Shobogenzo Maka-hannya-haramitsu 1: A Radical Heart Sutra Remix.

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Twelve instances of prajna paramita are the twelve entrances [of sense-perception]. There are also eighteen instances of prajna. They are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind; sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, and properties; plus the consciousnesses of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. There are a further four instances of prajna. They are suffering, accumulation, cessation, and the Way. There are a further six in stances of prajna. They are giving, pure [observance of] precepts, patience, diligence, meditation, and prajna [itself]. One further instance of prajna-paramita is realized as the present moment. It is the state of anuttara-samyak-sa bodhi. There are three further instances of prajna-paramita. They are past, present, and future. There are six further instances of prajna. They are earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness. And there are a further four instances of prajna that are constantly practiced in everyday life: they are walking, standing, sitting, and lying down.

 

In this chapter of Shobogenzo Master Dogen does something quite bold and direct - he basically rewrites one of the foundational texts of Mahayana Buddhism, the Heart Sutra.

The Heart Sutra is famous for containing a negation of everything we can experience, so that all things are rendered 'empty' by the text. But Master Dogen was not happy with this, and he took it further. For while it may be a valid view that our thinking about things and putting names on things is not reality, it's also the case that things do not exist on the basis of an intellectual negation, so Master Dogen here emphasizes that things, as we encounter them in 'dropping off body and mind' in zazen practice, come forward and exist as they do completely free of our thinking, or our lack of thinking, about them.

Master Dogen takes a positive and affirmative view of things, he does not leave them as intellectual or conceptual negations. 

In this way, in his version of the sutra, things that were previously negated or 'emptied' (such as eyes, body, sensations, the Way, our conduct, time, the elements that make things up etc etc) become instances of 'prajna' or direct experiential wisdom when we experience them in practice - they affirm reality, the mutual reality of each individual thing as a part of our experience and our life manifesting here and now. 

In his intro to the chapter Nishijima Roshi explained prajna like this: "Prajna, or real wisdom, is a kind of intuitive ability that occurs in our body and mind, when our body and mind are in the state of balance and harmony. We normally think that wisdom is some thing based on the intellect, but Buddhists believe that wisdom, on which our decisions are based, is not intellectual but intuitive. The right decision comes from the right state of body and mind, and the right state of body and mind comes when our body and mind are balanced and harmonized. So maha-prajna-paramita is wisdom that we have when our body and mind are balanced and harmonized. And Zazen is the practice by which our body and mind enter the state of balance and harmony."


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