Could This Ancient Mantra Open a Portal to Pure Joy? | Susan Piver

Unlock profound joy through the paradoxical wisdom of the Heart Sutra, one of Buddhism's most revered ancient texts. Join bestselling author Susan Piver as she shares over 30 years of insight into this enigmatic scripture's teachings on emptiness, impermanence, and the art of letting go - revealed through her powerful encounters like a 95-year-old calligraphy master. Hear how chanting the Heart Sutra and her book "Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra https://amzn.to/4l36n2o" can open you to an awakened presence amid life's ceaseless change. You can find Susan at: Website https://openheartproject.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/susan.piver/ | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/emptiness-impermanence-non-clinging-susan-piver If you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Tara Brach https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL19zRHduZVgtOU05Q01YdXlOajRIOFhZWDVtLV9TazFnRVdYTUF5NWhRY3M about making peace with the truth about our lives. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So have you ever felt a sort of an inexplicable pull towards something sacred or mystical, even if you didn't fully understand it, or didn't really consider yourself mystical or spiritual? A kind of a magnetic draw that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the thinking mind? Today's conversation with my dear friend and sometimes collaborator, Susan Piver, is going to open that impulse, that feeling, that curiosity, wide open. So for over three decades, Susan has been exploring and chanting the Enigmatic Heart Sutra, one of Buddhism's most revered and paradoxical texts. And in this rich conversation, she's going to initiate us into the sutra's profound teachings

• 0:42Jonathan Fields?

  on emptiness and permanence, and the joy of letting go of concepts entirely. Susan is a New York Times bestselling author, Buddhist teacher, and founder of the Open Heart Project. Her latest book is Inexplicable Joy on the Heart Sutra. And she has this just unique ability to make ancient wisdom feel alive and relevant to our modern lives. In today's conversation, Susan shares her surprising encounter with a 95-year-old Japanese calligraphy master that revealed the Heart Sutra's ultimate message in a way that she never saw coming, and how synchronistic experiences seem to affirm this insight of finding joy through radical non-clinging.

• 1:24Jonathan Fields?

  So whether you're a longtime meditator, or curious about a grounded sense of mysticism or spirituality, or just new to these ideas, it's time to have your perspective upended a bit in a truly delightful and insightful way. Susan's teachings point towards just living with an open, awake presence that doesn't resist life's ceaseless chains. And we could all use more of that now. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

• 1:58Speaker 01

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• 2:25Speaker 02

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• 3:47Jonathan Fields?

  Susan Piver. It is always great to be hanging out with you, dear friend, frequent collaborator, and thought partner, feel partner, person who I turn to for spiritually oriented yet practically grounded questions about life, about relationships, about work, about everything.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Jonathan, you're in trouble now, boy.

• 4:10Jonathan Fields?

  Setting expectations really high right there.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  But I'm so happy to see you. And I'm always happy to talk with you, always, always.

• 4:17Jonathan Fields?

  Me as well. We're going to spend some time diving into this thing that roughly translates as the Heart Sutra today. And this is something that from what you've shared, you have been exploring, you have been chanting for something like thirty years now. What I want to drop into eventually is what exactly is this thing? And why should we care in the context of our daily lives? But I also want to know, when you say yes to actually exploring something, to chanting it, to deepening into it for three decades, what was the inciting incident that was so different, so unusual, so impactful for you?

• 4:57Jonathan Fields?

  That led you to say, oh, this is something I need to dive into and not stop?

• 5:03Speaker 04

  For me, the spiritual journey and how one determines next steps, how I determine next steps, always seems to be not a result of a decision that I make, oh, this sounds smart, or this sounds good, someone told me I should do it. But to see what drops into my world and to start responding to it. That's what seems to be the most trustworthy way of making decisions on the spiritual journey, at least for myself. And this is how I connected with the Heart Sutra. I, thirty-five years ago, through great circumstance, I found someone who was willing to teach me how to meditate, who was really overqualified to teach me how to meditate. A longtime practitioner, a deep practitioner, for some reason said, yeah, come over to my house, I'll teach you how to meditate.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  And this was, again, thirty-five or more years ago. So it was still kind of like, am I joining a cult? Or what's going on here? Who is this dude? But I went to his house, he had a beautiful shrine. I'd never seen a Buddhist shrine before. And we talked a little bit about meditation and what it is and my motivation and so on. And then we sat down in front of the shrine and he said, well, before we sit, let's just say this together. And he handed me a piece of paper with some words on both sides. He said, you won't be able to pronounce some of them. That's okay, just skip the words you can't pronounce. Let's say this and then I'll teach you how to meditate. And it was the Heart Sutra. So I received the Heart Sutra before I ever even learned how to meditate.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  And while I was doing it, I was like, why am I saying this? Who's Avalokiteshvara? Where's Rajagriha? Just these things I'd never heard of. Fast forward thirty-plus years, it is the center of my practice, I would say. It is an ever-deepening relationship with an inexplicable text.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  And it was the seed syllable for my whole journey. And I didn't know that, of course, at the time. But again, spiritual meaning seems to be viewable only in retrospect. You don't see it when it's happening. And when I look back, I see that this was really happening from Jump Street, from the moment I began to practice. This was my companion.

• 7:14Jonathan Fields?

  What was it about that first experience with it that made it so?

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Nothing. I did not feel like any sense of connection to it. I didn't understand it. I guess what made me stay with it was I trusted the person that taught me to meditate. And then he invited me and other people, maybe not right away, but a year or two later, to go on a weekend retreat with him and maybe just five other people to study this Heart Sutra, this version that we chant together, which was a page and a half. And that's when it really started to become deeply meaningful. Not even to chant it a lot or to talk about what this word means

• 7:58Speaker 04

  or that word means, but to feel it take root in my practice and in my mind. I just noticed that that was happening. And again, what you notice is happening on the spiritual path is almost always more trustworthy than what you decide should be happening.

• 8:17Jonathan Fields?

  Good lesson for life more broadly, too. Okay, so let me ask the big, unanswerable question then. What is the Heart Sutra?

• 8:27Speaker 04

  It's big and it's unanswerable. Just for a little historic context, the Heart Sutra, or Prajna Paramita Sutra, in Sanskrit, is revered text throughout the Buddhist world. It is central to the Zen tradition. It's very important in the Tibetan or Vajrayana traditions that I've been trained in. If we were to turn up the volume on everybody who is chanting the Heart Sutra right now, it would be deafening. It's very revered, I would say is an accurate word. And Prajna means wisdom and Paramita means transcendent. So it is the transcendent wisdom sutra.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  So that's point one. The full text of the Heart Sutra is something like 100,000 lines long. There's another version politely edited down to 8,000 lines. And this version that I've written about and that I have chanted every day is not 8,000 lines long, it's 43 lines long. And it is also notable that the entire Heart Sutra could be 100,000, it could be 8,000, it could be 43, it could be zero lines long and one syllable. And that syllable is "ah." If you think about, as I have, why? Why is that the one syllable? Ah.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  There's a sort of letting go, a dissolving out, a repositioning of your feeling of where you are, from inside yourself to outside yourself. Your attention flows out on the ahs, perhaps one reason why breath is so emphasized in meditation practices all over the world. So that's the brief idea of what it is. I'll also say that Prajnaparamita is also the name of a female deity. Her name is Prajnaparamita. And she is the deity of wisdom. Wisdom in the Buddhist tradition is associated with the feminine principle.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  And I'll just say this briefly and then take a beat. Wisdom is thought to be with space, empty space. Sometimes Buddhist people will say, talk about emptiness, and they're talking about wisdom. But the emptiness isn't void, it's rather the space of all possibility. Anything has arisen. So it's the space of complete possibility. So it's just as accurate to call it fullness. And it explains perhaps a little bit why it's associated with the feminine principle. It's womb-like. It can give birth to anything. But it self, it itself.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Is empty of separate nature. It's a lot of Buddhist talk right there. I'll just tell you that.

• 11:25Jonathan Fields?

  I know, and we're gonna dive a lot more into it because in a couple of minutes, I'm gonna ask you to actually share that forty-three line version with us, and then we'll dip into it a little bit more and also explore why maybe it's not the greatest idea to try and deconstruct it at the same time. I wanna actually ask about the word sutra. This is a word that I heard for the first time many years ago, roughly translated, like actually, what is a sutra?

• 11:51Speaker 04

  I'll have to look up what the actual word means, but it refers to the teachings given by the Buddha during his lifetime. There's the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra. There's many sutras that are about teachings. There are also texts that are called tantras, which don't have anything to do with sex. Tantra means thread, and these are teachings said to have been given by the Buddha after his lifetime. I cannot explain that. The sutras usually refer to the exoteric teachings and the tantras to the esoteric or mystical teachings. So when you're talking about a sutra, you're talking about something the Buddha actually said.

• 12:33Jonathan Fields?

  When I, back in, you know, in many past lives now, when I was in the world of yoga, and I learned Pitangali's Yoga Sutras. Different?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Different, uh huh. Not foreign, not disconnected, but predates Buddhism.

• 12:49Jonathan Fields?

  Okay, so we have this thing called the Heart Sutra. A hundred thousand lines, eight thousand lines, forty-three lines, one syllable. You've been doing it for three and a half decades. I'm gonna go back to the question, why?

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is the question. And it is not answerable in advance. It's only answerable as you do it. For example, analogy is you are a writer, among many things. And you may think, well, this is what I'm going to sit down to write. But then when you start writing, that's when you actually discover what to write about. And these texts, these chants are the same. You can study them all you want, but you're not going to have any idea what they are until you start doing them. And then they start to speak to you, not in a woo-woo way, but you develop a relationship with them. And it's similar to the magic on good days of writing, when you discover in the process. So why chant?

• 13:50Speaker 04

  I don't know. But you'll discover it in the process. The chant that you choose to do, should anyone choose to do any chant, which nobody has to do, will open up a dialogue between you and a pre-existing wisdom that you have no idea what it's saying, at least I have no idea. And I'll just tell you that I don't necessarily understand this, even though I did write a little book about it, anymore than I understood it the first time I did it, before I had any idea what any of the words meant. But my relationship to it continues to deepen. And spiritual teachings, again, just to make another broad overgeneralization, seem to occur not between your ears, but in the relational space, between you and something.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  So it's very important to choose some things that are magnetizing to you, a chant, a shrine object, a retreat, a teaching, because those things wake up your inner wisdom. It's not generated from your, I don't know what, thought processes, but from your relationship to what you think about. Does that make sense?

• 14:56Jonathan Fields?

  I think so. So then, it's something that you do, because in some way, it becomes magnetizing to you and delivers on the experience of waking up some kind of wisdom or insight within you, without you even necessarily deconstructing or understanding what it is, what the words mean, who wrote them, where they came from, like, what is the logical translation of? There's something about interacting. With the language itself, the recitation of it, that for some reason, something inside of you is magnetized towards. And when you engage with it, there's an awakening that happens.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  That sounds totally right.

• 15:37Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  I had two little

• 15:39Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  pieces to that. One is, I've been absurdly lucky to have actual teachers who are great. And they said, you should do this. So I'm like, okay, I trust you, I'm doing it. So when I do it, I deepen my connection to the lineage that I practice in. That means a lot to me. It's not just floating out in space. It's deepening my relationship and honoring a relationship. You're right that when you try to deconstruct it, it falls away. It doesn't get closer to you. The best analogy, I think, is like listening to a piece of music. I'm sure you've had the experience of you hear something on the radio or someone somewhere when you used to listen to the radio. And you're like, I don't like that or whatever.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  And then you hear it again, you're like, hmm. And then you hear it a third time, and then you want to hear it again. It somehow sounds different each time you listen to it. And then when you become familiar with it, it takes place. It takes a place in your heart, in your ear, heart, or wherever music lives. And your relationship to it, you can listen to a piece of music you love a lot, and you still love it. And you may hear something different, you may not. But it evokes something important. And the heart sutra, for example, can be understood in the same way music can be felt or heard. First way to understand the heart sutra is the words.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  But the meaning also comes through in the sound of the words. So just like music, even if you don't, even if you, if you listen to lyrics in a different language, you don't know what they mean, but they sound, they have a sound. And the third way the meaning comes through is in the environment in which it is all happening.

• 17:25Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  So I told this story in the book, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood here. And I had my headphones on and I had a Spotify playlist that just shuffled songs I like. And at one point, Chet Baker came on singing My Funny Valentine. It was just so mournful and reedy and beautiful. And I'm walking on this bike path and like, oh, the world is so pretty. And then the next song that came on was Jump Around by House of Pain.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Jump, jump. You know, it was like from the word to your mom era of, and the world really looked different. So that's a sense of words, sound of words, environment. And the heart sutra or whatever one might chant arises in those three forms as well.

• 18:11Jonathan Fields?

  That lands really powerfully with me. I mean, I think back to some of the music where if I can hear the first three notes, I know what it is. It transports me. It lets me time travel and it gives me an immediate feeling that I love, like just an, or maybe it's a sad feeling, but maybe it's a sad feeling that also is meaningful to me, or just a joyful blissed out feeling. And at the same time, often that may be like a soundtrack of my youth. And back then I never knew all the words. Now I still don't know all the words, but it still gives me the feeling. I'm still going to pretend I know all the words and garble along with it. You know? And even if I knew the words, it's very likely I would have no idea what they actually

• 18:56Jonathan Fields?

  meant or meant to the person who wrote them or the people who wrote them. And then that third point, if I listen to that, if I go to a concert, so I love Bruce Springsteen. I could just listen and listen and listen and I put on my headphones and walk around and I'm smiling, listening. Profoundly different experience than being, and I don't know, it's called something different now, like Metal Lands in New Jersey, like hearing Bruce, you know, in the East Street Band play for four hours, you know, with 60,000 people all around you. And still I don't know the words to a lot of the songs, but they move me so deeply. And then to actually experience them in communion with other people, it's magical.

• 19:38Jonathan Fields?

  Like your entire life, there's the Buddhist thread and there's the music thread also. And which I have to imagine aren't all that different in a lot of ways.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  To me, they aren't. And I love that analogy. And Bruce, if you're listening, call me.

• 19:53Jonathan Fields?

  Me too. Go on the podcast.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Okay, call Jonathan first. Thanks for listening. You Changed My Life is particularly Dancing in the Dark hit me in a moment in time long ago that caused me to take my whole life in a new direction. Another story. But that analogy of the song is the same, the words are the same, whatever they might be, the chord progressions are the same, Bruce's the same thing, goodness. But it's, I think, songs are living. They're living energies. You can't, first of all, you can't find them. They're not the ones and zeros. And you're living. And so it's a relationship. And it continues to deepen or become distant, or now you like each other, now you don't. But that's a great analogy. And music is

• 20:38Speaker 04

  not that different. In fact, for me, and not just for me, I'm sure, in many ways, music communicates spiritual truths in a deeper way than any words of any book. Because it's so immediate and so alive. And when you listen, you're present. You're present. You can't listen to some, to what you, the song that you, when you listen to it yesterday, you can't listen to it yesterday. You can only listen to it right now. So it pulls you into the present moment. And many people, I parenthetically will say, I'm not judging, but don't know how to listen. You don't know how to track this instrument, or feel

• 21:19Speaker 04

  that crescendo, or it's ambient, rather than something that you actually tune into and track. But when you do tune into and track, that's not different than meditating. I'm convinced.

• 21:31Jonathan Fields?

  No, I like that analogy. So you could look at a sutra, the Heart Sutra in particular, almost in that same, similar context. It's like, this is like a piece of music. It has all those similar qualities. You could literally look at the lyric sheet. Read through it, you could chant it, or hear it chant it, or be in a room where many people are chanting together. And even if you you read it and you look at the words and you're like, I don't quite get it. There's a transmission happening. There's a transmission of energy, of feeling, of sensory experience that in some way lands in your heart and your mind and affects you.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  That's so beautifully said. And transmission is exactly the right word. You're not explaining it. A transmission is different than an explanation. It bypasses something, bypasses certain mental processes, I guess, and it strikes you somewhere more visceral. And that's why we love Bruce. And that's why we love music. And even if you hear a song you love in a different language, at a different tempo, with maybe some slight, with different instruments, you still know what it is immediately. There's something beyond the words, beyond the chord progression, even beyond the tempo, that is the song. I don't know what it is, but it's recognizable.

• 22:52Jonathan Fields?

  And at the same time, oftentimes, you never quite know what it is.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Well, that's a really good point.

• 22:57Jonathan Fields?

  And this is what you write in the book relating to the Heart Sutra. It's a little bit like falling in love. Shortly after that, you finish with, you'll never really know each other.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  I mean, you don't, but but you've, at the same time, and I know you, we've both been married for a long time. The intimacy deepens, as does the love and the distance. It's a very strange matrix. You will never really know each other, but the intimacy deepens anyway. And I think that's weird and cool.

• 23:28Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I think it's really cool also. And as you're describing that, I'm also thinking the intimacy continues to deepen. And if you're in a relationship where each of you individually continue to explore and grow, because there's no stasis, you have two people, maybe three people, whatever your relationship is about. And if you're all evolving in your own unique way, that means you're you're forever changing. If you allow yourself the freedom to grow in perpetuity, by definition, you will never be fully knowledgeable because who you were yesterday is not who you will be like next week and the month after and the year after.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, you don't even know yourself. So it's a mystery, Jonathan.

• 24:11Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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• 24:48Speaker 01

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• 26:07Jonathan Fields?

  I feel like it's time for us to actually hear the text, not the 100,000 line version of it.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 26:16Jonathan Fields?

  Would you be so kind as to actually share the 43 line version of the Heart Sutra?

• 26:22Speaker 04

  I would be delighted. And my suggestion for people who are listening is twofold. One is, there'll be names of people and words you don't understand. That's cool, don't worry about it. And the other is, though it is tempting, it would be a mistake, I would say, to ask, as you're listening, what does this mean? It would be more helpful to ask, what does this mean to me? So you want to start off making it personal. In fact, the first line is, thus have I heard. And I'll just say a little bit about that. That's the first line of the 43. Thus have I heard. So, right away, it's like, well, who is this "I"? And are they trustworthy? Yeah, that's what you heard. But what am I gonna hear?

• 27:04Speaker 04

  So it happens that the "I" here is one of Buddha's closest students named Ananda, who was also his cousin, and was renowned for his extraordinary memory. Hey, someone was mean to him earlier that day, and he didn't quite listen carefully, or so. You want to place yourself in the "I" position right away. That's always good advice, I think. Thus have I heard. Once the Blessed One, that's Buddha, was dwelling in Rajagriha at Vulture Peak Mountain, together with a great gathering of the Sangha of monks and a great gathering of the Sangha of Bodhisattvas. At that time, the Blessed One entered the samadhi that expresses the Dharma called profound illumination.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  And at the same time, noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, while practicing the profound Prajnaparamita, saw in this way. He saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature. Then, through the power of the Buddha, venerable Shari Putra said to noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, how should a son or daughter of noble family train who wishes to practice the profound Prajnaparamita? Addressed in this way, noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, said to venerable Shariputra, “Oh Shariputra, a son or daughter of noble family who wishes to practice the profound Prajnaparamita should see in this way,

• 28:29Speaker 04

  seeing the five skandhas, to be empty of nature. Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form. Form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. Thus, Shariputra, all dharmas are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no increase. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose,

• 29:13Speaker 04

  no tongue, no body, no mind, no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas, no I-dhatu, up to no mind-dhatu, no dhatu of dharmas, no mind-consciousness-dhatu, no ignorance, no end of ignorance, up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death, no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment. Therefore, Shariputra, since the Bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of Prajnaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. They transcend falsity and attain complete nirvana.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  All the Buddhas of the three times, by means of Prajnaparamita, fully awaken to unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment. Therefore, the great mantra of Prajnaparamita, the mantra of great insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequaled mantra, the mantra that calms all suffering.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Should be known as truth, since there is no deception. The Prajnaparamita mantra is said in this way: Om Gatte Gatte Paragatte Parasamgatte Bodhisvaha. Thus, Shariputra, the Bodhisattva Maha-Sattva, should train in the profound Prajnaparamita. Then the Blessed One arose from that samadhi and praised noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Maha-Sattva, saying, "Good, good, O son of noble family. Thus it is, O son of noble family. Thus it is." One should practice the profound Prajnaparamita just as you have taught, and all the Tathagatas will rejoice. When the Blessed One had said this,

• 31:04Speaker 04

  venerable Shariputra and noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Maha-Sattva, that whole assembly and the world, with its gods, humans, asuras, and gandharvas, rejoiced and praised the words of the Blessed One.

• 31:21Jonathan Fields?

  So two things are happening right now. One, I'm just really trying to sit with it. And as your invitation in the book was, you know, let it wash over you. And then the other, like, my scientist mind is like, what is this? What is that? What is this? Who is this? How is that? I want to know. Like, I want to, I want to deconstruct a bit. And I don't know if that's going to help me at all.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Oh, it will. Both are signs of intelligence. I want to experience it, and I want to penetrate it.

• 31:55Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Those are very, very smart.

• 31:57Jonathan Fields?

  So let me ask a couple of questions.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 31:59Jonathan Fields?

  It's like, the first part of this, the first third or so, it feels like it's the setup. It's act one. It's the hearsay part. Like, oh, I, like, I heard a really smart dude talking about this thing. And I'm very trustworthy because I'm close to him and I have a great memory. So this is sort of like setting up what the quote, "central transmission" is. Is that right-ish?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. I think so.

• 32:24Jonathan Fields?

  Okay. And then we get into what feels to me like, for me, and again, you asked like, don't think, what does this mean, but what does this mean to me, or what does this feel to me? The part where I found myself really leaning in was when the language started talking about emptiness, which you referenced a little bit earlier in our conversation. Emptiness and then also just the notion of impermanence of everything, which is a truth that I constantly try to go back and explore. And it's hard, it's beautiful, there's grace that's, and suffering and responsibility that goes along with it, and freedom, and you want to kick and scream against a whole bunch of it. Walk me through that central part a little bit more.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I share all of your feelings, by the way, in contemplation of impermanence. You're right, the first part's like, hey, here's the Buddha. Then he disappears, he goes into samadhi, which means a perfect absorption. And then the rest of it is spoken by one of his students, Avalokiteshvara, who is the bodhisattva of compassion.

• 33:30Jonathan Fields?

  And what does bodhisattva mean?

• 33:32Speaker 04

  Awakened being. So the sutra starts out by saying, "The Blessed One was there." That's the Blessed One means Buddha. "Together with a great gathering of the sangha of monks, monastics, and a great gathering of the sangha of bodhisattvas." So some people are monastic in their spiritual pursuits, that's totally reasonable and good. Other people are expressing their spiritual pursuits through being of benefit and helping others. Not that monastics aren't helping others, but the primary focus is, how can I serve? And that's bodhisattvas do. They lead with the question and devote themselves to, how can I serve? So we had the monastics and we had the bodhisattvas. We had the foundational practitioners and the heart-opening practitioners.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  And Avalokiteshvara is like the central of the bodhisattva world, the center of the bodhisattva world, the mahasattva, the ultimate bodhisattva. A student named Shari Putra, who's known for intellect, asks him, "What the hell? What is this that's going on here?" And he says, "Well, whatever you think it is, it's not that." "Oh, and thinking it's not that is also not that." Whatever you think it is, it isn't. And when you think, oh, it isn't, that's what it is, you just got kicked back to Polukaville. Because there is no place to land in empty space. It is groundless, according to the lore. So when you are in ultimate wisdom,

• 35:00Speaker 04

  which is synonymous with this vast space, there's no place to stand. And the sutra tells you over and over again, nope, don't try to stand there. Don't try to stand there. And it breaks it down, whatever you think, including all the dharmas you've learned. No dharmas. Towards the end of the no's, there's 37 no's, I think, he says, no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path. For anyone who's studied any of Buddhism will immediately know those are the Four Noble Truths.

• 35:33Jonathan Fields?

  Right, I'm listening to that and I'm like, wait, what?

• 35:36Speaker 04

  So at this point, by the way, according to the lore, some of the masters had heart attacks and died. So I was like, what?

• 35:44Jonathan Fields?

  Shouldn't be laughing at that, but...

• 35:46Speaker 04

  I know, I know, I hope it's not true. It just sounds so funny. And my favorite book on the Heart Sutra is called The Heart Attack Sutra by a great, wonderful writer named Carl Brunnholtz. And that's why he called it that. Because it shatters concept. And that's emptiness. Without concept, beyond concept. So that's one reason why we cannot apply concepts to understanding it. It's very frustrating. It's more like letting go, letting go, letting go. And then, according to all the great teachers, you realize emptiness. You don't understand it. You realize it. And it says, towards the end of the Heart Sutra,

• 36:31Speaker 04

  you're not going to get anywhere. Since the Bodhisattvas have no attainment and no non-attainment, thanks a lot, they abide by means of Prajnaparamita, transcendent wisdom or emptiness. So it's not like they... I've often wondered why that word was translated as abide, but it means they are one with the truth of emptiness. And P.S., there's a mantra that expresses this. And it says, the unsurpassed mantra, the great mantra, the unequaled mantra. And then, the part that always gets me going... The mantra that calms all suffering. So if you ever were like, I wonder if there's a mantra that calms all suffering. This one says, yeah, it's right here. I'll just break it down very briefly.

• 37:15Speaker 04

  Om, which is the seed syllable of compassion. So it's a seed syllable, it's a mantra. You are very familiar with om, as I'm sure are many people listening. But in this context, it plants the seed of compassion because it's Avalokiteshvara's seed syllable, the Bodhisattva of compassion. Gatte, gone beyond. Gatte, just gonna say it again, in case you missed it. Gone beyond. Paragatte, I really went beyond. Parasangatte, I shattered all limitations. I went so far beyond that I arrived. Bodhi, which means awake, in the root of the word Bodhisattva and Buddha, which means awake.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Svaha, which is often at the end of mantras, and it means so be it. Or, mic drop, I like to say. So compassion, beyond, beyond, super beyond, really, not kidding, beyond, awake. Mic drop. That's it. I can't explain it. That is the mantra that calms all suffering. It does no good, because I've tried this, to say, is that true? Let me try, you know, I don't know. Why? How could that be it? How could that be the one? But when I am suffering, I say it. And then I check. And I learn things.

• 38:33Jonathan Fields?

  Does it help?

• 38:34Speaker 04

  Yes and no. I mean, what I want is to stop suffering. And on, you know, really good hoydy-toydy days, I want to learn something from my suffering. But I think that the way it actually helps is it makes of my suffering a kind of offering. And there are certain situations, and I'm sure everybody understands this, you can't fix it. It could be anything from an intractable migraine to the reprehensible political situation in our country. I'm suffering. I can't fix it. I don't know any way out. Can I find my rage, or care, or love, or longing, whatever it might feel like, and offer it so that, I don't know how it can help others,

• 39:18Speaker 04

  but let me just offer my suffering so that it could benefit others? Not because they'll learn from it, I don't know how. But it adds a little ingredient of generosity into suffering, which is usually very contracted. Anyway, that's just something to think about. When I chant the mantra, I feel like I'm letting go of something. That's a simpler way of saying it.

• 39:41Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, it feels similar in an interesting way to you. I think, I'm trying to remember if this is coming back to me with the right attribution. I think it was when in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, but quoting Nietzsche about how suffering becomes a different experience when you can identify a why for the suffering, when you can sort of like say there's a certain purpose to the suffering that like it will in some way help, maybe not even me.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Exactly. It's a building block of some sort. And I cannot see the blueprint for this building. But something in me says, this is part of it, on good days. I think I would also say with this mantra and with the Heart Sutra in general, and you stop me if this sounds, I don't know, what confusing or unhelpful, but so much of spiritual practice in the West is about fixing yourself and withdrawing into yourself. Sometimes you gotta, because it's too stressful out there, or worse than stressful. But I don't think that's the original intention with these spiritual teachings, not to fix yourself, and it's certainly not to withdraw.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  It's to go in fully, to your life, to the world, to the experience that you have. And the going out is name checks. Ah, I'm going out. Ah.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  When you say something like this that you don't understand, or I don't, there's some sense that I'm reaching into a liminal space between me and wisdom that is beyond my conventional mind, which is the real one. It's important for spiritual practitioners, in my opinion. If you want to meditate, have less stress and get a better night's sleep, knock yourself out, it will help. That's great. Dig. But that's not why the practice was, I don't know what word is even suggested, invented, or taught. It wasn't like, hey, you'll become a better leader if you do this. It was, you will wake up from suffering. You will see what you cannot see with your conventional mind. If you want meditation as a spiritual practice,

• 41:51Speaker 04

  it's important to build some way of connecting with the it space between. And that sounds weird, and it's not. When you say a mantra, you're connecting with a liminal space. I don't know what it means. I'm saying it. I'm letting it go. When you say a chant that you don't really understand, you're sort of knocking on a door that you're not quite sure what's on the other side. And it doesn't even have to be that conceptual. If you have a little shrine or an altar with a candle or incense or a picture of something, and then before you practice, if you have a practice, and not everybody has to practice by any means, you light the candle or the incense, and it's a gesture into the liminal space. It's not, I'm figuring this out. Let me think about it.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  I'm lighting a candle to something or looking at a picture of something that inspires me to sort of draw me out into a bigger space. And a chant like this only draws you into a bigger space. And I don't know what that's going to look like for you. I don't even know exactly what it looks like for me. But that piece, the mystery, is a very important part of the spiritual journey or meditation as a spiritual practice. And that's often left on the table in meditation instruction, that it's mystical.

• 43:08Jonathan Fields?

  I feel like we often, we don't want to actually bring that into the conversation.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Why do you think that is?

• 43:13Jonathan Fields?

  Because it means that we don't know everything and that we have to. You know, that there's a giant domain of the unknown. Domain of the unknown is an oxymoron right there.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Ooh, I like it.

• 43:24Jonathan Fields?

  There's an undefinable unknown out there in the world. There's a lot of our lives is unlock, unlockdownable. It is a mystery, it's mystical. And that terrifies us. You know, we spend most of our waking hours trying to lock down as much of our lives as we possibly can. And you write about this, actually, in the book, and you were just speaking to it, like this notion of spiritual practice versus self-improvement paradigm. You know, the self-improvement paradigm is largely trying to change what is and lock down the future. We have like very specific goals and outcomes because we think that's going to make us feel the way we want to feel. Whereas like, in my experience, the spiritual paradigm is more, what if we accept that actually now is what it is? Life is about, more about surrender and unfolding.

• 44:09Jonathan Fields?

  The vast majority of it, we don't have control over and we will never have control over. And yet, we still exist within this ether of wisdom and truth and beauty. And if we can just be as present as we can, maybe we'll experience more of that, like without actually having to force change.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:30Jonathan Fields?

  And those two worlds, in my experience, often are at odds.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  Mine too. And that was beautifully said. And it gets even more paradoxical when you think, well, if I could only be present. Well, immediately, you're not present when you think that. It's always a slapback on the deep spiritual path. The things you think, well, if only I wasn't attached, I would be happier. But then you're attached to non-attachment. So there's always a, it's not that. Just like the Heart Sutra says, not that, not that, not that. And it's even not recognizing that it's not that. It's something beyond this or that. And yes, it is frightening to imagine that there is such a thing as beyond this or that because I'll never understand it. But I'll tell you what's scarier is to pretend that you understand and to stake your life

• 45:20Speaker 04

  on false understandings, which I have done probably 27 times before we had this call today. That's really scary. You missed your whole life.

• 45:30Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 45:35Jonathan Fields?

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• 46:20Jonathan Fields?

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• 47:03Jonathan Fields?

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• 48:08Jonathan Fields?

  Dipping back into this central theme of emptiness. Again, I think this is one of these things where we come at it from a Western mind and really, really, really struggle with it because emptiness has a pretty negative connotation to most of us. Like, I feel empty inside. I don't feel anything. I want to feel alive. I want to be engaged. Like, and the notion of emptiness, the frame that I think we so often bring to the concept is negative. Like, this is the thing we want to avoid. And yet, the Heart Sutra kind of positions it as this is a space of just profound abundance. And I guess then you make the argument at the same time, and then it's not.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Know this, know that.

• 48:49Jonathan Fields?

  Very perplexing.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  It's so friggin' perplexing. So here's a moment, this was long ago, when I sort of got some sense of what this might mean, maybe. I used to live in New York City. So when I first moved to New York City a million years ago, and I don't live there anymore, but I could not sleep because it was so noisy. And it wasn't even that noisy, but there was just that ambient hum all the time that you come to love when you are a New Yorker. But at first, you're like, how can anybody sleep here? So night after night after night, I can't sleep, I can't sleep. And then, out of desperation, one night, my ear tuned away from the noise and into the silence under the noise. And I realized that I could always do that. You can do it right now.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  If you're listening, you can do it too. There's sound coming out of silence. Now there's a silence. And then I say words and there's a sound. Bed of silence is always there. It's never not there. And if you want to play, you can tune your ear to it. Whenever you feel so inspired. And that's something about emptiness. And I agree that it has a negative connotation. And I wish someone had picked a different word, whoever translated it. Because it could, as mentioned, just as easily be expressed as fullness. Because there's a fullness of silence. Anything can come out of it. And nothing is possible without it. Then it would be dead. But because there's silence, there can be sound.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  And there's something about that dichotomy. Because there is light, there can be dark. There was no light, there would be no dark. That bed from which light and dark, silence and, I mean, sound arises, I think is a fruitful direction to explore.

• 50:35Jonathan Fields?

  Totally agree. The way it lands with me is it's, that's the space of unlimited possibility. And yet, the first move we want to make, we're in that space, is to determine which possibility we want to make manifest so that we're diminishing the experience of the unknown.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and go ahead. Just determine what is possible. That's what we do all day. But don't forget about this other space of silence and emptiness. It's still there too.

• 51:05Jonathan Fields?

  So you had an interesting experience not too long ago. After studying and chanting this Heart Sutra for so many years, you decided to lead a retreat where you would teach it in Colorado. You show up at the retreat and there's a momentary experience that you didn't see coming. That sounds like has also, and that made a slight tweak to the mantra part of the Heart Sutra. That was really interesting.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. As you say, I went to this retreat center in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies to teach a retreat on the Heart Sutra. What a privilege for me. And when I got there, I noticed there was another program wrapping up on calligraphy, and it was taught by, I hope I'm not butchering the name, Kazuhaki Tanahashi Sensei, a great calligrapher, 95 years old, Japanese, who also happened to have written brilliant book on the Heart Sutra, A Complete Guide to the Heart Sutra by Tanahashi Sensei. And I'm like, I am such a poser. I have got full-on imposter syndrome, and the reason I have that is because friggin' true. Here's this guy, and here's me. And I'm like, yeah, let me explain the Heart

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Sutra. And in the meantime, here's this actual sage walking around. And I think I said this in the book, I wanted, every time he walked by me, like on the way to the dining hall or whatever, I'd wait till he passed, and then I would bow like into the space behind him. Because I didn't want to, I don't know, insert myself. Who knows what I was thinking? And then I'm like, wow, he's here, and I'm about to do this with the hell. And then the morning my program was going to start, his was ending, and I walked into the residential hall, and he was sitting in the vestibule with his suitcase, I guess, waiting for someone to pick him up. Just him. And I just said, hey, and just rushed by. And then I'm

• 53:04Speaker 04

  like, wait, Susan, go back. Just go back. This is your chance to ask him a question. So I asked him if I could ask him a question. And he said, yes. I said, if you could tell people one thing about the Heart Sutra? What would it be? What is the most important thing to say? And without hesitating, he said, "Joy." That is the most important thing. The mantra, Om Gatte Gatte Paragatte Parasangatte Bodhisvaha. Svaha, often translated as "so be it." He said, "I translate it as joy." Svaha is joy. So the ultimate letting go, the "so be it," is what joy feels like. So I was grateful.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  I said, "Oh, thank you," and sort of slunk away, I guess. And that was the experience of the retreat. It was the joy of letting go of concept with other people who are also doing their best. It's hard to do it by yourself. And then miraculous signs and symbols happened. I mean, I'm not BSing you. Every day, there was a different rainbow. Crazy butterflies would just land on the threshold of the meditation room. Like, I'd never seen anything like this. There's another chant, not the Heart Sutra, that we do that says, "The raven-headed one," which is one of the deities. And Tibetan Buddhism is depicted as having a raven head for a head. And ravens started cawing, Jonathan Fields.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  You could hear ravens cawing. I'm like, "Okay, hold up, hold up, hold up. I don't know what's going on here, but it must have something to do with joy." There's a synchronization of inner experience and outer occurrences, a letting go, and then letting go of letting go. And somehow, the result is this svaha, joy. That's also where we started, was, "How did I get started with this? Or how did I find the Heart Sutra?" It's always a falling backwards. And it's always a noticing what is happening, rather than trying to conjure what we want to happen. Something is happening. And when you tune to that, rather than form, feeling, perception, formation, and so on,

• 55:17Speaker 04

  great forces come to your aid in the form of ravens and butterflies.

• 55:22Jonathan Fields?

  I just love that slight shift in where he defines svaha.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 55:28Jonathan Fields?

  If the last thing is joy, and that means the letting go, and then the letting go of the letting go, and then that, I'm going to translate that to, in my mind, you're like, "This is joy." Then it's an invitation to just sort of like move through the day. And...

• 55:45Jonathan Fields?

  Ah, exhale, let go. Like, what can I let go of? Even for a heartbeat, for a moment. And on the other side of that, or maybe in coincidence with that, maybe I'll invite more joy.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  I'm with you.

• 56:00Jonathan Fields?

  I'm guessing that maybe part of the reason that you ended up titling the book Inexplicable Joy.

• 56:05Speaker 04

  That is a very, very good guess. It's inexplicable, and it's joy. And then I read this very short, just a couple of lines. As this manuscript was being written, I'm like, what? Is this joy thing? I read this from a different great teacher named Choki Nyima Rinpoche, from his book Sadness, Love, and Openness, which is a great title. Deep sadness, because nothing lasts. Fervent love, because all beings are my beloved family. Lucid openness, because this ordinary mind is full awakening. Sheer joy, because all of this is true. I just burst into tears when I read that. All of this, nothing lasts,

• 56:50Speaker 04

  everything is alive. I don't know. Now I do, now I don't. I'm part of the fabric of something living. That all of this is true is sheer joy. That's my aspiration, anyway.

• 57:04Jonathan Fields?

  And that feels like a great place for us to come full circle as well. I've asked you this question in the past, and I can ask you again in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 57:18Speaker 04

  A profound and lasting connection to a source of wisdom that you trust. That's a good life.

• 57:25Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Tara Brock about making peace with the truth of our lives. You'll find a link to Tara's episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your Your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too.

• 58:10Jonathan Fields?

  But just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Cause that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

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