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This year, we’re using the framework of Buddhism’s Six Perfections to guide most of our episodes. Our last one, with returning guest and activist Kazu Haga, focused on patience or not returning harm. This week, another favorite of the podcast is back, Susan Piver. She and I talk and riff on her new book, Inexplicable Joy, which explores one of Buddhism’s most famous and mysterious texts: the Heart Sutra.

This profound text is all about the perfection of wisdom—emptiness—the ultimate interdependent nature of reality. Fully realizing this is said to lead to the inexplicable joy that gives Susan’s book its name. Join us to hear her unique take on a text she’s been reciting for 30 years and discover her fresh, modern, and sometimes surprising ways of understanding words written nearly 2,000 years ago.

Scott Snibbe: So Susan, it is really a delight to read another one of your books. You have such a unique voice and there’s so many wonderful, even shocking sentences in your book, like when you say the Heart Sutra wants to make out with you.

Susan Piver: Yeah, it really does. I was like, I guess I’ll leave that in.

Scott Snibbe: What does that mean when you say the text wants to make out with you?

Susan Piver: Well, it’s something that is best related to intimately, personally rather than studying the various words, which is also very important, but it’s just an intimate experience to practice the Heart Sutra.

Scott Snibbe: I love it. Also, you and I, we’re not monks and nuns. I think it bears on the practice of people in relationships and marriages and so on. It’s a nice metaphor for a person like me and many of your readers.

I don’t know if you’re prepared for this, but I wonder if you would start out by reading the Heart Sutra, or maybe you have it memorized and you can just recite it?

Susan Piver: I’m happy to.

The Heart Sutra

Thus have I heard. Once the Blessed One was dwelling in Rājagṛha, at Vulture Peak Mountain, together with a great gathering of the monastic Sangha and a great gathering of Bodhisattvas.

At that time, the Blessed One entered the meditative absorption on the teachings called Profound Illumination. At the same time, the noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva, while practicing the profound Prajñāpāramitā, saw clearly that the five skandhas are empty of inherent nature.

Through the power of the Buddha, Venerable Śāriputra spoke to the noble Avalokiteśvara:
“How should a son or daughter of noble family train, who wishes to practice the profound Prajñāpāramitā?”

The noble Avalokiteśvara replied to Venerable Śāriputra:
“O Śāriputra, a son or daughter of noble family who wishes to practice the profound Prajñāpāramitā should view things in this way: they should see that the five skandhas are empty of inherent nature.

Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.
Emptiness is not other than form; form is not other than emptiness.
In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are empty.

Thus, Śāriputra, all dharmas are empty.
They are without characteristics;
they are neither born nor do they cease;
they are neither defiled nor pure;
neither increasing nor decreasing.

Therefore, Śāriputra, in emptiness there is no form,
no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness;
no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;
no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no phenomena;
no eye element, and so on up to no mind element,
and no mental consciousness element.

There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance,
and so on up to no aging and death,
and no extinction of aging and death.

Likewise, there is no suffering, no origin of suffering,
no cessation of suffering, and no path;
no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment.

Therefore, Śāriputra, since the Bodhisattvas have no attainment,
they rely on and dwell in Prajñāpāramitā.
Their minds are without obscuration and without fear.
Having completely passed beyond all error, they reach the ultimate Nirvāṇa.

All the Buddhas of the three times, by relying on Prajñāpāramitā,
fully awaken to the unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment.

Therefore, the great mantra of Prajñāpāramitā,
the mantra of great knowledge,
the unsurpassed mantra,
the unequaled mantra,
the mantra that pacifies all suffering,
should be known as the truth, for there is no deception.

The Prajñāpāramitā mantra is said as follows:

Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

Thus, Śāriputra, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva should train in the profound Prajñāpāramitā in this way.

Then the Blessed One arose from that meditative absorption and praised the noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva, saying:

“Excellent, excellent, O son of noble family. Thus it is. Thus it is. One should practice the profound Prajñāpāramitā just as you have taught, and all the Tathāgatas will rejoice.”

When the Blessed One had said this, Venerable Śāriputra, the noble Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva Mahāsattva, and the whole assembly, including the world with its gods, humans, asuras, and gandharvas, rejoiced and praised the words of the Blessed One.

Scott Snibbe: Beautiful, and this is something you recite or think to yourself every day in your practice?

Susan Piver: Yeah, every day, I recite it. For probably more than 30 years.

Scott Snibbe: Very nice. I did for a long time. Then I stopped. Then I told my teacher I was having some problems in my life and he said, Oh, are you reciting the Heart Sutra every day?

Susan Piver: Why do you think he said that?

Scott Snibbe: Well, he did tell me a reason, what we call accumulating merit. When you find obstacles in your life, sometimes from your Buddhist teacher’s perspective, even if you’re like a good guy, sometimes things just aren’t going well for you, as I think we can all relate.

The Buddhist perspective is that also this purification and accumulating merit are important. That’s what he said is accumulating merit, doing things of just pure goodness and benefit for your own mind. I restarted reading it every morning, and I definitely see that benefit. It’s a different translation, there’s all these slightly different translations.

Can you tell me about the first time you heard and recited the Heart Sutra and how it struck you?

When was the first time you recited the Heart Sutra?

Susan Piver: I remember very clearly. This was a long time ago, maybe 35 years ago. I was talking to someone who worked at Shambala publications, the publishing house many years ago about business things, I wasn’t a writer, but we were talking about distribution and I said, at one point, I might like to learn how to meditate. We’re at a noisy restaurant and he said, What kind? I didn’t know there were different kinds. So, honestly, I said, Tibetan. It’s a cosmic moment.

Scott Snibbe: Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody choose that one right off the bat.

Susan Piver: Especially 35 years ago, who even knew what that was? Anyway, I’d been reading like many people do. He said, I know someone who might wanna teach you. And then he called me later, he said, No, he doesn’t have time, but come to a party at Shambala publications. I met this person and it turned out his name was Sam and he was the publisher and founder of Shambala publications.

He said, Well, if you wanna learn to meditate I’m gonna be away for a month, but when I’m back, call me and I’ll teach you if you would like. I’m like, Okay. And so I went to his apartment. I’m like, this is weird. I’m going to this dude’s apartment. I don’t really know him. But anyway, it was obviously totally fine.

We talked a little about practice and then he said, Oh, you’ve never meditated before. Well, we’ll sit for an hour. It’s like, what? He said, okay, 45 minutes, but before we sit, we’ll say this together. And he handed me this piece of paper and it was what I just recited, it was the Heart Sutra. He said, you won’t be able to pronounce some of the words.

That’s okay. Just skip over them. So we said the Heart Sutra and then he taught me to meditate. I read the Heart Sutra before I even ever learned to meditate. And it was sort of like the gateway. I now realized decades later, that was the seed syllable. That was the striking of the gong. I still practice it.

I read the Heart Sutra before I even ever learned to meditate.

Scott Snibbe: What what feelings did you have when you heard it for the first time, when you read it for the first time?

Susan Piver: Confusion, like, why are we doing this? What does this mean? What’s a garndarva? Why are we saying this? I didn’t feel anything like, Oh, this is cosmic. Or I was like, I don’t get it, but okay. And I was really not that different 33 or five years on. I still feel like I really don’t get it, but let’s do it again. Not being disingenuous here.

Scott Snibbe: That may be a deep realization. My brother became a Tibetan Buddhist before me and I watched him for about four years and was quite entertained by a lot of the stories he told me. But one of the stories he told me about Buddhism was his teacher said, you know that feeling when you are about to say something and you forgot it? And my brother said, Yeah, he said, and the teacher said, That’s the feeling you wanna have all the time.

Susan Piver: That’s awesome. You’re about to say something, but you forgot it. That’s great.

Scott Snibbe: There’s something really profound about being confused and and shaken up and, and open. Maybe that’s like, that’s a level of realization and not an obstacle at all.

Susan Piver: It is genuine in any case. The way I would say what he said, which is so great is, when you, and I don’t know that I I feel this way more and more about the Heart Sutra, but you read something of a spiritual nature and the best feeling to me is, I knew that. I didn’t know I knew it. There’s this moment of, Yeah, I knew it. I just didn’t know I knew it, but apparently I do. Then it erases, but that’s cool.

Scott Snibbe: I think when you emailed me about your book, I shared a little bit that I was kind of like, there was kind of peer pressure to become a Buddhist. My brother was sending me emails and things for about four years. But then I took him to see the Dalai Lama because I knew he would like it.

But then the Dalai Lama was giving refuge vows and so on, and my friends were like, Oh, you should do this. I’m like, Oh, what does this entail? Anyway, I did. And I don’t regret it. But then I start looked for a teacher in San Francisco, and I went to the Tibetan teachers first teachings and found them incomprehensible.

They were on the 12 links, the first teaching I ever took. But then I went to the prayers, there were prayers every weekend, meditation prayers every weekend with the nuns involved with the community. We read the Heart Sutra for the first time. I just broke into tears. I just started bawling and bawling, with the feeling like you said, like there’s something profoundly true and familiar here, and I certainly don’t understand it, but I’d like to learn more.

Susan Piver: That sounds like a a powerful experience.

Scott Snibbe: I guess we invite everybody, if you haven’t, well, all of you have now heard the Heart Sutra, so I’m curious for those of you now listening, think for a moment about what was your first reaction to hearing it.

Susan Piver: Did you chant it in a monotone when you first did it?

Scott Snibbe: We used to do it a bit like you actually, which was nice, by the way, I enjoyed the way you read it. A nice quote from your book early on is how you say that deciding whether the, so this text is, of course, beware of saying what this text is about, but what this text is said to be about is the ultimate nature of reality.

You say quite early on that whether or not that’s true, if this text somehow explains the ultimate nature of reality isn’t the point. Because you say, and here’s your quote, “All beliefs are considered obstacles because they separate you from what is now.” So can you explain that? What the obstacle belief poses to someone studying this text or grappling with Buddhism?

All beliefs are considered obstacles because they separate you from what is now.

Is belief sometimes an obstacle?

Susan Piver: Beliefs are somehow constructs based on something from the past, and they may be very well-founded beliefs, accurate, and helpful, but they could be considered an obstacle because you’re paying more attention to your ideas than your reality. If the Heart Sutra is about the ultimate nature of reality, whatever that might be, then it’s important not to dispose of beliefs because that’s an another belief. Learn how to separate.

Beliefs are somehow constructs based on something from the past, and they may be very well-founded beliefs, accurate, and helpful, but they could be considered an obstacle because you’re paying more attention to your ideas than your reality.

If you’re a meditator, which I know you are, and you say you have a breath awareness practice, and then you get absorbed in thought because you’re a person and that that happens and you let go. You notice that, you let go, and you come back to the breath. So, the thoughts are not considered obstacles, but not the point.

The breath in meditation is a stand-in. The idea is not to be a great breath follower. That would not be that helpful. But to understand how to place your attention on the present. And you can’t breathe in the past, and you can’t breathe in the future, no matter how hard you try. I have tried. When your attention is resting on the breath, it’s practicing resting on the present moment and then thoughts come up, well, I’m really good at this, or I’m terrible at this, whatever it might be, and you let go and you come back to the breath.

Not so that you can follow your breath when you go into your life, but so that you can follow the present moment because you have practiced with the breath. That is another way I think of saying beliefs are considered obstacles as just as thoughts are not the object of attention in meditation. Does that make sense?

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, absolutely, it’s very beautiful what you’ve said and it, boy, it brought up so many things in my mind because, one thing it brought up is almost that the text itself is like the object of focus that can never kind of resolve, but the way it’s constructed is so good at taking your focus and your attention, which is something I hadn’t really thought about before a lot of other things came to mind, but that was that was one kind of reaction.

Susan Piver: There are three things to pay attention to in the text. The first is the words. Thus have I heard, et cetera, and so forth. Those are very important. The second is the sound of the words. So, not just the content, but the sound of the words conveys meaning. And the third is the environment in which the words are spoken, so it just feels one way to chant the heart sutra here with you. When I go swimming every morning I often say the Heart Sutra while I’m swimming. It’s a different environment or if I’m on a mountaintop the environment plays into the meaning. The sound of the words, the environment, and they’re equally important.

The power of music

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, and the text is also situated in a place too, in Raj Riha. So that was important the first time it was spoken as well. It also brings up what you say later in the book about music. You use music as a very beautiful analogy for how the text works.

Can you talk about that? Because you talk about the sound of the text. And of course, the sound is different when it’s translated into all these different languages. Elaborate a little bit more on the sound of the text and how that relates to how music works with our minds.

Susan Piver: Yeah, music is my favorite analogy for most spiritual concepts because it’s just seems to be more direct. I wrote about this in the book and I think this is what you’re referring to. I was taking a walk with my earbuds in and I was listening to a playlist that just played things randomly on my playlist things just comprised of songs I really like.

I really like a lot of songs. I’m walking around and the song that comes on is Chet Baker, the great jazz saxophonist and extraordinary vocalist, singing my Funny Valentine, and it’s just super spacious and quiet and purely beautiful. I’m taking a walk on this path and I’m looking around the world looks beautiful. Then the next song that comes on is a song called Jump Around by a band called House of Pain. It’s like a hip hop band from the mid 90s. It’s got a lot of weird sounds in it. It’s not about my funny Valentine, so I love that song.

But anyway, when that song came on with its crazy sounds, equally beloved by me, the world looked different. I felt different. That’s just still just me, these earbuds in walking around Chet Baker and House of Pain convey different worlds.

Scott Snibbe: It’s an extraordinary medium, music, isn’t it? Because, of course, the emptiness of music is almost the the ideal object for emptiness. Cause where exactly, where do you find that music? Is it in the iPod or in your ears? Or the vibration, the brain? The recording was 20 years ago.

Susan Piver: I totally agree. And what even is a song? You can change the chord progression, you can change the tempo, you can change. It’s still recognizable as itself.

Scott Snibbe: But then as a medium, right? This is actually something I did get from my Buddhist teacher too, monks and nuns, at least in Tibetan tradition, very sadly, one of their vows is not to listen to music, believe it or not, which luckily almost all the monks and nuns I know don’t obey that vow anymore, which I think is excellent.

But I would ask my teacher, Venerable, Renee, my kind of my closest teacher, what he would do when it got difficult with his practice, cause he’d be in more than a decade of solitary retreat. He said, Well, I kind of throw a party for one, he is like, I put on some music, like for him, he liked to listen to some rock and roll and four seasons and things.

He said, I’d set up a little party, some lights and play some music. He said, there’s no medium that can instantly change your mood like that. Like you can’t look at a painting or read a book and have it instantly change your mood, but music does.

You can’t look at a painting or read a book and have it instantly change your mood, but music does.

Susan Piver: It’s immediate, you mix your mind, it mixes with your mind. It does not pass go. It’s just, you have to like concentrate on a book, even if you love it. But music, your mind just mixes with it immediately. It’s the greatest art if you ask me.

Scott Snibbe: So the sound of this, the sound of this text, I guess you’re saying can have a similar effect.

Susan Piver: Yeah, it’s not like make you feel like jumping, like House of Pain or Chad Baker, but it’s got a presence.

Buddhism Beyond Belief

Scott Snibbe: We were talking about belief, just to finish that out. This book is your first book in a series called, Buddhism Beyond Belief, can you talk about that? What does that mean and what is this new series you have in mind?

Susan Piver: Well, I kind of like the double meaning, Buddhism beyond whatever your beliefs are. Because that’s where the good stuff is. Beyond Belief is like, Whoa, I didn’t know it was this awesome. It’s Beyond Belief.

Scott Snibbe: Unbelievable. That’s really great. That reminds me of something. Robert Thurman once translated the mantra. You make a nice translation of the mantra. Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā. But his translation is like, Beyond, way beyond, even further beyond. But then the last part he says, Far out.

Susan Piver: That’s funny. I say, Mic drop.

Scott Snibbe: That’s really good. You need something like that. That’s very shocking at the end. I liked your mic drop. That updates it for the hip hop ear, his was good for the rock and roll ear.

Susan Piver: Totally good. I’ve been a student of Buddhism, as I keep saying, for like more than 30 years, and I’ve been a teacher in my own way, close to 15, and there are a lot of foundational teachings that are very useful. In this series, I wanna talk about those teachings in the three Ana’s, mostly the mahayana.

The Four Noble Truths, a separate book on the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the fourth truth. The six paramitas or transcendent actions, the four Karmas. I just want to have these little books that people can use without having to go into a full academic exploration. But for me, my own voice, my own preferred way of communicating, it’s not even a choice, it just seems to be the way it happens, is not to give a survey, but to talk about my experience with these teachings, not because my experience is exemplary, but because it’s personal. And the most important thing, I think, on the journey is that it be personal.

That we not try to master someone else’s thoughts even though there are true masters out there who deserve that kind of attention. But how do I understand it? Me, Susan Piver in my world, not Tibetan, female in this house. What are those teachings for me? That’s what I want the series to help with.

The Heart Sutra as a living text

Scott Snibbe: Talking about you as a teacher, in the book you talk about leading a 10-day retreat on the Heart Sutra recently, and I wonder if you could share the experience from that retreat, how did you spend a week and a half focusing on this text with the group?

Susan Piver: Well, unfortunately, we didn’t spend a week and a half because it got shut down due to COVID after six days. Yeah, that was a very disappointing, it was a shame, but I hope to do it again. And the whole object is just, let’s chant the heart sutra a lot. Let’s relax. Let’s not try to understand and let’s just relax and be receptive and notice our minds.

It’s a retreat, seven in the morning, nine at night. practice sessions, breaks for lunch, regular retreat schedule. But I wanted this retreat, and when I’ve taught it before, I also want this to include a lot of recitation of the Heart Sutra, discussion of the Heart Sutra, but then also just discussion amongst ourselves.

Some retreats are no talking. That’s cool. But the heart opening part seems to come from relating to the space to each other and to yourself. I wanted those things to be part of the retreat. And for a while they were, while it lasted. And so that’s what we did.

Scott Snibbe: How did other people respond to the text? Both initially, I bet some people heard it for that first time right at the beginning and then, as they went into it, deeper and deeper.

Susan Piver: Well, I don’t really know, because I’m not sure what their inner experience was. But the guiding question that I think is most important for this exploration is to not ask, what does this mean? Because then you’re just gonna go down a rabbit hole, but ask, what does this mean to me right now? Constantly try to connect your own heart, your mind, your experience, your felt sense to this text, because it is a little bit like music and it just mixes with your mind and it mixes with it in a different way every single time.

I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve chanted it. Who knows? A hundred thousand or so I don’t know, many. And every time I do, I’m like, Oh, I don’t remember it said that. Okay, that’s gonna help me with this thing I’m worried about. It feels like a living text. So, it changes, just like all living relationships.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, you talk about that, there’s certain texts like that are kind of different every time you read them. I notice it with some of my prayers I read every day, that sometimes I’ll have read something, like you said, 1,000-5,000 thousand times, and then I see something I never saw.

It’s almost like a line I never read, and yet I certainly read it thousands of times.

Susan Piver: How does that happen? I remember once I was talking to Sam, my meditation teacher, about something that was causing me pain. I can’t remember what it was, but it was very important. I was struggling and he said, Oh, well, do you know the mantra that calms all suffering? I said, no. He said, are you sure? I said, pretty sure. Then I remembered the Heart Sutra says the mantra that calms all suffering should be known as truth because there’s no deception. It just said in this way, oh, gate gate and so forth. So like, I never put that together. Actually, the mantra that calms all suffering. So he said, Do you know what it is? I’m like, No, I never heard of it, but I’ve been saying it every day for decades.

Scott Snibbe: It’s amazing how our minds work. Yeah, and that’s kind of like what my teacher means by accumulating merit. It’s like somehow something has to eventually, even have good intentions, good actions, somehow you have to wait for like the moment to click.

You were talking about opening your heart, how this text opens your heart. This text is better, is best known for wisdom. As you mentioned in the book, there’s these kind of two aspects to at least Mahayana Buddhism, Buddhism in general, of wisdom and compassion. The Heart Sutra is generally associated with the wisdom side. How do you see the Heart Sutra also helping to cultivate compassion and open heart? Joy too. That’s the title of your book, Inexplicable Joy.

Susan Piver: That’s true. Well the name, the Heart Sutra, is not about the heart. I know this isn’t your question. It means the pith, the Heart Sutra could be a hundred thousand lines long, it could be 50,000 lines long. This one’s 43 lines long, it’s therefore called the Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge. Wisdom and heart opening are not separate, so wisdom is seeing the non separation, the indivisible nature of all phenomena, the side I heard, right? As such, nothing remains but compassion,

Because it’s all one thing, and you don’t cut these people out or this circumstance out, you don’t even exist anymore, now there’s not a difference between wisdom and compassion. There’s compassion and skillful means, but I would say they’re the same. The wisdom is seeing the interdependence of all phenomena, which means you disappear and become connected to all.

The wisdom is seeing the interdependence of all phenomena, which means you disappear and become connected to all.

Emptiness is form

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, that’s very beautifully said, that wisdom and compassion are two, as another duality that we can transcend. Speaking of one of the most famous lines in this text is form is emptiness, emptiness is form. I wonder, with every one of these questions, I kind of hesitate on how to ask it without being too dualistic, but can you share your understanding or shifting understanding of this line, this phrase?

Susan Piver: Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. Form is no other than emptiness. I kind of get, well, form is empty of something. Emptiness is form. Is it more inscrutable to me? How can it be a form? I don’t know, but you know what? I trust it.

What do you think?

Scott Snibbe: The main lineage I’m in is like this Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Sometimes people make fun of it that we study too much. Then they make fun of the other schools saying, well, what are you meditating on if you haven’t studied? I’ve actually studied in other schools too. There’s different ways of looking at, like, one way I’ve heard His Holiness Dalai Lama explain it, is that emptiness isn’t a thing, I know you’re very well aware of, that it’s a property of everything. For something to be empty, there has to be a thing that is empty of—what we say inherently existing—empty of existing independent of anything else. So there’s no emptiness without a thing that’s empty of existing inherently. So that’s, that’s one way.

For something to be empty, there has to be a thing that is empty of—what we say inherently existing—empty of existing independent of anything else.

I’ve heard it explained many, many ways. Of course, there’s no single explanation, but that’s one that I remember. That has struck with me.

Susan Piver: That’s a good one.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, hard to beat His Holiness.

Susan Piver: He knows what he’s talking about. Let’s just say that.

Scott Snibbe: Like you’ve said, you can’t trick yourself to thinking you understand, or that that’s a meaning. Oh, yeah, that’s what I wanted to mention when you were talking about beyond beliefs. One of my very favorite quotes is from, that I read early on when I was a Buddhist, was from Zar Rinpoche, who said, “As long as you think you are a Buddhist, you are not yet a Buddha.”

I think that that reads well on belief, even the belief that you’re a Buddhist is an obstacle to realization at a certain point.

Susan Piver: And believing that it’s an obstacle is a belief that is an obstacle. Which just continues to dissolve.

When has the Heart Sutra helped you?

Scott Snibbe: This is like the Susan Piver trademark, I’ve noticed, is the meta analysis, like, you’re always ready to take that analysis, when, and I just love it. You’re always warning, like don’t stop there. To get more personal, which I think is effective. Can you tell me a time in your life that this sutra really helped you with something you were going through?

Susan Piver: Yeah, I don’t know if it helped me, but it helped me to feel like I was helping someone else. Yeah, I’ll try not to cry. Our cat died a week and a half ago. It’s horrible. Anybody whose lost a pet or whatever you call them, my heart goes out to you. It’s a grief like no other. And as he was dying, I said the Heart Sutra to him, I don’t, it’s probably more for my benefit.

I have no idea. But it’s a treatise on letting go. And because he’s my cat and we had him for 18 years, he’d heard it many times. I wanted it to feel familiar. I wanted him to hear something that I imagined, sounded familiar. I don’t know what cats hear, and I wanted that to go with, I wanted that sense of my presence and our togetherness to go with him to the point where it could not go any further. So that helped me.

Scott Snibbe: Hmm. It probably helped your cat, too.

Susan Piver: I don’t know. I miss him.

Scott Snibbe: Lama Zopa Rinpoche was one of my teachers, and he was constantly speaking, singing, yelling mantras into the ears of animals. He thought it was very, very important. Often the Medicine Buddha mantra, but also perfection of Wisdom, he said it was one of the very best things you can possibly do for an animal. To talk about going back to belief though, one of the belief is that the animal will actually become your student in a future’s life, if you believe that.

Susan Piver: As long as we can meet again. I, that’s amazing. Well, I hope I could be his cat in a future.

Scott Snibbe: I think you were, probably the ideal student and owner, friend to your cat. I’m sorry, what was your cat’s name?

Susan Piver: Robbie.

The various translations of the Heart Sutra

Scott Snibbe: Very nice. Yeah, to talk a little bit more about translation when you read other translations of the Heart Sutra, how do they feel to you when you read the other ones and do they change your experience of the text?

Susan Piver: Not really. They don’t really change my experience. I’ve read some wonderful ones, but it feels like I’m putting on a shoe that’s like a half size too small or something, or too big or something. I don’t know where to fit it here. Thich Naht Hanh’s translation is beautiful, they’re not that different from each other. I have clinging to the one that I’ve been chanting since the very first day I ever practiced meditation. It feels like a friend and a weird friend who doesn’t really care about me, it cares about me, but I don’t know how to be in a relationship with you. But I’m interested.

When I taught the Heart Sutra at the abbreviated retreat this past summer, there was a teacher there teaching something else. His name was, Tana Hashi Sensei. He’s 94, he’s teaching calligraphy, but he is the actual master of the Heart Sutra and wrote a book about the Heart Sutra.

I wrote about this in the book and Saha the last word of the mantra is translated as so be it or far out or mic drop. But he said he translates it as joy, which that was really eyeopening to me. That was beautiful. I’m happy I learned that from him. So that’s just one very small example of a different translation shed a different light, in a sense, didn’t change it, but it expanded it.

Scott Snibbe: It’s interesting, too, to hear it in a language you don’t understand, right? I looked it up in Sanskrit sometimes. I was like, oh, what does the original sound like? And that’s also affecting, right? Even without understanding it. Like music, like you were saying.

Susan Piver: I’ve only ever chanted it in English. I’ve heard it in Japanese, which is very intense. It’s very beautiful.

Mantras

Scott Snibbe: Very beautiful. The only part of the text that isn’t translated is the mantra, right? The Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā. They don’t translate mantras, right? Because they say like the vibration of the the Sanskrit, the syllables is very important. Can you talk about that? You talk nicely about it in your book, but can you talk about what mantras, and this mantra in particular, mean to you mean to one and how they affect our minds?

Susan Piver: Well, mantra’s very mysterious. And one never knows how it’s going to affect your mind, or what they mean. I mean, vibrationally and all that, om is a seed syllable of compassion among many things. As soon as the mantra opens with, om, you’re like, okay, I get what we’re talking about now. I don’t understand it, but I understand what kind of conversation I’m in. Gate you said, beyond gate, beyond paragate really beyond. Pārasaṃgate totally beyond like gone to the other shore. Bodhi awake svāhā. Far out. mic drop. Joy.

I’ve chanted it a million times, not just as part of the Heart Sutra, but when I’m suffering. And I don’t know what it does, but it’s worth trying. It’s worth experimenting with for sure. It would just sound different if it was like compassion gone, gone, gone beyond, really beyond away. It just wouldn’t sound right I don’t think. No.

Scott Snibbe: It’s nice to hear that. I’m also trying to try to teach in a secular way. I don’t really use mantras ever when teaching the type of course. But in my own life, in my mind, they’re just constantly there. Like we’re all thinking about something all the time. Sometimes it’s frustration, anger, sadness, despair. But I think for those of us who have become familiar with these mantras, it’s often that, that’s going through your mind as you’re walking down the street, and it’s a nice thing. You have to be thinking of something in general, so it’s quite a nice thing to have going through your mind.

Susan Piver: It’s often a better occupant than your thoughts about how much you suck or the world sucks, or it tends to not have the same karmic repercussions, I would say.

What if people doubt your teachings?

Scott Snibbe: I couldn’t agree more with you, but I’m sure you have become quite skeptical people in your Sangha and so on. What do you share with people when they express like doubts or that old or whatever?

Susan Piver: Go for it. Doubt is a sign of intelligence. Investigate your skepticism. IMy favorite teaching line is don’t take my word for anything. I really mean that. Do not take my word for anything. You have to figure it out. You have doubts. You have questions. Good. Okay. Good. Figure it out. Think about it. I’ll try to help.

Doubt is a sign of intelligence.

I don’t have any skin in the game. I don’t have skin in the game. No, don’t try it. Try it if you want.

The middle way

Scott Snibbe: One of the warnings that they traditionally have with this topic of emptiness is of falling into nihilism. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that danger, if it is a danger and if so, how to avoid it.

Susan Piver: Yeah, emptiness is understandably confused with voidness, but it doesn’t mean voidness. As you were saying earlier, it means empty of separate existence. Like your parents, the food they ate, their parents, all of that is not separate. You cannot separate those things from you. You did not arise separate from those causes and conditions.

Emptiness doesn’t mean null. And if you think it does, well, investigate. Is it null? But Nihilism is thought of as one of the two extremes to be avoided, in favor of what’s called the middle way, which I know you’re familiar with, especially as a Gelugpa student. So the two extremes along, when the Buddha first became enlightened, according to the stories, he said, we we don’t do either of the extremes. Nothing wrong with them, but that’s not what we do.

First one is called eternalism, which is, we’re gonna get this right, and then we’re gonna go somewhere perfected for all time. But we don’t know if we’re doing it right until the end, because there’s someone out there judging it. Maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But Buddhist said, we’re not doing that one. And nihilism is there are no rules, there is no meaning, there’s no one judging, because there’s nothing beyond this mortal coil.

He said, we’re not doing that one either. So the middle way is not the midpoint between the two extremes. It’s a constant question mark if you ask me, what do you do without eternalism or nihilism? It’s not a rhetorical question. You are in the middle, and the middle is not, not eternalism. It’s not not nihilism, it’s not neither. It’s not both. It’s a mysterious midpoint, as far as I can tell located in outer space.

What do you do without eternalism or nihilism?

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, for the people that understand it too. I’m not one of them, by the way, for the people that understand it, like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he says it’s so subtle. He says, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist. He is like, it’s very close, but it’s very, very subtle. In the, Gelugpa we study this topic, tenets. Maybe you study it too, with this, like four different schools of emptiness, because over the course of Buddhist history, there were at least four major ways of looking at emptiness. And the first three find something, the first three actually find a base.

The first one, I don’t know if I should use a jargon, but it’s called Sica, and they find atoms. They say it’s kind of like physics before Einstein, they’re like, they find atoms, they’re like, everything’s atoms and that’s where the buck stops. Then the next one, Tantrica says we find functions, that the ultimate way things exist is that they do something, they come together for some purpose.

Then the next one is kind of my favorite, even though I’m technically middle way practitioner. But the next school you probably know is a mind only school, which is Thich Nhat Hanh is actually more like of that school. It actually says there’s no matter. That one interpretation, there’s no matter, that all you find is mind.

Then the last one is this middle, so those three are quite, they’re reified, ’cause they all find some basis for reality. And then it’s this middle way school, again, I’m just kinda sharing the way I’ve been taught it. Then there’s this middle way school, which is so subtle because it says you never quite find anything, that everything keeps being is divisible.

It’s like, infinitely divisible. Like we look for Susan, we find the body and the mind, then the body can be broken into arms and dah dah, like, you’re used to this analysis, but you never find a base that you don’t find quarks, moans, sub, there’s always divisible. Always, even though we don’t know what those are, science doesn’t know what they’re, there’s always some material divisibility.

And same thing mentally, like when we divide Susan’s mind to say, your mental factors, feeling, discrimination, so on, of perception, you used the word feeling, perception. Those also break up into moments of consciousness and they can never be subdivided. Anyway, we could talk about this for like 25 hours, 25 years actually.

Susan Piver: Very interesting, by the way, I never heard that and it’s very interesting and I appreciate hearing it a lot.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, sure. But that’s how I’ve been taught, and we do like, quite long retreats on, and we see the value. My teacher, a geshe, there’s a wonderful geshe here now, Che Cong we keep studying this topic over and over, tenets, it seemed to be very important in our school. He said, none of them are right, of the four schools, he says none of them are right. He says, which one is very powerful. Especially, Gelugpa, we have this kind of reputation, middle way is the correct view. No, it’s not. It’s which one is, like you keep saying, which one is the right one for you at this moment.

Thanks for asking. That’s a little bit of what I’ve been taught, we did a retreat on this recently with Venerable Renee in April, and he tried to get us, there’s this phrase, merely labeled, that you’ve probably heard, that things are merely labeled. Things just exist as a label, like a word, or sound, on top of something. At the lower schools, they say that something is parts and causes. Which you’ve probably heard, like there’s the parts of something, we just talked about with Susan, the body and mind parts, and then the causes that brought them together.

Which is already really profound, but that seemed to be the lower school understanding of emptiness. The higher school is that it’s just merely labeled on something, and you just really can’t get a handle on what that is until you have like the direct realization of it. And they say like Lama San Kapa, when he realized emptiness, he said, Oh, it’s so much different than I expected.

Susan Piver: Seems trustworthy to me. What is a lower school?

Scott Snibbe: The lower means really earlier, it evolved. So, some teachers would say less correct to of course, like I was saying, but my teachers don’t say that, they actually say, no, they’re all actually valid, that the earlier schools would be more like provisional, that they’re provisional understandings, and that the higher one is ultimate, but there’s many ways of interpreting it, I like the one that it’s just the way that it evolved, the way that different minds come to understand.

But in general, they’re a little bit coarser, like to find reality and atoms is coarser than finding it in function, is coarser than finding it in mind. And then that’s coarser than finding it in this kind of unfindability as you like infinitely dissolve things. I mean, words are. As you mentioned, words are reified, words are dualities. It’s tricky too, the words aren’t the path, but they lead you to it. Anyway, I would love to talk to you about this for a very long time.

Susan Piver: I enjoy talking with you about it too.

Susan’s meditation

Scott Snibbe: You don’t wanna get caught up, especially, you give a very good warning in your book, like, beware of thinking that you understand this story or anything of its nature. It’s a very good warning. It’s juicy to think about it and to grapple with understanding it you have is what a wonderful invitation your book is to people. I highly recommend it. I enjoyed it. It is quite short. Inexplicable Joy: on the Heart Sutra, wonderful introduction to this text that I would highly recommend to anybody.

You may kindly agree to lead a meditation to partner with this, and we’ll air that in the next episode, but would you say anything about that meditation?

Susan Piver: Yeah, I’m happy to do it, we’ll just do a short breath awareness meditation, which is often sounds like a beginner’s practice. But if you were to go down the Buddhist path, you would start with this practice. Then if you went and did all the visualizations and the guru yogas and the mantras and the mandala practices and so on, at the end, you would pretty much come back to this. It’s almost formless, but it’s not completely formless. Anyway, it’s very simple.

Scott Snibbe: Susan, thank you so much for the wonderful conversation about such a meaningful topic and for writing to another beautiful book: beautiful, funny, meaningful, little bit shocking and fresh in all the perfect ways. I think anybody who cracks it open is going to enjoy it. Thank you very much and keep up the good work.

Susan Piver: Thank you. It’s a delight to talk with you. I really appreciate our conversations.

Scott Snibbe: Yeah, thanks for everything you do. It’s in these times, especially it’s like there’s really nothing better we can be doing.

Thanks for joining me for this inspiring conversation with author and teacher Susan Piver. Her new book is Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra. It’s the first in her Buddhism Beyond Belief series. If you’d like to deepen your meditation practice and connect with like-minded people who share an interest in the ideas we explore on this podcast, head over to howtotrainahappymind.org.

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