''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 Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai school, Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Caodong school, Cáodòng school, which was founded during the ...

Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

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 ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

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. History The term "conventional wisdom" dates back to at least 1838, as a synonym for "commonplace kno ...

, but rather wisdom regarding the

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

of all

phenomena A phenomenon ( phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable Event (philosophy), event. The term came into its modern Philosophy, philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be ...

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

zazen ''Zazen'' is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. The generalized Japanese term for meditation is 瞑想 (''meisō''); however, ''zazen'' has been used informally to include all forms ...

, 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 Tiāntóng Rújìng (天童如淨; Japanese: Tendō Nyojō) (1163–1228) was a Caodong Buddhist monk living in Jìngdé Temple (景徳寺; Japanese: Keitoku-ji) on Tiāntóng Mountain (天童山; Japanese: Tendōzan) in Yinzhou District, Ningbo. ...

. 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 (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

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

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

of all things.

Translations

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maka hannya haramitsu Soto Zen Zen texts