Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā.
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond—awakening, hail.
I. The Seeker’s Burden
It began with a quiet ache.
Not the dramatic kind, but a soft background hum—like static in the soul. I had a life. I had work. I had dreams. I built systems, coded products, optimized workflows, chased purpose.
And still—something underneath whispered: Why does it all feel like scaffolding over a void?
I tried to fix it by doing more. Productivity hacks. Life goals. Stoicism. Psychedelics. I layered philosophies over the ache. I turned East—Taoism, Zen, Advaita. I read the old masters, listened to modern ones.
Eventually, I stopped moving and just sat. Not to calm down. But to face the ache head-on.
It didn’t go away.
Instead, something stranger happened: I stopped believing in the one who was aching.
II. The First Encounter with the Sutra
I don’t remember the day I first read the Heart Sutra. But I remember the impact.
It hit like a hammer wrapped in silk. Half a page long. Few words. But every line struck deep:
- No eye, no ear, no nose…
- No suffering, no cause, no path, no cessation…
- No attainment, and no non-attainment…
It didn’t explain. It unmade.
This wasn’t a map. It was a bomb.
A bomb disguised as wisdom. A demolition charge beneath the cathedral of the self.
III. What It Destroys
I had been seeking a method. The Sutra offered none. I had been trying to become. It denied there was anyone to begin with.
Avalokiteśvara, practicing deeply the Perfection of Wisdom, clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty, and thus relieved all suffering.
The five skandhas: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness.
The ingredients of “me.”
And the Sutra doesn’t say they’re wrong or sinful. It says they’re empty—devoid of fixed essence, ungraspable.
Empty not like a void, but like a reflection. Like a flame with no core.
That understanding didn’t comfort me. It cracked something.
IV. The Crack in the Mirror
One morning, during sitting, I asked:
Who is meditating?
No answer came—just a quiet, widening gap.
So I kept asking:
- Who is thinking?
- Who is planning?
- Who is fearing?
- Who is watching?
Each question reached toward something— and touched nothing solid in return.
Thoughts came. Sensations flowed. But no “I” could be found behind the scenes.
It was like trying to catch your reflection—and your hand passes through.
The seeker had no center. The controller had no location. The one striving for awakening was already a fiction.
This wasn’t bliss. It wasn’t even peaceful. It was disorienting. A grief mixed with wonder.
I realized: the question “Who am I?” contains a false assumption. There is no answer because the one asking isn’t stable—it flickers like a flame in the wind.
V. After the Bomb
Life didn’t stop. I still worked, planned, refreshed Twitter too much.
But something had quietly left the room: The urgency to become.
What remained wasn’t apathy—it was clarity.
Things still mattered, but they no longer owned me. I didn’t feel detached—I felt strangely present.
It’s hard to describe unless you’ve lived it. It’s not transcendence. Not nihilism. Not some spiritual trophy.
It’s the felt realization that:
- There is no solid “you” to fix.
- There is no ground beneath identity.
- And yet, life moves forward—perfectly.
From that, a curious kind of freedom appears.
Not the freedom to be whatever you want. But the freedom from believing you are anything at all.
VI. Thầy’s Stories: Pinched Nose, Empty Words
Thầy (Thich Nhat Hanh) once told two stories to illustrate a deep misreading of the Heart Sutra.
In the first, a novice monk recited:
There are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue… no suffering, no path, no attainment.
The Zen master asked, “Do you believe this?”
“Yes, absolutely,” said the novice.
The master pinched his nose hard. The novice screamed.
“But if the nose doesn’t exist,” the master said, “what’s hurting?”
In the second story, a bhikkhu asked Master Tuệ Trung, “What does ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ really mean?”
The master replied with silence, then:
Bhikkhu, do you have a body?
Yes.
Then why say the body does not exist?
He later added:
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form—this is a temporary teaching device. The true nature of form is neither being nor non-being.
Thầy explained: the mistake is not in “form is emptiness” but in misunderstanding it as a claim that nothing exists. Emptiness is not non-existence. It means interdependence, fluidity, and the absence of inherent self. To misunderstand emptiness as negation is to twist the Sutra into nihilism.
The novice’s nose still hurts to this day, Thầy would say with a smile.
VII. The Empty Canvas
So what do you do when the self unravels?
The temptation is to ask: Does life lose meaning?
But meaninglessness only hurts if you depended on meaning to validate your existence.
Once that dependency dissolves, what remains is not despair.
It’s space.
Not a void, but a canvas.
Not blank in the sense of emptiness—but in the sense of infinite possibility.
You’re not required to paint. But you can.
- Sweep the floor.
- Build something weird and useful.
- Hold someone while they cry.
- Watch clouds pass for no reason.
There is no script. No judge. No observer outside the moment.
VIII. Living as Emptiness
This is where the Heart Sutra comes alive—not in temples or chants—but in how you meet life:
You get irritated. You pause.
Who is angry?
You feel afraid. You look deeper.
Who is afraid?
You succeed. Ego flares.
Who is achieving?
And gently, each time, the illusion thins.
You stop trying to sculpt a better self. You begin to see there’s no fixed self to begin with.
And in that emptiness, something intimate arises.
Not detachment. But radical presence.
A leaf falls—and your whole being listens. Someone suffers—and your heart opens, without walls.
You become, like Avalokiteśvāra, empty enough to care.
IX. What Now?
So what should you do with your life?
Whatever arises. But do it awake.
Without clinging. Without performance. Without the burden of a role.
Drink tea. Write code. Be still. Help someone. Laugh more. Die when it’s time.
You don’t need a grand narrative.
Because this moment—just this—is already form-as-emptiness.
You were seeking the path. But the ground beneath your feet was already the other shore.
X. Postscript: No One Left to Save
The Heart Sutra didn’t give me answers. It removed the need for them.
It didn’t make me special. It made me no one.
And in that— I found something still, quiet, and free.
A freedom I didn’t know I was already swimming in.
So I share this not as a teacher, not even as a storyteller— but as an echo through the mirror, reminding you:
You were never lost. You were just looking from the wrong side of the glass.
The Insight That Brings Us to the Other Shore
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s translation of the Heart Sutra
Avalokiteshvara,
while practicing deeply with
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore,
suddenly discovered that
all of the five skandhas are equally empty,
and with this realization
he overcame all ill-being.
Listen, Shariputra,
this body itself is emptiness,
and emptiness itself is this body.
This body is not other than emptiness,
and emptiness is not other than this body.
The same is true of
feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
Listen, Shariputra,
all phenomena bear the mark of emptiness:
no birth, no death,
no being, no non-being,
no defilement, no purity,
no increase, no decrease.
That is why, in emptiness,
body, feelings, perceptions,
mental formations and consciousness
are not separate self-entities.
The eighteen realms of phenomena,
which are the six sense organs,
the six sense objects,
and the six consciousnesses,
are also not separate self-entities.
The twelve links of interdependent arising
and their extinction
are also not separate self-entities.
Ill-being, the causes of ill-being,
the end of ill-being, the path,
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self-entities.
Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain.
Bodhisattvas who practice
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
see no more obstacles in their mind.
Because there are no more obstacles in their mind,
they overcome all fear,
destroy all wrong perceptions,
and realize Perfect Nirvana.
All Buddhas in the past, present, and future
by practicing
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
are all capable of attaining
Authentic and Perfect Enlightenment.
Therefore, Shariputra,
it should be known that
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore
is a great mantra,
the most illuminating mantra,
the highest mantra,
a mantra beyond compare,
the true wisdom that has the power
to end all kinds of suffering.
Therefore, let us proclaim
a mantra to praise
the Insight that Brings Us to the Other Shore:
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.
Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.