The Essential Paradox

In the Heart Sutra, one of the Buddha's principal disciples, a monk named Shariputra, begins to question Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, asking, "In all the words and actions and thoughts of my life, how do I apply the prajnaparamita? What is the key to training in this practice? What view do I take?"

Avalokiteshvara answers with the most famous of Buddhist paradoxes: "Form is emptiness, emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness." His explanation, like the prajnaparamita itself, is inexpressible, indescribable, inconceivable. Form is that which simply is before we project our beliefs onto it. The prajnaparamita represents a completely fresh take, an unfettered mind where anything is possible.

"Form is emptiness" refers to our simple, direct relationship with the immediacy of experience. First we wipe away our preconceptions and then we even have to let go of our belief that we should look at things without preconceptions. In continuing to pull out our own rug, we understand the perfection of things just as they are.

But "emptiness also is form" turns the tables. Emptiness continually manifests as war and peace, as grief, birth, old age, sickness, and death, as well as joy. We are challenged to stay in touch with the heart-throbbing quality of being alive. That's why we train in the relative bodhichitta practices of the four limitless qualities and tonglen. They help us to engage fully in the vividness of life with an open, unclouded mind. Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.

-Pema Chödrön