, “no” that becomes our ordinary world. When we put in “no,” intellectually we cannot understand “no feeling, no eyes, no color” but there is a very interesting taste in this word. This “no” has red color, the flower has really red color. This dew is really beautiful dew.
In other words, the world of feeling, the ordinary world, appears even though you come through this world of “no,” world of “mu,” world of emptiness. Still you exist, and your whole being becomes walking, breathing, eating, prajna. Vijnana turns to prajna. “No” is that gate which vijnana goes through and turns to prajna, knowledge becomes wisdom, passing through this gate, which is “no.” The world of wisdom is advancing all the time. Color is not color, and yet it is color. A familiar teaching is: “Mountain is mountain. Mountain is not mountain. And mountain is mountain.” …”
Mahayana Buddhism did not arise from a scholastic way of study. It is not just for monks and nuns, rather the body of Mahayana Buddhism is usual people. Inside of Buddhism there was revolution, change, and outside of Buddhism there was the vedantic way of life. So when I see this sutra, I see not only a Buddhist sutra, I see a very strong figure of Hinduism. In Hinduism, hridaya can be identified as the Atman and shunyata, emptiness, can be identified with Brahman, so it is impossible to know what this emptiness is. Only what someone can know is through faith. In the Hindu feeling, through faith you feel a blink of Atman, and then build a long ladder into the sky which you climb up and meet with Brahman. You never meet Brahman on this earth. Shunyata is a Buddhist term for this emptiness, longing for Brahman, which is a part of Indian peoples’ nature. The basic point, which we have to really understand, is what emptiness is. Shunyata. And when you understand emptiness, the historical problem of whether “I” exist or whether God exists, naturally will be solved for you.
An individual life is like a water current. The same water flows, but moment after moment it changes form and position. This current, life current, is suffering with constant change. Some say that because a bird cannot be air, that bird is suffering. Because a fish cannot be water, that is the fish’s suffering. The human cannot be something else, so that is human suffering. This was the Indian people’s idea about life in the form of suffering, so the arhat tried to evaporate out of this current into the air, like water evaporates, and never come back to the water, to the river. But bodhisattvas and buddhas are always willing to come back into the water, to be born as the water. This is called life of the vow. Life of the vow and life of karma are the same, but one is working and one is sleeping.