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Prajna Paramita
As mentioned above, this little verse is actually part of a much longer sutra. Personally I’ve never read the whole thing. In fact, aside from the really geeky pocket-protector academic types, you’ll find that very few Buddhists have actually personally read the entire sutra. This section is called the Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra, or just the Heart Sutra for short. It’s called the heart because it contains the core teaching of the whole sutra.
It’s written in traditional Mahayana sutra–style, namely as a purported dialogue between Avalokiteshvara and Gautama Buddha’s disciple Shariputra, with Gautama himself hanging out in the background meditating and only emerging toward the end of the piece to say, “Right on, bro’!” Actually, though, it’s commonly agreed by scholars that the sutra did not appear until about five hundred years after Gautama’s death, and Avalokiteshvara in this context is a completely mythical character. By today’s definition, we would have to classify all of the Mahayana sutras as works of fiction. This is another major point where Buddhism differs from religions. All religions firmly insist on the historical accuracy of their texts, however dubious that insistence may be. Buddhism, however, doesn’t care either way. It is the meaning of the texts right here and now in our lives that is important—and that has nothing to do with mere historical veracity.
Prajna is intuitive wisdom, and it has nothing at all to do with knowledge. Prajna ain’t book learnin’. The word intuition is used a lot these days to refer to a kind of gut feeling, and that’s something like what prajna is—but it’s more than that: it’s a direct knowing. You’re thinking with body and mind together. Regular thinking is only mental action, but prajna includes the physical as well.
It’s also a mistake to regard prajna as emotional. Emotion itself can often be a kind of confusion. Once a feeling becomes so strong we start calling it an emotion, it’s already become too powerful to deal with in any clear-eyed manner. Prajna includes feeling, but it’s feeling on a more subtle level.
Think about anger. Everyone experiences a flash of anger welling up in some circumstance or other. But anger can only continue to grow when it’s fed by thought. Prajna is the wisdom to notice anger before it becomes a problem, to see clearly why you feel angry and what that feeling of anger really is (and is not). This goes much deeper than just saying, “I’m angry because he called me a panty-waist with carburetor breath.” Why does an insult make you angry? Who is the “you” that has been insulted? What is the “you” that can get angry?
Prajna is the wisdom to get at the very root of any emotional response. Prajna is developed through the practice of zazen.
The word paramita essentially means “highest” (though it has other meanings as well), so in this context we simply read “prajna paramita” as the highest wisdom, the highest prajna.
Shariputra
Shariputra, as I’ve said, was one of Gautama Buddha’s most advanced students. He was a guy with a particularly clear grasp of subtle teachings about “emptiness” (more about this concept soon)—so lots of sutras have Buddha addressing him or answering his questions. Many of the earliest sutras from the ancient Pali canon compiled after Gautama’s death are almost certainly transcripts of actual talks between the two men, but in the Mahayana sutras both Gautama and Shariputra have basically become legendary figures, characters in the unfolding of a dialogue.
Five Skandhas
Buddhists do not accept