Today’s FBA Podcast is another reading from The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. This one, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras” Chandana talks about the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, a category of Sutras in the Mahayana tradition.
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A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - Okay, so we're back to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Buddhist scriptures. So once again, on a cold night, we're still at the slip road, hoping for a lift to who knows where, but wherever it might be, hopefully in a warm vehicle. So where is this vehicle gonna take us? In fact, which vehicle might it be tonight? So just to recap the last couple of weeks, so two weeks ago, I came up with this road map to helpers, maybe with our journey. And broadly speaking, I mean, I'm not gonna recap the detail now, but broadly speaking, the red bit at the top is what we know as the trippitica, the three baskets of canonical Buddhist literature. And then down here, we've got a fourth bit as well, which is the tantras. And haven't really said anything about the tantras yet, but watch this space, they might just reel their heads by the end of what I've got to say. And then last week, so Mahabodi introduced us to a sutta from the suttrapitica up here. And in my understanding, Mahabodi, it was from Heya, actually, from the Diga Nikaya, which is the collection of long discourses to give you a translation. And I can't remember what the suttra was called. - The fruits of the homeless life. - Okay, thank you. So in that, it was a lengthy suttrap as befits the long collection. I suppose. And we heard about a meeting of two historical figures. So one was the Buddha. And the other was King Ajata Sattu. And the king arranged a meeting with the Buddha. Sort of happened upon him without warning, one moonlit night, and asked for a teaching. And the Buddha proceeded to give King Ajata Sattu a lengthy and comprehensive teaching on the Dharma. And in fact, that concluded, that whole episode concluded with the king being mightily impressed, and reciting, if my memory serves me right, what we've come to known as the refuge formula. So he was, he responded to his being blown away, if you like, by the Buddha's teaching, by stating that he was going for refuge to the Buddha, to his teaching, that's to say the Dharma, and to the community, what he wanted to become a member of the lay community. So that's refuge to the Sanga. So that was last week. So we were in the Hinayana portion of the Sutra Pitaka last week. So this week, this week, I'm gonna take you somewhere quite different, quite a different stop and our journey. So just to begin with a little reading. Okay. In fact, two short readings, from this book, "Visions of Mahayana Buddhism." So that might give you a clue. So here's the first one. No wisdom can we get hold of, no highest perfection, no bodhisattva, no thought of enlightenment either. When told of this, if not bewildered and in no way anxious, a bodhisattva courses in the Buddha's wisdom. In form, in feeling, will, perception and awareness, nowhere in them, they find a place to rest on. Without a home, they wonder, dharmas never hold them, nor do they grasp at them. So this has quite a different sound immediately from what we heard last week. And then a second shorter reading from the same tradition. As stars, a falter vision, as a lamp, a mock show, due drops, or a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash, or cloud. So should we view what is conditioned. So, there's anybody happen to know where in the road map we've landed from those two readings. Anybody have some familiarity with any of that? We are indeed in the Mahayana. Very good, Kevin, very good. So we are here. We are in what are known as the perfection of wisdom suitors of the Mahayana canon. So the perfection of wisdom is a collection of literature. It's a large collection of literature. In fact, Sanger actually, in his survey of Buddhism, calls it a literature of truly staggering dimensions. So, let's just have a bit more detail on the picture. So this, in a sense, tries to locate these perfection of wisdom suitors in the plural, in the context of Mahayana sutras in general. So this sort of pie chart down here, such as it is, is just trying to give an idea of the sort of variety of the Mahayana sutras. And, I mean, they also feature in the big road map as well. So there's a wide kind of variety of Mahayana sutras. And this segment, this fairly sizeable segment, is called in Sanskrit, the Prangya Paramita, and the English translation of that is something like the perfection of wisdom. And then this pyramid up above really tries to sort of expand on that. So what we can generically call the perfection of wisdom, the Prangya Paramita sutras, actually themselves have a lot of variety. And I'll explain in a moment why I've used a sort of pyramid shape to illustrate that. Before I do, probably important to say, well, what is wisdom in this context? Well, let's let's come back to that. Yeah. The word wisdom is significant. When we talk about the perfection of wisdom, we need to have a fairly clear understanding of what we mean by that word. So just concentrating for a moment on the pyramid shape up there. So what we have there is the whole, well, the sort of representation of the whole range of this whole family, or Bantai calls it a dynasty, in fact, of perfection of wisdom sutras. There are a lot more than you can see there. So we believe, or historians believe, that about 27 versions of the perfection of wisdom sutras have come down to the present day from various source languages. Originally, it's likely that there were more than 27. So Sangarach to Bandai is the number 34 around, in fact. And what the pyramid seeks out to represent is that they have quite an astonishing variety of size, in fact. So down at the bottom here, the perfection of wisdom is, there is a version of the perfection of wisdom that we refer to as the perfection of wisdom in 100,000 lines, which sounds pretty bulky, and it is. So a line, as well, we have to understand this, is not really a line, like a line on a page of A4. It's more like something like a stanza, really. So this is a very large body of literature, indeed. But then we've got, above that, the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines. That's, that's in red, you'll notice. And the reason for that is, this is thought to be the original, if you like, the ancestor of all the other perfection of wisdom writings. So in fact, what's believed to have happened is that this was, this was composed, this was committed to writing from the oral tradition. Do you remember two weeks we talked about the roughly 300 years of the oral tradition. And that happened, the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines became a written document in a long period of time between about a thousand, sorry, a hundred BC and a hundred AED, as we would say in Western time. And then for the next 200 years, that, let's call it 8,000 line document, was elaborated on, was developed, was added to. And that's how we ended up with the 100,000 line version. And then almost as a sort of reaction to that explosion of a volume, the next 200 years, so that's something like 300 to 500 AED, actually resulted in a contraction back down to smaller forms. So working from the larger versions to the smaller versions as we go up, we've got something called the Ratnaguna Samchaya Gata. That doesn't in any way describe an order member who is now based in Manchester, okay? So Ratnaguna Samchaya Gata translates something like versus describing the store of, the store of treasures or something like that. Treasures, of course, relating to the perfection of wisdom. And then getting smaller again, we've got something that a lot of us are quite familiar with, actually, the heart sutra. Or to give it its full name, the heart of transcendental wisdom or the heart of the perfection of wisdom sutra. So if you know the heart sutra, you'll know that it's actually quite condensed. You can indeed get it on a side of a fourth. And that's very well known, and probably just as well known is the Diamond sutra, which is actually slightly smaller. The second of those readings that I gave you, which were making comparisons to conditioned existence, that came from the Diamond sutra. The first reading incidentally, came from the perfection of wisdom in 8,000 lines. It's towards the very beginning of that very important sutra. And then you might think, well, what's he got going on at the top of the pyramid with the letter A, what does that stand for? So, well, that stands for, and this is where things get frankly quite surreal, is the perfection of wisdom in one letter. So you don't get much more concise than that, do you? So eventually a, well, a certain school of thought arose that said we can represent the perfection of wisdom as one letter, and it happened to be the letter A. Now, this is not pure surrealism, actually, there is some meaning to that. The letter A corresponds, in this case, to the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet. And if you know a little of your Sanskrit, you'll know that the prefix A means, anybody know what the prefix A means? - Without. - Without, or not. So, wisdom, transcendental wisdom can be summarised as not. Okay, does that sound mysterious? It's not quite as strange as it sounds as, well, as maybe I'll elaborate on. So there's something quite strange going on there anyway, isn't that apparently? So, so that's the, this is just a representation and just a sort of quite, quite a light representation of this whole family that we call the perfection of wisdom sutures. Okay, so, the excerpts that I read to you from the perfection of wisdom, from the Pragnya Paramita, clearly contrast quite markedly in style with what we heard from Mahabodhi last week from the Hinayana, if you want to call it that, or Nikaya Buddhism to give it, it's more polite term. So, where last week's sutta was, I mean, it was a teaching on what we might say fairly straightforward matters, fairly sort of worldly matters given by the Buddha to King Ajata Sartu. The perfection of wisdom is quite, quite different. So, it's more of the nature of a sort of a debate or a dialogue between various sorts of enlightened beings. So, in fact, well, we typically have three sorts of enlightened beings who feature as a sort of the cast, if you like, of the perfection of wisdom sutures. One is the Buddha. One is somebody who typically represents the Hinayana. So, you know, the earlier great phase of Buddhism. An example of that would be Shari Putra. And then the third character in the cast of the perfection of wisdom sutures is very, very importantly, the Bodhisattva. So, is anyone new to the expression Bodhisattva to the term Bodhisattva? Okay, so I don't particularly need to explain that, but accept to say the Bodhisattva is belongs entirely to the Mahayana, or very nearly entirely. Neil. (audience member speaking indistinctly) Yeah, yeah, so Bodhi means enlightenment. Suffering speaking, satva just means being. So, it is indeed an enlightened being. But in a sense, just short of being a Buddha. I mean, this is, I'm putting this fairly crudely, but the really important distinction between a Bodhisattva in the Mahayana tradition and an enlightened being in the Hinayana tradition is the Bodhisattva has done it, has pursued and reached enlightenment for the benefit of others. (audience member speaking indistinctly) Well, certainly the Mahayanaists would say that Prince Siddhata was a Bodhisattva before he became the Buddha. Yeah, so this is a really important distinction, but there were other important distinctions as well between the Hinayana and the Mahayana as we'll see. Okay, so just concentrating on the Bodhisattva as an important class of being, if you like. So according to one tradition in the Mahayana, there are perfections that are possessed and practiced by a Bodhisattva. So it is the business of a Bodhisattva to practice perfections. And some would say that there are so many perceptions and others would say that there are different numbers, but quite a popular number of perfections in the Mahayana model is six. So we can conveniently say the Bodhisattva pursues six perfections. And one of those, and the highest one of those perfections is the perfection of wisdom. So parameta means perfection, pragmya means wisdom. So here's an interesting quiz. Does anybody know what the other five perfections of the Bodhisattva happen to be? Effort, yep, very good. So that's, or vivya in Sanskrit, yep, good, nice and thanks. Yup, morals or shila, cila, the cila parameta, okay. Patience, thanks my body, the cishanti parameta, and there's a couple of others. - Generosity. - Generosity and meditation, absolutely right. So generosity, ethics, patience, energy, meditation, and highest of all those wisdom. So I said that we should explain what wisdom in this context means, and this is important stuff as well. So what it isn't is kind of scholarly learning. It's not knowing the facts. It's not having them at his or her fingertips. It's not having a sound grasp of all the models that you've already heard of in the Buddhist tradition. It's not understanding the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path. It's not even understanding the six perfections of the Bodhisattva, it's nothing of that. So it's not knowledge, it's wisdom. So what you might ask is the distinction. Well, wisdom, and this is vitally important, wisdom is what is directly perceived by the Bodhisattva. And specifically, what is being directly perceived is reality. So the true nature of things as they are, if you like, the unconditioned reality of things, of the universe, without the trappings of conditionality. So this is why sometimes we talk about Pragnya Paramita as being the perfection of transcendental wisdom. This is the wisdom that cuts directly to reality through direct experience. So it's a big deal. It's a much bigger deal than just being as we might say knowledgeable, or clever, or intellectual, or any of that. Okay, excuse me. And what is often said throughout the Mahayana tradition is that what characterizes that direct insight into reality is a certain quality. And again, does anybody know what that quality is? So reality is characterized by emptiness, very good. Or as we were saying in Sanskrit, shunya ta. Shunya ta emptiness, again, is a very important concept in the whole Mahayana tradition. So what do we mean by emptiness? So we have the makings of a bit of a riddle here, don't we? So we're saying that the perfection of wisdom is not the perfection of knowledge. We're saying that wisdom is direct perception of reality and the characteristic of that direct perception is emptiness. So from a sort of everyday common sense point of view, this continues to sound quite mysterious. So let's see where this is taking us. So just to return to the original text that I've called there the perfection wisdom in 8,000 lines, just like to read you a little bit more from that. And this is from this book, which I mentioned two weeks ago, the eternal legacy and introduction to the canonical literature of Buddhism. So here we are. So this passage is spoken by a Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva in question is Sibhuti, again a name that crops up in our Chiratana tradition. But Sibhuti is seeking to, in a sense, to speak on behalf of the Buddha here. And he's addressing a proponent of the Hina Yana. Well, actually he's addressing the Buddha, but he's got this proponent of the Hina Yana in mind. So he says, "I do not, O Lord, see that dharma, Bodhisattva, nor a dharma called perfect wisdom. Since I neither find nor apprehend nor see a dharma, Bodhisattva, nor a perfect vision, that's sorry, a perfect wisdom, what Bodhisattva shall I instruct and admonish in what perfect wisdom? And yet, O Lord, if when this is pointed out, a Bodhisattva's heart does not become cowed nor stolid, does not despair or despond. If he does not turn away or become dejected, does not tremble, is not frightened or terrified, it is just this Bodhisattva, this great being who should be instructed in perfect wisdom. It is precisely this that should be recognized as the perfect wisdom of that Bodhisattva, as his instruction in perfect wisdom. When he thus stands firm, that is his instruction and admonition. Moreover, when a Bodhisattva courses in perfect wisdom and develops it, he should so train himself that he does not pride himself on that thought of enlightenment with which he has begun his career. That thought is no thought, since in its essential nature, thought is transparently luminous. So, stranger and stranger in a sense. So, stability appears to be saying that the very concept of perfection of wisdom is not really there at all. The concept of the Bodhisattva is not there at all. And again, these are characteristics in a way of the Mahayana in general, but the perfection of wisdom sutras in particular. So, there's certainly quite a strong flavour of what we might call paradox in the definition of the unconditioned. So, just to unpack what was going on there, as I said before, the main characters were Sibhuti, whom we heard speak there, that the Buddha is in the sutra himself. And then there's Shari Putra. And remember that Sibhuti is a Bodhisattva, he's a Bodhisattva in the Mahayana tradition. And Shari Putra is an enlightened being or sometimes we would say an arahant in the earlier Hinnayana tradition. And interestingly enough, Shari Putra is also credited with being the founder of this bit, this bit of the Hinnayana tradition, the Abhidharma or the philosophical collection. So, the Abhidharma, if you know anything about the Abhidharma, the Abhidharma is, it's characterized by being an extremely rigorous, intellectual, analytical treatment of the nature of reality. We could say to a quite sort of obsessive degree, an obsessively sort of deconstructivist, maybe as the word analytical, maybe as a better word degree. And what's happening here, in a sense, is a sort of polemic. So, Sibhuti as a representative of this new school of thought, this sort of revisionary school of thought, is really refuting that very, a very sort of fossilized view of reality, but the Mahayana's would say, the earlier Buddhists had sunk to. So, what he's doing in that sort of paradoxical language is really refuting the whole sort of construct of concepts. He's saying, well, however you, whatever concept you try to apply to reality, they don't work, they are not enough. They are not the same, they are quite emphatically not the same as direct experience. If you think you can conceptualize direct experience, then you haven't seen reality. And this is a very powerfully Mahayana's sort of argument, and particularly, it's a powerful argument of the perfection of wisdom sutures. So, we could say that the, the perfection of wisdom marks a sort of transition, the perfection of wisdom sutures were early Mahayana sutures. And we could say, in a sense, and Sankarachita says, in a sense, that they mark a transition between the Hinayana. The Hinayana had become formal and analytical and conceptual, and on the other hand, the Mahayana, where time and time again, the emptiness of concepts is emphasized. So, to come back to what we said about Shunyatta, this emphasis on Shunyatta, well, what is empty? And what we can conveniently say is, concepts are empty. Concepts will not help us, ultimately, in our route to enlightenment. Excuse me. Pfft. Well, to put it the other way around, to put it more positively, the only way that we can, the only way that we can perceive reality, that we can see things as they truly are, is by direct experience, and never by conceptualizing. And in fact, misunderstanding that point, or so the Mahayana s would say, is a direct obstacle to enlightenment. So, this is really crucial, in a sense. This was the whole gripe, we might say, to use crude language, but the proponents of the Mahayana had with the Hinayanaists. The concepts that the Hinayanaists were so fond of, and which crop up throughout the Tripitika, but particularly in the Abhidharma, or most extremely in the Abhidharma, far from being helpful, are actually an obstacle to enlightenment. That would be the Mahayana position. So, Sangarachta puts this in quite interesting language, there's this whole problem, in his survey of Buddhism. So, I'm just gonna read briefly from that, from the chapter which looks at the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. So, Sangarachta says, so what he's leading up to saying here, the context of what he's saying rather, is that from the Mahayana point of view, this is the central problem of the spiritual life. So, it's quite a big statement, or perhaps the central problem of the spiritual life. What is this problem, he says, that the means to enlightenment of being regarded as an end in itself, becomes an object of attachment, so that from a help, it is transformed into a hindrance, all the more dangerous for being in its subtler form, so very difficult to detect. So, if we're, to paraphrase Sangarachta, possibly we're making some progress on the spiritual path, but we get bogged down in a relatively subtle hindrance, and that hindrance is the attachment to the concept of enlightenment itself. And then he goes on to quote from a scholar, Dr. Edward Konza, who was, by the way, Dr. Konza was absolutely instrumental in the translation of a vast body of Perfection of Wisdom sutras into English. He was an Anglo-German scholar, and he was the sort of scholar par excellence in the area of translation of those works into English. And what Dr. Konza said was this. I quite like this. He said, "The very means and objects of emancipation are apt to turn into new objects and channels of craving. Attainment may harden into personal possessions. Spiritual victories and achievements may increase one's self-conceit. Merit is hoarded as a treasure in heaven, which no one can take away. Enlightenment and the Absolute are misconstrued as things out there to be gained. In other words, the old vicious trends continue to operate in the new spiritual medium. The Prangya Paramita is designed as the antidote to the more subtle forms of self-seeking, which replace the coarser forms after the spiritual life has grown to some strength and maturity. So that's interestingly put, isn't it, that the Perfection of Wisdom, the Prangya Paramita is designed as an antidote, deliberately as an antidote to that sort of subtle hindrance. So just to conclude, we can say that the Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva, the Bodhisattva of the Mahayana, works in this context. So the Bodhisattva has Perfect Wisdom, if you like, along with the other five perfections. So he or she knows that concepts are not the answer, concepts are not the route to enlightenment. And yet, the Bodhisattva has to teach less enlightened beings as to help less enlightened beings along the way to enlightenment. So this is where we get into another really interesting Mahayana doctrine, which is the doctrine of skillful means. So in other words, Bodhisattvas will use a sort of provisional teaching for the benefit of those hearers that haven't had the same experience as they the Bodhisattvas have had. And this is what we mean by skillful means. And those skillful means have to act provisionally until such time as the hearers have had direct experience. In other words have gained the perfection of wisdom themselves. So just the final little excerpt from, actually it's not quite the final excerpt, bear with me. So this is from Nargapriya's visions of Mahayana Buddhism. So to sum up what I just said on the role of the Bodhisattva, according to the perfect wisdom in 8,000 lines sutra, in just the same way that the Buddha and his immediate disciples wondered possessionless, homeless, not attached to anything. So Bodhisattvas wander through the world without attachment to any fixed views, completely free of dogmatism, using ideas merely as skillful means to help mature others. They use concepts to free others, but never become trapped in them. So that's quite a powerful notion, isn't it? That they use concepts to free others, but never become trapped in them. And this is what we mean when we talk about skillful means of the Bodhisattva. So just to take things to almost to a conclusion, so we've talked about the evolution of the Pragnya Paramita works. And the Pragnya Paramita, the perfection of wisdom sutras, took on such an importance with the Mahayana or within the Mahayana. That eventually, and this is quite a strange notion in itself, they eventually crystallized out into a sort of being, into a being who was worthy of worship. And in fact, we normally call that being a goddess. So on the shrine, just over by that beautiful pair of lilies, is a little figure, a little rupa of the figure, of the female figure that we call Pragnya Paramita. And Pragnya Paramita as a goddess, for one to a better word, was the product of the sort of infiltration of the perfection of wisdom tradition by the Tantras. So, which are down here, aren't they, on the main road map. So when the Tantric tradition began to hold sway, the meeting of the Tantras and the perfection of wisdom sutras, in a sense gave birth to this goddess, this figure who in her own right, is highly revered in certain parts of the Mahayana world. And if you want to know more about the goddess Pragnya Paramita, I really recommend this book by Versantra, which is a guide to the deities of the Tantra. She's in there alongside figures like Padmasambhava and Vaidrasattva and others. Okay. And maybe, maybe when we do our puja a little later on, maybe we can, you know, feel so inclined, we can even make offerings to Pragnya Paramita, as well as the main Buddha rupa. So, I'll just finish with final reading, which is from something which might be quite familiar to you, but it's possibly in slightly unfamiliar language. So, it's a translation which you might be a little less familiar with than Sanga Rajtas. So, this again is a translation by Dr. Edward Konza, and it's from here. It's from the heart sutra. Homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. Avelokita, the holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the wisdom, which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own being, they were empty. Here, O Shari Putra, form is emptiness, and the very emptiness is form. Emptiness does not differ from form, nor does form differ from emptiness. Whatever is form, that is emptiness. Whatever is emptiness, that is form. The same is true, our feeling, perception, impulses, and consciousness. Here, O Shari Putra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor stopped, neither defiled nor immaculate, neither deficient nor complete. Therefore, O Shari Putra, where there is emptiness, there is neither form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness. No eye, or ear, or nose, or tongue, or body, or mind. No form, nor sound, nor smell, nor taste, nor touchable, nor objective mind. No sight organ element, no hearing organ element, and so forth until we come to no mind consciousness element. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so forth until we come to. There is no decay and death, no extinction of decay and death. There is no suffering, nor origination, nor stopping, nor path. There is no cognition, no attainment, and no non-attainment. Therefore, O Shari Putra, owing to a body, sat for indifference to any kind of personal attainment, and through his having relied upon the perfection of wisdom, he dwells without thought coverings. In the absence of thought coverings, he has not been made to tremble. He has overcome what can be upset in the end sustained by Nirvana. All those who appear as Buddhas in the three periods of time fully awake to the utmost right and perfect enlightenment because they have relied upon the perfection of wisdom. Therefore, one should know the Pragnya Paramitaa has the great spell, the spell of great knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequaled spell, a layer of all suffering in truth for what could go wrong. By the Pragnya Paramitaa has this spell being delivered, it runs like this, gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all hail. - We hope you enjoyed the talk. 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