Heart sutra: I don't understand this passage, i.e "...nose exist...hurting...".

[dontknwmucboutanythng]

Could someone provide a bit more explanation to the below passage, "...nose doesn't exist ... what's hurting..."?  Thanks!

 

“

In the first story, the Zen master asked the novice monk:
“Tell me about your understanding of the Heart sutra.”

The novice monk joined his palms and replied:
“I have understood that the five skandhas are empty. There are no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind; there are no forms, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, or objects of mind; the six consciousnesses do not exist, the eighteen realms of phenomena do not exist, the twelve links of dependent arising do not exist, and even wisdom and attainment do not exist.”
“Do you believe what it says?”
“Yes, I truly believe what it says.”

“Come closer to me,” the Zen master instructed the novice monk. When the novice monk drew near, the Zen master immediately used his thumb and index finger to pinch and twist the novice’s nose.
In great agony, the novice cried out “Teacher! You’re hurting me!” The Zen master looked at the novice. “Just now you said that the nose doesn’t exist. But if the nose doesn’t exist then what’s hurting?”

“

 It is from the below link:

https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/

[wandelaar]

The Zen master is warning against disregarding conventional reality. Being empty doesn't mean being irrelevant.

 

But that's just my current understanding. Maybe someone else has a better solution.

[Jeff]

Intellectual understanding is meaningless, as the heart sutra is beyond the mind. One does not believe, more they know...

[wandelaar]

3 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Intellectual understanding is meaningless, as the heart sutra is beyond the mind. One does not believe, more they know...

 

That's one road, another is taking rational thought to the limit:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

[dawei]

Zen was really good at showing the limitations in thought, or our inability to intuit there are no sides, or both sides are really the same side.   If we take a position, Zen will show you that is mistaken, whether you take the right or left; both are wrong and both are right.

 

When a monk says it is not there, the master shows him it is there; when a monk says it is there the master will show him it is not there.

 

 

[Jeff]

15 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

 

That's one road, another is taking rational thought to the limit:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

 

And when you do, I good teacher/master will wack you in the head with a stick.  

[wandelaar]

10 minutes ago, Jeff said:

And when you do, I good teacher/master will wack you in the head with a stick.  

 

That's why I prefer walking alone.

[awaken]

It is very dangerous to challenge the limit of the students. The student might hate or attack the teacher/master if the student is too stupid to understand what the teacher said.

 

Edited May 14, 2018 by awaken

[Mudfoot]

And I managed to not make a pun on that one. 

Presenting the new, improved Mudfoot. 😁 

(wandelaar's post) 

Edited May 14, 2018 by Mudfoot
Added sentence

[kbe]

For a small number of students, used by the Master at just the right moment, that nose  pinch may have prompted  a certain degree of enlightenment to occur. Otherwise, like a snooze is often just a snooze, a nose pinch is just a nose pinch

Edited May 15, 2018 by kbe

[wandelaar]

43 minutes ago, kbe said:

For a small number of students, used by the Master at just the right moment, that nose  pinch may have prompted  a certain degree of enlightenment to occur. Otherwise, like a snooze is often just a snooze, a nose pinch is just a nose pinch

 

That brings up another possible application: as the reaction of the student to the twisting of his nose is likely to be immediate it shows how his conscious ego need not be involved in the way he behaves. But as his reaction is clearly his nevertheless, the illusion of an autonomic ego is experientially disproved.

Edited May 15, 2018 by wandelaar

[taoguy]

-sorry, please delete, double post!

Edited May 18, 2018 by taoguy

[taoguy]

Lol. The master is funny!

 

The Heart Sutra is not something you should "study". It was meant to be a direct pointing instruction towards liberation. You are supposed to read it and find yourself unable to grasp onto anything. It should go something like this...

 

Monk: Everything should be just Form. Everything exists.

 

Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness! (refutes existence)

 

Monk: Oh, so I was wrong. Everything is actually empty. There is no form at all, no existence at all. Form is actually just emptiness. I have been thinking about Form as a tangible reality and that alternative never occurred to me. I get it now, there is actually no Form. All the five skandhas are empty!

 

Heart Sutra: Emptiness is Form! (refutes non-existence)

 

Monk: Okay... I'm getting confused. How about this, I know! Both Form and Emptiness are combined together, like milk and water. There is both existence and non-existence, they are mixed together. 

 

Heart Sutra: Emptiness is not other than Form! (refutes both)

 

Monk: What?? Okay, so what you're saying is that they are equivalent... Grasping onto form is the same as grasping onto emptiness. Okay, so I will NOT grasp onto them. I should not be grasping onto both, so there is none of them! There is none of the two.

 

Heart Sutra: Form is not other than Emptiness! (refutes neither)

 

Monk: ??????????????????????????? *Gives up* 

 

Heart Sutra: Hurray! Cross the shore, Cross the shore quickly! Move up the five paths just like that!

 

The zen master twisted his student's nose because this student is trying too damn hard. He's being too damn nosy.

 

Edited May 18, 2018 by taoguy

[thelerner]

He's lucky he had a moderate Zen Master.  In the old days the master would have cut it off!

 

In a couple of ye olde Zen Master stories the cranky master is always cutting off parts of his devoted disciples to make a point.   It's usually the finger pointing to the moon that gets it first.. 

[ion]

It displays the truth that understanding that things are empty and are non-existing is not a bit of knowledge that leads to enlightenment. In fact because of what is called the law of attraction, it leads to loss, and annihilation. It is better for the "novice" to start off thinking that all is NOT void. That "nothing exists" is the shine on the Apple, and the Apple is the understanding of dependent arising. 

 

Many practitioners mistake the shine on the apple for the Apple itself.

 

And then they grasp at the shine.

 

An Apple in itself is not shiney. An Apple does not have the quality or characteristic known as "shine". The shine does not exist.

 

There is no such "thing" as  anything being shiney. Nothing is characterized as having a shine.

 

By understanding dependent arising one understands that nothing ever arises, nothing abides, and nothing perishes.

 

Arising arises but does not abide, abiding arises but does not abide, and perishing arises but does not abide.

 

Things do not come and go, things do not ever come to completion or to any state that one can say, "there, the thing is now complete and is what it is and will be"

 

What ever is appearing is apprehended by the mind as being.

 

Whatever it is that is apprehended is not a container that contains. It is only apprehended by the mind as full and complete and as being itself being. The causative factors of its existence are unseen, yet as they Change, or come and go, the thing changes or comes and goes.

 

When a fire is built, you can not say, "this morning we've built a fire, let's go do,our days work and when we comeback the fire will be here to keep us warm" becausea fire is not self existing.  It exist only when the causative factors are present and intermingled.

 

If it was decided that some one would stay to keep the fire going, to stay there to add would and to move logs and fan the embers, when you it back at the end of the day you could not rightly say "oh good, the fire is still there."

 

It would not be the same object, unchanged, and it would not be the same object that had changed.

 

Images and form are impermanent nothing ever changes. Whatever it is that is apprehended as an object that has changed into another object is only apprehended by the mind as such.

 

Things do not change. What ever appears as being passes, ceases from moment to moment causing the illusion of change.

 

If the fire keeper replaced the burnt wood with new wood, and the new wood was from a different tree of a different genus, than the characteristics of the fire would change and one could not rightly say "the same fire is still there, but it has changed."

 

One thing can not change into another because if it ever was a thing than that thing would be it's own self. Its own self would be defined by the characteristics of that self. If the characteristics of that self changed into other characteristics, than the characteristics that were what was called self would be no more so that self would be no more; characteristics that were new could not be said "to used to be other and different characteristics"

 

 

If the characteristics of a thing's/self's past are different than the characteristics of the thing's/self's, present, and in future the thing's/self's characteristics will differ from the past and the past that was that present than because there are three sets differing characteristics, there are also 3 different thing's/self's none of which came into existence as it's very own independent being.

 

Looking at the stream of changing characteristics of the fire, and knowing that the change is due to the passing and replacing of the causative factors (change in heat, change of fuel, change of air) than it is seen that the fire is notit's very own self existing thing, and that it is not a thing.

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by ion

[ion]

Further more, a tree can not fall. A tree has no ability, and nothing has ever made a sound.

 

A tree is being a tree, falling is falling.

 

Tree faller; Forest floor.

 

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by ion

[thelerner]

Sorry, but in my view you guys are all too philosophical and would also get a painful nose pinch.

 

The story is simple, in the 'Don't stink of Zen' tradition.

ie, saying the most important thing is my yearning for the Dharma, leads to disciple being dunked and finding out the most important thing is air. 

 

Here a disciple says there's no nose, the master tweeks nose and asks if anything hurts.  To me the point of these stories is Don't go so high fallutin.  Live in reality.  Breathing is more important then abstract philosophy.  There is a nose.  You have one.  It hurts when tweaked.  Don't get so lost in philosophy that you stop acknowledging reality. 

 

At least not with that particular master. 

Edited May 25, 2018 by thelerner

[wandelaar]

@ thelerner

 

One can have both: a deep philosophy and acknowledging everyday reality, it's accomplished by the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths.

[steve]

In fact, that is a primary teaching I get from the Heart Sutra - the Two Truths

Edited May 26, 2018 by steve

[Eric Woon]

Without eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body, a suryaputra  (sentient beings) cannot directly perceive the sensation of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Having lost its five perceptions, it also could no longer directly perceive the full response range of visual, auditory, olfactory, taste and touch sensations. Henceforth, it could not experience or feel the effect of these five senses, directly.

Then and there, it should stop trying to understand what it no longer can perceive and for that matter, whatever that has to do with the perceptions of the mundane world. After all, these worldly affairs come and go, and are infinitely boundless. And for that matter, all things that have to do with the worldly affairs are boundless unlimited and shall vanish in no time.

A suryaputra must withdraw completely and stay clear of the worldly affairs. Then only a suryaputra can stop all forms of sufferings or misery and free itself from discernment of its current plight. This is the highest form of perfect wisdom on how a suryaputra can extricate itself from all sufferings and not worry about its hapless situation anymore.

This is a direct interpretation of Tang Tripitaka words, [無眼耳鼻舌身，意無色聲香味觸，法無眼界乃至無意識界，無無明亦無無明盡，乃至無老死亦無老死盡，無苦集滅]：

Here is my translation into modern Chinese.

因为没有了眼睛、耳朵、鼻子、舌头和肌肤，所以众生无法直接^【[1]^】意识到视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉和触觉，也导致它们无法再直接感受和处理一切视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉和触觉所及的范围。那么，它们没必要再去了解不懂的事情，因为这些事情是再怎说也说不尽的。这些甚至不会历时长久也不会终止的事情，更是再怎说都说不尽的。于是众生没必要为这样的情况而感到苦恼，进而才能成功消灭所有的苦厄境况。

 

---

[1] 只是失去了直接的感应能力。但是，每一个舍利子依然能够保留着第六感，即处理感知的能力。在此，著作就点到为止。

[rideforever]

As the student is talking, the Zen master in front of him realises that the student is just a parrot, and gives him a wake the hell up lesson.

 

Talking is void :
Is it, or is it only when you are not present.   Is Rumi void ?  Is J Krishnamurti void ?  Is your mother void ?
No because they talk when they are present, and so Truth is conveyed inside the words ... the words are very close to Truth itself because they are close to Truth, the concept are close to Truh.

 

In your own life I am sure you have noticed that when you are not present, everything that comes out of your mouth is BS.   But when you are present you can make some sense.

 

Concepts are of no use:
Well ... even that is a concept.   Meditation is a concept.  Is it of no use ?
Of course it is of use.
When a mountain climber climbs a mountain, is the map of no use ?  Is the map the mountain ?   Is he climbing a map ?
No, it's quite simple.
You take a look at the first bit of the map, the you climb the first bit of the mountain.   Afterwards you have experience  of climbing, and then you read the next bit of conceptual instructions - as you have experience you can understand more.    Then you climb a bit more.   Then you take a break and read instructions.    Then you climb a bit more.
Concepts + Climbing, step by step.

You are all there ever is :
Really ?  What if you want to become a surgeon and go to medical school.
After 5 years you quality, your learning and experience has changed you, you are unrecognizable now Mr Surgeon.
Where did this change come from ?
Is it still you - or someone else ?
Did nothing change ?
Everything changed because you made it change.
If you had not gone to medical school your Doctorship would have been a potential that never flowered.
It is you but a you that through your own work you made appear.

If the Skandhas are empty, then fill them.