Elaborations on Emptiness

Uses of the Heart Sūtra

Donald S. Lopez

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781400884513
• Sujet: Theology & Religion
• Sous-sujet: Buddhism

The Heart Sutra is perhaps the most famous Buddhist text, traditionally regarded as a potent expression of emptiness and of the Buddha's perfect wisdom. This brief, seemingly simple work was the subject of more commentaries in Asia than any other sutra. In Elaborations on Emptiness, Donald Lopez explores for the first time the elaborate philosophical and ritual uses of the Heart Sutra in India, Tibet, and the West.
Included here are full translations of the eight extant Indian commentaries. Interspersed with the translations are six essays that examine the unusual roles the Heart Sutra has played: it has been used as a mantra, an exorcism text, a tantric meditation guide, and as the material for comparative philosophy. Taken together, the translations and essays that form Elaborations on Emptiness demonstrate why commentary is as central to modern scholarship on Buddhism as it was for ancient Buddhists. Lopez reveals unexpected points of instability and contradiction in the Heart Sutra, which, in the end, turns out to be the most malleable of texts, where the logic of commentary serves as a tool of both tradition and transgression.

One

Who Heard the Heart Sūtra?

By being transmitted via so many spokesmen,

the Saddharma ran the greatest of dangers.

From the beginning, it should have been

enclosed in a code of authentic writings,

recognised by all the members of the

Community unanimously; however, the

Buddhists only belatedly perceived the

necessity of a codification of the Dharma;

moreover, the oral transmission of the

Doctrine rendered such a task, if not

impossible, at least very difficult.

—Étienne Lamotte

IT MAY SEEM SURPRISING that as late as the eleventh century Indian commentators still felt compelled to discuss the referent of the “I” of “Thus did I hear” (evaṃ mayā śrutam) at the beginning of Mahāyāna sūtras. Perhaps they were simply performing their roles as commentators in explaining the meaning of every word. Still, one might expect that by that date there would at least have been some agreement among them. But a survey of the Pāla Dynasty commentaries on the Heart Sūtra displays a wide range of opinion on the issue. Some of the commentators make a remark only in passing as they gloss the terms of the sūtra, but others, notably Vimalamitra and Atiśa, dwell on the question of the qualifications of the saṃgītikartṛ and on what it means to have heard (śruta). The term saṃgītikartṛ is perhaps best rendered as rapporteur. Saṃgīti most often means “song” or anything that is sung or chanted in chorus. In Buddhist texts, it can be a pronouncement of the Buddha or the rehearsal by others of such a pronouncement. But it can also mean a council of monks, gathered to settle questions of doctrine and establish the text of a sūtra. The kartṛ is the “maker” or agent of any of these activities. Hence, saṃgītikartṛ carries a range of connotations, from the maker of the Buddha’s word, to the leader of its public recitation, to the convener of a council to determine its content, that is, from speaker, to reciter, to redactor. It was rendered in Tibetan as bka’ sdud pa po, the gatherer of the Buddha’s word.

Only the author of the single tantric commentary on the sūtra, the mahāmudrā master Vajrapāṇi, remains above the fray, transliterating rather than translating evaṃ mayā, calling those four letters (apparently drawing on the Guhyasamājatantra) “the source of the 84,000 collections of doctrine and the foundation of all success.” The Mādhyamika commentator Jñānamitra states unequivocally that all of the Mahāyāna sūtras were heard and compiled by Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom. The latest of the commentators, Śrimahājana, reports that according to Dignāga, the saṃgītikartṛ was Vajrapāṇi, the bodhisattva of power, but Vimuktasena opts for Ānanda, based on the closing passages of the Aṣtasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Stanzas) in which the Buddha entrusts the sūtra to Ānanda’s care. He also mentions that in the opinion of Ratnākaraśānti, the saṃgītikartṛ was Ānanda “empowered by the Buddha.”¹ It is significant that Śrīmahājana implies a distinction between Ānanda as rapporteur and Ānanda empowered by the Buddha as rapporteur. This distinction seems also to be at play in the judgments of the final two commentators, Praśāstrasena and Kama laśīla, neither of whom names the saṃgītikartṛ; but they do provide a hint in their gloss of śrutam. Praśāstrasena states that the term “heard” means that the dharma was apprehended by the consciousness of an ear sense organ, noting that it only means that the dharma was heard; it does not imply that the meaning was understood. Kamalaśīla says nothing on the issue in his Heart Sūtra commentary, but in both his commentary on the Vajracchedikā (Diamond Cutter) and that on the Saptaśatikā (Perfection of Wisdom in 700 Stanzas), he makes the same point: “‘Heard’ [means] experienced by the ear consciousness; it does not mean understood because no one other than the Tathāgata has the power to comprehend such a doctrine.”² For Praśāstrasena to say and for Kamalaśīla to imply that the sūtra was heard without being understood (a point to which I will return later) may imply that the saṃgītikartṛ was Ānanda, the traditional rapporteur of the Buddha’s words, but who, as a śrāvaka, was unable to understand them. This is the position of Haribhadra in his Abhisamayālaṃkārālokā, where he reminds his readers how Ānanda, through the practice of buddhānusmṛti, was able to overcome his absence of introspection and say with eloquence, “Thus did I hear.”³ In fact, Vimalamitra claims in his commentary that the grammar of the statement confirms that the words were only heard and not understood: “It says, ‘I’ [literally ‘by me’]. Therefore, the third [case ending, the instrumental,] indicates only the hearing of the sounds of the letters just as they are; because it is a consciousness arisen from hearing, it completely eliminates the possibility of it being [the rapporteur’s] own realization [of the profound meaning of the sūtra: it is rather just an understanding of the words]. Otherwise, ‘heard by me’ would be in the sixth [case, the genitive] because of meaning [‘my] understanding.’ … In order to establish his own validity, when the [rapporteur] bears witness to the place, the time, and the audience, and to having witnesses, he is saying, ‘I understand that I am a valid speaker; I do not understand the great things of which I speak.’”

It is only in the commentaries of Vimalamitra and Atiśa that the topic of the saṃgītikartṛ is actually engaged; the comments of the other exegetes are made more or less in passing. I will focus here on Atiśa because he includes Vimalamitra’s position in the course of his discussion. Atiśa notes that the saṃgītikartṛ does not simply begin his recitation of a sūtra after declaring “evaṃ mayā śrutam” but also provides a setting (nidāna, gleng gzhi) describing where the sūtra was delivered and who was present. The purpose of such description, he says, is to establish the saṃgītikartṛ as reliable (prāmāṇya). This, he says, is the position of Dignāga (c. C.E. 480–540), and he cites a passage from the Prajñāpāramitāpiṇḍārtha (Condensed Meaning of the Perfection of Wisdom, also known as the Prajñāpāramitāsaṃgraha) (3–4) in which the qualifications of the saṃgītikartṛ are directly addressed: “In order to establish his validity, the saṃgītikartṛ indicates the teacher, the audience, the witness, the time, and the place as factors [causing] the faithful to enter [the teaching], just as in the world, if someone has a witness indicating the place and the time, he is authoritative.”⁴ Unfortunately, neither Dignāga nor his commentator, Triratnadāsa, makes any mention of what might distinguish the witness (sākṣin) from the audience (parṣad), with Triratnadāsa merely equating the two: “Because the audience is the bodhisattvas, etc., they should be understood as the witnesses.”⁵

Atiśa then notes that Dignāga’s assertion that the saṃgītikartṛ must have a witness to establish his validity is rejected by Vimalamitra, whose refutation of Dignāga he goes on to explain. He does not alert us to the fact that Vimalamitra does not offer his objections in his commentary to the Heart Sūtra, which Atiśa cites liberally on other points, but is to be found instead in Vimalamitra’s commentary to the Saptaśatikā. In fact, Vimalamitra does not mention Dignāga by name. Instead he says: “It is said that in order for someone to prove himself to be valid, [his identification of] the place and the time are the proof [of his presence] and the audience is the witness, as in the case of a disputed contract. That is not my understanding; [the faithful] go everywhere [to hear sūtras] and if [it were necessary] to ask a witness, it would be a long [time] before those incapable of going there could determine the meaning of the sūtra. [And in the case of sūtras] in which the name of the audience is not indicated, whom should one ask?”⁶

Atiśa discerns two objections here. The first has to do with the function of the witness. According to Atiśa’s reading of Dignāga, the purpose of the saṃgītikartṛ’s statement of pedigree is to inspire his audience to enter into the dharma. A witness is rarely called upon at the moment of testimony, but rather at some later date, when doubts begin to arise. Dignāga’s insistence on the witness therefore is problematic because by the time the doubts arise, the witnesses may have died or gone elsewhere. To prove the peripatetic nature of those who seek the dharma, he cites an unidentified sūtra, “Those who desire to hear the jewel of the profound and limitless sūtras go everywhere for the welfare of all the worldly realms.” And in some cases, like that of Mahākāśvapa, who is said to reside inside a mountain, the witnesses may still be alive, but it is our ill fortune that they remain inaccessible to us.

Atiśa’s more intriguing gloss of Vimalamitra is what he has to say about Vimalamitra’s statement above, that, if having a witness is a requirement, then those who were unable to go to the place where the sūtra is delivered could not determine the meaning of the sūtra. In Atiśa’s reading, these people are not ordinary persons prevented by circumstance from traveling to distant lands, but instead those who have attained the powers of clairaudience that are achieved with ṛddhi (magical power) and abhijñā (superknowledge), which allow them to hear the words of the buddhas from extraordinary distances. What Atiśa seems to take Vimalamitra to be saying is that physical presence in an audience is not required for one to qualify as a saṃgītikartṛ; there are other means available for hearing the buddhavacana.

The second objection to Dignāga discerned by Atiśa is that if one insists on the presence of witnesses in order to prove that what is reported is the word of the Buddha, then sūtras in which there is no mention of the names of the members of the audience, sūtras such as the Heart Sūtra in fact, could not be considered buddhavacana. The Heart Sūtra, of course, mentions Avalokiteśvara and Śāriputra, but they, as interlocutors, seem not to count as witnesses, and none of the others in attendance are mentioned by name. Atiśa seems, then, to reject Dignāga’s understanding of the saṃgītikartṛ and accepts that of Vimalamitra. And in his own commentary to the Heart Sūtra, Vimalamitra makes it clear that being a saṃgītikartṛ has little to do with having witnesses, but is much more the result of proper practice:

The three words [evaṃ mayā śrutam], “Thus …” form the opening. What “I heard” was “thus”; not something else. Because this removes [the possibility of anything] being left out or added, it is a promise as to the accuracy of what was heard. It expresses the fact that having been heard once, what was taken in and retained is correctly and fully set forth. The correct compilation [comes about through] the ripening of roots of virtue created in relation to the Buddha by one who has the protection of a virtuous friend. These should be known to be practices such as revering the Buddha, asking properly, giving, and ethics. Otherwise, hearing the primary [expression] of the meaning of the perfection of wisdom in this way does not take place.

Thus, that Vimalamitra leaves the saṃgītikartṛ unnamed seems to imply more than a nod to Ānanda. His discussion of the topic (with Atiśa’s gloss) suggests that anyone who has engaged in the proper practices may develop the capacity to hear a sūtra, perhaps even by magical means. But he also makes it clear that such revelation is of the words alone, to be duly recited; that the event of revelation implies no realization of the profound meaning of the words revealed, such realization remaining the exclusive possession of the absent Buddha.

What, then, is at stake in the identification of the saṃgītikartṛ? To claim that the saṃgītikartṛ is Vajrapāṇi or Mañjuśrī or Samantabhadra, or to say it is Ānanda, or to leave the saṃgītikartṛ unnamed is to add one’s voice t...