Listen to the entire audio
portion of this piece (with links at the bottom of the
page) - the files are in mp3 format and the total duration
is around 22 minutes.
For much of 2003, I studied a lot of Buddhist "Sutras" (Or
"Suttas" - basically canonical texts of Buddhism) - but one
that I spent much time on was "The Heart Sutra" which ends
with the above mantra "gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi
svaha" - The text itself describes the mantra as
"Mahāmantro, mahā-vidyā mantro, ‘nuttara mantro
samasama-mantrah", which Edward Conze translates as "The
great mantra, the mantra of great knowledge, the utmost
mantra, the unequalled mantra, the allayer of all
suffering." These words are also used of the Buddha, and so
the text seems to be equating the mantra with the Buddha.
I liked the text's "conceit" if you like, like a lot of
philosophical / religious writing, that 'this is the
unequalled way to spiritual attainment." But one of the
differences I learned between Buddhism and theistic
religion such as Christianity, Islam or Judaism, the
Abrahamic religions, was that Buddhism as a religious
culture, downplays the scriptures in a way theistic
religion doesn't in my view. Whereas "the word" is
everything in Christianity - and is often taken literally,
Buddhism only really emphasises the practice of the life
and these texts may help practice. Some schools of Buddhism
have few texts and others massive back catalogues of the
Buddha's greatest hits and his fellow practitioner's
remixes. Sometimes these remixes are way off at a tangent.
So, I wanted to make a meditative piece about this sutra,
to help my understanding of it. In the end I decided to
record a man with a wonderful voice, an ordained member of
The Western Buddhist Order. His name was Pasada and he
lives in Glasgow. A very nice guy, with a VW camper van,
who has devoted much of his later years in life to quite a
dilligent practice of quiet meditation. Here, he's read
much about the text but the emphasis in the audio piece I
made with him was definitely about practice and reflection.
I remember the day I recorded him really well. I think it
was January the 15th 2003. I'd just hired a new microphone
for the occasion and we sat in my kitchen, in my rented
flat in Edinburgh, overlooking Arthur's Seat (if you don't
know what that is, google it!). We spent an hour talking
about the sutra, and I was initially going to have this
gallery piece as an interview, like gallery Buddhist radio!
In the end I cut out myself from it completely, and decided
people needed something to look at while they listened to
the text. I didn't like the idea of an image as it would be
too literal and might have created a corny "chill out zone"
in the gallery. So I took a font I liked a lot, Hoefler
Text, and blew up seven inch high letters with a vinyl
company and stuck the mantra on the wall.
Like a couple of my other overtly Buddhist pieces, people
occasionally sat in front of to meditate. I am not sure if
this piece of work is even "art" as such. It's a 22 minute
radio piece really with a nice clean presentation (at
Edinburgh's www.stills.org). If you want to hear the work
http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-talks.htm has a full archive
of the work as does www.edinburghbuddhistcentre.org.uk
Various commentators divide this text in different numbers
of sections. Briefly the sutra introduces the bodhisattva
of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, who in this case is
representing the faculty of prajña (wisdom). His analysis
of phenomena is that there is nothing which lies outside
the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas) — form
(rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (samskārā), perceptions
(saṁjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna).
Avalokiteśvara then addresses Śariputra, who in this text —
as with many other Mahāyāna texts — is a representative of
the Early Buddhist schools, described in many other sutras
as being the Buddha's foremost disciple in wisdom.
Avalokiteśvara famously states that, "form is emptiness
(Śūnyatā) and emptiness is form" and declares the other
skandhas to be equally empty — that is, without an
independent essence. Avalokiteśvara then goes through some
of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four
Noble Truths and explains that in emptiness none of these
labels apply. This is traditionally interpreted as saying
that Buddhist teachings, while accurate descriptions of
conventional truth, are mere statements about reality —
they are not reality itself — and that they are therefore
not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition
beyond dualistic description. Thus the bodhisattva, as the
archetypal Mahāyāna Buddhist, relies on the perfection of
wisdom, defined in the larger Perfection of Wisdom sutras
to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without
conceptual attachment. This perfection of wisdom is
condensed in the mantra with which the Sutra concludes.
Listen to part 1
Listen to part 2
Listen to part 3
Listen to part 4
Listen to part 5
Listen to part 6
Listen to part 7
Listen to part 8
Listen to part 9
Listen to part 10
Listen to part 11
Listen to part 12
Listen to part 13
Listen to part 14
NB: Portions of this text were taken from wikipedia, but
all sources have been checked.