''Maka hannya haramitsu'' (), the Japanese transliteration of ''Mahāprajñāpāramitā'' meaning ''The Perfection of Great Wisdom'', is the second book of the

Shōbōgenzō is the title most commonly used to refer to the collection of works written in Japan by the 13th century Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō Zen school, Eihei Dōgen. Several other works exist with the same title (see above), and it is som ...

by the 13th century Sōtō Zen monk Eihei Dōgen. It is the second book in not only the original 60 and 75 fascicle versions of the text, but also the later 95 fascicle compilations. It was written in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

in the summer of 1233, the first year that Dōgen began occupying the temple that what would soon become

Kōshōhōrin-ji ''Kōshōhōrin-ji'' (), more commonly known by its abbreviated name ''Kōshō-ji'' () and sometimes by its full formal name ''Kannondori Kōshōhōrin-ji'' (), was the first independent zen temple in Japan. While Kennin-ji was established in 1202 ...

. As the title suggests, this chapter lays out Dōgen's interpretation of the ''Mahaprajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sūtra'', or ''Heart Sutra'', so called because it is supposed to represent the heart of the 600 volumes of the '' Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra''. The ''Heart Sutra'' focuses on the Buddhist concept of prajñā, or wisdom, which indicates not

conventional wisdom The conventional wisdom or received opinion is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field. In religion, this is known as orthodoxy. Etymology The term is often credited to the economist John K ...

, but rather wisdom regarding the

emptiness Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy. Feelings of emptiness often accompany dysthymia, depression (mood), depression, loneliness, anhedonia, wiktionary:despair, despair, or other mental/em ...

of all

phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

. As Dōgen argues in this chapter, prajñā is identical to the practice of

zazen ''Zazen'' (literally " seated meditation"; ja, 座禅; , pronounced ) is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. However, the term is a general one not unique to Zen, and thus technicall ...

, not a way of thinking.

Allusions to other works

The Heart Sutra, seen here in a 12th-century manuscript, is the subject of Dōgen's essay and is heavily referenced Although Dōgen's writing usually references other Buddhist works with heavy frequency, ''Maka hannya haramitsu'' only references the Heart Sutra, the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, and a poem about a wind bell by his teacher, Tiantong Rujing. The poem is from ''Record of the Words of Master Rujing'' and is as follows:

The whole body is like a mouth hanging in empty space. Not questioning the winds from east, west, south, or north, Equally all of them, speaking of prajñā: Ding-dong-a-ling ding-dong.

According to Shohaku Okumura, the wind bell or hanging mouth represents ourselves while the winds represent all of the different circumstances that can face us. Regardless of what comes our way, we need not discriminate. When we view the world without discrimination, we express prajñā and see the reality of life. The last line is an

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

for the sound the bell makes, representing the expression of prajñā, wisdom of reality itself, as well as the

interdependence Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its struc ...

of all things.

Translations

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maka hannya haramitsu Soto Zen Zen texts