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THE HEART SUTRA
A teaching on the
Sutra of the Heart of Transcendant Knowledge
I had the opportunity to contemplate the Heart Sutra while spending two hours in a traffic jam —getting here from San Francisco to Berkeley was really astounding. We left at five o'clock [chuckles].
Tonight we are going to begin with the teachings on the Mahayana. And there will be two classes on the Mahayana —this week and next week. In terms of all the readings I gave you ahead of time, I had first thought I would first teach on compassion, then on shunyata, but as I got into this I decided I would teach on shunyata and then on compassion. So, in other words, even at the end of last week, I thought I was going to teach on compassion this week... I said I would be teaching tonglen, but actually that will be next week.
For next week, you will be reading the chapter in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism called Shunyata.
Actually, there are two readings from Cutting Through and two from The Myth of Freedom [both by Chögyam Trungpa], but I'd like you to particularly emphasize and to read this chapter on shunyata. I'm going to be teaching on it tonight, and then you'll get to read about it again, which I think will be good. The text will reiterate quite of few of the things I'll be saying tonight, plus the chapter has a lot of things that I won't get to tonight —sort of enrichment on what I have to say. So, please do read that chapter on shunyata —and everyone do that and give it your attention.
The two questions often asked are: What is the difference between Hinayana —or, I've been calling it the Foundation yana— and Mahayana? And, how do you know when you've moved from one yana to the next? Students often want to know that.
I'm going to try, in some small way, to answer the first question tonight, in what distinguishes the Mahayana from the Foundation Yana. And the answer to the second question —I mentioned in an earlier talk— one never knows when one has moved from one yana to another.
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