Sariputra falls into ecstasy in the presence of his beloved God and sings this hymn to the supreme gender-free feminine wisdom. The perfection of wisdom shines forth as a sublime light, O Buddha Nature. I sing this spontaneous hymn of light to praise Mother Prajnaparamita, She is worthy of infinite praise. She is utterly unstained because nothing in this insubstantial world can possibly stain her. She is an ever-flowing fountain of incomparable light. And from every conscious being on every plane, she removes the faintest trace of illusory darkness. She leads living beings into her clear light from the blindness and obscurity. caused by moral and spiritual impurity as well as by partial or distorted views of reality.

[02:18]

In her alone can we find true refuge. Sublime and excellent are her revelations through all persons of wisdom. She inspires and guides us to seek the safety and certainty of the bright wings of enlightenment. She pours forth her nectar of healing light to those who have made themselves appear blind. She provides the illumination through which all fear and despair can be utterly renounced. She manifests the five mystic eyes of wisdom, the vision and penetration of each one more exalted than the last. She clearly and constantly points out the path of wisdom to every conscious being, with the direct pointing that is her transmission and empowerment. She is an infinite eye of wisdom. She dissipates entirely the mental bloom of delusion. She does not manipulate any structures of relativity.

[03:23]

Simply by shining spontaneously, she guides to the spiritual path whatever beings have wandered into dangerous, negative, self-centered ways. Mother Prajnaparamita is total awakeness. She never substantially creates any limited structure because she experiences none of the tendencies of living beings to grasp, project, or conceptualize. Neither does she substantially dismantle or destroy any limited structure, for she encounters no solid limits. She is the perfect wisdom which never comes into being and therefore never goes out of She is known as the Great Mother by those spiritually mature beings who dedicate their mind streams to the liberation and full enlightenment of all that lives. She is not marked by fundamental characteristics. This absence of characteristics is her transcendent mystic motherhood, the radiant blackness of her womb.

[04:30]

She is the universal benefactress, who presents as a sublime offering to truth the limitless jewel of all Buddha qualities, the miraculous gem which generates the ten inconceivable powers of a Buddha to elevate living beings into consciousness of their innate Buddha nature. She can never be defeated in any way on any level. She lovingly protects vulnerable conscious beings who cannot protect themselves, gradually generating in them unshakable fearlessness and diamond confidence. She is the perfect antidote to the poisonous view which affirms the cycle of birth and death to be a substantial reality. She is the clear knowledge of the open and transparent mode of being shared by all relative structures and events. Her transcendent knowing never wavers. She is the perfect wisdom who gives birthless birth to all Buddhas.

[05:35]

And through these sublimely awakened ones, it is Mother Prajnaparamita alone who turns the wheel of true teaching. So we take the to the point where I think that Tara mantra might be the very best access to her, even though in her text she offers the gate gate pargate parasamgate as the mantra of all mantras. Let's consider what the Mahaprashna Paramita Sutra says about about the motherhood of Prajnaparamita. I say gender-free because all circumscriptions are taken away by Prajnaparamita, including gender.

[06:46]

But they function. Lord Buddha speaks. Consider a mother who has many children, not just five or 10 self-centered ones, but a thousand enlightened children totally devoted to her. If she were to become infirm, they would commit themselves to caring for her with great love and intensity, aware that they owe their very existence to her. With selfless sacrifice and intense labor, she brought them into the world. During their childhood, she carefully and wisely instructed them about the nature of human existence, its joys and dangers, its goal and the path to that goal. How sensitively they would care for her, providing every condition that might make her happy, protecting her and lavishing tenderness upon her,

[07:59]

imbued with the longing that she should be free from any pain or discomfort coming from her own body or caused by stinging insects, human intruders, demonic spirits, or physical mishaps. Thus would enlightened children naturally honor and serve their beloved mother. In a similar way do the Tathagatas, the ones who have disappeared into reality, the thousand Buddhas of this eon, reverently regard their mother, Prajnaparamita, keeping her constantly in heart and mind, longing only to serve her and facilitate her wishes. This devoted connection with the wisdom mother generates the waves of blessing that enable those on the path of universal conscious enlightenment to venerate, memorize, study, chant, copy and transmit the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Not only Tathagatas from this billion world system, but fully awakened ones who dwell in other universes as well constantly express the perfection of wisdom through body, speech, and mind, thereby generating happiness and fulfillment for countless living beings.

[09:11]

They remain aflame with intense compassion for the illusory suffering of all limited forms of consciousness, heavenly, subtle, and earthly beings on all levels of awareness. Buddhas without number exercise superhuman efforts so that the perfection of wisdom can remain culturally available and spiritually accessible, never becoming obscured or forgotten. These conquerors exercise all Buddha skills so that Mara and the forces of egocentric negativity will not impede perfect wisdom from being widely disseminated, authentically transmitted and carefully practiced. Unthinkably deep is the loving commitment of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to Mother Prajnaparamita, cherishing her, protecting her, and receiving her protection. She is their true nature, matrix, guide, power, and bliss.

[10:14]

She alone has revealed unobstructed and spontaneous omniscience to them as total awakeness. She has patiently instructed them to deal skillfully with the empty, transparent nature of existence, tenderly awakening all living beings from the dream of individuality, substantiality, and separation. From her compassion and wisdom alone have the Tathagatas miraculously come forth. She alone shows them the world as it really is. The pure presence of the awakened ones comes from her and is simply her plenitude. All Buddhas from the beginningless past, from the infinite dimensions of the present, and from the inconceivable expanse of the future, reach full enlightenment thanks to their one universal wisdom mother. The atmosphere here is so beautiful that one just feels like reading the sutra.

[11:40]

The sutra is the... Of course, the body, speech, and mind of Buddha are inseparable, indivisible, but this sutra is the mind, is the Buddha mind, and therefore, such a precious thing. I was talking with Sun Tsan Nim yesterday or a few days ago in Los Angeles and I was saying that certainly Zen is a transmission outside of the sutras but it's also inside the sutras because it's everywhere. And he said to me, well, Buddha never opened his mouth. I said, yes, but the sutra just flowed through his pores. We're having the essence of a Buddha mind in the Sutra and that's why it's so precious. I have something a little bit more challenging.

[12:58]

This is a selection, these are 40 selections from the sutra, from Prashna Paramita Sutra in 8,000 lines. And this is a selection entitled, Mirror Image of Pure Presence. And we'll hear the master Subhuti manifesting his brilliant form of realization. Jayaputra has a tender realization. and we're reminded that there are infinite types and kinds of full realization. Realization never repeats itself. Subhuti. This radical teaching of truth is openly presented as a non-teaching. Therefore, nothing can obstruct this teaching. which is all-embracing and ungraspable as space, no trace of which can ever be found, crystallized, isolated, divided, tested, or analyzed.

[14:10]

This teaching of truth is not related to any other teachings because it does not preserve the concept of otherness, nor does it encounter any adversarial positions because it does not proclaim any principle of opposition. It is a traceless teaching because it is utterly spontaneous, not brought into being by various causes or influences. This teaching has never been taught or displayed in any way because it does not accept as substantial any coming into being or going out of being. It is a non-teaching without any path to its realization because no separate mode of access is recognized to exist inherently. who is the sovereign of the 33 heaven and who is an aspirant to perfect wisdom, remarks, a precise mirror reflection of the awakened one is this perfect disciple, the holy sage Subhuti. For whenever he demonstrates truth, he begins, moves, and concludes in the absolute transparency called non-self-existence.

[15:21]

Subhuti answers, difficult to even praise Subhuti, much less question him. Even if you praise him, he will respond with a revolutionary, in a very revolutionary way, Subhuti. Only because the one now speaking has never been born does he manifest as an utterly insubstantial mirror image of the Tathagata. the awakened enlightenment that just is. The one now speaking is simply an image of the pure presence into which the Tathagata has disappeared. Neither arriving from anywhere, abiding anywhere, nor going anywhere, neither evolving, continuing, devolving, or dissolving, is the pure presence, which is the essence of the Tathagata, and of Subhuti as well.

[16:24]

There has never been a time in which the loyal disciple Subhuti has not been an image of the pure presence or suchness of the Tathagata. Why? Because the suchness of the Tathagata, the one who has disappeared by awakening as reality, is the very same as the suchness of all possible structures of relativity. So the pure presence of Subhuti, the elder, is universal pure presence. Born without birth, as a mirror image of pure presence is Subhuti. Born only as the mirror image of ever-perfect Buddhahood is the one now speaking. Suchness is not substantial in any sense. Only as a mirror image of ontologically transparent or insubstantial suchness has Subhuti spontaneously risen without beginning. This is the only sense in which the one now speaking can be said to manifest as a living image of Lord Buddha, who is the pure presence of a transparent, selfless awakeness, which is absolutely insubstantial, yet functions coherently as a relative body, speech, and mind.

[17:37]

This suchness called subhuti is not some self-existence which changes or transforms in any way, nor can it be discriminated or differentiated as any separate mind stream which changes or remains the same. Precisely the same is true of the Tathāgata. Thus it can be said that the unidentifiable subhūti, now speaking, is simply indivisible, undifferentiated suchness, and is therefore a living image of universal Buddha nature. Just as the pure presence of the Tathāgata, which never transforms or divides, does not encounter any obstruction, barrier, or frontier. So it is with the pure presence of all phenomena, which never transforms by dividing or multiplying in any way, and which never experiences any contact or encounter. The transparent suchness of Buddha and the transparent suchness of all phenomena are simply suchness, not divided or divisible, not multiple, not even single.

[18:44]

This pure presence without any second reality or sub-reality is not located anywhere, nor does it come from anywhere, nor does it belong anywhere, much less is it going anywhere or evolving in any way. It is precisely because this pure presence does not belong anywhere that it is total and simple. Just by being awake as unconstructed presence, Buddha nature. An unconstructed presence never put together or taken apart is at no time not present. It is ever-perfect, ever-present simplicity. This is why the present speaker is a living image of the universal Buddhahood of all conscious beings. At all times and timelessly, suchness remains without substantial structure and therefore without essential description. although it appears effortlessly as Subhuti, as Shakyamuni Buddha, and as all phenomena.

[19:50]

Although there may seem to be two beings, that is, Subhuti the disciple, as a separate image of Buddha is mastered, nothing has been broken away from the original Buddha Presence, which can now be called the image of Subhuti, because pure Presence remains unbroken and unbreakable. There is no substantial agent apart from suchness which could break or divide it into two, or which could reflect suchness by functioning as a separate mirror or perceiver. In this divisionless sense alone can Subhuti be said to be a living image of universal Buddha nature. The pure presence of the Tathagata does not exist somewhere else, outside or beyond the pure presence of all phenomena. The same can be said about the pure presence of the one who is now speaking. Since the suchness of Buddhahood is not outside or beyond any phenomenon, there is no phenomenon that is not Buddhahood. The simple suchness of subhuti is therefore precisely the same as the suchness of all the structures of relativity and all the awakened ones.

[21:00]

The present speaker knows directly the pure presence of all structures and processes, by reflecting it spontaneously in the unchanging and insubstantial mirror of his own pure presence. But no reflection takes place in a mode of separation. It is therefore only in a processless, imageless, inseparable sense that Subhuti is a mirror reflection of the Tathagata. Why? Because the pure presence of the Tathagata is neither past nor future, nor is it to be found in the false abstraction called present time. Exactly thus is the suchness of all phenomena. So Sabuti could just as easily be called the timeless mirror image of all phenomena, not just the reflection of his master. However, only through the pure presence of Shakyamuni Buddha does Sabuti actually awaken to his own pure presence as being simply that of all phenomena. Only through the total simplicity

[22:03]

or suchness of his great Master, does Subhuti awaken to the total simplicity of all manifestation in the past, future and present. But Subhuti now recognizes no essential distinction whatsoever between the pure presence of the Master and the pure presence of the disciple. Within the all-embracing simplicity of reality, there is no distinction or division between the pure presence of Subhuti the pure presence of Śākyamuni Buddha, and the pure presence of all phenomena. The suchness of Śākyamuni, while he is strenuously, strenuously sacrificing his energy for others during five hundred preparatory lifetimes as a Bodhisattva, is precisely the suchness of Śākyamuni when he attains full enlightenment, sitting perfectly at ease beneath the Bodhi tree, now manifest as Lord Buddha. This inexhaustible suchness alone constitutes the Buddha nature of all conscious beings. As this incomparable demonstration of pure presence shines forth in the miraculously unified awareness of Subhuti, King Chakra, and the assembled denizens of the 33 heaven, the universe quakes in all six dimensions.

[23:19]

Scary place to mention about the universe quaking. The universe quakes in all six dimensions of its being, trembling and rumbling melodiously with ecstasy, precisely as it did when Shakyamuni Buddha attained complete enlightenment." Subhuti concludes, "'It is only in this way, O heavenly beings who seek truth, that the one now speaking can be said to be a living mirror image of the Tathāgata. But the present speaker is not the reflection of any holy form, nor of any stage of contemplative attainment, ranging from wholeheartedly entering the path to tasting the fullest fruition of the path. For no holy forms or attainments, external or internal, actually possess the slightest substantial self-existence, nor can they be grasped or objectified in any way. Only in this uncrystallizable sense can Subhuti be called a mirror image of universal Buddha nature."

[24:25]

exclaims, O Lord Buddha, according to this brilliant exposition by the elder Subhuti, pure presence constitutes the unspeakable, unthinkable depth of the teaching. Lord Buddha replies, indeed it does, Sariputra. As this totally effective demonstration of suchness shines forth with great initiatory power in the Buddha's radiant assembly, The well-prepared minds of 300 holy monks are liberated from all notions of gain or loss and from every conceivable form of grasping or clinging. 500 well-prepared holy nuns blissfully open the pure, dispassionate, and perfectly unstained eye that perceives truth alone. 5,000 exalted heavenly beings who have trained in Prajnaparamita during previous precious human lifetimes now awaken to the transcendent patience which lovingly accepts and embraces all structures of relativity, knowing that no structures have ever substantially come into being.

[25:35]

And the profoundly compassionate minds of 6,000 male and 6,000 female Bodhisattvas are suddenly released into the astonishing delight and freedom of perfect wisdom. I thought we would invoke her together with Tara Mantra. Please join me. Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha. [...]

[26:39]

Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha. OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SVAHA [...] Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha. Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha. Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha. Om Tare Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha. Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha. Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha.

[27:43]

Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Svaha. [...] OM TARE TU TARE TURE SVAHA OM TARE TU TARE TURE SVAHA Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Spaha.

[28:57]

Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Spaha. [...] OM TARE TUT TARE TURE SVAHA Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha Om Tare Tuttare Ture Tvaha.

[30:08]

Om Tare Tuttare Tureshwaha Om Tare Tuttare Tureshwaha I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. So is it time for a question?

[31:46]

Yes? You talked about a gender-free principle, but also feminine. Gender-free feminine? Yes. Can you say more about that? I wish I could. The tradition takes the feminine nature of Prajnaparamita very seriously, so we should continue to take it seriously. But the principle of Prajnaparamita itself removes all circumscribed characteristics. Therefore, it can't be a question of gender, although Prashantha Parpita functions as gender, just like she functions as everything. So, in that sense, gender questions are very important to clarify, to penetrate. But when it comes to this mother, to this womb, it's not feminine or masculine. the Tara Mantra being, as many of you I'm sure know, the wonderful lore about Tara in many previous eons ago when she was a human woman.

[33:09]

Because we only attain Buddhahood from this platform of the human birth. She made a vow to attain Buddhahood without ever taking a male incarnation. Kind of a consonant with some of the us would be proud of her. And she attained Buddhahood and became the Buddha of Torah. Any other? Yes? Would you say more about Buddha never opening his mouth? You'd better have to ask Suntanim about that. What do you think? where this teaching has never been displayed in any way, has never been taught in any way, because it doesn't accept any independent person who speaks or any independent person who listens.

[34:20]

That's what he means by the Buddha never opened his mouth. But then, when I responded, but the sutras like his fragrance, it means that there is a teaching. This is a teaching that is a non-teaching. This teaching is presented as a non-teaching in the sutra, but that doesn't mean that it is a teaching. It is a non-teaching. That's why we don't just and we have taishos and things like that. And that's why the universe isn't silent. That's why all phenomena are teaching. So Subhuti said that the Buddha nature is that all phenomena are a perfect, insubstantial, non-separate, mirror image of Buddha nature.

[35:25]

So all phenomena are the sutra. The sutras written originally in Sanskrit or Pali and translated into all the beautiful languages of the world are just the cream, let's say, of the milk of the sutra of all phenomena. Thank you for asking me this. I never had that thought before. I never expressed that before. That's the creativity of a place like this, where spontaneous wisdom has arrived. As you say, there are a lot of practices, the silence of the taisho and our own practices. And when we chant, as we just did, the Tara chant, can you say something about how we practice that chanting practice and why? I'm glad you asked that. I'm glad you asked that. So usually,

[36:28]

It seems to me that Zen, as little as I know it, I'm a student myself, I'm a Bernard Tetsukin Glassman sensei. He says he's going to make me a sensei soon, but that remains to be seen. Zen is practicing the body of the Buddha, mostly. Of course, body, speech, and mind of the Buddha are inseparable, but there's an emphasis on the body of the Buddha. The chanting is the speech of the Buddha. and the sutra, and that would include chanting the sutra, but the sutra as something that one understands and clearly investigates, is the mind of the Buddha. Of course, in all practices, in all moments, we should be unifying body practice and speech practice and mind practice, but the The sutra is the mind of the Buddha.

[37:33]

Prajnaparamita is the way the Buddha's mind is operating. So when one chants Tara mantra, I think the body practice would be to visualize one's body as Tara, as the Buddha Tara, or not to visualize it, but to feel it. experience it. This is wonderful. Let's talk in a gender sense for a moment. It's wonderful for women to finally be visualizing their own female body as the Buddha body, after much concentration on a Buddha body being at least biologically male. It's also very, very good for men to be visualizing what they conventionally perceive always as a male body, as a female body. And so she's intensely vibrant and she's a beautiful color green, the kind of color that if you will see a mountain stream that's got ice over it, but with water flowing underneath at certain times, the ice turns a certain kind of green.

[38:39]

That's the color of Tara. And then the speech would be the mantra itself. pervading all of space and time, penetrating all illusory barriers and dissolving them. And then the mind would be this wonderful teachingless teaching. and all the teachings that one receives in the sutra. It doesn't mean one has to be reviewing those teachings in a discursive sense, but one should be in touch with the way that the Prajnaparamita looks at the world, which is beautifully expressed in the Heart Sutra that you all cherish so much. The Heart Sutra is, first of all, as a chanting practice, it's a practice of the speech of the Buddha.

[39:53]

But as a mind practice, the little Prajnaparamita Sutra is calling us into the greater Prajnaparamitas, the one in 8,000 lines, the one in 18,000 lines, the one in 25,000 lines, and the one in 100,000 lines. It's calling one forth. And it's sort of like, in that sense, the Heart Sutra is this beautiful threshold, this door opening, and too often we're just sitting on the threshold. Why don't we just go in to this vast Prajnaparamita literature and be immeasurably enriched by it, as I think you can see just in some of the selections I've read this morning. So that when we're chanting Tara mantra, we should be practicing the body of Tara and the speech of Tara and the mind of Tara. correctly, like the color of a Buddha, for example green, when the sutra itself indicates that the ultimate reality is without its characteristics.

[41:22]

Yeah, I think that It's a reasonable question, but ordinary reasoning is not the criterion of perfect wisdom. So as I understand the Heart Sutra, it says that formlessness is form. So what would be the problem of describing the form of a Buddha, or the color of a Buddha? But some place in the chanting this morning, it says something about something that's far beyond formlessness and form. Is there a phrase like that that we chanted this morning? Far beyond formlessness and form. So that's really the correct point of view. So that since the nature of reality is far beyond having characteristics and not having characteristics,

[42:24]

then we can easily move through the experience of having characteristics and not having characteristics. We can fluidly experience both because the reality is beyond both. Something like that. I thought I would conclude with reading the version of the Heart Sutra which I have here in the appendix. There's a little third chapter which is called Practice. There's a couple of poems of enlightenment from different Buddhist traditions. There's a version of the Heart Sutra which is not a chantable version. It's more an expanded version, which came into being after my years of working on the Sutra. So I might conclude that way. Is it about time to conclude? It's 635.

[43:26]

So we will conclude at 645. Any other? We have a few more minutes here. Any more questions before we conclude? Yeah. Yes, everything being subject to cause and conditions. But when you see what I call the ontological transparency of causes and conditions, that means that they don't have any substantial meaning, although they function.

[44:36]

So that like red light, the traffic stops, green light, it goes. They function that way, but when you realize that this is merely a convention, a functioning convention, but it has no substantiality behind it, it's not written in stone, as we say, then that that takes us into the unconditioned nature. So it's the unconditioned nature of conditions, the formless nature of forms. Presumably this is not something that bothers Zen people, but maybe it does. To be perfectly honest, maybe it does bother us. That's why we have to keep studying the sutra.

[45:40]

I think that's why I hope that people will get a copy of this book and study it, maybe read it every day, read a chapter every day or whatever, so that we're not just sitting at the threshold of the Heart Sutra and just getting a little lightning flash of this, but we're going into more expansive expressions of it. And again and again the Sutra is expressing the same fact from different directions. At first what sounds paradoxical gradually sounds perfectly natural. And maybe that's also the way Cohen's study goes to some extent, that as long as it's paradoxical and you're kind of reaching for some amazing explanation of it that will somehow explain the paradox, then you have to keep working. But if it seems to be perfectly natural, then there's a kind of spiritual maturing that's going on.

[46:45]

Another question. I saw you at the Bodhi Tree, didn't I? This woman with the Serapion? No, I wish I were. No, I don't mean the Bodhi Tree in India. I meant the Bodhi Tree bookshop in Los Angeles. I saw someone who could be your sister then. So shall we read the Heart Sutra again in a new light? This is the Heart Sutra as it's enriched by the study of the full sutra and the kind of implications that the whole sutra contains. But of course this is not, as you'll soon see, it's not a chantable form of it. If we were to chant it in Japanese or in or Chinese or Vietnamese or English, it has to be a pared-down form.

[47:49]

But this is the... This is a mind version of it. The humble Lord of Enlightenment is seated at the center of His radiant assembly of monks, single and married practitioners of perfect wisdom and celestial beings. Suddenly, Lord Buddha enters the astonishingly profound concentration on Prajnaparamita, in which every single structure of relativity shines clearly and distinctly. This particular concentration is known as the Samadhi of Deep Light. To the right of the Golden Buddha, the sublime form of Avalokiteshvara, embodiment of enlightened compassion, now manifests like a brilliant white cloud shining in the sunlight. Avalokiteshvara is also spontaneously engaged in the profound practice of Prajnaparamita, clearly experiencing the insubstantiality and transparency of the five constituents of personal and communal awareness, including material forms and conscious states.

[49:02]

Sariputra. O Sublime Avalokiteshvara, As I inquire only through the power of Buddha nature, so may you reply through the same transcendent power. How should a son or daughter of the Buddha family proceed in order to study truly and to practice powerfully the unthinkable depth of perfect wisdom?" And Avalokiteshvara answers, O noble Sariputra, a beloved son or daughter of the wisdom lineage who longs to awaken to the depth of unthinkability, should proceed this way. All material forms and all conscious states are to be known as absolutely selfless, without separate identity, luminously pure. The processes of personal awareness do not need to be purified. They are ontologically transparent or perfectly pure by their very nature.

[50:07]

all the apparently complex forms of functional interdependence remain utterly simple, indivisible, pristine, open, and free. Universal transparency is what manifests as both form and consciousness. Material forms are empty of the slightest substantial self-existence, and luminous emptiness of self-existence is precisely what manifests as material forms. In the same way, conscious states are empty of the slightest independent self-existence, and luminous emptiness of self-existence is precisely what is manifest as conscious states. O Shariputra, all structures of relativity without exception are empty of inherent self-existence, free from characteristic marks or limits, never created and therefore never destroyed, transparently pure, untouched by any conventional notion of imperfection, never increasing or diminishing.

[51:09]

O Shariputra, in the light of Prajnaparamita, ontological transparency alone reigns, free from substantial material forms and from independently existing conscious states. Interdependency functions harmoniously and unerringly without any need for self-existing form, perception, conception, or separate awareness of whatever description, without substantial eyes, ears, nose, tongue, nervous system, or mind. The profoundly significant karmic careers of all beloved conscious beings unfold coherently, without any need for separate subject or object. without subjective or objective sound, smell, taste, or touch, and without any substantial, subjective, or objective structures, either particular or general. O Shariputra, reality is never veiled or crystallized by primordial ignorance, and so there is no moment of illumination when veils or constructs are removed and ignorance ceases.

[52:17]

There is no time at which total awakeness grows old or dies, And so there is no moment of liberation when the functioning of aging and dying is overcome. There is no substantial need for the drive to attain liberation, for there is no substantial bondage. O Shariputra, in precisely this sense, there can be no independent self-existence of what conscious beings conceptually and perceptually project as pervasive suffering. Even the notions developed by contemplative science about the inevitable arising of universal suffering, its ultimate cessation, and the spiritual disciplines conducive to its cessation, even these venerable teachings are relative or conventional. Since there is no separate moment of attaining wisdom, there is no time when perfect wisdom has not been attained. The uncompromising light of Prajnaparamita even reveals that there is never any independently existing perfect wisdom in the first place.

[53:21]

O Śāriputra, bodhisattvas never generate any awareness of intermediate attainment or of reaching some supreme spiritual goal. They abide in abodelessness, standing their ground within the groundlessness of perfect wisdom. Their entire sensibility or mindstream is free from the slightest obscuration, free from the faintest trace of separate subjects or objects, and free as well from the root anxiety that arises inevitably from the instinctive notions of objectivity and subjectivity. These fantastic notions and other false assumptions upon which the conventional world claims to be founded simply evaporate in the blazing light of Prajnaparamita. the entire complex of cyclical sorrow becomes transparent. O Shariputra, the fully awakened Buddhas of the beginningless past, the open future, and the limitless dimensions of the present can manifest the total awakeness of Buddha nature only by birthless birth from Mother Prajnaparamita, the womb of perfect wisdom.

[54:34]

O Shariputra, listen carefully to these syllabic sounds which contain the entire perfection of wisdom as a vast tree is miraculously contained within a small seed. This is the mantra which awakens every conscious dream into pure presence. This is the mantra of all mantras, the mantra which transmits the principles of incomparability and inconceivability, the mantra which instantly dissipates the apparent darkness of egocentric misery, the mantra which invokes only truth and does not acknowledge the separate self-existence of any falsehood. Tadhyatā gāte gāte, paragate parasaṅgate bodhi-svaha. Pure presence is transcending, ever-transcending, transcending transcendence, transcending even the transcendence of transcendence. It is total awakeness. It is suchness.

[55:35]

During the pregnant silence, which follows this amazing discourse and miraculous mantric transmission of the full power of perfect wisdom, Lord Buddha comes forth from his blissful absorption and addresses Avalokiteshvara. Lord Buddha, beautifully expressed and impeccably transmitted, O sublime celestial Bodhisattva, a son or daughter of the Buddha family, should enter the unthinkable depth of Prajnaparamita in precisely the way you have indicated. The voice of awakened enlightenment rings out with such perfect clarity that members of this and every other Buddha assembly, as well as conscious beings in all world systems, are plunged immediately into the peace of universal transparency and the ecstasy of universal praise.

[56:35]

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