Exploring The Heart Sutra (Sarah A. Mattice)

Exploring the Heart Sutra
Exploring the Heart Sutra
Sarah A. Mattice
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Names: Mattice, Sarah A., author.

Title: Exploring the Heart sutra / Sarah A. Mattice.
Other titles: Tripiṭaka. Sūtrapiṭaka. Prajñāpāramitā. Hṛdaya. English.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021036020 (print) | LCCN 2021036021 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781498599405 (cloth) | ISBN 9781498599412 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tripiṭaka. Sūtrapiṭaka. Prajñāpāramitā. Hṛdaya—Commentaries.
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May all beings be happy; may they live in peace and joy.
Contents
Acknowledgmentsix
Introductionxi
The Heart Sutraxix
1 Sampling Authenticity 1
2 Perspectives on Translation 31
3 Guanyin75
4 Voices of Women 121
5 A Chinese Interpretive Context 169
6 Translation and Line Commentary 197
Bibliography225
Index239
About the Author 245
vii
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of many years of hard work and would not have
been possible without the dedicated and caring help of family, friends, col-
leagues, and generous strangers. I am especially grateful to my husband and
philosopher-in-residence, Aaron Creller, for both his loving support and
his philosophical eye for detail. I am also grateful to Dr. James Goetsch for
first introducing me to the Heart Sutra many years ago, and to N. Harry
Rothschild for encouraging me to pursue this project. I would like to thank
Leah Kalmanson, Mercedes Valmisa, Jason Simpson, Andy Lambert, Amy
Donahue, Greige Lott, and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful atten-
tion to various drafts along the way. Their critical reading and suggestions
have made this book better. Whatever mistakes or oversights that remain are
mine.
When I began work on this project, I had only limited experience con-
ducting ethnographic field interviews. I want to thank Julie Ingersoll and
Brandi Denison for their guidance and my many interviewees for so gen-
erously giving their time and stories to this project. Their words brought
this book into the world of lived experience, and I am immensely grate-
ful. A research grant from Academic Affairs at the University of North
Florida, along with a sabbatical leave, made possible the time and travel
required to complete significant portions of the book, and funding from the
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at UNF helped to support
William Gilbert’s aid in transcribing my interviews. I would also like to
acknowledge the hard work of Jana Hodges-Kluck and Sydney Wedbush
ix
x Acknowledgments
at Lexington Books, the editors who graciously put up with me pushing

deadlines back, among other things.
My thanks to the following for epigraph and reproduction permissions:
Ch. 1 epigraph:
Chang, Vanessa. “Records That Play: The Present Past in Sampling Prac-
tice.” In Popular Music 28, no. 2 (2009):153.
Ch. 2 epigraph:
Bernofsky, Susan. “Translation and the Art of Revision.” In In Translation:
Translators on Their Work and What It Means. Edited by Esther Allen and
Susan Bernofsky. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Ch. 3:
Butler, Judith. “Reply from Judith Butler.” In Philosophy and Phenomeno-
logical Research XCVI, no. 1 (2018): 247. For the epigraph.
Cijing, Xing. “Casual Thoughts.” In Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of
Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China. Translated by Yuhang Li. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
Ch. 4:
Gesshin Greenwood, Claire. That’s So Zen: Zazen and Menstrual Blood Hell.
Unpublished Manuscript, April 26, 2021. My thanks fo Gesshin Green-
wood for permission to cite this piece.
Author interviews found in ch. 4 and 5, including the ch. 4 epigraph
Bai, Nina. “Yanny Vs. Laurel: A Neuroscientist Weighs In.” UCSF, May
16, 2018. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/05/410411/yanny-vs-laurel-
neuroscientist-weighs.
Reeves, Mosi. “Warren G and Nate Dogg’s ‘Regulate’: The Oral History
of a Hip-Hop Classic.” Rolling Stone, December 14, 2014. https://www.
rollingstone.com/music/music-news/warren-g-and-nate-doggs-regulate-
the-oral-history-of-a-hip-hop-classic-170034/. My thanks to Bobby Dee of
Bobby Dee Presents for facilitating this permission request.
Stein, Stephen. “Steinski Gives a Sampling History Lesson.” By John Schae-

fer. Soundcheck, NPR, October 22, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/
story/story.php?storyId=93844583.
Introduction
My first encounter with the Heart Sutra was as an undergraduate student in

an Asian Philosophy course many years ago. Reading the sutra had a pro-
found impact on my life, both personally and professionally. I was inspired
to write this book after teaching my own introductory course on Buddhism.
In it, we spend part of the term looking at a variety of commentaries on the
Heart Sutra, and I often end the term by suggesting to the students a different
translation and reading of the text, based on an approach to translation from
Classical Chinese philosophy. This book has been many years in the making,
reflecting an interdisciplinary philosophical approach to making sense of this
sutra.
THIS IS A COMMENTARY, THIS

IS NOT A COMMENTARY
This book is a commentary on the Heart Sutra, the short-but-profound

Mahāyāna Buddhist text that is read and chanted around the world every day.
According to John McRae, “What we refer to in English as the Heart Sutra
the Chinese took to be the ‘scripture of the mind,’ the quintessential Buddhist
statement regarding the mind.”1 The text is traditionally read as a discourse
on emptiness (Ch. kong 空; Sk. śūnyatā) and the bodhisattva path and seems
to paradoxically negate some of the most important aspects of Buddhist theo-
rizing, like wisdom, attainment, and the four noble truths.
The oldest extant version of the Heart Sutra (Ch. Xinjing «心經»; Sk.
Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sūtra) was compiled by the famous Tang Dynasty
monk Xuanzang玄奘 in 649 CE, and the text has been the subject of com-
mentarial attention ever since. Xuanzang’s two most prominent disciples,
xi
xii Introduction
Kuiji 窺基 and Wŏnch'ŭk 圓測, wrote the first two commentaries on the text.2
Since then, there have been more than a hundred Chinese commentaries by
figures such as Fazang 法藏 and Da Dian 大顚, Japanese commentaries by
figures like Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴, Indian and Tibetan commentaries, and
contemporary commentaries by major figures in popular Buddhism.3 The
sutra itself shows up in all manner of places, from sophisticated philosophical
exegesis to inscriptions on bracelets, from recitation at daily Buddhist cer-
emonies to tattoos, from copying for merit at a temple to hanging on the wall
at a local restaurant. Japanese artist Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917–2002) used min-
iature calligraphy of the Heart Sutra as the medium for his many paintings.4
The Heart Sutra shows up in beatboxing and in Burger King commercials.5
There is even a Heart Sutra of Cats (Mao Xinjing «貓心經»)!6
While this is not a text that is absent scholarly or popular attention, in this
book I approach the text not as an insider with monastic authority but from
the academic perspective of a comparative or cross-cultural philosopher with
expertise in East Asian traditions. I have centered this commentary in China
at every opportunity, although the text is more commonly read with its roots
in South Asia. Each chapter is both inspired by the Heart Sutra and leads to
a specific interpretive lens on the text: I situate the text historically, in terms
of its origins and its main figure, Guanyin (Avalokiteśvara); linguistically, in
terms of translation theory; socially, in terms of its connection to women’s
practice and my own ethnographic work; and philosophically, in terms of
concepts that influence my reading of the text.
This book is, however, also not a (traditional) commentary on the Heart
Sutra. Not only am I not an insider, nor am I a monastic authority sharing my
spiritual insight on the text, I am not even a Buddhist. And most of this text
is not a line-by-line commentary, the traditional form for commentaries on a
sutra. Nor is this book an introduction to Buddhism or Buddhist philosophy,
as is the case for some contemporary commentaries.7 In many ways, each
chapter can stand on its own, and none aims to give the reader a detailed
exegesis of the text from a specific Buddhist school or perspective. Instead,
the chapters range over topics from authenticity to feminism, from translation
to ethnography, setting a context for readers to engage the text as a multifac-
eted and polyvalent phenomenon for themselves.
PREACHING TO THE BUDDHA
While I expect that many readers will bring some familiarity with either
Buddhism or Chinese philosophy to this text, at the risk of “Preaching to the
Buddha” (Jp. Shaka ni seppō),8 I will here provide a very brief overview of
some key Buddhist concerns.9
Introduction xiii
Siddhārtha Gautama, of the Sakya clan, woke up—became a Buddha, or

one who was awakened—sometime in the seventh to fourth centuries BCE
in the part of the world we now call Nepal, after having left a relatively shel-
tered and privileged life to engage in ascetic practices. Finding those ascetic
practices still unsatisfying for the existential quandaries that prompted him to
leave his family, he sat under a tree (later called the “Bodhi” tree) and vowed
to meditate until he figured things out. Along the way, he ate a small bowl of
porridge that was offered to him (a pretty large meal for someone who had
been engaging in ascetic pursuits like surviving on a grain of rice a day) and,
with a full belly, meditated until he came to a series of realizations: remem-
bering his past lives, understanding the nature of karma, and realizing the four
noble truths. After considering these realizations for some time, he decided to
return to his former ascetic colleagues and begin to teach them what he had
learned. Soon after, the Buddha had formed a sangha, a community of others
interested in practicing together the dharma, what the Buddha taught.
The context of Siddhārtha’s awakening was a religio-philosophic environ-
ment of those seeking mokṣa, or liberation, from saṃsāra, the cycle of birth
and death. The Buddha taught that there are three characteristics of existence:
all this is characterized by impermanence; all this is characterized by suffer-
ing, trouble, and discontent; and all this is characterized by nonself (in con-
trast to the prevailing view about the reality of Self). From this perspective,
the four noble truths, or four truths for nobility (of character, not birth), make
sense: all this is suffering; our suffering has a cause; cessation of suffering is
possible; and there is a path to cessation. In the early materials, this is often
described on a kind of medical model, with the Buddha as the spiritual physi-
cian who diagnosed the problem (suffering, dis-ease), identified the source or
origin of the problem (thirst or craving), recognized that a cure was possible
(nirvāṇa), and provided a treatment plan (the eightfold path). The cause of
our dis-ease or suffering lies in what are called the three poisons: ignorance,
attachment (greed), and aversion (hatred). Because we do not realize how
things really are (impermanent, imperfect, and impersonal), we cause our-
selves trouble by becoming attached to things that we want to keep or to stay
the same (but that will not), by trying to get rid of things we want to go away
(though those too are impermanent), and by making everything about “me.”
This is the result of cycles of habituation that require hard work to undo.
One way these cycles of habituation are understood is through the idea of
dependent arising—this is because that is—the idea that all phenomena are
conditioned and caused by other phenomena: all phenomena are interrelated.
As time went on, the Buddha’s teachings developed into vast schools
that spread across Central, South, and East Asia. Broadly speaking, there
are three big families of Buddhist schools that still exist today: Theravāda
(the Way of the Elders), found today primarily in Southeast Asia; Mahāyāna
xiv Introduction
(the Great Vehicle), found today primarily in East Asia; and Vajrayāna (the
Thunderbolt or Diamond Vehicle), a family of esoteric traditions found pri-
marily in Tibet, Mongolia, and Japan. As much of this book is centered in
China, where Mahāyāna Buddhism is the predominant family, a few words
about Mahāyāna are in order. The Mahāyāna developed first in South Asia
before spreading to East Asia. In broad terms, Mahāyāna thinkers argued, on
the basis of early Mahāyāna texts like the Lotus Sutra, that we could trust
the authority of texts even if they were written much later than the lifetime
of the historical Buddha; that bodhisattvas, originally a term restricted to the
historical Buddha’s past lives, were not only many but that they, unlike the
arhat, or individually perfected person, were the ideal of Buddhist practice;
and that becoming a Buddha was possible for everyone. In doing so, they
made a series of conceptual identifications: saṃsāra and nirvāṇa; emptiness
and dependent arising; and wisdom and compassion.
As the Mahāyāna moved into China, the idea of buddha-nature (Ch.
foxing 佛性) also became very important. The early Chinese philosophers
(especially Ruists or “Confucians”) had an on-going philosophical discourse
concerning natural human tendencies (xing 性) and the moral directed-ness of
human beings—that is, do we naturally incline toward moral development, or
do we need to be forcefully shaped and steered toward the good? The concept
of buddha-nature, or our innate potential for enlightenment, was a natural fit
in this broader philosophical discourse.
While initially Buddhism in China closely mirrored schools and concerns
found elsewhere in Central Asia, over time indigenous schools of Chinese
Buddhism emerged, including Tiantai 天台宗, Huayan 華嚴宗, and Chan
禪宗, and practices related to the Pure Land 淨土 became ubiquitous.10
Bodhisattvas like Guanyin 觀音 (Avalokiteśvara), Wenshu 文殊 (Mañjuśrī),
Puxian 普賢 (Samantabhadra), and Dizang 地藏 (Kṣitigarbha) gained
their own followings and cult status, and buddhas other than the historical
Buddha—like Amituofo 阿彌陀佛 (Amitābha/Amitāyus)—became central
to the practice of many people. From China, Buddhism spread into the
Korean peninsula, and from there, the Japanese archipelago.
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY
PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH
As I see it, the Heart Sutra is doing many different things on a number of
different levels. My approach to the text mirrors this in trying to bring out dif-
ferent aspects or contexts from which we might understand the sutra. While I
am a philosopher by trade, in my opinion philosophical work is significantly
Introduction xv
enhanced by interdisciplinary inquiry, and the chapters here reflect my com-

mitment to interdisciplinarity. Although they are in an order I think may be
useful, the chapters do not need to be read in this order; most can operate as
stand-alone pieces, starting from and returning to the Heart Sutra, like spokes
of a wheel around a hub of the text.
Chapter 1, “Sampling Authenticity,” focuses on the historical context and
controversial origins of the text. Is it, as the story is told, an early Indian
Mahāyāna text? Or was it compiled from a variety of sources in China and
back-translated into Sanskrit to ensure appropriate authority? This chapter
explores Jan Nattier’s provocative thesis that the sutra is “really” Chinese,
considering what impact that could have on our reading of the text, using a
hermeneutic paradigm of “sampling” drawn from contemporary music.
Chapter 2, “Perspectives on Translation,” considers what it means to
give philosophical attention to the act of translating. Centering Chinese
translation history and theory as the subject of concern, the chapter puts
Chinese literary giant QIAN Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998) into conver-
sation with contemporary translation theorists and practitioners Lawrence
Venuti and Roger T. Ames. This chapter explains the context for a number
of the choices in my translation of the Heart Sutra that could be considered
unorthodox.
Chapter 3, “Guanyin,” explores the question, “Who is Guanyin?” In trans-
lating the sutra from the Chinese, the speaker of the text becomes Guanzizai
Pusa 觀自在菩薩, more commonly known as Guanyin Bodhisattva, the bod-
hisattva of compassion. The chapter provides context for this figure in China,
focusing especially on the figure’s complex gender identities. Looking at both
canonical and popular contexts for Guanyin provides a richer understanding
of what it means for this figure to be the main speaker of the Heart Sutra.
Chapter 4, “Voices of Women,” is inspired by the role of this sutra in the
lives of practitioners, especially women. The chapter is prompted by explor-
ing what it might mean for women practitioners if Guanyin is a woman and
gives a brief history of women’s practice, focusing especially on China,
before turning to the results of qualitative ethnographic interviews I con-
ducted in 2018–2019. The interviews are organized around the topics of
gender, Guanyin, and the Heart Sutra, showing a wide diversity of women’s
experiences in practicing Buddhism.
Chapter 5, “A Chinese Interpretive Context,” brings together philosophi-
cal threads from Yogācāra-influenced schools of Chinese Buddhism, Ruism
(Confucianism), and Daoism, to provide an interpretive context for the sutra
situated firmly in a Chinese philosophical milieu.
Chapter 6, “Translation and Line Commentary,” is the most traditionally
structured commentarial chapter. In this chapter, the sutra is broken down into
xvi Introduction
bite-sized chunks, each appended with commentary explaining key terms and
translation choices, especially where translation choice impacts the meaning.
Noted translator Eliot Weinberger once wrote that “[e]verything worth
translating should be translated as many times as possible, even by
the same translator, for you can never step into the same original
twice. . . . Translation is change and motion; literature dies when it stays
the same, when it has no place to go.”11 Weinberger’s reference here to
Heraclitus—you can never step in the same river twice—could just as eas-
ily be read in light of the Heart Sutra: all phenomena are empty and so
impermanent and interdependent. Even the Heart Sutra must be emptied
and renewed from time to time.
NOTES
1. John McRae, “Ch’an Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: Preliminary Inferences

on the Permutation of Chinese Buddhism,” Journal of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies 11, no. 2 (1988): 85–114, 102.
2. See Dan Lusthaus, “The Heart Sūtra in Chinese Yogācāra: Some Comparative
Comments on the Heart Sūtra Commentaries of Wŏnch'ŭk and K'uei-chi,”
International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 3 (2003): 59–103.
3. Full commentaries available in English translation, academic and popular,
include but are not limited to: Kuiji (2001), Hakuin (1996), Tenzin Gyatso aka Dalai
Lama (2005), Sheng Yen (2001), Thich Nhat Hanh (2017), Taisen Deshimaru (2012),
Red Pine (2004), Tanahashi (2014), Schodt (2020), Brunnholzl (2012), Thubten
(2018), Conze (2001), Hsuan Hua, Osho (2014), Ghelue (2009), Mu Soeng (2010),
McLeod (2007), Lopez (1996), Yoo (2013), and Bokar Rinpoche (2002).
4. See Paula Arai, Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra
(Boulder: Shambala Press, 2019).
5. See Yogetsu Akasaka, “Heart Sutra Live Looping Remix,” May 12,
2020, https://youtu.be/nvIGCMhjkvw; Oona McGee, “Burger King Releases New
Whopper to Ward off Evil in Japan,” Sora News 24, December 24, 2020, https://
soranews24.com/2020/12/24/burger-king-releases-new-whopper-to-ward-off-evil-in
-japan/
6. See Hong Qisong, The Heart Sutra of Cats «貓心經» (Taibei: Dakuai Wenhua
Chuban, 2018).
7. The Dalai Lama, Sheng Yen, and Thich Nhat Hanh are all explicit that their
commentaries serve as introductions to Buddhism.
8. Literally “preaching to Shakyamuni Buddha,” meaning when someone is so
presumptuous as to try to teach something to someone who is already better informed
on the subject—similar to the English expression “preaching to the choir.”
Introduction xvii
9. There are many excellent introductions to both Buddhism and Chinese philos-
ophy. Regarding Buddhism, see, for instance, Mitchell and Jacoby (2014) or Harvey
(2013). Concerning Chinese philosophy, see Lai (2017), Hagen and Coutinho (2018),
or Liu (2006).
10. For an excellent history of Chinese Buddhism, see Chün-fang Yü (2020).
11. Eliot Weinberger, “Anonymous Sources: On Translators and Translation,” in
In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, ed. Esther Allen and
Susan Bernofsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 30.
The Heart Sutra
Compiled by the Venerable Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty1
When Guanyin was in the midst of deep Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting prac-

tice, she saw clearly that the five constituent processes were all empty and
thus overcame all suffering, trouble, and discontent.
Śāriputra! Forming is not different from emptying; emptying is not dif-
ferent from forming. Forming is emptying; emptying is forming. Sensing,
perceiving, acting, and knowing are all like this.
Śāriputra, this is the emptying of each and every phenomenon. They are
neither becoming nor ceasing to be, neither defiling nor purifying, neither
increasing nor decreasing.
For this reason, the core of emptying is without forming, without sens-
ing, perceiving, acting, or knowing; without eye, ear, nose, tongue, body,
or cognitive attention; without seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
or thinking; without any of the sense realms, from the visual through to the
intelligible; without generating ignorance and without exhausting ignorance,
all the way through to without aging and dying and without an end to aging
and dying; without suffering, craving, extinguishing, or way-making; without
becoming wise and without attaining anything.
With nothing to attain, bodhisattvas rely on Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting
practices, and so their feeling and thinking is without obstructions; without
obstructions, and so without fear, they are far removed from false views and
illusions, awakening to the utmost. All Buddhas, past, present, and future,
rely on Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting practices and so attain full and complete
awakening.
xix
xx The Heart Sutra
Therefore, know that this is the great inspiring zhou, the great enlighten-
ing zhou, the unexcelled zhou, the unequaled zhou; it dispels all suffering,
trouble, and discontent; it is genuinely substantial and not vacuous. Hence,
proclaim the Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting zhou. Recite the zhou thus: Jiēdì
jiēdì bōluójiēdì bōluósēngjiēdì pútì sàpóhē!
NOTES
1. Translated from T. 251. «般若波羅蜜多心經» Heart Sūtra, in Taishō Shinshū

Daizōkyō «大正新脩大藏經» 8, no. 251, ed. Takakusu Junjiro (Tokyo: Taishō
Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai, 1988), CBETA version 6/15/2016. http://tripitaka.
cbeta.org/T08n0251. Zhou (mantra) with pinyin alteration, see Chapter 6: Translation
and Line Commentary, note 37 for more detail.
Chapter 1
Sampling Authenticity
The resituation of the sample in its new context is a moment of rupture

and play.
—Vanessa Chang1
What we take a text to be and how we approach it matters. This chapter

lays out an interpretive approach—a hermeneutic paradigm—for making
sense of the Heart Sutra as a distinctively Chinese text. Because we know
that the Heart Sutra quotes directly from another text, we can treat it like a
piece of music that samples from other sources. This approach allows us to
navigate the challenges presented by the controversial origins of the text,
instead prioritizing the text itself as a creative act within a particular histori-
cal and cultural context. The chapter begins with an explanation of sampling
and how sampling can be analogized to form the basis of a hermeneutic
paradigm. Next, it explores the controversial origins of the text, questions of
textual “authenticity,” and arguments for the text’s “Chinese-ness.” Finally,
it concludes by applying this hermeneutic of sampling to the Heart Sutra to
establish the interpretive framework that grounds explorations of the text in
subsequent chapters.
SAMPLING AS HERMENEUTIC PARADIGM
“Sampling” is the practice in music composition where a portion, or sample,

of one song is used in a different song. This can be a rhythm break, a word
or a few lyrics, a sound, or an instrumental phrase, and it can be “sampled”
from one’s own work or from the work of another. There are some fascinating
1
2 Chapter 1
legal issues with contemporary sampling practices and copyright law, but for
our purposes the aesthetic practice itself is of interest, as it helps expand our
understanding of how to engage a “text.”
While there is some sense in which sampling in music is a relatively recent
phenomenon, connected to technologies that make recording and repetition
possible, the practice of drawing a section of one piece into another is very,
very old. From contemporary examples like Drake’s 2015 hit single, “Hotline
Bling,” which samples from Timmy Thomas’s 1972 “Why Can’t We Just
Be Together”;2 to more classic twentieth-century examples like Warren G’s
“Regulate,” which samples Michael McDonald‘s “I Keep Forgetting”; the
Beatles’ 1967 “All You Need Is Love,” which samples the French National
Anthem, “La Marseillaise”; or James Tenney’s 1961 “Collage #1,” which
samples from Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” there are countless untold
examples of sampling in music. Musicians or producers who sample are
drawing on work that may or may not be familiar to their listening audience,
sometimes with marked changes (different lyrics, slowed down or accelerated
beats, etc.) and sometimes wholesale (e.g. from a whole musical phrase to the
recorded sound of a train or a baby’s cry).3
John Schaefer, host of Soundcheck, interviewed early “cut-and-paste” pio-
neer Stephen “Steinski” Stein:
Music, and especially jazz, has always been referential, saying, “I’ll take a piece
of that or I’ll take a little piece of this.” But because of the nature of instrumenta-
tion and the technology, it was always done through the person, through Dizzy
Gillespie’s trumpet or Charlie Parker’s saxophone.4
Jazz musicians often call the practice of re-playing a piece of a phrase from
someone else “quoting,” although, in the context of sampling, it is often
described as copying. But in the twentieth century, with the advance of
recording technologies, this re-personalization through performance takes on
a different understanding. Stein describes the early excitement at the process:
All of a sudden, you could be referential by taking the thing itself. Instead of re-
contextualizing it on your instrument in music as part of your own composition,
you could then re-contextualize the piece by taking the actual piece and putting
it in a new setting.5
Consider, for example, Warren G’s 1994 song, “Regulate.” Not only does it
sample, in an overt and direct way, Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgetting,”
but it also samples whistling, a string sound, an organ lick, and a phrase from
the movie Young Guns.6 The sample from “I Keep Forgetting” is, if one is
familiar, recognizable in “Regulate,” but it has been significantly transformed
Sampling Authenticity 3
as well—not only in terms of genre but also in how the sound is used in the
two songs. In discussing this song, Warren G said,
For “Regulate,” I was at home, and I came up with it. I was listening to Michael
McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin.’ ” It was a record that I always loved, from
being a kid and my parents playing it when they had their company of friends
over. It was a record that just stuck in my head, and it just felt good. I had the
sample and was, like, “It would be so different to do a hip-hop song over this.”
...
When they told me that Michael McDonald liked it, that really sparked me. I
was like, “Wow.” For such a great artist like him, and to have been in the music
business way before me, just to hear him say that he loved the record and cleared
[the sample] . . . it was a good thing, man.7
While in this case Warren G describes McDonald’s appreciation of and

approval for the sample, the relationship between artists and their sampled
work is often much less clear, and the tendency to want to treat the new mate-
rial as a mere extension of the sample is prevalent.
In writing about the practice of sampling in hip-hop music, Vanessa Chang
explains that a sense of panic:
pervades much of the general discourse on authenticity, ownership, and origi-

nality in sampling practice. . . . As recording technology occasioned the reifica-
tion of sound, it provoked a deep cultural concern for the origin . . . Archaic
notions of what it means to be creative and original continue to dog theoretical
accounts of sampling practice.8
That is, as with discussions of texts, it is easy for sampling to get caught in
unhelpful inquiries about origin and authenticity. A number of twentieth-
century continental philosophers have explored the idea of a “text” from
outside the bounds of the obsession with the origin of a text as determinative
of its meaning. From Jacques Derrida’s différance to Roland Barthes’ death
of the author and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “repetition,” “refrain,”
or “rhizome,” the idea of de-coupling a text’s meaning and interpretive pos-
sibilities from the situation of its composition has many variations.9 These
theorists inspired a new way of looking at the practice of sampling, which
makes it an intriguing analog for a text like the Heart Sutra.
Chang’s project is to begin to give an account of what creativity and origi-
nality look like in the context of sampling. Her work is theoretically informed
by philosophers like Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari, and, although she is not
bound by their frameworks, she does draw on some of their language for
making sense of both how to think about creativity without reducing that to
4 Chapter 1
an origin story, and how to make sense of what happens inside a song that
consists in sampling.
In describing the “tyranny of the origin,” Chang draws on ethnographic
work by Joseph Schloss, explaining that “originality in sampling practice has
very little to do with the anachronistic conception of the origin as the indis-
putable centre of meaning.”10 In other words, she is interested in theoretical
projects of resistance that make space for rethinking how a sampled song is
meaningful or original, in light of the fact that the origin of the sample(s) is
not the sufficient or defining feature of the song for either producers or lis-
teners. Instead, the way in which the sample is transformed, integrated into,
or uniquely juxtaposed as part of a new event is the crucial space for judg-
ment. According to Chang, “As the origin fades from view, creation becomes
defined by acts of recombination.”11
In this context, whether or not the intended audience will recognize the
samples per se, Chang argues that “In order to act creatively, a producer
must efface the sonic elements that surround a sample, which would help to
constitute aura and genre, and posit radical new relationships between differ-
ent samples.”12 Creativity here is an expression of the dynamic interplay that
emerges when previously unassociated events/elements are brought together
successfully into new relationships.13 Part of what this requires is that the
sampled sections become understood as part of the whole, not as either a
kind of simple quotation back to the source, nor as a simple string of samples
without aesthetic coherence or cohesion. In describing his ethnographic work
with contemporary musicians, Schloss explains that “For hip-hop produc-
ers . . . the significance tends to lie more in the ingenuity of the way the
elements are fused together than in calling attention to the diversity of their
origins.”14
A hermeneutics of sampling takes the new piece—in this case, the Heart
Sutra—as a distinctive object for interpretation, not reducible to the inter-
pretive possibilities of its “sampled” sections, nor bound to the discourse of
“authenticity.”
THE HEART SUTRA
The text that we in English call the Heart Sutra has many names:
Prajñāpāramitā hṛdaya (Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom) in Sanskrit,
«般若波羅蜜多心經» Boreboluomiduo Xinjing (Chinese), Hannya Shingyo
(Japanese), and Ban Yasimgyeong (Korean).15 The English name of the text
is a good place for us to begin considering this text. In English, Spanish, and
other European languages, we call it a “sutra”—why do we use a Sanskrit
word for the title of the text? Since this text is so popular in East Asia, why
do we not call it something connected to its Chinese or Japanese name? Why

not the Heart Jing, for instance? The traditional reason for this has to do with
the priority of Sanskrit in particular and South Asian heritage in general when
it comes to the reception of Buddhist texts.
“Sutra” is one of more than seventy-five Sanskrit words that have entered
into common English vocabulary.16 Rather than maintaining its techni-
cal meaning from Sanskrit (as a thread back to the words of the historical
Buddha),17 in common English it means either a precept summarizing a Vedic
teaching or a basic text of Buddhist scripture.18 So there is some sense in
which this is precisely the appropriate classifier for the text in English—as a
Buddhist text, it somewhat automatically becomes a “sutra,” whether or not
it “really” is a sūtra in the technical, canonical sense.
The reason for this, however, has to do with a legacy of authenticity dis-
courses that stretches from post-Han China to nineteenth-century Germany
and into the present moment. As Buddhist texts, artifacts, and practices
made their way into China, and later Korea and Japan, it became a matter of
some importance to determine which teachings were orthodox, authentic, or
genuine and which were spurious. One of the major criteria for this determi-
nation was origin—where a text came from—and the most reliable way to
determine that was vis-à-vis language. Kyoko Tokuno describes the activities
of Chinese cataloguers of Buddhist texts, who served as the gate-keepers
of the “authentic” canon: “Since, for the Chinese cataloguers, a scripture’s
authenticity was synonymous with its foreign provenance, one of the most
obvious proofs that a text was legitimate was its non-Chinese (viz., Indian
or Central Asian) origin.”19 Texts coming from the “West,” the birthplace of
the historical Buddha, would have been originally written in one of a num-
ber of Prakrits, local languages, or later in classical Sanskrit, as that became
the standardized language for Buddhist texts.20 These texts would have their
translators carefully noted and were thus “authentic” in a way that texts writ-
ten only in Chinese, for instance, were not.21
This bias toward India as the authentic place of Buddhism continued into
an early European scholarship on Buddhism, where, for example, in 1863
Charles Hartwick explains what Buddhism “really” is:
What I intend by Buddhism, is the system of metaphysical and social philoso-

phy, organized by Shakyamuni, or Gautama Buddha. Neither am I speaking
here of Buddhism in its modern development, as modified by intermixtures
either with the popular forms of Brahmanism, or with the older superstitions of
the countries where it afterwards gained a footing: for that view of it will come
more properly before us, when we pass from Hindustan to China, and the other
regions where it still possesses a complete ascendancy. In different words, we
shall be dealing now with a philosophy rather than with a religion.22
6 Chapter 1
Here Hartwick expresses a common view of the time, which continues to have
some influence today, notably, that “real” Buddhism is found in the Sanskrit/
Pali texts with a connection to the historical Buddha, not as it is found in
lived communities or later textual developments outside of India. Calling it
“philosophy” rather than “religion” also indicates a common historical view
of the time, where Buddhism has none of the “undesirable” characteristics of
religion—if one is Protestant, then Buddhism does not have ritual (unlike the
undesirable Catholicism); if one is Catholic, then Buddhism is about reason,
not faith (unlike the undesirable Protestantism), and if one is European, then
it is a pacifist philosophical tradition without violence (unlike the nearly
unceasing violence between religious groups in then-recent European his-
tory). In this way, “authentic” Buddhism was structured as much if not more
by the concerns of nineteenth-century Europe than the tradition itself.
In any case, Buddhism’s Sanskrit/Indian authenticity shadow, be it from
Tang China or modern Europe, still stretches into contemporary under-
standings of texts and practices. Many Buddhist Studies scholars, explains
Robert Buswell, “inevitably place the regional forms of Buddhism within
the purview of the greater Indian tradition, treating them as appendages of
fundamentally Indological concerns.”23 As scholars of Buddhist traditions,
however, we have a hermeneutic responsibility to the historical origins of
texts and practices, to the local context of texts and practices, and to the ways
in which our understanding of authenticity can illuminate some interpretive
possibilities and obscure others. In what follows, I present the “traditional
story” of the Heart Sutra and then explore some of the evidence for why we
ought to be skeptical of this story and the interpretive priorities it generates.
The Traditional Story

The Heart Sutra is one of the most important sutras in Mahāyāna Buddhist
practice across the world today and for the last thousand years. On any given
day, it is chanted by monastics and lay persons alike, in languages from
Tibetan to Japanese, from Chinese to English, from Vietnamese to Spanish.
Many commentators and practitioners note that it is called the “Heart” Sutra
because it contains the condensed “heart” or core of Mahāyāna Buddhist
teachings.
The common story of the origin of this text is that it was one of many
texts brought to China during the first two to three centuries of transmission
(roughly 200–400 CE), likely by Central or South Asian monks traveling
with caravans of traders across the Silk Road. This is, in fact, how a great
many Buddhist texts, images, and practices made their way into China—not
as part of a unified, concerted effort, but in the pockets and memories of trav-
eling devotees. These early texts were then translated into Chinese, usually
by a team of translators working through a chain of languages from the origi-

nal text to Chinese. In the traditional account of the Heart Sutra, the famed
Central Asian translator Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什, 334–413 CE) is listed as the
first to have translated the text into Chinese (T. 250).
While the authenticity of Kumārajīva’s version is in doubt, the most
authoritative version of the text appears with the monk 玄奘 Xuanzang
(604–664 CE), who became famous for traveling to India and back during
the Tang Dynasty—a journey that took more than twenty years.24 The oldest
currently extant version of the Heart Sutra is from a carved stele (649 CE),
and the version that became closely associated with Xuanzang (T. 251) has
since been the authoritative version across East Asia. While the Mahāyāna
Buddhist Canon, the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō (大正新脩大藏經) lists eight
different versions, Xuanzang’s (T. 251) is without question the standard.
Xuanzang’s biography25 tells the story of how he first encountered the
Heart Sutra, which he frequently chanted during his long journey across the
desert:
Some time ago, when the Master was in Shu [Sichuan] he encountered a sick
man. His body was covered in stinking, open sores and he had only a few dirty,
tattered rags for clothes. The Master carried him straightaway to his monastery
and gave him clean clothes and good food. The sick man, ashamed and grateful,
conferred on the Master this jing, which he recited often. On his journey across
the desert, he encountered various bad spirits and uncanny beasts who sur-
rounded him front and back. Even calling on Guanyin did not work. It was not
until [they heard] the sound of him chanting this text that they were dispelled.26
Like Xuanzang, Chinese and East Asian Buddhists often recite this text for
a number of reasons, including especially its protective potency, which can
dispel demons and achieve other extraordinary effects.
The text is generally understood to be part of the larger prajñāpāramitā
category of Buddhist literature.27 The central part of the Heart Sutra has
often been thought to be drawn from—sampled from—the Large Māhā
Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (hereafter Large MPS). The Heart Sutra is commonly
held to focus on the advice of not reifying emptiness and on the steps or
stages of the bodhisattva path.
In most of the more than one hundred commentaries on the text, stretch-
ing back from the first extant commentaries done by Xuanzang’s two most
prominent students, 窺基 Kuiji (632–682 CE) and 圓測 Wŏnch’ŭk (613–
696 CE), to contemporary commentaries by leading Buddhist figures, the
Chinese text is almost always treated as a translation of the original Sanskrit
(Indian) text, first and foremost. While this has led to many interesting
directions of interpretation, it privileges Sanskrit or South Asian sources as
8 Chapter 1
authoritative, which in turn reflects the questionable assumption that older/

Sanskrit texts are somehow more “authentic,” as if the interpretive context of
the sample ought to guide everything that follows in the new piece. In fact,
there is significant scholarly disagreement about the origin of the text, with
a number of established scholars agreeing with the position put forward by
Jan Nattier that the text has its origins in China, not India. Regardless of the
text’s “true” origins, which are likely ultimately undecidable, treating it as
a distinctly Chinese text opens up a number of novel and valuable interpre-
tive possibilities. The much-debated “Nattier hypothesis” provides context
for this move.
The Nattier Hypothesis

The idea for re-translating the Heart Sutra grew in large part out of my own
reflections on Jan Nattier’s provocative 1992 essay, “The Heart Sutra: A
Chinese Apocryphal Text?” In that essay, Nattier focuses on the circum-
stances of the composition of the Heart Sutra. The essay contains an intricate
argument that is worth spending some time to unpack, as this is the touch-
stone argument for all contemporary scholars working with the Heart Sutra.
The argument in her essay has two major sections: the first lays out the case
for the back-translation of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra from the Chinese, and the
second explores the possibility that Xuanzang was responsible for the back-
translation. Nattier begins the first section by noting that there are, broadly,
two received versions of the Heart Sutra, a short version and a long version:
the short version is much older and ubiquitous in Chinese and East Asian
Buddhisms, while the long version is more popular in Tibetan and Indian
Buddhisms. As the short version is without question older, Nattier focuses her
attention on that text. She notes that the text consists of three main sections:
(1) A brief introduction, in which the perspective of the bodhisattva

Avalokiteśvara on the emptiness of the five skandhas (based on his practice of
the Perfection of Wisdom) is introduced; (2) a core, in which Avalokiteśvara
(the implied speaker, though his name does not appear in this section) addresses
a series of observations to the elder (sthavira) Śāriputra, beginning with the
well-known affirmation of the non-difference between form and emptiness and
culminating in a series of negations countering virtually all the most basic cat-
egories of Buddhist analysis of the person, the nature of causality, and the path;
and (3) a conclusion, in which the bodhisattva who relies on the Perfection of
Wisdom is described, the Perfection of Wisdom is touted as the basis for the
enlightenment of all buddhas, and the well-known mantra (gate gate pāragate
pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā) is recommended as a means to eliminating all suf-
fering. The sūtra concludes with the mantra itself, which in all non-Sanskrit
versions of the text is maintained in its Indian form (that is, it is transliterated
rather than translated).28
Considering the text from within the literary category of Mahāyāna

prajñāpāramitā texts—perfection of wisdom literature—Nattier notes sev-
eral things that are odd about this text. The most obvious peculiarity about the
text is its length—it is very short for this kind of text. However, as there are
several other short texts, which like the Heart Sutra contain segments from
other texts; while this is the shortest of the popular Mahāyāna texts, it is not
really that strange.
Nattier identifies four more significant oddities about the text. First, it lacks
a standard frame. Most Mahāyāna sūtras open with a version of the phrase
“Thus I have heard,” which establishes the conditions (location, audience,
context) of the Buddha’s teaching of the sūtra, and most conclude with a
return to the frame in the form of the audience’s response to the teaching.
This text does neither. Second, and related to the frame issue, the historical
Buddha (Śākyamuni) does not appear in the text. However, in traditional
terms, in order for something to be a “sūtra,” a thread back to the teachings
of the historical Buddha, he needs to be the main teacher of the text. Both
of these problems are resolved in the longer version of the sutra, which does
contain a frame (opening and closing) and the historical Buddha. The fact of
this resolution is itself curious, as it means that at the time the shorter version
was circulating, people noticed these problems and took steps to deal with
them.29
The third oddity with the short Heart Sutra concerns the figures present in
the text. As Nattier notes, “The cast of characters . . . is not at all what we
would expect, for both the Buddha himself and Subhūti are entirely miss-
ing, while a seeming interloper, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, has been
awarded the only speaking part.”30 In other words, the main speaker of the
text, Avalokiteśvara, is odd because Avalokiteśvara is not really present in
other early prajñāpāramitā texts to any significant degree, while Subhūti, the
main interlocutor in many early prajñāpāramitā texts, is totally absent. The
text is addressed instead to Śāriputra, but Śāriputra is not normally associated
with the content of these teachings. And, as noted earlier, with the absence of
the historical Buddha, calling this text a sūtra in the technical sense—a thread
back to the life and teachings of the historical Buddha—is definitely odd.
Finally, it is very unusual for a sūtra, or early prajñāpāramitā literature, to
end with a mantra (zhou). In traditional Indian Buddhism, mantras are spo-
ken syllables whose potency is derived directly from the connection between
the sound (of the Sanskrit syllables) and the cosmos. They are generally not
meaningful, in the sense of denoting a specific word or phrase beyond their
sound. In discussing the Heart Sutra’s mantra, Donald Lopez writes,
10 Chapter 1
The translators of the Heart Sūtra thus opt for transference rather than transla-
tion, leaving the mantra untouched by translation and the apparent limitation
that that would entail, leaving the mantra unreconciled with the tongue of the
reader but protected as event, an event that communicates nothing.31
In this case, however, the mantra does have a meaning, a translatable phrase
that is noted in all of the commentarial traditions on the text.32 Furthermore,
not only do most sutras end with the frame of the audience’s response to the
Buddha’s teaching and not a mantra, but the few prajñāpāramitā texts that
involve incantations, broadly, tend to call them not “mantra” but “dhāraṇī,”
where mantra are recited for the power of the sound, and dhāraṇī are recited
as mnemonic devices. Nattier writes, “The very presence . . . of a mantra in a
Prajñāpāramitā text—let alone the highlighting of such a mantra by allowing
it to stand alone as the sūtra’s conclusion . . . demands our attention.”33
In addition to these “odd” features, Nattier examines the relationship
between the Heart Sutra (the shorter, older version) and the Large MPS. The
traditional view has been that the Sanskrit Large MPS came first, followed
by the Sanskrit Heart Sutra, followed by their translations, as separate texts,
into Chinese. However, what Nattier calls the “core” section of the (Chinese)
Heart Sutra is virtually identical to a passage from the (Chinese) Large MPS.
The Chinese versions are almost word-for-word, and this indicates that it is
very likely that the core section of the (Chinese) Heart Sutra was excerpted
from the passage in the (Chinese) Large MPS (Chinese Heart Sutra samples
from Chinese Large MPS), as the dating of the Large MPS and its transla-
tion into Chinese is relatively uncontroversial and significantly before even
the earliest reasonable speculation about the Heart Sutra. In other words,
given how closely they match, it is more likely that the Chinese Heart Sutra
sampled from the Chinese version of the Large MPS than that both were
independently translated into Chinese but just happen to match so closely.
Furthermore, according to Nattier “there is a virtual word-for-word cor-
respondence between the Sanskrit Heart Sūtra . . . and the Chinese Heart
Sūtra attributed to Xuanzang.”34 The correspondence between the Sanskrit
Heart Sutra and Xuanzang’s version would seem to indicate a close tie
between the two texts, which would not be unexpected if Xuanzang’s ver-
sion is a translation from Sanskrit, as generally thought. However, while the
relevant passage in the Sanskrit version of the Large MPS is very similar
to the Sanskrit Heart Sutra in terms of content, the linguistic details are
remarkably divergent. There is not only a difference in terms of length (the
relevant passage in the Large MPS is much longer than the Heart Sutra
core section), but the two texts employ different vocabulary and have dif-
ferent grammatical forms for phrases with similar meaning: “The wording
thus could not be more different, though the overall meaning is the same.”35
The puzzle of the differences between the two Sanskrit versions, given the
similarities in the Chinese versions, is at the core of Nattier’s argument in
the first section: why do the Chinese passages match when the Sanskrit pas-
sages do not?
This puzzle leads to one of two possible explanations: either the
(Sanskrit) Heart Sutra was the basis for the extended elaboration in the
longer (Sanskrit) Large MPS, or the (Sanskrit) Heart Sutra is a distillation
of the (Sanskrit) Large MPS. Since it is well established that the (Sanskrit)
Large MPS was translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva, and the (Chinese)
Heart Sutra does not appear until at minimum a hundred years later, the
differences noted above are unlikely to be on account of the Large MPS
being an extended elaboration of the Heart Sutra. Thus, many scholars have
theorized that the Heart Sutra was a summary or distillation of the larger
text. However, this leaves us with a mystery. As Nattier explains,
To get from the Sanskrit text of the Large Sūtra to the Sanskrit Heart
Sūtra . . . we must not only posit the emergence of an abbreviated style from
an elaborate one; we must also account for the substitution of adjectives for
verbs, plurals for singulars, and synonyms . . . for certain Buddhist technical
terms. . . . To put it succinctly: there is no straightforward way to derive the
Sanskrit Heart Sūtra from the Sanskrit Large Sūtra, or vice versa.36
The mystery here is this: how is it that the Chinese versions of these two texts
are virtually identical when the Sanskrit versions are not? Nattier explores a
possible hypothesis for this—that the Chinese texts are independent trans-
lations of their respective Sanskrit originals, which were later edited to be
similar—but rejects this as exceedingly unlikely, given the high quality and
standards of Kumārajīva’s known translations. It does seem improbable that a
professional translator would translate two similar, but importantly not identi-
cal, passages in Sanskrit into identical passages in Chinese.37
Returning to the textual evidence, Nattier notes the similarities between the
earliest extant versions of the Sanskrit and the Chinese Large MPS, conclud-
ing that the minor differences can be attributed to the process of translation.
Kumārajīva is held to be the earliest translator of the Large MPS, and his
translations are well known for aligning with Chinese aesthetic sensibili-
ties, which in this case would account for the areas where the Chinese text
was somewhat abbreviated when compared to the Sanskrit, as repetition is
undesirable in a Chinese literary context. She argues, then, that the next step
must have been the composition/compilation of the Heart Sutra by Chinese
Buddhists, where the core section was excerpted from the Chinese version of
the Large MPS, and the introductory and concluding sections added. This,
however, requires ending on “a heretical assertion”: that the final step in
12 Chapter 1
this chain of events is the translation of the Heart Sutra from Chinese into
Sanskrit.38
Figure 1.1 gives a sense for both the traditional account of the origin of the
text and the direction of Nattier’s argument.
Figure 1.1
Nattier’s argument for the back-translation hypothesis—that the Sanskrit

Heart Sutra was translated from the Chinese—involves several factors. She
examines the evidence for back-translation in terms of the changes in vocabulary
and in grammar (expressions, singular verbs to plural adjectives, etc.) from the
Large MPS to the Heart Sutra, concluding that the changes in vocabulary/gram-
mar are made more intelligible by the presence of Chinese as an intermediary.
One example she gives is from perhaps the most famous line of the text:
The Large MPS reads: (na) anyad rūpam anyā śunyatā nānya śunyatānyad
rūpaṃ.
The Heart Sutra reads: rūpan na pṛthak śūnyata śūnyatāyā na pṛthag rūpam.
Nattier explains that the issue here has to do with the difference between
these lines. In the Large MPS, the grammar of the sentence uses the expres-
sion na anya X anya Y, whereas in the Heart Sutra, the expression is X na
pṛthak Y. She argues that these two expressions, although similar in meaning,
are relevantly different grammatically: X is not other than Y, and Y is not dis-
tinct from X.39 The best way to make sense of this, and other odd differences
between the Sanskrit Large MPS and the Sanskrit Heart Sutra, is to assert
that the Chinese Heart Sutra was an intermediary. The Chinese of the above
passage, in Xuanzang’s version, is 色不異空，空不異色 (se bu yi kong,
kong bu yi se). This is a reasonable translation of the Large MPS’s Sanskrit
phrase into Chinese, and the Sanskrit Heart Sutra’s phrase is a reasonable
translation of this Chinese phrase. This set of phrases is a clear example of the
kind of thing that happens with other, well-documented, back-translations,
where an “original” phrase is transformed by means of back-translation—
from the first language into the second and then back from the second into
the first—where the end result is a phrase with similar meaning but different
expression.
This argument is also supported by historical evidence, or rather by the
absence of certain kinds of historical evidence. While no Indian/Sanskrit
commentaries on the Heart Sutra can be found prior to the eighth century,
many Chinese commentaries exist from the mid-seventh century. In addi-
tion, the two oldest versions of the Chinese Heart Sutra, translations by
Kumārajīva and Xuanzang, are first mentioned in an eighth-century cata-
logue, and Xuanzang’s biography details him receiving the text, not translat-
ing it.40
Furthermore, the many oddities in the Heart Sutra are mostly found in
the frame sections, and if the text were compiled in China, then these oddi-
ties should be explainable by the Chinese context. Nattier here draws on the
work of Fukui Fumimasa, who argues that the Heart Sutra (心經) is not a
“sūtra” at all, but rather that “xinjing 心經” was in fact a way of describing a
“dhāraṇī scripture,” or a text intended for recitation for protective benefit, not
one intended to be the distillation of the Perfection of Wisdom philosophy.41
If this is true, then the absence of the technical “sūtra” frame makes some
sense—the compilers of the text did not do a poor job of passing this off as a
“real” sūtra; they just were not interested in trying to do so!
Nattier continues with this line of argumentation, considering the likeli-
hood that other textual oddities—in particular the presence of Avalokiteśvara
and the concluding mantra (zhou)—would have been found around the ori-
gins of the text, in China in the early-to-mid-seventh century. She concludes,
“The answer, emphatically, is yes . . . the choice of Avalokiteśvara as the
central figure in a newly created Buddhist recitation text would be perfectly
plausible in a Chinese milieu.”42 After all, we have extensive evidence
14 Chapter 1
suggesting that Avalokiteśvara was one of, if not the, most popular bodhisat-
tvas in China at the time.
As for the mantra (zhou) that concludes the text, Nattier explains that this
particular mantra (zhou), and the list of epithets for it, is found in several
other texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon, including in a catalogue of zhou
(spells, incantations, and recitation phrases) from 653 CE.43 If this section of
the text was composed in a Chinese context, this also explains why some of
the phrasing is very natural in Chinese, but perhaps less so in Sanskrit. Nattier
details several examples of this, where the Sanskrit word order in the Heart
Sutra is not what would be expected from normal Sanskrit phrasing, but
instead is a match for the word order coming from the Chinese (word order
is a major part of Chinese grammar). Since Chinese and Sanskrit have often
dramatically different word order patterns, this is significant.
Nattier opens the second part of her argument by considering precisely
how the text might have come to be, focusing on the figure of Xuanzang, as it
is his “translation” that becomes the basis for all later Chinese commentaries.
As discussed earlier, Xuanzang’s biography details him receiving the text in
gratitude from a sick monk he helped during his time in Sichuan. His biog-
raphy also notes not just his familiarity with the text, but his preference for
it and his confidence in its life-saving potency. We also know that Xuanzang
translated some Chinese texts into Sanskrit, as was (allegedly) the case with
the Daodejing «道德經» and with the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna
«大乘起信論», when he discovered there was no existing Sanskrit version.
Nattier hypothesizes that Xuanzang may have facilitated in some respect
the back-translation, as he would likely have assumed the Sanskrit origins
of the text, the same as he did with the Awakening of Faith. It is important
to note, however, that Nattier is careful not to claim in any strong sense that
this part of her argument is any more than a theory that makes sense of some
of the evidence, not an assertion that it must have been Xuanzang who back-
translated the text.
One of the major hurdles to be overcome for Nattier’s hypothesis is the fact
that the canon has long held there to be a version of the Heart Sutra translated
by Kumārajīva (T. 250), which, if true, would predate Xuanzang’s version
by several hundred years. Nattier draws on Japanese scholarship looking at
the practice among some of Kumārajīva’s students, in particular 僧肇 Seng
Zhao (378–413 CE), of commenting on the passage from the Large MPS that
is the core of the Heart Sutra. According to Nattier, there is no evidence that
this was the full version of the Heart Sutra, and moreover, as the earliest ver-
sions of Kumārajīva’s catalogue of work do not include mention of the Heart
Sutra. Furthermore, since misattributions of Kumārajīva translations abound,
Kumārajīva was unlikely to have been the original source.
The version attributed to Kumārajīva mostly agrees with Xuanzang’s ver-

sion, with a few important exceptions: some extra text, different vocabulary
or phrasing in a couple of places, and different translations for a few techni-
cal terms.44 Fukui has argued that the additional phrases are drawn out of
Kumārajīva’s translation of the Large MPS, although they are found in no
other versions of the Heart Sutra. While Fukui concludes that Kumārajīva
must have been the original translator of the text, Nattier argues that this is
highly unlikely. Kumārajīva was a brilliant translator, and so it would be
very strange indeed for him to have translated two Sanskrit texts, where the
Sanskrit is different, into one and the same version in Chinese.
Nattier further explains the existence of the Kumārajīva version as
potentially excerpted much later (perhaps even after the Xuanzang
“translation”) from Kumārajīva’s version of the Da zhidu lun 大智度論
(Sk. Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa), a commentary on the 25,000 line MPS,
often attributed to Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE) but extant only in the Chinese,
which was massively influential on the development of Chinese Buddhisms.
The DZDL (T. 1509) was translated and composed around 406 CE;
Kumārajīva translated about the first third of the enormous text and abridged
the rest in his own phrasing. While the DZDL may have been the source of
the samplings in the version of the Heart Sutra attributed to Kumārajīva, it
is unlikely that Kumārajīva himself authored or translated that version. In
addition, the Kumārajīva version of the Heart Sutra is not the most common
version and never became popular for either recitation or commentary, as far
as we know. But if there had been a Kumārajīva version before Xuanzang’s,
it would be strange for Xuanzang’s ever to have come to occupy the posi-
tion it does. This is because, when versions of a text by both translators
exist, Kumārajīva’s version is almost universally favored over Xuanzang’s,
as Kumārajīva’s prose is considered more beautiful and less technical than
Xuanzang’s. Nattier concludes that argument by writing, “What we can state
with certainty at this point is that this version of the Heart Sutra is neither
Kumārajīva’s nor an independent translation from the Sanskrit.”45
Nattier next considers the role that Xuanzang may have played in “trans-
lating” the text—or rather, since his biography details his encounter with the
text, his editing of it. In particular, there are three words that are translated
with technical terms that were favored, or perhaps even coined, by Xuanzang:
Śariputra as 舍利子 Shelizi (and not 舍利弗 Shelifu), Avalokiteśvara as
觀自在 Guanzizai (and not 觀世音 Guanshiyin), and the term skandha as 蘊
yun (and not 陰 yin). For Nattier, this is “a virtual fingerprint of Xuanzang’s
editorial activity.”46 Nattier is careful to note, however, that it is unlikely that
Xuanzang “authored” the text, in any strong sense, given his overt devotion
to the text. The minor editorial changes that he may have made are consistent
16 Chapter 1
with his conviction that some terms, especially names, had not been well
translated/transliterated into Chinese by prior translators.
Nattier concludes that there are three possibilities at this point: (1) The
“Kumārajīva” version was compiled after Xuanzang’s version was popular,
possibly as a result of dissatisfaction with Xuanzang’s editorial choices; (2)
the “Kumārajīva” version was in circulation, and Xuanzang not only made
minor editorial changes but removed certain parts of the text; or (3) the
version Xuanzang obtained in Sichuan had already been abbreviated, and
Xuanzang made only minor editorial changes. Nattier finds the third possibil-
ity to be the most likely, although she notes that there is insufficient evidence
for ruling out any of these options.
Although we are not in a position to state with certainty much about the ori-
gins of the text, it is uncontroversial that it was Xuanzang’s version that first
became widely popular in China, and it is still the main version for chanting
and copying across East Asia. Nattier also argues that Xuanzang was likely
responsible for the sutra’s initial circulation in China, and perhaps also its
translation into Sanskrit and its circulation in India.47 Given this, Nattier next
explores why it is that the Xuanzang version of the text is not the version that
became canonical in India and Tibet. As discussed earlier, “In China . . . the
first criterion of scriptural legitimacy was that of geography, for any text that
had no demonstrated Indian pedigree was, on those grounds alone, suspect.”48
Coming from India (or somewhere West of China) and being in Sanskrit (or
traceable to Sanskrit) was crucial for establishing the authenticity of Buddhist
texts, and given the proliferation of texts and teachings, authenticity was a
major problem.
However, geography was not a useful criterion for determining textual
authenticity in India. Nattier argues that the Indian criteria centered on agree-
ment with other (accepted) teachings and that it had to have been “heard”
from a legitimate source. In other words, the text had to have the right frame
formatting and be loosely consistent with other established texts: this is what
makes it a sūtra, in the technical sense. This explains why the longer version
of the Heart Sutra—the only one that from this perspective is a legitimate
sūtra—is the one that received commentarial attention in India. Tibetan
Buddhists used both the Chinese and the Indian criteria—geography and
sūtra form—and so also only commented on the longer version. There is no
question, however, that the longer version of the sutra is significantly later
historically than the Xuanzang version.
Nattier concludes the piece by reiterating the sequence of events as she
finds them to have most likely occurred:
from the Sanskrit Large Sutra to the Chinese Large Sutra of Kumārajīva to
the Chinese Heart Sutra popularized by Xuanzang to the Sanskrit Heart Sutra.
To assume any other direction of transmission would present insuperable

difficulties—or would, at the very least, require postulating a quite convoluted
series of processes, which . . . seems considerably less likely to have taken place.49
In other words, not only is the text unarguably Chinese in the sense of where
it was popularized and made canonical, and from where it was transmitted
to the rest of East Asia, but that it was (likely) compiled/edited in a Chinese
context as well.
Responses to Nattier
Readers unfamiliar with the Heart Sutra may at this point be thinking
that Nattier has been reasonably successful in showing the possibility, if
not the probability, that the Heart Sutra was compiled/edited in a Chinese
context, with Xuanzang playing a major role in at least editing and popu-
larizing the text. However, for a number of reasons, this does not seem to
be the prevailing view of the origin of the text. Contemporary scholars and
interpreters of the text, many of whom are themselves ordained insiders
in different Buddhist traditions, are split in at least two dimensions. First,
many—including the Dalai Lama, Edward Conze, Red Pine, Sheng Yen,
Fukui, Kōsei, Lopez, and Waddell—maintain the South Asian/Sanskrit ori-
gin of the text.50 Of those who agree with the Nattier hypothesis concerning
the text’s Chinese origins and the back-translation into Sanskrit—including
Ji Yun, Dan Lusthaus, Jayavara Attwood, and Kazuaki Tanahashi—there is
still widespread disagreement about whether or not the Kumārajīva version
is authentic, the number of versions of the Heart Sutra in circulation in the
early Tang, the role Xuanzang may have played in all this, and whether or not
the original “editor(s)” of the sutra can be identified at all.51 In what follows,
I give a brief overview of some figures whose views diverge from Nattier’s
arguments, in particular where they provide a specific argument or their own
hypothesis about the text’s origins.
Noted popular translator Red Pine (Bill Porter) describes Nattier’s argu-
ment as “convoluted” at best and, along with many others, follows early
twentieth-century scholar Edward Conze’s theory about the origins of the
text.52 Red Pine notes that while the earliest prajñāpāramitā literature is
likely to have been composed in southern India, around the first century
BCE, the Heart Sutra was more likely composed in the northern regions
controlled by the Kushans. In their territory, the Sarvastivadin sect was in
power, and Red Pine follows Conze in arguing that the content of the Heart
Sutra is a response to the Sarvastivadin teachings. He writes, “it was probably
a Sarvastivadin monk (or former Sarvastivadin monk) . . . who composed the
Heart Sutra upon realizing the limitations of the Sarvastivadin Abhidharma.
18 Chapter 1
This was Edward Conze’s conclusion concerning other Prajnaparamita

texts.”53
In responding to some of the details of Nattier’s argument, especially the
inconsistencies between the Sanskrit Large MPS and the Sanskrit Heart
Sutra, Red Pine suggests his own solution to the problem:
My own solution to this apparent inconsistency is to assume that the lines in

question in the Sanskrit texts of the Heart Sutra and the Large Sutra used by
Kumārajīva and Xuanzang were identical. Thus, there was no need, nor any
basis, for divergence in the Chinese. . . . The differences we see today in the
two Sanskrit texts, I would suggest, were the result of subsequent corruption or
simply reflect the existence of variant editions.54
While it is not unreasonable to think that there were more versions of these
texts in circulation that we currently know about, without any evidence for
such a matching text (for example, in a catalogue or a commentary), this is
an unsatisfying response to a genuine problem.
Kazuaki Tanahashi, noted translator of Japanese Buddhist philosopher
Dōgen and author of The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic
of Mahāyāna Buddhism, agrees with Nattier’s findings of the Chinese origins
of the text and describes her work as “revolutionary . . . careful . . . and thor-
ough.”55 He is particularly interested in the idea that the central part of the
Heart Sutra’s text may have been drawn not directly from the Large MPS but
from Kumārajīva’s translation of the DZDL.56
However, Tanahashi is skeptical of the role Xuanzang may have played
in the back-translation of the Heart Sutra into Sanskrit. He presents a differ-
ent kind of theory about the origin of the Sanskrit version: “A later record
suggests that he received the Sanskrit version ‘from Avalokiteshvara.’
Thus it is possible to regard the emergence of the Hridaya [Heart Sutra]
as Xuanzang’s mystical experience during meditation.”57 In exploring this
theory, Tanahashi’s explanation for how the Sanskrit version came to be is
in many ways in line with historical accounts of the origins of other sutras:
When Xuanzang wanted to have the original Hridaya [Heart Sutra] and could
not get it, would he not have meditated and prayed to Avalokiteśvara, his guard-
ian deity, to bestow the sutra upon him? . . . Did he not then in truth ‘receive’ it
from the bodhisattva? . . . “Receiving” sutras from the Buddha or a bodhisattva,
as Xuanzang’s followers—including Amoghavajra—claimed to do, is tradition-
ally how the origins of Mahāyāna sutras were accounted for.58
This is not, then, so much a disagreement with Nattier’s argument but a

refinement of one of the possible ways in which Xuanzang could have
come to be involved with the “back-translation.” While there are extensive

accounts of monks, nuns, and devoted laypersons receiving texts directly
from buddhas or bodhisattvas, as a line of inquiry into the historical origins
of the text, this is also unsatisfying. Xuanzang’s biography does not record
him having received the text from Avalokiteśvara, and given his close ties to
the bodhisattva, it does seem odd that an account of that sort of meditative
encounter would not have been conveyed at least to his students. It certainly
would have added a weighty sense of authenticity to the text at the time. The
fact that the description of this comes from Amoghavajra (不空 705–774
CE), a later Tantric master, makes sense given Amoghavajra’s other work,
but without any evidence from closer to Xuanzang’s life, does not lend cred-
ibility to the theory. Other than a need to find a more “authentic” origin to
the sutra than “an unidentifiable person in China,” this theory is less than
compelling in contemporary scholarship.59 But even if Xuanzang did receive
the Sanskrit version of the text in a meditative experience, Tanahashi is still
convinced by Nattier’s Chinese compilation argument.
Ji Yun, a professor at the Buddhist College of Singapore, has written a
lengthy response to Nattier’s article in his 2012 piece, “Is the Heart Sutra
an Apocryphal Text?—a Reexamination,” translated by Chin Shih-Foong
(2018). The core of Yun’s disagreement with Nattier seems to concern her
use of the term “apocryphal” to describe the Heart Sutra. Yun notes that the
term for “apocryphal” in Chinese, “疑伪” (yiwei), has a strong connotation
of something being “doubtful” or “fabricated.” Yun details some of the his-
tory of the term “apocryphal,” noting that in its early Christian usage, it was
relatively value-neutral, indicating that something was non-canonical but not
necessarily “fake.” However, from around the sixteenth century it came to
mean something more like “heretical” and had a very strong negative conno-
tation. Yun argues that this really does not fit the Chinese Buddhist case—he
goes even further than Nattier in asserting the Heart Sutra was definitely
compiled from sutra extracts in China—but is careful to note that other sutras
composed in China, for example, Huineng’s Platform Sutra, are still very
much part of the (Mahāyāna) canon. So if the Heart Sutra was composed in
China, that does not make it either non-canonical or heretical, and so it should
not be called “apocryphal.” A more common use of the term is described by
Buswell: “It now appears that many Buddhist scriptures were not ‘transla-
tions’ at all but were composed within the indigenous cultures of Asia and
in the native languages of those regions. It is to such scriptures that the term
‘Buddhist apocrypha’ is meant to refer.”60
Furthermore, Yun agrees with Nattier (although it is not clear he recog-
nizes this) in following Fukui’s scholarship on the nature of the Heart Sutra
as primarily and originally a dhāraṇī, a text intended for protective recita-
tion, not a sutra in the technical sense. Since dhāraṇī are not sūtras and are
20 Chapter 1
not subject to the same concerns about authenticity as sūtra are, he writes
that “the question of ‘apocryphal-ness’ does not arise.”61 He also sees this as
explaining a number of Nattier’s “odd” features of the Heart Sutra, as if the
text were a dhāraṇī and not a sūtra it would not be expected to have a sūtra
format and would be expected to have an incantation of some sort. This is
well in line with Nattier’s argument. The issue of apocryphal-ness may have
more to do with differences between technical language in scholarly disci-
plines across language barriers, but it is relevant to note that being Chinese in
some strong sense does not prima facie disqualify a text from being canoni-
cal in Mahāyāna traditions, although the gravitational pull of authenticity
discourses is centered in Sanskrit.
Yun also argues that the Heart Sutra was likely a 抄经 chaojing, a copied
sutra extract. Tokuno explains that “[a]ccording to Sengyou, the designation
chaojing was originally reserved for an abbreviated translation of selected
passages from a scripture, which were presumed to convey the text’s essen-
tial meaning without any superfluous prolixity.”62 Copied sutra extracts were
noted as early as the late second century. Originally, they:
were meant to be accurate synopses of authentic translations that would make

more accessible and intelligible to a Chinese audience the difficult, and lengthy,
texts of Buddhism. In practice, however, they often deviated from this principle
and became something akin to spurious.63
In the early catalogues, many chaojing were listed as having anonymous

translators. Before the practice of assigning a famous translator to a text that
a cataloguer wanted to recognize as legitimate became common, texts com-
posed in a manner other than the most orthodox way could often be listed
as having “anonymous” translators, as a way of indicating that they were
“authentically” South Asian. Yun hypothesizes that this was the basic struc-
ture of the process for the early composition of the Heart Sutra, and only later
did the text become identified as a “translation” done by Xuanzang.
Yun does not appear to disagree about the issue of the Heart Sutra’s
Chinese origins or the idea of back-translation, but he does suggest a differ-
ent version and timeline of those events, one where the rising popularity of
Tantric forms of Buddhism in seventh-century Tang China plays a key role in
the composition of the Heart Sutra. Yun does not think that Xuanzang either
translated or back-translated the text, but that he did do some minor editing,
and that through his possible association with his contemporary, translator
Atikūṭa (阿地瞿多, 7th c. CE), who is known for having worked on a number
of dhāraṇī texts, including the Catalogue of Dhāraṇī «陀羅尼集经» (T. 901),
he may have been involved with composition of the last part of the sutra—the
“mantra” from the third section of the sutra is also found in this catalogue.
Yun also agrees that the Kumārajīva version is a misattribution, likely later
than Xuanzang’s version, and that both versions were likely formed as
extracts from Kumārajīva’s DZDL, which is itself based on the Large MPS.
Ishii Kōsei, of Komazawa University, has a recent article, “Issues
Surrounding the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya: Doubts Concerning Jan Nattier’s
Theory of a Composition by Xuanzang,” translated by Jeffrey Kotyk. Kōsei,
a noted scholar of Huayan and Chan Buddhism, is thoroughly unconvinced
by both Nattier’s central argument and her supposition as to the role of
Xuanzang. He draws on the work of several other Japanese Buddhist schol-
ars, noting that “However, in addition to a number of points already known
in Japan, Fukui Fumimasa 福井文雅 (2000) and Harada Wasō 原田和宗
(2010) have pointed out in detail that the argument suggesting that Xuanzang
produced the Sanskrit Hṛdaya is overstated and mistaken.”64 This is, how-
ever, not his main concern.
As a scholar well versed in both East Asian languages and Sanskrit, he
takes issue with a number of the claims Nattier makes about the grammar
and translation of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra. Kōsei argues that Nattier has
presented an English translation of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra that serves her
argument too well while not serving the Sanskrit well enough. He focuses his
main criticism on two lines of the text.
The first, from the opening passage, “the five aggregates were all per-
ceived to be empty” (照見五蘊皆空), has two problems, according to Kōsei.
The same passage, from a later Sanskrit edition, reads “āryāvalokiteśvaro
bodhisattvo gaṃbhīrāyāṃ prajñāpāramitāyāṃ caryāṃ caramāṇo vyavalo-
kayati sma | pañca skandhās tāṃś ca svabhāvaśūnyān paśyati sma.”65
Kōsei notes that all extant Sanskrit versions of the text include the phrase
“svabhāvaśūnyān,” meaning “empty of self/own-nature,” while the Xuanzang
version of the Chinese text does not. Nattier’s translation of the Sanskrit text
does not include what the five aggregates are empty of—own-being, or self-
nature. In addition, her translation breaks the larger sentence in a different
place from the Sanskrit phrasing: “What is important here is that in contrast
to all the Chinese translations that translate ‘the five aggregates were all per-
ceived to be empty’ as a combined operation, in the case of the Sanskrit texts,
no matter the recension, they all comprise a structure of two levels: ‘There
are five aggregates, and they were all perceived to be empty.’”66 Kōsei also
does his own translation walk-through, arguing that the Chinese for this sen-
tence makes more sense as a translation from the Sanskrit than the other way
around, as it is more likely that the sentence break came first and was erased
in the Chinese than that it was introduced in translation from the Chinese.
The second case he considers is the phrase from the end of the sutra,
“It is true and not false; thus, the mantra of prajñāpāramitā is spoken
眞實不虛故說般若波羅蜜多呪.” Again, the Sanskrit and the Chinese break
22 Chapter 1
this phrase in different places—the Chinese traditionally after “genuinely true

and not false” 眞實不虛, the Sanskrit more like “It is true. Because it is not
false.”67 Kōsei again does his own translation and suggests that the Chinese is
a perfectly natural and common translation of this phrase into Chinese from
Sanskrit. He does not, however, significantly engage Nattier’s claim about
why this phrase is important in Chinese, nor any of her arguments about the
back-translation process—the presence of synonymous but distinct vocabu-
lary and grammatical structures in the two Sanskrit versions.
In sum, he is critical of the idea that the back-translation hypothesis
makes the best sense of the evidence: “It is a fact that the Hṛdaya is unique,
and Nattier’s paper is significant with respect to the various cited examples
of this. However, the assertion that ‘it is easier to understand the Sanskrit
Heart Sūtra as a translation from Chinese than the reverse’ is a mistake.”68
However, he does agree that the Heart Sutra did not likely begin its life as a
sutra, given its popular use as a protective incantation, but rather as a kind of
hybrid text using elements from Prajñāpāramitā texts, the cult surrounding
Avalokiteśvara, and the mantra.69
Finally, renowned scholar and translator Dan Lusthaus responded to
Nattier’s hypothesis in an article titled, “The Heart Sūtra in Chinese
Yogacara: Some Comparative Comments on the Heart Sūtra Commentaries
of Wonch’uk and K’uei-chi.” While his response to Nattier is not the main
subject of the article, he does devote significant time to thinking through the
implications of commentaries by these two preeminent students of Xuanzang
on Nattier’s hypothesis.
Lusthaus, in describing Nattier’s argument, writes that “The evidence she
uses to demonstrate the tell-tale signs of back-translation is compelling.”70
In other words, the critical lens he intends to bring to bear on her argument
is not with the basic outline of the likely flow of translation, from Sanskrit
Large MPS to Chinese Large MPS to Chinese Heart Sutra to Sanskrit Heart
Sutra. The critical lens he provides concerns the suppositions over precisely
how this might have occurred in China and Nattier’s claim that it could have
been Xuanzang who edited/compiled the “original” Heart Sutra.
The crucial piece of the disagreement between Nattier and Lusthaus has to
do with whether or not we accept the idea that the Heart Sutra version attrib-
uted to Kumārajīva is a false attribution. Nattier’s picture of how the back-
translation might have worked relies on her argument that the Kumārajīva
version was likely translated/compiled after Xuanzang’s version. Lusthaus,
however, wants to show that evidence from Wŏnch’ŭk’s commentary on
the Heart Sutra, likely written after Xuanzang’s death, strongly suggests
that there were certainly more versions than Xuanzang’s circulating at the
time, and that of those perhaps multiple versions, one is likely to have been
Kumārajīva’s.
Lusthaus writes, “At least four times in his commentary, Wŏnch’ŭk dis-
cusses what may be other, earlier Chinese translations of the Heart Sutra.”71
Wŏnch’ŭk repeatedly refers to both an older (舊) version of the text and to
the existence of at least two different versions, which seem to mostly agree
but where one version has “and so on” (等) in a number of places where the
received version from Xuanzang does not. Wŏnch’ŭk tells the reader that
he has consulted the Sanskrit, found “and so on” there, and so finds the text
with the additions to be the more correct. However, the oldest extant versions
of the Sanskrit text also do not have this phrase in these locations, nor does
Kumārajīva’s alleged version. Wŏnch’ŭk is adamant, however, that there are
multiple different versions of the text.
The final passage Lusthaus examines contains a word not found in
Xuanzang’s version but that is found in Kumārajīva’s version. Xuanzang’s
version of the passage reads, according to Lusthaus, “because there are no
obstructions, there is no fear. Completely detached from conceptually-per-
verted dream thoughts, [this is] ultimate Nirvana.” The version Wŏnch’ŭk pre-
fers reads “detached from all conceptually-perverted dream thoughts,” which
is the same reading found in the Kumārajīva version, although Wŏnch’ŭk
does not mention Kumārajīva by name. Lusthaus finds this to be conclusive
evidence: “It is Kumārajīva’s version.”72 Whether or not we can conclude from
this similarity that the version Wŏnch’ŭk is quoting is from a text translated by
Kumārajīva, these instances together do seem to indicate, as Lusthaus notes,
that “there were even more Chinese Heart Sutra versions than Xuanzang’s or
Kumārajīva’s available at that time.”73 Lusthaus also speculates that the ver-
sion of the text Xuanzang received from the sick person in Sichuan was in fact
the chanting version of the Sanskrit text, which Xuanzang would have found to
be particularly efficacious. The transliteration, however, is more likely to have
been connected with the much later figure of Amoghavajra than Xuanzang.
Some scholarly consensus seems to be that the origins of the Heart Sutra
are difficult to pin down and that the back-translation hypothesis is not
unreasonable, although we cannot know for sure if it was as direct (Sanskrit-
Chinese-Sanskrit) as Nattier suggested, occurred as late as she suggested, or
whether or not it involved Kumārajīva. It is my view, given the arguments at
play in present discourse, that the Heart Sutra was likely compiled from sutra
extracts and other sources, in China, sometime after Kumārajīva’s transla-
tion of the Large MPS and the DZDL, but probably before Xuanzang’s time.
There may have been multiple similar, but not exact, versions of the text,
and it was originally likely used more as a devotional chant than as a written
sūtra, although it came later to occupy both positions. Xuanzang certainly
was involved in editing the text, and as his “translation” (his composition, in
musical terms) became standard, he was a central figure in its popularization.
While many insiders to the tradition(s) have insisted that the Heart Sutra
24 Chapter 1
must have originally been a Sanskrit text, from a contemporary philosophical

perspective, we can bracket out the controversy over origins without having
to take a dogmatic stand on these murky issues and instead take this as an
opportunity to re-engage the text, treating it as we would an original compo-
sition, like a piece of music containing various samples. Whether or not the
text was “originally” compiled in China, and by whom, let us imagine for
the moment that, as Nattier concludes, “The Heart Sutra is indeed—in every
sense of the word—a Chinese text.”74
CONCLUSION
Thus far we have been examining arguments from historians and buddholo-
gists concerning the origins of the Heart Sutra; at this point, we can shift
to the aesthetic or hermeneutic perspective on the text qua work through
the frame of the hermeneutics of sampling. As it is relatively undisputed
that the central section of the text is borrowed, nearly word-for-word, from
either the Large MPS or the DZDL, some might ask, why does it matter
where it was composed? The main part came from a Sanskrit text, end of
the story. Here, though, we can bring a different lens to bear on the text by
thinking of the text as an instance of sampling.
In the context of the Heart Sutra, the “odd” elements of the frame might be
thought of, not as “odd” because they do not fit into the previous (Sanskrit/
South Asian) mold, but as radical new relationships. Avalokiteśvara,
Śariputra, the mantra (zhou), the absence of the Buddha, and the discourse on
emptiness—putting all these elements together makes possible new relation-
ships that disclose meaning not found simply in the Large MPS alone.
Imagine, perhaps, that someone or a group of people have a favorite
passage from the Large MPS/DZDL, which gets copied out on its own for
various purposes. Through some set of circumstances, this sutra extract—the
equivalent of the McDonald phrase in Warren G’s song—becomes the basis
for a new composition, one which has additional “sampled” elements like
the opening frame with Avalokiteśvara and the closing mantra (zhou). It is
then remixed and takes on a new life of its own—it has a rhythm, a sono-
rous quality that lends it to chanting as an efficacious incantation, in a way
that is genuinely different from how the “original” passage was treated and
used in its context. As a new composition, it takes root in Chinese soil as
not only a chanted incantation (dhāraṇī) but as a common text for teaching
and commenting, for use in daily practice and ritual, as an object itself of
sutra copying and veneration, and as a comfort to lay people. The nature and
extent of people’s engagement with the “new” work are dramatically differ-
ent from their engagement with the Large MPS. The analogy of “sampled”
composition opens up some interesting avenues for thinking about this

work—text, song, ritual object, chant—and for what creativity and originality
mean in a context where the origin is murky at best, and for resisting the logic
of the primacy of origin without ignoring the fact of relationship.
The notion of creativity drawn from sampling, creativity as the con-
struction of diverse, unexpected, and meaningful relationships, has strong
resonances within a Chinese Buddhist philosophical framework, where there
are no isolated events without causes and conditions, and where dependent
arising is made sense of through a diverse set of ideas, taken to the fullest
in the account of mutual interpenetration. Sampling as an interpretive frame
liberates us from the tendency to essentialize origins—itself both a common
Buddhist practice and a philosophical point of criticism. Chan philosopher
Peter Hershock writes on the relationship between the key Buddhist ideas
of emptiness and dependent arising (interdependence), “the emptiness of all
things consists of their meaningful interdependence. Realizing the emptiness
of all things is thus realizing how each thing contributes to the meaning of
all other things and how all things contribute, in turn, to each thing’s own
meaning.”75
Applied to the notion of a text, this metaphysics is already prepared to pay
close attention to not only the causes and conditions for a thing’s coming-to-
be but also to the manifold meanings that emerge from appreciating a new
or different juxtaposition of its elements. Texts, like all other phenomena,
are dependent on and conditioned by other phenomena, in endless chains of
connection. What can “original” or “authentic” even mean in this Buddhist
metaphysics? No text emerges causa sui from the void, and all texts are, like
all phenomena, unified-yet-composite events. Taking an interpretive position
on the Heart Sutra that prioritizes its Chinese context and not its South Asian
context, then, is a legitimate approach.
Innovation or creativity is precisely a situation of relationships. A sample
being drawn from another work is, perhaps, more a difference in degree than a
difference in kind, on a logic where everything is always already conditioned
and related. Chang argues that “the sample comes to signify within a differ-
ent framework.”76 What she means here is that the meaning, the significance
of the new event (the Heart Sutra), emerges in a different context from the
context from which the sample (selection from the Large MPS/DZDL) was
drawn. Making sense of the compilation or sampling then requires attention
to the surrounding details, the ambient environment in which the sampling
has become part of a new event. Not only would it not make much sense to
try and judge or interpret “Regulate” by the standards and genre criteria of
“I Keep Forgetting,” but because “Regulate” is its own work, making sense
of it requires taking it on its own terms, from its own context. This is not to
say that there are no dis-analogies between a song with significant sampling
26 Chapter 1
and a text like the Heart Sutra, but rather that the analogy with sampling lets
us look at the text as a playful transformation that becomes its own event
in its own context, where the audience can simultaneously venerate the
sample’s origins and see it as fully woven into a new pattern of relationships
in the new work. In this case, seeing the Heart Sutra through the frame of
sampling pushes us to take seriously its surrounding details and the ambient
environment—its Chinese context.
This chapter opened with an epigraph from Chang: “The resituation of the
sample in its new context is a moment of rupture and play.”77 Treating sam-
pling as a hermeneutic paradigm for interpreting a text like the Heart Sutra
allows us to see both the rupture and the play possible with the text when we
view it on its own terms in a Chinese context. This means not only translat-
ing it from the Chinese, not Sanskrit, but treating the Chinese language of
the text as fully meaning-bearing rather than as a transparent slide back to its
Indian origins. It means taking seriously that the speaker of the text is 觀音
Guanyin, where Guanyin and Avalokiteśvara do not have the same cultural
or philosophical resonance in Indian and Chinese Buddhist contexts. It also
means looking at other texts and concerns that were in the ambient atmo-
sphere around the time it was becoming popularized, in China, and making
sense of the relationship between its ideas and its practice as it developed in
and from a Chinese context into the contemporary world. These are the chal-
lenges of the following chapters.
NOTES
1. Vanessa Chang, “Records That Play: The Present Past in Sampling Practice,”
Popular Music 28, no. 2 (2009): 153. My thanks to Cambridge University Press and
Wiley for permission to use this as an epigraph.
2. Drake’s “Hotline Bling” was also inspired by DRAM’s “Cha Cha,” which
also samples from Timmy Thomas’s rhythm. Drake has seen significant controversy
over the sampling in this song, in the music video, and in other work. For more on
the issue with the video, see for instance Laura Bradley’s “Could Artist James Turrell
Technically Sue Drake Over His ‘Hotline Bling’ Video?” Slate, October 22, 2015,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/10/22/drake_s_hotline_bling_video_
resembles_jamej_turrell_s_light_installations.html
3. For more on the history of sampling, see for instance Laurent Fintoni, “15 samplers
that shaped modern music—and the musicians who use them,” FACT, September 15,
2016, https://www.factmag.com/2016/09/15/15-samplers-that-shaped-modern-music/
4. Stephen Stein, “Steinski Gives a Sampling History Lesson,” interview by
John Schaefer, Soundcheck, NPR, October 22, 2008. My thanks to NPR, NYPR, and
WNYC for permission to reprint this and the following quotation from this interview.
5. Ibid.
6. Mosi Reeves, “Warren G and Nate Dogg’s ‘Regulate’: The Oral History of a
Hip-Hop Classic,” Rolling Stone, December 19, 2014. My thanks for permissions to
reproduce quotations from this interview.
7. Ibid.
8. Chang, 144.
9. For example, see Derrida (2016); Barthes (1978); and Deleuze and Guattari
(1987).
10. Chang, 149.
11. Ibid., 145.
12. Ibid., 149.
13. This is the case not only with sampling in the context of music, but across the
arts in a variety of media. Consider, for instance, filmmaker Jim Jamusch’s advice
on the creative process: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates
with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music,
books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture,
bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows. Select only
things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and
theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And
don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case,
always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things
from—it’s where you take them to.’” (Jim Jamusch, “Things I’ve Learned: Jim
Jarmusch,” MovieMaker, June 5, 2013). My thanks to Jason Simpson for suggesting
this connection.
14. Joseph Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip Hop (Middletown:
Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 66. Cited in Chang, 146.
15. In classical East Asia, written Chinese was the “lingua franca” of educated
communication, and it was shared across diverse spoken languages.
16. Roger Jackson, “Terms of Sanskrit and Palī Origin Acceptable as English
Words,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 5, no. 2 (1982):
137–38.
17. In its technical Buddhist usage in India, a sūtra is thread back to the words
and teaching of the historical Buddha, which must both have the appropriate textual
format and be consistent with other Buddhist teachings. Traditionally, sūtra were held
to be the words of the Buddha himself, as heard first-hand by his disciples and later
written down.
18. “Sutra.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sutra. Accessed 4 Sep. 2021. When referring to the
technical meaning, I will use the appropriate Sanskrit diacritical and italics (sūtra);
when using the broad English usage, I will drop these.
19. Kyoko Tokuno, “The Evaluation of Indigenous Scriptures in Chinese Buddhist
Bibliographical Catalogues,” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Robert E. Buswell,
Jr. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 59.
20. For more on this, see Nattier, A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist
Translations: Texts from the Early Han and Three Kingdoms Period, 2008. Gandhari
is one example of a Prakrit that is relevant to this argument, as Xuanzang’s use of
28 Chapter 1
觀自在 Guanzizai, rather than the more standard 觀世音 Guanshiyin, is likely indica-
tive of Gandhari influence.
21. There are two historical challenges with this model. First, often the “transla-
tor” of record may simply be the non-Chinese person who presented the text, in either
written or oral form. Second, translation was often a team effort, but only the most
foreign member of the team would be noted.
22. Charles Hartwick, Christ and Other Masters (2nd ed., 1983), I: 217–18,
quoted in Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European
Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), 127.
23. Robert E. Buswell, Jr., “Introduction” in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990) 2.
24. A fictionalized version of this story was popularized in the Ming Dynasty
as «西遊記» Xiyouji (Journey to the West), one of the four great classic Chinese
novels.
25. 大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳, T2053.50. Huili began the biography during
Xuanzang’s life, and it was finished shortly after his death by Yanzong. The most
current full English translation is by Li Rongxi (1995).
26. T2053.50.0224b, my translation. 初法師在蜀見一病人。身瘡臭穢衣服破
汚。慜將向寺施與衣服飮食之直。病者慚愧乃授法師此經。因常誦習至沙河
間。逢諸惡鬼奇状異類遶人前後。雖念觀音不能令去。及誦此經發聲皆散。
27. Twentieth-century scholar Edward Conze is most closely associated with
English language scholarship and translation of the category of Prajñāpāramitā
texts.
28. Jan Nattier, “The Heart Sūtra: An Apocryphal Text?” The Journal of the
International Association of Buddhist Studies 15, no. 2 (1992): 155.
29. It is likely that the compilers of the longer version, popular in India and Tibet,
would have simply thought that the frame had been misplaced, as it were, not that it
originated without one. Both the Kumārajīva “translation” and the Xuanzang “transla-
tion” of the text are examples of the short version, with no frame.
30. Nattier, 157.
31. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sūtra
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 16.
32. For more on this, see the final section of the line commentary in chapter 6.
33. Nattier, 158.
34. Ibid., 160.
35. Ibid., 165.
36. Ibid., 167.
37. See Nattier, 168.
38. Ibid., 169.
39. See Ibid., 164.
40. Nattier, 174.
41. Fukui Fumimasa, Hannya shingyō no rekishiteki kenkyū (Tokyo: Shunjusha,
1987), 201–7.
42. Nattier, 176.

43. Ibid., 177.
44. Ibid., 184–85.
45. Ibid., 189.
46. Ibid., 190.
47. See Ibid., 193–94.
48. Ibid., 196.
49. Ibid., 198–99.
50. Most scholars in this group either simply maintain the traditional account of
the sutra, as per their sect’s account, or they follow Edward Conze’s dating of the
sutra to about 350 CE as part of the third wave of Prajñāpāramitā literature. Some
of their works were published prior to Nattier’s essay, and so cannot necessarily be
evaluated as disagreeing with her hypothesis.
51. This group of scholars are all writing somewhat more recently than the previ-
ous group, in a manner more engaged with Buddhalogical scholarship. Attwood, an
independent scholar-monk, has written extensively on the Heart Sutra and has pro-
duced his own critical edition of the text, available on his blog, “Jayarava’s Raves.”
Attwood argues that Xuanzang did edit the Heart Sutra but was not in any sense its
“translator,” drawing on evidence from recently found stele. For more on this, see
his published piece, “Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the
Fangshan Stele,” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 32 (2019): 1–30.
52. Red Pine, The Heart Sutra (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2004), 23.
53. Ibid., 20–21.
54. Ibid., 24.
55. Kazuaki Tanahashi, The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic
of Mahāyāna Buddhism (Boston: Shambala Press, 2014), 78.
56. Ibid., 79.
57. Ibid., 78.
58. Ibid., 80.
59. Ibid., 79.
60. Buswell, 1.
61. Ji YUN, “Is the Heart Sūtra an Apocryphal Text?—A Re-examination,”
Singapore Journal of Buddhist Studies 4, trans. Chin Shih-Foong, (2017): 59–60.
The Chinese article, 纪赟 —《心经》疑伪问题再研究, was first published in Fuyan
Buddhist Studies 7 (2012): 115–82.
62. Tokuno, 39.
63. Ibid.
64. Ishii Kōsei, “Issues Surrounding the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya: Doubts
Concerning Jan Nattier’s Theory of a Composition by Xuanzang,” trans. Jeffrey
Kotyk, accessed on academia .ed
u, 1. Originally published in Japanese as Ishii
Kōsei 石井公成, “‘Hannya shingyō’ wo meguru shomondai—Jan Nattier no
Genjō sōsaku-setsu wo utagau” 『般若心経』をめぐる諸問題 : ジャン·ナティ
エ氏の玄奘創作説を疑う, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究 64,
no. 1 (2015): 499–92.
30 Chapter 1
65. Kōsei, 3.
66. Ibid., 4.
67. Ibid., 10.
68. Ibid., 10.
69. Ibid., 6.
70. Lusthaus, 81.
71. Ibid., 82.
72. Ibid., 86.
73. Ibid.
74. Nattier, 199.
75. Peter Hershock, Chan Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2004), 138.
76. Chang, 150.
77. Ibid., 153.
Chapter 2
Perspectives on Translation
In the end, all translation is transformation. It just isn’t possible for a

text to work in its new language and context in exactly the same way it
worked in the original.
—Susan Bernofsky1
Twentieth-century hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer famously

wrote that “every translation is at the same time an interpretation,” but
making sense of what this really means in the context of actual translation
practice can be challenging.2 Paul Swanson, noted translator and exegete of
Chinese Tiantai Buddhism, takes the following hermeneutic perspective on
translation:
A variety of translations are possible for all texts, without having to conclude
that one of them must be “correct” and all the others “wrong.” It is even pos-
sible that different translations could all be “right” in different ways; some can
be more correct or accurate than others. Or again, they could all be “wrong” or
inadequate.3
Swanson explains that he himself has often translated the same passage in
different ways, relative to context and purpose. He notes that the “ambiguity,
imprecision, and multivalence of language” means that reliable translations of
texts, especially religious texts, are difficult at best. A translation, then, has to
function in the framework of an interpretation that takes a stand—implicitly
or explicitly—on issues ranging from the ambiguity, imprecision, and multiv-
alence of language to the broader context, meaning, purpose, and function of
both the source text and the translated text. Translations necessarily present
31
32 Chapter 2
an interpretation of the source text—the translator has to make sense of the

source text and transform that into the translation, embedding her understand-
ing, and so her interpretation, in the translation. And, not only do translators
present their interpretation of the source text in their translations, but they
must also make interpretive choices focused on their anticipated readership.4
Noted translator of Japanese literature Michael Emmerich defines translation
“very simply, as any change wrought upon a piece of writing intended to
make it accessible to a new audience with particular needs or preferences.”5
Contemporary philosophers, though, have often not paid a great deal of
attention to translation, taking for granted standard assumptions about trans-
lation as a technical practice—centered around the ideals of fidelity and invis-
ibility, the inevitability of loss, and so on. The goal of this chapter is to pay
attention to translation, and in particular, to a set of different perspectives and
discourses that inform the translation of the Heart Sutra in this book.
Attending to translation as an object of philosophical inquiry requires, first
of all, that we rethink the role of the translator.6 As Esther Allen and Susan
Bernofsky explain,
translators, like actors, appear to us under a persona, speaking to us with words

that both are and are not their own. In the contemporary Anglophone world this
fact does not keep us from appreciating actors. Often, however, it keeps us from
even noticing the work of translators. To perceive the translator as endowed
with agency, intent, skill, and creativity is to destabilize the foundations of the
way we read, forcing us to take in both a text and a literary performance of that
text, to see two figures where our training as readers, our literary upbringing,
has accustomed us to seeing only the author.7
This perspective on translators—as skillful and creative agents, not as pas-

sive vehicles—enables one to pay attention to translation as a philosophically
significant practice, especially with respect to texts that many can access only
through translation. As Eric Schwitzgebel and colleagues note in their study,
“The Insularity of Anglophone Philosophy,” English is the lingua franca of
much contemporary philosophical work.8 Treating English as the common
language of philosophical discourse has a number of disadvantages, one of
which is that it inclines people away from sources not available in translation
and limits cross-cultural work to that which is available in translation, even if
the translation is not done from a philosophical perspective.9 In addition, as
Michael Nylan notes, translating from East Asian languages is “an art vastly
underrated by our fellow academics working in European languages, in the
social sciences, and in the sciences.”10
Translators face a number of concerns, including what Catherine Porter has
called the false dichotomy of translation: being forced to choose “between
Perspectives on Translation 33
servitude—which will mean their work is perceived as transparent, while

they themselves remain invisible—and collaboration—which will bring them
criticism for asserting their role in shaping a new text.”11
Porter explains that this is a false dichotomy because “Serving the text
and collaborating with its author are only two among the many, sometimes
conflicting, responsibilities that a translator has to weigh and juggle.”12
Furthermore, serving the text and collaborating with the author are, on a her-
meneutic perspective, not necessarily conflicting responsibilities. As Nylan
notes in describing one of her strategies to deal with passages that have
multiple conflicting interpretations in the classical commentarial traditions:
Modern readers will doubtless learn more about Yang Xiong and his world, not
to mention the later reception of his works, if I as translator choose to alert them
to all such instances of complexity rather than hide behind an arbitrary selection
as the pseudo-omniscient translator.13
To alert readers of the complexity, ambiguity, or intentional difficulty present

in a particular passage, Nylan explains that she sometimes chooses to “give
two parallel if competing translations for the same line, in the hopes of giving
modern readers a better sense of the inherent complexities of a masterwork or
classic.”14 This is only one example of the ways in which serving the text and
being visibly present as a collaborator might go hand in hand.
Translators do have to balance a number of different technical concerns
in ways that cannot simply be prescribed ahead of time. Translation is an
art, not a science, in this respect. In addition to balancing the original and
the new audience and linguistic concerns, translators also have to walk the
fine line between minimizing errors and maximizing accuracy, minimizing
“translationese” (painful literalness, dictionary fundamentalism) and maxi-
mizing sound/sense unity, and minimizing source-translation/context/genre
disjunct and maximizing fit, to name just a few concerns.15 Nylan gives an
excellent set of practical translation injunctions for translators, including
such things as striving to reproduce the clarity of argument presentation in
the source text, limiting the number of “dictionary” words and transliterated
terms, taking care with parsing key philosophical terms like tian 天, dao 道,
xin 心, and shen 神, retaining original metaphors and concrete language, not
being scared of changing word order, and avoiding uncritical attachment to
past (mis)translations.16
Bernofsky refers to dealing with translation challenges as “a matter of
learning to calibrate dissatisfaction” and reminds us that “yes, somewhere
along the line the original text must be forgotten.”17 Lest readers think this
“forgetting” merely an artifact of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-
century postmodernism, a similar sort of “forgetting” can be seen all the way
34 Chapter 2
back in the sophisticated hermeneutics of Wang Bi 王弼 (226–249 CE), one

of the most important commentators on the Yijing «易經». In his essay “Ming
Xiang 明象” Wang Bi develops a hermeneutics that, according to contempo-
rary scholar Mercedes Valmisa, “revolves around the concept of forgetting
(wang 忘).”18 This forgetting is not a simple dismissal of language as instru-
mental to getting to the ideas, however. Instead, “forgetting” for Wang Bi is
a complex negotiation of the inextricable tensions between meaning and sign,
where we ought to “forget” and so not be trapped by the literal meaning or
pre-given interpretation of the signs (words, language) in question, in order to
“make room for a difference and allow intentions to be continuously actual-
ized in new signs by using local resources.”19 As Valmisa explains, “Wang
Bi’s forgetting is an intentional letting go of the reader’s tendency to cling to
particular signs as if they were literal, absolute, and necessary, in a movement
to favor flexible correlations and semantic openness.”20 For Wang Bi, as for
Bernofsky and other theorists, this flexible forgetting is not an openness to
“anything goes,” but an attitude of respect for the process of meaning-making
and meaning-sharing as cooperative and context-sensitive.
The project of translating the Heart Sutra from the Chinese presents an
opportunity to reflect on the text in the context of translation theory. In
producing this translation of the Heart Sutra, I have been guided not by a
single established translation theory but by a perspective constructed from
putting Chinese, European, and American thinkers into conversation with
one another. In taking seriously the value of translation and, in particular, in
attending to the theoretical commitments and practice dimensions of trans-
lating classical Chinese philosophical texts into contemporary English, one
immediate pitfall I wish to avoid is Eurocentrism, or what Ming Dong Gu has
called the problem of “sinologism”: “the ideological dominance of Western
intellectual habits vis-á-vis China.”21 In negotiating the tension between the
problem of sinologism on one side and the problem of sinocentrism or essen-
tialism on the other, I take a comparative approach. Martha Cheung describes
this sort of comparative approach to translation studies:
In the discipline of translation studies, efforts of scholars from the metropoli-

tan centre to guard against Eurocentric tendencies have resulted in attempts to
borrow and learn from other discourses on translation in order to produce new
models or conduct new theoretical explorations.22
Rather than beginning from a history of Western or European translation the-

ory or taking a Western figure as my starting point, I begin here with a brief
history of translation in a Chinese context and situate my account of trans-
lation theory as building on and inspired by the work of twentieth-century
Chinese literary giant Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998), in conversation

with contemporary theorists and practitioners Lawrence Venuti and Roger T.
Ames.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

IN A CHINESE CONTEXT
The term translated as “translation” from the Chinese is fanyi 翻譯, or just yi
譯. In the pre-Qin period, there was not often extended discussion of trans-
lation, but there are several texts that mention translators.23 The earliest of
these texts speaks of sheren 舌人, tongue-persons, those we might call “oral
translators” or perhaps more accurately “interpreters.”24 In somewhat later
texts, “translators” are identified not in general but by the group of people
they translate for, as in this passage from the Liji «禮記»:
The people living in the five regions spoke different languages and had different
customs, likings and preferences. In order to make accessible (da) what was in
the minds of different peoples, and in order to make their likings and prefer-
ences understood, there were functionaries for the job. Those in charge of the
regions in the east were called ji (the entrusted; transmitters); in the south, xiang
(likeness-renderers); in the west, Didi (they who know the Di tribes); and in the
north, yi (translators/interpreters).25
Martha Cheung argues that these different job titles—ji 寄, xiang 象, didi
狄鞮, and yi 譯—speak to different concepts at play in the time about the
idea of translation (trust, transmission, maintaining a likeness, knowing oth-
ers, and exchange) and that the eventual dominance of the term yi, and its
related sense of translation as exchange, was due to frequency of usage after
increased trade and other ties to the northern peoples.26
While early mentions of translation like those in the Liji are very limited,
by the time of the late Han Dynasty, there was a significant increase in inter-
est in translation. But as Joseph Allen argues, “almost all [references to trans-
lation] refer to activities in the liminal space of the Chinese borders.”27 Prior
to the arrival of Buddhists and the resulting translation needs of Buddhist
materials, translation activities—likely more oral than written—were most
closely associated with economic and political activity at state borders,
negotiating trade and relations between various “barbarian” peoples and the
central states, so the flow of translation mirrored the flow of power, from the
boundary areas into Chinese, and was conducted by minor border officials
or merchants, not literati. It is not surprising, then, that translation was not
36 Chapter 2
a central philosophical theme for reflection outside of the Buddhist context,

given the cultural, political, and economic dominance of the central states
and the general Ruist lack of concern for mercantile matters. Allen suggests
that “In early China, translation was like socks; very useful but not very
interesting.”28
With the arrival of Buddhists from Central and South Asia, theorizing
translation—first of memorized texts and later of physical texts—became a
more central concern. Zhi Qian’s Preface to the Dhammapada (Faju jing xu
«法句經序») is widely considered the first extended discussion of translation,
and it situates Chinese translation discourse in the context of pre-Qin philoso-
phy of language, with excerpts from the Analects «論語» and the Daodejing
«道德經», among other early texts.29 Although the image today of a transla-
tor is often of someone who speaks multiple languages and is at home in
the different cultural milieu, early Chinese Buddhist translation efforts were
primarily conducted not by individuals who personally straddled multiple lin-
guistic and cultural fields but by massive, state-sanctioned translation teams,
sometimes led by a foreign (non-ethnically Chinese) monk who would then
be identified as the “translator” of a set of texts. This is nearly the opposite
of how contemporary translation authority tends to work, as the major early
figures in Buddhist translation were not translating into their native language
but rather into Chinese.
This is related to issues of authority and origins, as Cheung notes in dis-
cussing common concerns among Chinese Buddhist translators:
For Chinese discourse on Buddhist sutra translation, the dominant force is the
Buddhist monks’ discourse on the “source” (ben 本), especially their emphasis
on “following the source” (anben 案本), on the need to “yield to the source”
(yiben 依本) and to “stay close to the source” (shouben 守本).30
Early Chinese Buddhists’ textual authority was largely situated with ordained
monks who not only spoke Sanskrit or another South/Central Asian language
but were themselves non-Han Chinese. As later figure Fa Yun 法雲 (1088–
1158) notes, “by translating [fanyi 翻譯], we mean turning Fan [Sanskrit]
into Chinese.”31 In other words, translation was mostly a unidirectional affair,
centered into the Chinese language, and often understood by Buddhists in
explicitly soteriological terms: “we use the translated sutras in this land to
manifest the Truth that comes from another land.”32 Because most early trans-
lation practice was in this soteriological context, the standards for translation
included not only the desire for manifesting the source text appropriately but
also debates between approaches that prioritized plain or unhewn translation
(zhi 質) and refined translation (wen 文), or between direct translation (zhiyi
直譯) and sense translation (yiyi 意譯), accurate representation of Buddhist
doctrine, ability to benefit readers, karmically or upay-ically, and not seeking

fame for oneself as a translator.
While it used to be common to say that the practice of 格義 geyi (“match-
ing concepts,” “reaching meaning,” or “correlating categories,” where Daoist
vocabulary was used to translate Buddhist terminology) was widely used in
the early days of transmission (especially the third and fourth centuries), now
it is more common for scholars to complicate the picture of early transmission
and translation.33 As John M. Thompson explains in his article, “Mixed up
on ‘Matching Terms’ (geyi): Confusions in Cross-Cultural Translation”: “the
Chinese sources . . . speak of geyi as a method of explaining specific sort of
passages from the sutras for the benefit of people unfamiliar with Buddhism
but none of them speak of it as a method for translating.”34 Victor Mair has
argued convincingly that most of the explicit examples of geyi are in fact
attempts to deal with enumerated lists from the source texts by “matching”
the list with an enumerated list more familiar to the Chinese audience.35 Not
surprisingly, the practice lasted only a short time (third and fourth centu-
ries), since unrelated enumerated lists do not actually make much sense as
explanations.
In other words, although geyi was used heuristically for explaining
Buddhist ideas to a Chinese audience, it was not understood by those using
it or criticizing it as a technical translation practice. This does not mean that
translators were not borrowing vocabulary from Daoist sources—indeed,
from the whole of literary Chinese available at the time, Daoist, Ruist, folk,
and other—but rather that they did not understand themselves to be engaged
in a specific translation practice of geyi when doing so. Dao An 道安, for
instance, came to criticize geyi very harshly later in his career, but he still
regularly used Daoist vocabulary for translation.36 The fact that geyi as a term
only appears a few times in the entire Buddhist canon also serves to indicate
that it was not as widespread as the common view would suggest.37 In other
words, while geyi was not a translation technique, in particular, it did briefly
have a specific heuristic function in the transmission of Buddhism to the
Chinese elite.
In terms of Chinese translation discourse, although there are twenty or
thirty particularly important translators in the history of Chinese Buddhism, a
more limited set of figures is often considered crucial in terms of their theo-
retical work and influence on later translators: Dao An 道安 (312–385 CE),
Kumārajīva 鳩摩羅什 (कुमारजीव 344–409 CE), Yancong 彥琮 (557–610 CE),
Xuanzang 玄奘 (aka Sanzang 602–664 CE), and Zanning 贊寧 (919–1001).38
Although it is unlikely that Dao An (312/314–385 CE) knew any
Sanskrit, he carefully studied different versions of translated texts, even-
tually producing the first Comprehensive Catalogue of the Sutras (Zongli
zhongjing mulu 綜理眾經目錄), a catalogue that classified and analyzed
38 Chapter 2
all the available translations of the time. He is also one of the first to have
engaged in systematized translation criticism, and he famously called for
translations to remain as close to the Sanskrit as possible, only altering word
order when necessary. He suggested that “Chinese translations which have
been conveniently simplified and made easy [bian 便] are like wine diluted
with water.”39
His most well-known contribution to Chinese translation discourse is
the “Five instances of losing the source and three difficulties.”40 The five
instances of losing the source can be summarized as:
1. Reversing the word order from the Sanskrit to conform to Chinese word
order;
2. Making the unhewn [zhi 質] Sanskrit sutras refined [wen 文] to conform
to Chinese literary tastes;
3. Shortening, condensing, or excising the wordy Sanskrit sutras (especially
repetitive chants);
4. Erasing the summarizing poetic verses at the end of sections; and
5. Removing narrative digressions.41
The three difficulties can be summarized as:
1. The Buddha’s words are tailored to the audience of his times. But, since
a great deal of times has passed since the Buddha’s life, the sutras need
to have their “antiquated elegant [ya 雅] features removed and adjusted
to the present time.”42
2. It is difficult to make the Buddha’s words intelligible to the general popu-
lace, especially given how much distance exists, in terms of geography
and time, between the Buddha’s time and the present.
3. The first council who edited the sutras had five hundred arhats who were
rigorous in their procedures, but in contemporary times people edit the
texts without such care.
These translation considerations shaped much of the discourse to follow,

from Dao An’s time until the twentieth century.
Kumārajīva (344–409 CE) is one of the most important translators in the
history of Chinese Buddhism. Many of his translations are still the standard
version used to this day. He was unique in a number of ways, starting with
the fact that he was born in Kucha (a small state in what is now Xinjiang, in
the northwest of China) to a South Asian father and a Kuchan royal mother.
Because of his family heritage, he was truly bilingual from an early age
and later, as a mature translator, could read the Sanskrit text and himself
give a Chinese gloss, not requiring an intermediary interpreter like most
translators. When he arrived in the capital he was appointed as the National

Preceptor (guoshi 國師) and, with his disciples Seng Zhao and Seng Rui,
among others, translated more than thirty sutras, although he himself left no
writing on the topic of translation. As Luo Xinzhang and Martha Cheung
explain,
His output was surpassed in volume by Xuanzang, but in range, sophistication

and style he still stands foremost in the history of Buddhist translation in China.
Kumārajīva’s translations, which marked a distinct departure from previous
translations, were called “new translations.” They were enormously popular, not
only in his time but even today.43
Kumārajīva’s translations were “new” in at least two senses. First, he and

his teams spent a great deal of time and energy constructing new terms and
transliterations and clarifying terminology, to better reflect the source texts.
So, for educated Chinese Buddhist readers, his translations often contained
new vocabulary or differed in significant ways from previous translations.
Second, Kumārajīva often altered the text in not insignificant ways, to better
communicate with his Chinese audience. He sometimes removed parts of the
text he felt were not “useful to this land” and made stylistic choices intended
to convey the aesthetic quality of the Sanskrit text in a Chinese manner.44 As
Hui Guan explains, “He was able to use the language of this land to convey
a meaning that did not distort the source [guaiben]; the merits in terms of
style were also a significant gain.”45 Kumārajīva’s translations paid careful
attention to the features and styles of the Sanskrit texts but successfully used
Chinese literary conventions to communicate the beauty of the text, some-
thing no translator had done before him.
Yancong was a famous Buddhist monk in the Sui Dyansty. He was fluent
in Sanskrit and took charge of the Translation Bureau as abbot of the Great
Xingshan Monastery in Chang’an (the capital of China at that time). He was
part of translation teams for at least twenty-three different sutras and alleg-
edly also translated from Chinese into Sanskrit. Parts of his major work on
translation, Bian zheng lun 辯正論 (On the Right Way), are extant in his
biography.46 In this text, he argues that Buddhist texts are better translated
when someone who really knows Sanskrit is involved so that the text is not
embellished too much. He writes, “In my opinion, we should value a plain
[pu 樸] style that keeps close to the doctrine, rather than a felicitous [qiao巧]
translation that goes against the original. When we see a translation that is
unsophisticated and unhewn [zhi 質], we should not dismiss it for being
tedious [fan 煩].”47
Yancong is probably most famous for articulating eight prerequisites or
qualifications for translators. He writes that “[o]nly when he [the translator]
40 Chapter 2
has prepared himself in all these eight aspects will he be regarded as a worthy
translator; only then will he be able to gain merit in the karmic trio of thought,
word and deed and project his influence.”48 The Eight Prerequisites can be
summarized as:
1. Loving the truth and being devoted to spreading the teachings of the
Buddha;
2. Holding fast to the (monastic) rules of abstinence and not arousing scorn
or laughter from others;
3. Being well read in the Buddhist canon, understanding both Hīnayāna
(Theravāda) and Mahāyāna teachings, and not being deterred by
difficulties;
4. Being well read in Chinese classics and history, so that translations are
neither clumsy nor awkward;
5. Being compassionate, open-minded, and loving learning, not being
biased;
6. Being devoted to practicing the way, having no desire for fame or show-
ing off;
7. Thoroughly studying Sanskrit and learning the correct methods of trans-
lation; and
8. Knowing classical Chinese and understanding the history of the Chinese
language so as to not misuse words in translation.
These are lofty standards for a translator to meet, but most later translators
in the Chinese Buddhist tradition understood themselves as seeking to meet
these qualifications. They indicate a concern not only with linguistic mastery
but with meeting the conditions for translation as an act of generating karmic
merit.
Xuanzang, of Journey to the West (Xiyouji «西遊記») fame, is another
particularly illustrious translator, and as the figure most closely associated
with the dominant version of the Heart Sutra, his views on translation are
particularly important for our purposes. After returning from his sixteen-year
journey to India and back with more than six hundred fifty different texts,
Xuanzang and his team of assistants translated approximately seventy-five
into Chinese. He also allegedly translated not only into Chinese but is said to
have translated the Daodejing from Chinese into Sanskrit. Whether or not this
actually ever happened is a question open to some debate; Xuanzang was com-
missioned to make the translation of the Daodejing for King Bhāskaravarman
of Kāmarūpa in eastern India, but the difficulties of translating this text from
Chinese into Sanskrit were enormous, and there is significant doubt as to
whether it was ever actually completed or sent to India.49
As a translator, Xuanzang was known for his technical precision. His trans-
lation theory is considered a “middle way” between Dao An and Kumārajīva,
as he advocated for translations to be plain, and truthful, and intelligible to
the local populace. In terms of his major contribution to translation discourse,
Xuanzang articulated “five untranslatables” (wu zhong bu fan 五種不翻) five
acceptable circumstances for transliteration (音譯 yinyi, sound translation),
in what Wang Hongyin has argued situates him as a forerunner to “foreigniz-
ing” views on translation.50 According to Xuanzang, translators should not
translate but leave the phrase transliterated, in the following cases:
1. If the phrase is secret (秘密 mimi), as in esoteric, and/or has power

due to its sound. The example Xuanzang gives is of dhāraṇī (陀羅尼
tuoluoni). Presumably Xuanzang means not only the term “dhāraṇī,” but
also actual dhāraṇī, incantations, special phrases, or magic spells whose
power is in part due to the sound of the recitation. The mantra (zhou) at
the end of the Heart Sutra is one such phrase that Xuanzang chose to
transliterate, rather than translate for meaning.
2. If the phrase is polysemic, having multiple meanings (含多意 handuoyi).
The example he gives is “Bhaga” (薄伽 bojia), likely a shortened version
of “Bhagavan,” which carried, according to Xuanzang, at least six mean-
ings: sovereignty, glory, austerity, name, fortune, and honor. A transla-
tion for meaning would artificially elevate one meaning over the others,
leading to problems of meaning in cases where the valence of the term
went with a different meaning than the translation choice’s emphasis. By
retaining the original term in transliteration, all of its meanings are also
retained.
3. If the phrase refers to something that does not exist in the target language
or area (此無 ciwu). Xuanzang gives the example of the Jambu tree
(閻浮樹 yanfu shu), which is a kind of Syzygium flowering fruit tree not
found at that time in China.
4. If an earlier transliterated version of the phrase has become established
and accepted (順古 shungu). The Sanskrit term “anubodhi” (anuttara-
samyak-sambodhi), supreme enlightenment, has an early transliteration
into Chinese as “阿耨菩提 anouputi,” and although Xuanzang notes that
it could now be translated for meaning, he prefers to keep the established
term. This term, for instance, appears in its transliterated form in Xuan-
zang’s version of the Heart Sutra.
5. If the term is related to bringing about Buddhist virtuosity or moral excel-
lence (生善 sheng shan). The example Xuanzang gives here is concerns
the transliteration of the Sanskrit “prajna,” or Buddhist wisdom, in its
transliterated form of 般若 bore, with the earlier instances that translated
42 Chapter 2
the term for meaning into 智慧 zhihui, which also means something like
“wisdom,” but which has overt Ruist connotations. In order to be clear,
Xuanzang suggests that it is better to transliterate some terms in order
to bring the full Buddhist connotations of the term into Chinese. Xuan-
zang’s example here is part of the title of the Chinese version of the Heart
Sutra, from the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā hṛdaya Sūtra to the Chinese
般若波羅蜜多心經 Boreboluomiduoxinjing.
These principles were largely adopted by later translators in the Chinese

tradition.
Zanning was a very important figure in the history of Chinese Buddhism
and Song Dynasty politics. He was a literati-monk who was extremely well-
versed in both Buddhist discourses and Ruist and Daoist texts, to the point
where Albert Welter has called him a “Buddhist junzi.”51 It was Zanning
who compiled the Song gaoseng zhuan 宋高僧傳, the Song Version of the
Biographies of Eminent Monks, in addition to writing a number of other
essays and books. Zanning famously wrote that “[t]o translate [yi 譯] means
to exchange [yi 易]; that is to say, to exchange what one has for what one does
not have.”52 He uses the metaphor of a tangerine becoming an orange due to
different soil, alluding to the idea that
one does not simply take one object and use it in exchange for another object.
A more complicated process is involved. One takes what one has—the soil in
one’s country, or the language of one’s country—and uses it in such a way
as to enable something foreign to germinate, grow, bear fruit and “become”
something else, something that is different yet still bears important and essential
similarities to its source.53
Zanning details much of the history of translation in China, from as far

back as the Zhouli to his Buddhist predecessors such as Dao An, Yancong,
and Xuanzang. He also explains the change from yi 譯 to fanyi 翻譯:
How wonderful it is that the Eastern Han Dynasty saw the first translation of
the Sutra in Forty-Two Chapters . . . at that time the character “fan” [literally,
“turn [something] over”] was added in front of the character “yi.” The meaning
of “fan” could be conveyed by likening it to turning over a piece of brocade—on
both sides the patterns are the same, only they face opposite directions.54
Zanning used six different categories to organize his comments on transla-

tion practice: translation of words and sounds; Hu and Fan (Sanskrit) lan-
guages; indirect and direct translation; informal and formal language; elegant
(ya 雅) and the vernacular (su 俗) styles; and straightforward and esoteric
expressions.55
During the third to seventh centuries, in the major period of translations, a
significant percentage of Chinese words were invented to deal with the need
for making sense of the foreign concepts and ideas being brought into China
via Buddhist texts and practices. In discussing the changes to language and
literature brought by Buddhism in China, Mair notes that one key change was
the “enlargement of the lexicon by at least thirty-five thousand words, includ-
ing many that are still in common use.”56 These new words fall into roughly
five categories:
1. Existing words given new meanings;

2. Transliterations;
3. New terms and concepts not previously found in Chinese (e.g., rulai
如來 (Tathagata, thus come one), jingtu 淨土 (pure land), jietuo 解脫
(mokṣa, liberation), zhenru 真如 (tathātā, suchness));
4. Words that are combinations of transliteration and translation; and
5. Words that were created because of the influence of Buddhism, but
that are not direct translations (e.g., chujia 出家 (leave home, become
ordained), fangzhang 方丈 (the abbot of a monastery)).57
New idioms and proverbs were also created during this period, and as Mair
notes, a great deal of Chinese vernacular literature is directly tied to the
import of Buddhism into China.
As we see from the above listing, both transliterations and neologisms were
invented or repurposed to deal with Buddhist vocabulary. An example of an
“invented” term is ta 塔, meaning “stupa.” The Shuowen Lexicon entry for
this term details its construction: “塔：西域浮屠也。从土荅聲.” The first
part of the entry indicates meaning: from the Western regions, beyond the
Yumen pass, a futu (transliteration of the Pali word thupo, meaning “stupa”).
The second part of the entry indicates the character’s composition in terms of
form and sound: from the characters tu 土 and da 荅.
As mentioned earlier, another way this invention happened was through
transliteration. For instance, while early translations of “nirvāṇa” used the
Daoist phrase wuwei 無為 (non-action, effortless action, non-impositional
acting), later translators used the transliterated phrase niepan 涅槃 instead,
thus avoiding confusion and allowing for a more specialized and technical
meaning to be developed and distinguished from the common Daoist term.58
New words were not only created wholesale or transliterated—Paul Swanson
has identified a number of “mixed binomes,” or terms where one part of the
phrase is a transliteration from Sanskrit, and the other is a Chinese term with
44 Chapter 2
meaning for the phrase. One example of this is 僧眾 sengzhong, a created term
for “sangha,” the assembly of monks and nuns, where the first character is from
the transliteration of sangha (僧伽 sengjia), and the second is a Chinese char-
acter (眾 zhong) meaning “assembly.”59 Other examples of this kind of translit-
eration/translation combination practice include 三昧定 sanmeiding (samādhi,
specific state of intense concentration/meditation), where sanmei is the translit-
eration and ding means concentration; 剎土 chatu (kṣetra, land/country), where
cha is the transliteration and tu means land (found in translations by Lokakṣema
and Zhi Qian, and often used elsewhere to mean “Buddhist temple”); and
大鴈塔/小鴈塔 Dayanta/Xiaoyanta (Large Goose Pagoda/Mahāyāna Pagoda,
Small Goose Pagoda/Hīnayāna Pagoda), two pagodas built in the seventh cen-
tury at Xuanzang’s request, where the yan is not, as is often claimed, used for
its meaning of “goose,” but rather as a transliteration of yāna, from Mahāyāna
(Great Vehicle) and Hīnayāna (Small Vehicle).60
Some important terms from this period were not transliterated or created
through composition but repurposed. One important example of repurpos-
ing is the term 空 kong, which in its oldest usage is a generic term meaning
“hollow,” “bare,” “deserted,” or literally “empty.” It was transformed by
Kumārajīva to fulfill a technical, conceptual niche that it came to be recog-
nized was not being adequately dealt with by the earlier translation of the
Sanskrit term śunyatā as 無 wu—while wu, and kong, and śunyatā in English
might all be appropriately rendered as “emptiness” in some contexts, their
connotations are very different. As Matteo Cestari notes in explaining the
differences between Vedic, Daoist, and Buddhist ideas of emptiness,
In Vedic culture, the role of negation with regard to ultimate reality is used
to underline the unutterable dimension of a permanent essence of the world
(Brahman). For some Daoist scholars, such as Wangbi from the “Study of
Mystery” school (Xuan Xue 玄學), wu is definitely a metaphysical foundation,
the hidden origin of everything, beyond every possible word and conceptual-
ization. . . . In Indian Buddhism, śūnyatā is a way of looking at the world, a
non-attached attitude to life (which means non-attachment to both annihilation-
ism and eternalism). The ideas of [emptiness] as a mental attitude (Buddhism)
and [emptiness] as a metaphysical principle (Daoism) should therefore be kept
separate. . . . In China, the adoption of wu as a translation of śūnyatā created
numerous misunderstandings and obscurities before Kumārajīva’s work. In fact,
śūnyatā had nothing to do with the Daoist opposition between the correlatives
of being (有) and nonbeing (無). . . . This . . . caused Kumārajīva to translate
śūnyatā with kong (空).61
It took some time for translators, commentators, and practitioners—both South

or Central Asians living in China and Chinese Buddhists—to understand one
another’s contexts well enough to determine that the translation of śunyatā

as wu was both missing something important from the Sanskrit and adding
something unhelpful from the Chinese. This is but one of many examples
where Kumārajīva—and with him his entire translation team—innovated in a
way that became the standard for Buddhism in China.62
Modern Translation Perspectives

In later Chinese dynasties, translation theory and practice developed as China
had more extensive contact with different groups—in the Yuan Dynasty
(1271–1368 CE), the Mongolian-led dynasty whose territory spanned from
the Korean peninsula in the far East all the way west through Central Asia,
Persia, and Eastern Europe—there was extensive translation from Persian,
Arabic, and other Central and Eastern languages. In the Ming (1368–1644
CE) and Qing (1636–1911 CE) Dynasties, translation efforts often centered
on Latin, not only for and by Jesuits and other missionaries but with Western
powers for technical, literary, and political purposes, and later between
Manchu and Chinese, for the purpose of helping the Qing Manchu rulers bet-
ter understand China.
During the period of the late Ming and early Qing dynasty (i.e., late 16th century
to the beginning of the 18th century) discussions about translating terminol-
ogy—not so much scientific terms as philosophical and religious terms—and
in particular about whether conceptual terms in one cultural tradition could find
their equivalents in the Chinese cultural tradition and be translated adequately,
were often conducted with the purpose of advancing or checking the missionary
cause in China.63
This missionary cause sparked the Chinese Rites Controversy (seventeenth to

twentieth centuries), in part a translation-centered diplomatic dispute between
different groups of Catholic missionaries, the Vatican, and the Chinese
government (and later, other governments). While the main dispute of the
controversy concerns the practices of Chinese Christian converts, the “terms”
portion of the controversy concerns the possibility and practice of acceptable
Chinese translations for “God.”64
Many well-educated Chinese scholars in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries wrote extensively on translation, including figures such
as Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) and Hu Shih 胡適 (1891–1962).65
Probably the most well-known modern translation theorist in China, however,
was Yan Fu 嚴復 (1853–1921), who argued in the preface to his translation
of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (天演論) that there are three main
difficulties for translation: Xin 信, Da 達, and Ya 雅 (Faithfulness/Sincerity,
46 Chapter 2
Fluency, Elegance).66 While these terms have long histories in Chinese aes-
thetics, some scholars argue that they were, in fact, borrowed translations
of Western translation standards, specifically those of Scottish translation
theorist Alexander Fraser Tytler. Yan Fu explored these terms in light of
his work translating Western texts into Chinese—he was well-known for his
translation of Western authors like Huxley, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer,
J.S. Mill, and Montesquieu, to name a few. Mid- to late-twentieth-century
figures such as Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書, Luo Xinzhang 羅新璋, and Wang
Hongyin 王宏印 focused their translation theory work not specifically on
Western literature or Western translation theory, but on thinking through
a more distinctively Chinese translation theory.67 Martha Cheung describes
Qian Zhongshu’s essay, “Lin Shu’s translations,” as “one of the most impor-
tant essays on translation to have appeared in twentieth-century China.”68
She notes that “with its emphasis on Lin Su’s creativity as a translator, [it]
challenged the prescriptive insistence on accuracy which was the orthodoxy
of the day.”69 The following section takes Qian’s translation theory as its
point of inquiry.
QIAN ZHONGSHU: TRANSLATION, FROM

TRANSFORMING TO MATCH-MAKING
Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) was one of China’s literary giants of the

twentieth century. While he read several languages in addition to Chinese,
was a prolific author, and did translating work of his own, he did not often
write explicitly on translation, with the notable exception of “Lin Shu’s
Translations 林紓的翻譯.”70 YU Chengfa argues that Qian’s translation the-
ory has been extremely influential in China since the publication of his major
work on translation in the early sixties, and yet it has received very little
attention outside of Chinese literary circles. Like Yu, I follow the method of
“interpreting Qian in his own words,” focusing here on a short selection from
Qian’s main piece on translation, “Lin Shu’s Translations,” which according
to Yu “is probably the most significant single piece of writing on translation
in 20th-century China.”71 While I depart in significant ways from canonical
interpretations of Qian’s work, I take his theoretical frame as an excellent
place from which to begin reflecting on contemporary theory and practice of
translation in comparative Chinese philosophy. Not only was he an incredible
classicist well-versed in Chinese traditions, but he was also a brilliant linguist
and comparativist, so he is well-positioned to be placed in conversation with
other contemporary figures. Furthermore, we can find in his translation dis-
course important influences from each of the sanjiao 三教, the three major
religio-philosophical traditions: Ruism, Daoism, and Buddhism.
Lin Shu 林紓 (1852–1924 CE) was a prolific “translator” of foreign novels

in the early twentieth century, one who “translated” through interpreters as
he did not speak or read any language other than Chinese. As a young man,
Qian, along with his entire generation, was introduced to non-Chinese litera-
ture through Lin’s “translations.” Qian opens the piece with an etymological
discussion of various terms classically related to translation: you 诱, e 囮,
and hua 化, often translated as “enticement,” “misrepresentation,” and “sub-
limity,” respectively. Most scholarship on Qian’s translation theory takes its
cue from this opening, focusing on these terms. However, in my reading of
this selection, I shift focus to the concepts of 化 (transformation), 投胎轉世
(rebirth), and 忠 (loyalty), among others.
Transforming
After his opening remarks on the history of translation, Qian delves into the
heart of his translation theory:
The highest standard in literary translating is “transforming (hua).” In chang-

ing a written work from one language into another, translators must com-
pensate for differences in language customs and produce quality work that
preserves the distinctive flavor of the original without feeling forced. That
is precisely what people regard as “huajing 化境.” 文学翻译的最高标
准是“化”。把作品从一国文字转变成另一国文字，既能补因语文习惯的
差异而露出生硬牵强的痕迹又能完全保存原有的风味，
那就算得人于“化境.”72
Here, Qian begins by making a very striking claim. Unlike Yan Fu, or any
number of other translation theorists, he does not identify the highest stan-
dard of translation with something like fidelity or accuracy, what one might
describe as the least amount of change possible. As a contemporary translator
and theorist Eliot Weinberger notes, “the old bugbear of ‘fidelity,’ . . . turns
reviewers into television evangelists. Obviously a translation that is replete
with semantical errors is probably a bad translation, but fidelity may be the
most overrated of a translation’s qualities.”73 Instead, Qian reverses this
expectation by identifying transformation—change—as the highest standard
of translation.
This is not without at least two relevant caveats. First, this term, hua,
is loaded with philosophical and literary significance in Chinese history—
recall perhaps the phenomenal transformations (wuhua 物化) at the end of
the butterfly passage in the early Daoist text Zhuangzi74—and so he is not
just saying “change.” Instead, he is evoking an idea of transformation, of
something changing into something else or being made into something truly
48 Chapter 2
different.75 In the Zhuangzi, this notion of transformation opens the text and
is understood as the process of the cosmos and everything in it, and learning
to transform along with the transformations of the world is a crucial skill to
develop.76
Second, he is not simply highlighting change for the sake of change,
transformation with no concern for continuity, or that the text be made into
something radically altered. There is, he notes, a kind of flavor that you do
want to persist, to still be able to taste even though the piece has been trans-
formed. The gustatory metaphor here is interesting and prompts reflection on
the ways in which flavors and tastes can change, transform, and evoke in new
circumstances.
In the next part of the excerpt, Qian notes that “this,” the changing while
maintaining a flavor, is what should be regarded as “huajing,” which we could
perhaps gloss as “the best.”77 I have purposely left this untranslated above,
because I want to play a bit with this term. This is the same hua, transform-
ing, from the high standard of translation, and the “jing 境” here has a range
of meanings, from border or boundary to place, area, condition, situation, or
circumstance, and is in the common phrase “jingjie 境界,” meaning “ideal
state, realm, height, or extent reached.” Martha Chueng parses this phrase as
“the highest, the most natural, and most marvelous state, transformation in
the total sense,” evoking the way in which this functions as a largely unreach-
able ideal, but one that challenged the political and ideological situation Qian
found himself in during the mid-twentieth-century China.78 Contemporary
scholar Liu Huawen translates this as “real-m-ization” or the ideal of keep-
ing the concrete image foregrounded when translating Chinese poetry into
English—creating the translated poem as a realm of images, not a logical
structure or sequence of events.79 In Daoist aesthetics, the term huajing
became a technical term for a consummate work of art, and this is sometimes
translated into English following the influence of Kantian aesthetic ideals as
“sublimity” or “perfection.”80
However, the term has its origins (or at least an earlier origin) as a techni-
cal Buddhist term, one of the two buddha domains (二種佛境): the Buddha’s
domain or state of absolute enlightenment (證境 zhengjing) and the huajing,
the domain that the Buddha is transforming—in other words, this very world,
right here, right now. This is the realm where insight and understanding
of how things really are is possible; in this realm we can see precisely the
conditions of this very moment, how things are connected to one another,
and how they influence each other. So, as the region, condition, or environ-
ment of Buddha instruction or conversion, huajing, which is related to huatu
化土 (transforming realm, buddha field/kṣetra), is not a heavenly land (not
the Tuṣita heaven, 兜率天, for instance), nor is it a hell realm, but it is the
very special place where the teaching, and so the transforming effects of the
Buddha’s teaching, can take place.81 It is precisely the locale of transforma-

tion, the transforming field, that is the context for the possibility of Buddhist
enlightenment, which in a Chinese context is not (at least on some readings)
an exit from this world but a re-orientation to the world and a deepening of
one’s intimacy with the world. So, as a standard or goal for translation, it is a
lofty goal, but one that has some fundamental differences from goals such as
fidelity or smoothness, and which is not well expressed by the Kantian notion
of sublimity. It speaks to the many ways that the text transforms—from the
process of translation, in front of the reader, to the transformative effect of
the text on the reader.
Contemporary American theorist Peter Cole also considers transformation
as a standard or goal, and like Qian uses gustatory metaphors to think through
translation, calling for translators to preserve through transformation rather
than “salting or pickling . . . through superficial mimicry.”82 Cole continues,
arguing that:
Vital transformation of this sort will not be brought about by focusing on dis-
crete one-to-one equivalence, what Dryden called “tedious transfusions,” as so
many translators and certain kinds of scholars like to do, especially when they
take us “into the workshop.” Make no mistake about it, the choice of individual
words is extremely important; but far more important to a translation’s chances
for success—if one looks back across the history of English—is attending to
the way words in a row, their shapes in the mouth and their echoes in the body,
come together as a whole. When they do coalesce, something extraordinary
occurs: “Three or four words in exact juxtaposition,” Pound tells us, “are capa-
ble of radiating . . . energy at a very high potentiality . . . [These words] must
augment and not neutralize each other. This peculiar energy which fills [them]
is the power of tradition.”83
While Ezra Pound is a complicated figure to quote in the context of East

Asian philosophical translation—“in the eyes of many translation critics,
Pound is, without question, a traitor to the original Chinese poems”—Cole’s
point here about translation, transformation, and embodied context—the way
words in a row come together as read or spoken by living persons—highlights
the aesthetic, and not mechanical, nature of good translations.84
Qian’s emphasis on transformation anticipates the shift in Euro-American
translation studies in the 1980s, which moved from viewing translation as
a repetition of source texts or transference of meaning to thinking of trans-
lation in terms of transformation and transmutation. As Jacques Derrida
noted, when thinking about translation we need “a notion of transforma-
tion: a regulated transformation of one language by another, of one text by
another.”85
50 Chapter 2
Unlike Cole’s gustatory metaphor, however, Derrida’s discussion of trans-

lation and transformation is situated in the context of metaphors of biological
growth, development, and family kinship. Using those metaphors to resist the
“old bugbear” of fidelity, Derrida argues that the assumption of the comple-
tion of a text—the original—is a false assumption. He writes, “If the transla-
tor neither restitutes nor copies an original, it is because the original lives on
and transforms itself. The translation will truly be a moment in the growth
of the original, which will complete itself in enlarging itself.”86 That is, for
Derrida, translation is one kind of growth of the work, and a good and neces-
sary transformation of it, as the continued growth of a plant is for its develop-
ment, or as mammalian procreation is for the species—in being translated, the
work grows and develops, not from an original to various pale copies but in
a living chain of proliferating meaning.
Rebirth
Derrida uses the term “sur-vival,” continued living, to play (in French, as his
translator Joseph F. Graham does in English as much as possible) with Walter
Benjamin’s notion of the translation as an “afterlife” of the original. One of
Walter Benjamin’s central preoccupations in his work on translation is the
changes works of art go through in the course of their “afterlife.” Benjamin
writes,
Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phenomenon
of life without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original—
not so much for its life as from its afterlife. For a translation comes later than
the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their
chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage
of continued life.87
Because of Benjamin’s central place in Euro-American translation theory, it

is common to hear of translations referred to as “afterlives” of the original.
The underlying metaphysics of this metaphor is intriguing to explore—trans-
lation as afterlife is possible, after all, only in a context where an “afterlife”
makes sense, where one dies and goes in some relevantly similar fashion to
some relevantly similar place to live a relevantly similar life, just after death.
In an Abrahamic or Judeo-Christian context, this makes sense. In a broadly
Buddhist context, however, this faces certain interesting challenges.
Qian’s essay continues, “There was a 17th century thinker who praised
this kind of translation attainment, comparing it to the Buddhist notion
of rebirth . . . 十七世纪有人赞美这种造诣的翻译，比为原作的
‘投胎转世.’”88 There is something interesting in thinking about high
translation attainment as a kind of rebirth in a Buddhist sense.89 While Qian

takes this reflection at a relatively surface level, with the idea of something
that changes outwardly in form but retains a shared spirit (躯壳换了一个，
而精神姿致依然故我), there is more here to be considered. As students are
often quick to note, rebirth in a Buddhist context of nonself and imperma-
nence raises certain philosophical flags. What gets reborn, and how, if there is
no “self” and no permanent “stuff?” While on a popular level, many Buddhists
talk about this like the transmigration of a soul into a new “body” container,
philosophically rebirth is accounted for through karmic inertia, our constituent
processes (sk. skandhas) being bound together not by some essential, internal
force, but through karmic connections that, with the right sorts of practices,
will fade and dissipate over time. Each new rebirth, then, entails both new and
old elements coming together in sometimes familiar and sometimes surpris-
ing patterns. Each new rebirth is both on account of one’s previous karmic
generation and an opportunity to either generate better karma for the next go-
round or to start engaging in the kinds of liberatory practices that will begin
to dissipate one’s current karmic load. Applied to translation, translation as
rebirth gives us a way to talk about a translation not as the “pale substitute” of
the original trying to live forever, but as an intermingling of new and old that
has both inertia from the previous life and the potential for new and interest-
ing developments that are genuinely those of the rebirth, the translation, and
not simply bound to the tyranny of the “original.” Furthermore, on a rebirth
metaphor, the translation is still “alive,” still living, vital, and robust, not the
dead echo of something that was once alive but now no longer truly lives.
How often have we all heard (or said ourselves) that translation necessar-
ily means a loss? As Clare Cavanagh suggests regarding translating poetry,
according to many critics, losing things is what translators do best . . . as if one

of poetry’s tasks weren’t to shake us loose from the fetters of literal-minded-
ness. Translating poetry, we’re often reminded, is impossible. Well, apparently
so is bees’ flying.90
She further explores the idea that “the losses and gains that make up the art
of translation are intertwined,” arguing that “loss” in translation generates
“not only pain but also creative possibility, and even perhaps ‘inexhaustible
joy.’ ”91 This shift in perspective reveals a way to think about the “loss” of
translation as what she calls “joyful failure,” where “the poetry is plagued
not so much by the world’s emptiness as by its unplumbable abundance.”92
In other words, the inevitability of change resulting from translation is an
opportunity to be celebrated, not a wound to guard against. Qian takes up a
variation on this perspective as well, in commenting on Dao An’s translation
discourse:
52 Chapter 2
If the original inversion was changed, there would be a loss of the Sanskrit
source; if the Chinese order was not followed, there would be a loss of the
Chinese source. What Dao’an regarded as “losing” is something natural and
unavoidable, which means that whenever there is a loss there, there is a gain
here. Dao’an was thus not able to see both sides and failed to get insight in the
truth therein. . . . Thus we know that something of the “source” has to be lost,
and without this losing, there would be no translation at all.93
Qian here questions the dominance of the “loss” vision of translation, sug-
gesting that if there is a loss, there must also be a certain kind of gain—for
him, translation is also transgressive.94
Just as we can question the metaphysics behind the idea of “rebirth,” we
can also question the metaphysics behind the idea of translation as neces-
sarily indicating a loss. Embedded within the contemporary discourse about
translation as loss is a set of assumptions about cosmology/metaphysics,
about essence and permanence that belong more fully to some cosmolo-
gies and not others. From a broadly Buddhist cosmological perspective,
which takes change and impermanence as cosmological givens, and which
identifies the give and take between transformation and continuity, between
persistence and change, as the dynamic of how events unfold, translation—
even language and communication itself—like everything else, necessarily
involves change. We need not see the “original” as “losing” meaning in
translation, but rather as a gift, an opportunity for connection with others,
and an opportunity for continued growth and development. As Allen and
Bernofsky argue,
To say of translation—as is so often said—that “the original meaning is always

lost” is to deny the history of literature and the ability of any text to be enriched
by the new meanings that are engendered as it enters new contexts—that is, as
it remains alive and is read anew. The ability to speak and be understood, to
write and be read, is one of the great desiderata of the human spirit. Meaning is
a slippery fish, but all of us—and translators and writers more than most—prefer
to live in a world where people make an effort to be intelligible to one another.95
The standard of fidelity, and its concomitant vision of translation as betrayal

or loss, calls for change without change. But meaning and expression are
changed in translation—this is Qian’s point about transformation—and this
change sometimes involves what Qian calls “misrepresentation” (e 囮). As
Cheung explains, he identifies two main types of errors or misrepresentations,
“those due to Lin’s own carelessness and those which, upon careful analysis,
would be seen as additions, compensations, and embellishments.”96 Yet to
think of the latter of these as a loss implies an assumption of entropy and
moreover misses the ways in which new translations—and so new interpreta-

tions—add meaning and value as well.
Zhong 忠
For Qian, thinking about translation as transformation does not simply mean
that anything goes and that translations have no important connection back
to the text.97 He uses the term “zhong 忠” to describe this in the next part
of his essay: “To put things another way, the translated version should be
zhong 忠 (loyal) to the source text such that on reading it, it does not seem
like a translation, since the source text would not itself read like a translation.
换句话说，译本对原作应该忠实得以至于读起来不象译本，因为作品
在原文里决来象经过翻译似的.”98 Given that the highest standard in liter-
ary translation is transformation, he is not thinking about zhong as loyalty in
the sense of fealty, or fidelity, whose primary meaning in the context of trans-
lation is exact correspondence to a given situation, the absence of change.99
He also acknowledges directly that e, misrepresentation, is a necessary impli-
cation of any translation—given that translation is a kind of change, change
of some form or another in meaning is inevitable.
Zhong, often translated as “loyalty,” “doing one’s utmost,” or “doing
one’s best,” is a central Ruist/Confucian value in East Asian philosophical
and cultural practice. Going all the way back to the Analects and earlier, this
is a concept that has deep roots in the hierarchical cosmology and relational
ethics of early Ruism. As Kathleen Higgins explains, “Confucian thought
aims . . . at nurturing human relationships. Loyalty [zhong], accordingly,
figures centrally in the Confucian worldview, for it is an indispensable ingre-
dient in the achievement of this goal.”100
From the early Ruist worldview, it is clear that we have specific obligations
to both those over whom we have power and those who have power over us.
Analects 4.15 is an important passage on this topic:
The Master said, “Zeng, my friend! My way (dao 道) unites by piercing through
the center of things [like the string that coins/pearls are strung together with].”
Master Zeng replied, “Ah, yes.” After the Master left, Master Zeng’s dis-
ciples asked him, “What does he mean?”
Master Zeng replied, “As for the Master’s way (dao), it is zhong 忠 and shu
恕, and that’s all.”101
Here zhong is paired with its complement, shu, often translated as “defer-
ence” or “putting oneself in the other’s place.” Zengzi seems to be telling his
students that his teacher’s way consists in zhong, doing one’s utmost for oth-
ers, and shu, putting oneself in their position. This sense of zhong describes
54 Chapter 2
the kind of reciprocal obligations we have to those who have power over
us—we ought to do our utmost to fulfill our obligations to those who have
power over us, while at the same time they ought to put themselves in our
place (shu), taking care of us and not expecting more than we can reason-
ably deliver. In this way, zhong and shu provide the balance in a hierarchical
situation—while I now need to zhong my benefactors and shu my beneficia-
ries, in the future I may be a benefactor, and so others ought to zhong me,
and so on.102 This is, then, not just “loyalty” as swearing allegiance, although
through the relation with shu it does have a strong sense of concern for how
one ought to be in one’s relationships. Higgins explains, “Zhong (忠), often
translated as loyalty, and shu (恕), deference, are reciprocal virtues, connot-
ing the ideas of different kinds of commitment that characterize subordinates
and their superiors (or equals).”103
Zhong, then, expresses a relational value that places a responsibility on
one to fulfill specific expectations in certain ways. However, zhong does
not imply either blind obedience or straight mimicry, and in a number of
cases the practice of remonstrance, with either parents or rulers, is required
for one to be zhong—remonstrating is not a betrayal or a loss of loyalty,
but an obligation. As Higgins notes, in explaining Analects 4.18 on the
need to remonstrate, albeit gently, with one’s parents, “The compatibility
of remonstrating with those to whom one owes loyalty is also evident in
the Confucian view that rulers who are not living up to their roles should
be urged to rectify their behavior.”104 Being properly loyal (zhong) does
suggest a hierarchical relationship of care, respect, and action on behalf
of the other, but it does not require setting aside one’s judgment for that
of the other or not suggesting alternatives or different courses of action.
Being loyal to one’s parents, for instance, not only does not mean avoiding
remonstrating when appropriate, but also does not mean trying to be them,
to reproduce them in oneself without accounting for the relevant differences
in context and situation—refraining from changing a father’s ways for three
years after his passing is not in the service of becoming him, but rather in
taking up his position and appreciating his perspective before making it
appropriately one’s own.105
In being “loyal” to the “original,” Qian’s translation standard of transfor-
mation, rather than taking us away from the text, actually begins to make
sense as the most reasonable way for us to respect the language, culture, and
context of the text, while realistically understanding that translation is by its
very nature transitory and transgressive. For instance, early Buddhist transla-
tors like Kumārajīva, who attempted to preserve the soteriological element of
texts by retaining or creating a literary quality, might be understood in this
context not as expressing a translation value of fidelity that leads to painful
literalism, but rather of loyalty to the source texts’ liberatory aims. In the
context of talking about Lin Shu’s “translations,” Qian’s language here might
indicate that in some cases, loyalty to the text may have room for, or even
require, something other than direct reproduction.
Paul Goldin has also argued that there are some cases in which the verti-
cal hierarchy of “loyalty” is too limited a way to understand zhong. Instead,
he proposes that zhong, in some earliest texts, often means something like
“being honest with oneself in dealing with others.”106 He explains,
Zhong, therefore, bespeaks a scrupulous self-analysis necessary to ensure the

integrity of shu. Confucius tells us that we must relate to other people by taking
ourselves as an analogy, by placing ourselves in the position of our comrades.
However, this requires that we be vigilantly self-aware, lest we come to pretend
that what is immediately and unreflectively advantageous to us is somehow
advantageous to those who we deal with.107
Both of these definitions, the more narrow “loyalty” and the broader “being
honest with oneself in dealing with others” are relevant for making sense of
how a translator might be zhong with respect to the text. Although zhong is
usually taken as relevant to interpersonal dealings, in the case of being zhong
with respect to a source text, the translator ought to be honest with herself,
having engaged in a significant examination of the text, in particular with
respect to who the translation serves and for what purposes.
LAWRENCE VENUTI: RESISTING “INVISIBILITY”

BY FOREIGNIZING TRANSLATIONS
How to be loyal to the source text as a translator is, in a sense, the subject
of much of contemporary theorist Lawrence Venuti’s work. Venuti is both
a scholar of translation and a working translator who situates himself in and
between the fields of cultural studies and translation studies. He follows
Friedrich Schliermacher in arguing for an ethics of translation based on
prioritizing a certain kind of “foreignizing” translation, taking translations
as places where cultural “others” can appear as themselves as much as pos-
sible.108 For Venuti, foreignizing translations are
concerned with making the translated text a place where a cultural other is
manifested—although, of course, an otherness that can never be manifested in
its own terms, only in those of the target language, and hence always already
encoded. . . . The “foreign” in foreignizing translation is not a transparent
representation of an essence that resides in the foreign text and is valuable
in itself, but a strategic construction whose value is contingent on the current
56 Chapter 2
target-language situation. Foreignizing translation signifies the difference of the

foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target
language.109
In other words, a translation is not “foreignizing” by virtue of locating and

manifesting some mystical “foreign” essence of the text in question, but
rather, the translation is foreignized, made foreign, rather than made domes-
tic, as a technique of signaling to readers precisely that something other than
what they are familiar with is happening—the translator is trying, as much
as possible, to be loyal to the original rather than the readership’s ease or
familiarity. For Venuti, “Foreignizing translation in English can be a form
of resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and
imperialism.”110 This requires, as a technique, certain methods of disrupt-
ing familiar patterns of discourse, in particular the standards and values of
English-language literary production, as English now has a place of privilege
and dominance in world languages.
One of the main things that have to be disrupted or resisted, from Venuti’s
perspective, is the ideal of the translator’s invisibility—a widespread belief
that translations ought not broadcast their translated-ness. Contemporary
scholar Ming Dong Gu articulates the widespread position Venuti is critiqu-
ing when he writes, “Only when a Chinese text is naturalized and achieves
a translucence in a Western language can one say that successful translation
has been done.”111
The translator’s invisibility, and the resulting “translucent” text, taken as
an ideal means that translations ought to read smoothly or fluently in the tar-
get language—the translated-ness of the piece ought to recede invisibly into
the background.112 For Venuti, a fluent translation
is immediately recognizable and intelligible, “familiarised,” domesticated, not

“disconcerting[ly]” foreign, capable of giving the reader unobstructed “access
to great thought,” to what is “present in the original.” Under the regime of fluent
translating, the translator works to make his or her work “invisible,” producing
the illusory effect of transparency that simultaneously masks its status as an illu-
sion: the translated text seems “natural,” i.e., not translated.113
However, this ideal of invisibility is itself the result of a particular socio-

historic set of conditions relative to the rise of British colonial history,
Anglo-American philosophical and legal assumptions about authorship,
and more. The trouble is not that this is a standard, but that as a standard
it covers over the complexity and partiality of translation practices, which
exist not in a vacuum but in a political world where language is power
and translation is interpretation. When invisibility is the standard, so much
so that even its existence as a standard is taken for granted, the impact
of translation on cultural relations is deeply asymmetrical. According to
Venuti, “The translator’s invisibility is symptomatic of a complacency in
Anglo-American relations with cultural others, a complacency that can be
described—without too much exaggeration—as imperialistic abroad and
xenophobic at home.”114 When translations seek to domesticate the foreign
taste of the source text, they implicitly privilege the domestic and suggest
that anything worth reading should taste just like the familiar flavors of
home—but there is no real substitute for the distinctive spice of Sichuan
peppercorns.
Invisibility is, in part, a standard with roots in the European Enlightenment
and is connected with other Enlightenment period ideals like the disenchant-
ment of the natural world, language, and texts, the desirability of an objective,
bias-free viewpoint, and the possibility of perfect understanding. By seeking
to maintain the illusion of transparency, “a fluent translation masquerades as
true semantic equivalence when it in fact inscribes the foreign text with a par-
tial interpretation, partial to English-language values, reducing if not simply
excluding the very difference that translation is called on to convey.”115 In a
foreignizing text, however, the “text is the site of many different semantic
possibilities that are fixed only provisionally in any one translation, on the
basis of varying cultural assumptions and interpretive choices, in specific
social situations, in different historical periods.”116 Foreignizing translations
are no less partial than transparent translations, but they do tend to be more
up front about it.
Venuti notes that “fidelity” and “freedom,” often called the two poles of
translation standards in Western translation theory, are themselves histori-
cally inscribed categories and as such cannot be simple, objective standards.
He writes that meaning
is a plural and contingent relation, not an unchanging unified essence, and there-
fore a translation cannot be judged according to mathematics-based concepts
of semantic equivalence or one-to-one correspondence. Appeals to the foreign
text cannot finally adjudicate between competing translations in the absence of
linguistic error.117
As with Qian, Venuti is not saying here that anything goes or that transla-
tion should be untethered to the source text, an exercise in “creative inspira-
tion” over and against loyalty. Rather, he is noting that given this account
of meaning, language, and interpretation, if there are no linguistic errors,
judgment is based on interpretive quality, which requires additional informa-
tion. Here, there seems to be a strong resonance between Venuti and Qian—
translation is a kind of transformation that cannot be determined in advance.
58 Chapter 2
Transformation is a non-algorithmic change and so can neither be predicted

nor judged by an a priori set of features, absent straightforward translation
mistakes.
As Swanson describes, “When a word is used, it carries with it layers of
historical development, contextual nuances, and half-hidden associations that
are often unconsciously present even to the original verbalizer.”118 From indi-
vidual words to more complex phrases and larger arguments, “multivalent
nuances,” as Swanson explains, are common and require significant annota-
tion just to get at the various ways native speakers may read a given text.119
Making sense of even good translations requires understanding not only the
relevant linguistics but also the source and target audiences, the context of
translation, and the interpretive framework provided, implicitly or explicitly,
by the translator.
In addition, for Venuti, translations have a certain power, when they resist
the common standards of invisibility. To be visible is to “do wrong at home,
deviating enough from native norms to stage an alien reading experience—
choosing to translate a foreign text excluded by domestic literary canons, for
instance, or using a marginal discourse to translate it.”120 An alien reading
experience can be a powerful draw toward a different culture from one’s own
and toward seeing the world as larger and more complex than one’s familiar
surroundings might suggest. Qian makes precisely this point at the end of the
passage in question from “Lin Shu’s Translations”:
Enticing (媒) and match-making (诱) certainly illustrate the cultural exchange
that happens in translation. A translator is like a mediator or a liaison, introduc-
ing us to foreign literature, seducing us to fall in love with it. Translation is like
“match-making,” and it enables nations to establish relationships of “literary
interdependence” between one another.121
In the context of Qian’s transforming field, this is an interesting notion

to consider—translations have the power to both be transformations of a
work and to themselves transform readers, effecting not only a hermeneu-
tic change in self-understanding but a change in one’s relation to cultural
others.122
For Venuti, this alien reading experience is not simply an abstract ideal.
In discussing his translation of Derrida’s 1998 lecture “What Is a ‘Relevant’
Translation?” he explains his own approach to translation practice:
I sought to implement what Philip Lewis has called “abusive fidelity,” a

translation practice that “values experimentation, tampers with usage, seeks
to match the polyvalencies and plurivocities or expressive stresses of the
original by producing its own.” Abusive fidelity is demanded by foreign texts
that involve substantial conceptual density or complex literary effects, namely

poetry and philosophy, including Derrida’s own writing. This kind of trans-
lating is abusive in two senses: it resists the structures and discourses of the
receiving language and culture, especially the pressure toward the univocal,
the idiomatic, the transparent; yet in so doing it also interrogates the struc-
tures and discourses of the foreign text, exposing its often unacknowledged
conditions. . . .
In practice abusive fidelity meant adhering as closely as possible to Derrida’s
French, trying to reproduce his syntax and lexicon by inventing comparable tex-
tual effects—even when they threatened to twist English into strange forms.123
In light of our above discussion of Qian, instead of “abusive fidelity,” we

might rather call this a kind of “translation zhong,” a loyalty to the source
text that implies significant obligations, of doing one’s utmost or being honest
with oneself in dealing with others, not to make the target text smooth and
familiar, but precisely to resist that transparency of translation for an opacity
that showcases a site of cross-cultural complexity. Staging an alien reading
experience requires that translators be particularly explicit about points of
cultural/textual contrast so as to aid readers in appreciating what the unfamil-
iar or jarring elements of the text are signaling.
ROGER T. AMES: DETOURING AROUND

MISSIONARIES WITH GERUNDS
While Venuti as a theorist is concerned with the oft-unseen political implica-

tions of “invisibility” as a translation standard, his translation practice is pri-
marily between English and European romance languages. I have elsewhere
argued that the translation practices of Roger T. Ames and his collaborators
serve as an excellent example of the kind of “foreignizing” translation meth-
odology Venuti is calling for in the context of classical Chinese philosophical
texts.124 From within the frame of Qian’s work on translation, Ames’ work
on translation can also be seen as an example of translation as enticement or
match-making, where the translator becomes, explicitly, a mediator or liaison
for establishing inter-cultural relationships.
From early in his long and controversial career, Ames has prioritized a
particular approach to Chinese philosophical texts grounded in the herme-
neutic practice of trying to take the texts seriously on their own terms—
being “loyal” to the text—where figuring out what that means has entailed
rethinking much of the inherited translation-and-interpretation apparatus
of early sinology. As Ames explains, “An alternative inventory of pre-
suppositions has been at work in the growth and elaboration of Chinese
60 Chapter 2
civilization, and the failure on our part to excavate and acknowledge this
difference in our translations has rendered the Chinese worldview decep-
tively familiar.”125 In other words, by not treating classical Chinese texts
as sites of relevant cultural specificity—by instead translating for fluency
and invisibility—the texts come to seem not all that different, and so, for
several generations of philosophers, not particularly interesting. By using
translation techniques that resist the familiar pull of English norms, Ames
and his collaborators have attempted to let the texts speak from a place of
difference.126
One of the ways in which Ames goes beyond Venuti’s call for enacting
translational difference, however, is in theorizing the need for an explicit
discussion of cultural differences, beginning with metaphysics, ontology, or
cosmology.127 As he writes,
the fundamental interpretations that must guide translation have to do with, first,
what the metaphysical presuppositions of the users of the object language were,
and second, the nature of the object language itself, and to a lesser extent, the
nature of the target language as well. Many translators do not make their inter-
pretive views on these matters explicit, and it is understandable why they do not.
Metaphysical views, and views of language, are seldom given to us explicitly.128
Where the metaphysical views between contemporary European language

speakers may not differ all that much, there are significant and relevant differ-
ences between the general folk metaphysics of contemporary English-speaking
Americans, for instance, and the basic worldviews and ambient cultural
assumptions of thinkers during the Warring States Period (475/403–221 BCE),
on issues such as the nature of minds and relations between “minds” and “bod-
ies,” on the basic “stuff” of the cosmos, and the nature of personal identity, to
name a few examples. Where English is an excellent technical language, it has
a tendency to easily make things of things—to substantialize and reify without
our even noticing. Much of “our” metaphysics is a metaphysics of cosmic
furniture, and the central questions are about what kind of “furniture,” what
size, or shape, or composition, from some of the early Greek philosophers to
the mereological metaphysicians of today. Even Martin Heidegger asked why
there was something instead of nothing. As Ames puts it,
Essentialism is virtually built into English—indeed, into all Indo-European lan-

guages—by the way things, essences, substances, (nouns) do something (they
are verbed) or having something attributed to them (via being auxiliary verbed).
Consequently, moving from Chinese as our object language, which may prop-
erly be described as eventful, into an essentialistic target language, English, will
require a stretching of the latter in order to better convey the former.129
Many scholars, from Zhang Dongsun in the last century to Frank Perkins
today, have argued that early Chinese worldviews privilege accounts of the
world as constituted by interconnected, constantly changing, and immanent
relations, in sharp contrast to the cosmological assumptions privileged by a
Christian perspective in Western Europe, for instance.130
While Venuti noted that “abusive fidelity” meant staying as close as he
could to Derrida’s French, even when it meant twisting English in sometimes
uncomfortable ways, for Ames and his collaborators, staying as close as pos-
sible to classical Chinese has often had two practical expressions: “Think
verbs first, and try not to impose too many Western philosophically and or
religiously pregnant concepts on the text at hand.”131
Beginning with the last point first, as a translator into English, trying not
to impose too many Western philosophically or religiously loaded terms on
a text is a difficult, perhaps ultimately impossible, although aspirational,
task—the translation, after all, is into English, and even a foreignizing trans-
lation needs to be intelligible. However, the history of Chinese philosophical
translations is littered with missionary activity of one form or another, the
inertia of which can still be felt today. From the Jesuit invention of the term
“Confucianism” or the translation of tian 天 as Heaven—a term loaded with
Abrahamic religious significance if ever there was one—to the contemporary
philosophical tendency toward asymmetry described by Kwong-loi Shun,
finding ways to talk about Chinese philosophy absent the history of Jesuit or
Protestant translations or dominant philosophical vocabulary from Western
traditions can be difficult.132 This difficulty is, however, not entirely insur-
mountable. We can choose to use “Ruism,” which more closely matches the
Chinese, instead of “Confucianism,” for instance, even though it is not as
familiar; we can ask Western philosophers to become not just familiar with
but conversant in Chinese philosophical terms and categories by leaving key
some terms untranslated.133 And, in the context of translation, Ames and his
collaborators have consistently revisited the translation of not just key terms
but whole texts, and others can and should do the same. Nylan, for instance, is
very open about having tried a number of different translations for individual
terms and larger passages and also argues for the need for translators to reject
the influence of missionary translations whenever possible.
What does it mean to “think verbs first”? Ames has become somewhat
famous for choosing to use many gerunds in his translations. In English, a
gerund is a kind of verbal noun (verb -ing form) that retains the properties
of a verb but acts as a noun. He argues that because gerunds keep more of
the verbal, dynamic, event-oriented sense of language that they often give
English readers a better feel for classical Chinese worldviews, which tend to
privilege change, the relationships between transformation and persistence,
or the “how” of events unfolding, over a search for the unchanging essence
62 Chapter 2
of “what” things really are, behind their changes. In describing some of the
translation choices for the Daodejing, he and collaborator David L. Hall
wrote,
Above we have argued for a processual understanding of classical Daoist cos-

mology. If this account is persuasive, it means that the vocabulary that expresses
the worldview and the common sense in which the Daodejing is to be located is
first and foremost gerundive. Because “things” in the Daodejing are in fact active
“processes” and ongoing “events,” nouns that would “objectify” this world are
derived from and revert to a verbal sensibility. The ontological language of sub-
stance and essence that is sedimented into the English language tends to defy
this linguistic priority, insisting upon the primacy of “the world” rather than the
process of the world “worlding” and the myriad things “happening.”134
In addition to the tendency to prioritize substance and essence, Indo-European

languages also have a tendency to emphasize a sharp split between subjects
and objects, whereas classical Chinese, with its lack of need for subjects
altogether in many cases, often emphasizes a situation and its relational con-
stituents over an agent/object perspective.
Other examples of Ames using the technique of gerunding include translat-
ing li 禮 as “observing ritual propriety” rather than the more common nouns
“ritual” or “etiquette”; dao 道 as “way-making” or “forging a way forward”
instead of “the Way”; zhi 知 as “realizing” instead of “knowledge”; and
zheng 政 as “governing properly” instead of “government,” to name just a
few.135 These should all be read in the context of particular passages and
texts, of course, yet they give a feel for the initial point of gerunds as evoking
dynamic processes or events rather than static things.
For Ames and his collaborators, the work of translation is in the service
of helping others to come to better appreciate, and so value, early Chinese
philosophical traditions. In the Preface to his 2011 monograph, Confucian
Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, Ames notes the double entendre of the idea of
“appreciating” Confucianism: he explains that in the text he wants to both
“appraise and to give a robust account of the uniqueness and the worth of
Confucianism as a cultural narrative” and, in the sense that “‘To appreciate’
can be the opposite of ‘to depreciate’ . . . [ to] appreciate role ethics in the
sense of investing it with additional value and meaning.”136 This drive for
appreciation does, however, require a balance between foreignizing transla-
tion techniques and readability in English. As Nylan cautions, “In general,
slavish adherence to the Chinese wording or word order often means distort-
ing the basic sense of the passage for English readers.”137 In their zhong to the
source text, foreignizing translations also should not forget the reader—there
are two (or more) parties being brought together. This role of cross-cultural
match-making, seen in Ames, Venuti, and Qian, highlights the importance of
understanding and appreciating the real conditions of the other, in service of
establishing a relationship that is ultimately transformative.
CONCLUSION
Ming Dong Gu writes that “[t]he value of a translation does not lie in its ori-
gin, whether it is found in the author or the source text; its value lies in the
targeted reader. This is even more so in the domain of translating China for
the Western reader who has little to no prior knowledge of China.”138 In the
world of philosophical translations, having multiple translations that reflect
different theoretical and interpretive perspectives is as important as encourag-
ing readers to learn the other language(s) so they can serve as translators and
interpreters for their own reading. As Gu suggests, anticipating what readers
may or may not be familiar with is a crucial aspect of successful translations,
especially when there is reason to think that readers may be very unfamiliar
with relevant context, language, or concerns of the source text. Different
translations can help readers to appreciate not only different interpretive
structures but also to highlight the various biases present in any one transla-
tion. And Swanson explains, “Beyond the limitations of having to work in
specific languages, the cultural background and historical development of a
word gives it connotations beyond the dictionary definitions that can never
be exactly replicated in another language.”139 The choices translators make in
parsing out words and phrases, what additional information they provide to
readers, either in footnotes or as added commentary, can give readers a sense
of humility in the act of reading.
Swanson further states that there are “two cardinal rules about translating
words and ideas from one language into another: first, that there is no one-
to-one correspondence between words of different languages; and second,
there is never only one correct translation.”140 What does all of this mean
for translating the Heart Sutra? As Swanson suggests, even when there exist
good translations of a text, “there’s room for remixing and new renditions.”141
In what follows, I want briefly to draw your attention to a few features of the
translation that are informed by the discussion of translation studies in this
chapter.
Because I have translated the text foregrounding the Chinese version,
whenever possible if there is a need to leave a foreign term transliter-
ated, rather than translated, I have used the Chinese—even when Sanskrit
is the more familiar default for Buddhist texts (e.g., Guanyin instead of
64 Chapter 2
Avalokiteśvara, “zhou” instead of “mantra”). I have also chosen to fore-

ground the Chinese linguistic and philosophical connotations of key terms
instead of the South Asian connotations, and I have emphasized connections
to other Chinese philosophical texts and concerns elsewhere in the commen-
tary. Following Venuti and Ames, I have translated key terms as gerunds
(e.g., kong 空 as “emptying,” instead of the more common “emptiness”) and
avoided overly familiar or missionizing choices whenever possible. Finally,
in thinking about this text as a site of transformation, not only of the source
text but also of the reader, in the commentary I highlight the nature of the
text as advice not just for an intellectual viewpoint but for personal cultiva-
tion and transformation.
NOTES
1. Susan Bernofsky, “Translation and the Art of Revision,” in In Translation:

Translators on Their Work and What It Means, ed. Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 233. My thanks to Columbia Press for
their permission to use this epigraph.
2. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd Edition, trans. Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum Press, 2004), 386.
3. Paul Swanson, “Dry Dust, Hazy Images, and Missing Pieces: Reflections
on Translating Religious Texts,” in In Search of Clarity: Essays on Translation and
Tiantai Buddhism (Nagoya, Japan: Chisokudō Publications, 2018), 218.
4. Andrew Lambert makes this point in his article, “Lost in Translation: The
author versus the reader in contemporary Chinese philosophy translations,” Chinese
in Journal of East China Normal University, Humanities and Social Science 6 (2016):
63–66.（华东师范大学学报哲学社会科学版 2016.6, trans. Andrew Lambert). He
argues that contemporary translators of Chinese philosophy ought to (at least some
of the time) use the language, vocabulary, and conventions of Anglo-American
philosophy, in order to make the Chinese texts seem sufficiently philosophical for
engagement.
5. Michael Emmerich, “Beyond, Between: Translation, Ghosts, Metaphors,” in
In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, ed. Esther Allen and
Susan Bernofsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 52.
6. Rethinking the role of the translator and taking translation as an object of
philosophical attention also ought to inspire us to rethink practical considerations like
the value of translations in tenure decisions, and political considerations like the need
for more translations of historically marginalized philosophers—especially women
and members of marginalized traditions.
7. Allen and Bernofsky, xix.
8. Eric Schwitzgebel, Linus Ta-Lun Huang, Andrew Higgins, and Ivan
Gonzalez-Cabrera, “The Insularity of Anglophone Philosophy: Quantitative
Analyses,” Philosophical Papers 47, no. 1 (2018): 21–48.
9. Schwitzgebel identifies several disadvantages to having a philosophical lin-

gua franca: it puts disproportionate burdens on non-native speakers; given the impor-
tance of ordinary language, it leads to privileging the experiences of native speakers;
it makes invisible ways of seeing the world that arise in other linguistic/cultural
contexts; and it leads to a paucity of diverse kinds of thinking. See Eric Schwitzgebel,
“Disadvantages of a Lingua Franca in Philosophy,” The Splintered Mind: reflections in
philosophy of psychology, broadly construed, July 25, 2019, https://schwitzsplinters.
blogspot.com/search?q=disadvantages+of+lingua+franca
10. Michael Nylan, “Translating Texts in Chinese History and Philosophy,” in
Translating China for Western Readers: Reflective, Critical, and Practical Essays,
ed. Ming Dong Gu (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), 119.
11. Catherine Porter, “Translation as Scholarship,” in In Translation: Translators
on Their Work and What It Means, ed. Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013), 59.
12. Porter, 59.
13. Nylan, 125.
14. Ibid.
15. For more on this see Porter, 2013.
16. Nylan, 120–30. Nylan explains in addition that translators ought to pay close
attention to the class and status of the source text, the possibility of irony or sarcasm,
the nature of titles, and when to include information for the reader that has been left
out of the Chinese.
17. Bernofksy, 229.
18. Mercedes Valmisa, “Wang Bi and the Hermeneutics of Actualization,” in The
Craft of Oblivion: Aspects of Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China, ed. Albert
Galvany (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, Forthcoming), 3. A careful exami-
nation of Valmisa’s account of Wang Bi’s hermeneutics reveals striking resonances
with Qian Zhongshu’s translation theory, where Wang Bi’s “forgetting” makes
Qian’s “transforming” possible, in a certain sense. While Qian would certainly have
been familiar with Wang Bi, he does not cite or reference him in the sections of the
essay examined in this chapter.
19. Valmisa, 13. Wang Bi is not talking explicitly about translation, but because
of his hermeneutic approach, what he has to say about interpretation is relevant for
translation as well.
20. Ibid., 12.
21. Ming Dong Gu, “Sinologism, the Western World View, and the Chinese
Perspective,” in Comparative Literature and Culture 15, Special Issue “Asian
Culture(s) and Globalization,” ed. I-Chun Wang and Li Guo, no. 2 (2013): 2.
22. Martha P. Y. Cheung, “Introduction—Chinese Discourses on Translation,”
The Translator 15, no. 2 (2009): 228.
23. In the earliest materials, it is difficult to fully distinguish between cases that
refer to “translation” as a textual matter, and cases that refer to “interpretation” as an
oral matter. Although we may suspect that many of the early cases are more focused
on oral communication, later Chinese theorists often took the early material as equally
relevant to written translation. One of the most clear pre-Buddhist case of specifically
66 Chapter 2
written and not oral translation is from the “Treatise on Literature” (Yiwenzhi 藝文志)
in the Hanshu «漢書», edited by Liu Xiang, who catalogued and wrote abstracts
for all of the books (in the world) that could be collected at the time. The text also
discusses the process of moving from the various older scripts to a new standardized
script in the editing process, which also involved translation. My thanks to an anony-
mous reviewer for bringing this to my attention.
24. In the Zhuoyu, speeches of the Zhou. Quoted in Martha P. Y. Cheung, ed. An
Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation Volume 1: From Earliest Times to
the Buddhist Project (New York: Routledge, 2014), 28.
25. From the Liji, Wangzhi section. Translated by Cheung in “‘To Translate’
means ‘to exchange’? A new interpretation of the earliest Chinese attempts to define
translation (‘fanyi’),” Target 17, no. 1 (2005), 27–48. 29. 言語不通，嗜欲不同。達
其志，通其欲：東方曰寄，南方曰象，西方曰狄鞮，北方曰譯。 .
26. Cheung, “‘To Translate’ means ‘To Exchange’?” 37.
27. Joseph R. Allen “The Babel Fallacy: When Translation Does Not Matter,”
Cultural Critique 102 (2019): 127.
28. Ibid., 135.
29. While Luo Xinzhang and Wang Hongyin, among others, have maintained
this claim, Martha Cheung (2005) argues that this covers over the complex and
nuanced history of the very idea and category of translation (yi) in a pre-Buddhist
context. She draws on passages from the Zhouli and the Liji to suggest that the distinct
names for translators of the four different peoples/barbarians reveal a shifting and
unstable discourse around the nature of translation in early China.
30. Martha P. Y. Cheung, “The Mediated Nature of Knowledge and the Pushing-
Hands Approach to Research on Translation History,” Translation Studies 5, no. 2
(2012): 165–66.
31. Fa Yun, “We Use the Translated Sutras in this Land to Manifest the Truth that
Comes from Another Land,” from Fanyi mingyi ji (A Collection of Names and Their
Explanations in Buddhist Translations), Fascicle 1, trans. Diana Yue, in Anthology
of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Martha Cheung (New York: Routledge,
2014), 199.
32. Ibid., 200.
33. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. eds. “geyi,” Princeton
Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 319.
34. John M. Thompson, “Mixed up on ‘Matching Terms’ (geyi): Confusions in
Cross-Cultural Translation,” in Brahma and Dao: Comparative Studies of Indian and
Chinese Philosophy and Religion (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014), 238.
35. Victor Mair, “What Is Geyi, After All?” China Report 48, no. 1–2 (2012):
29–59.
36. Thompson, 239.
37. Victor Mair puts the number of appearances, total, in the entire Buddhist
Canon at twenty-three, with two additional possibilities that are questionable
variables (46). Thompson identifies six major uses in the Taisho Canon: three in
the Gaosengzhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks), two in the Chu sanzanji ji
(Collected records on the production of the Tripitaka) and one in the Zhongguan
lunsu (Commentary on the Middle Treatise), (236).
38. A more extensive list would include figures such as An Shigao 安世高(148–
180 CE), Zhi Loujiachen 支婁迦讖 (Lokakṣema b.147 CE), Zhi Qian (支謙,
222–252 CE), Zhu Fahu 竺法護 (Dharmarakṣa b. 233 CE), Tanmo Chen 曇無讖
(Dharmakṣema, 385–433 CE), Sengyou 僧祐 (445–518 CE), Putiliuzhi 菩提流支
(Bodhiruci, 5th–6th c CE), Qiunabatuoluo 求那跋陀羅 (Gunabhadra, 394–468
CE), Śikṣānanda (652–710 CE), Jingangzhi 金剛智 (Vajrabodhi, 671–741 CE), and
Bukong 不空(Amoghavajra, 705–774 CE), among others.
39. Dao An, Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Cheung, 78.
40. See Luo Xinzhang and Martha Cheung, Anthology of Chinese Discourse on
Translation, ed. Cheung, 70–71.
41. Dao An, in Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Cheung, 79.
42. Ibid., 79.
43. Luo Xinzhang and Martha Chueng, Anthology of Chinese Discourse on
Translation, ed. Cheung, 93.
44. See Seng Zhao, in Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed.
Cheung, 100.
45. Hui Guan, “Kumārajīva was able to use the language of this land to convey
a meaning that did not distort the source,” from Fahua zongyao xu (A Collection
of Records on the Emanation of the Chinese Tripitaka), Fascicle 8, Anthology, ed.
Cheung, 104.
46. See Luo Xinzhang’s headnote, Anthology of Chinese Discourse on
47. Yancong, trans. Cheung, Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed.
Cheung, 141.
48. Ibid., 142.
49. For more on this see Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The
Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (Honolulu: Association for Asian
Studies & University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 263–64, n. 131; and Oxford Handbook
of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE–900 CE), ed. Weibke Denecke, Wai-Yee
Li, and Xiaofei Tian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 505.
50. Wang Hongyin, A Critique of Translation Theories in Chinese Tradition:
From Dao’An to Fu Lei, trans. Xiaonong Wang (Miami: American Academic Press,
2018), 54. The earliest record of Xuanzang’s five transliterations is in Fanyi Mingyi
xu by Zhou Dunyu, for Fanyimingyi, a translation encyclopedia complied in 1143 by
Fayun. See Wang, 73–74.
51. Albert Welter, “Confucian Monks and Buddhist Junzi: Zanning’s Topical
Compendium of the Buddhist Clergy (Da Song seng shi lve 大宋僧史略) and the
Politics of Buddhist Accommodation at the Song Court,” in The Middle Kingdom and
the Dharma Wheel, ed. Thomas Julch, Sinicca Leidensia Vol 133 (2016).
52. Zanning, “To Translate Means to Exchange” in the Song gaoseng zhan,
Fascicle 1. Translated by Martha Cheung in Anthology of Chinese Discourse on
68 Chapter 2
53. Cheung, “Commentary,” in An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on

Translation, 175.
54. Zanning, from the Song Gaozeng Zhuan, trans. by Cheung, in Anthology of
Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Cheung, 177.
55. See An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Cheung, 178–86.
56. Victor Mair, “Language and Script,” The Columbia history of Chinese litera-
ture, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York: Columbia Press, 2001), 56.
57. Guang Xing, “Buddhist Impact on Chinese Language,” Asian Philosophy 23,
no. 4 (2013): 223–27.
58. The individual characters used in this transliterated phrase, “nie 涅” and “pan
槃,” do not share any meanings with “nirvāṇa.” “Nie” has meanings of “to blacken”
or “mud” and “pan” has meanings of “search,” “turn,” or “wooden tray.”
59. Paul Swanson, “Bodhidharma, Wall Contemplation, and Mixed Binomes,” in
In Search of Clarity (Nagoya: Chisokudō Publications, 2018), 254.
60. See Ibid., 250–55.
61. Matteo Cestari, “Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness: Reflections
on Negation in Nishida and Buddhism,” Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy: Japanese
Philosophy Abroad 7, (2010): 328.
62. Chinese history credits this and other important translation moves to
Kumārajīva, and also often to the other foreign leaders of translation teams, rather
than to the last person on the team, the native speaker person rendering the text into
smooth Chinese. Although this is somewhat turned around from how contemporary
translation teams tend to work—the person speaking the target language often gets the
most credit now—in the context this makes sense, as the foreign figure would have
been considered closer to the “authentic” language of the original texts, and thus the
most important figure in the translation chain. Because these were state sponsored
groups, the state could control who the translation was attributed to, and would have
benefited from supporting translation projects that seemed to have the most chance of
getting as close as possible to India.
63. Cheung, “Introduction: Chinese Discourses on Translation,” Anthology of
Chinese Discourse on Translation, ed. Cheung, 227.
64. For an overview of some issues in the Chinese Rites Controversy, see Paul A.
Rule, “The Chinese Rites Controversy: A Long Lasting Controversy in Sino-Western
Cultural History,” Pacific Rim Reports 32 (2004).
65. See, for instance, Liang Qichao’s “On the Translation of Books,” in A
Collection of Theses of Studies on Translation, Association of Chinese Translators
(Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 1984); and “Principles
for Datong Translation Bureau” in Shi Wu Newspaper, Vol. 42, 1897; and Hu Shih’s
“Fojiao de Fanyi Wenxue” [The translated literature of Buddhism (Parts 1 and 2), in
Baihua Wenxue Shi [A History of Baihua Literature], ed. Ouyang Zhesheng, Vol. 8,
139–390. 1928/1998.
66. For more on Yan Fu, see, for instance, Elsie Chan’s “Translation Principles
and the Translator’s Agenda: A systemic Approach to Yan Fu,” in Crosscultural
Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological
Issues, ed. Theo Hermans (New York: Routledge, 2002).
67. See, for instance, Luo Xinzhang’s 1984 “A System of Its Own: Our
Country’s Translation Theories” (Woguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lulun 我国自成体系
的翻译理论), in Fanyi Lunji (An Anthology of Translation Theory). Edited by Luo
Xinzhang. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1984; and Wang Hongyin’s A Critique of
Translation Theories, 2018.
68. Martha Cheung, “Power and Ideology in Translation Research in
Twentieth-Century China: An Analysis of Three Seminal Works,” in Crosscultural
Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II Historical and Ideological
Issues, ed. Theo Hermans (New York: Routledge, 2002), 152.
69. Cheung, “Power and Ideology,” 144.
70. For an English version of the entire text, see “Lin Shu’s Translations” in
Qian Zhongshu, Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature, trans. Duncan M.
Campbell (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
71. Yu Chengfa, “On Qian Zhongshu’s ‘Theory of Sublimity’,” Perspectives:
Studies in Translatology 14, no. 3 (2006): 214.
72. Qian Zhongshu, “Lin Shu’s Translations,” first published in Wenxue Yanjiu
Jikan 文學研究集刊 (Anthology of Literary Studies) 1 (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue
Chubanshe 人民文学出版社, 1964): 267–95. This version of the text (in simpli-
fied characters, as is common now in the PRC) is drawn from “Linshu de Fanyi
林书的翻译” (Beijing: Shangwu Yinshu Guanchuban, 1981), 18.
73. Weinberger, 24.
74. From chapter 2 (齊物論) of Zhuangzi: “Last night Zhuang Zhou dreamt
he was a butterfly, a vivid and lively butterfly, who felt just like a butterfly should.
He didn’t know he was Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and was pleasantly surprised to
be Zhou. He didn’t know if he were Zhou, dreaming he was a butterfly, or a but-
terfly dreaming he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly, there must indeed be
some distinction. This is called phenomenal transformation (the transformation of
phenomena, things and events). 昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也，自喻適志
與！不知周也。俄然覺，則蘧蘧然周也。不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶
之夢為周與？周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化.” For an extended discussion
of this passage in the context of transformation, see Mattice (2014), chapter 3, p. 57.
75. Classical Chinese has a number of different ways to express nuanced under-
standings of change: bian 變 is to change gradually across time, yi 易is to (ex)change
one thing for another, hua 化 is to transform utterly where one thing becomes another,
qian 遷 is to change from one place to another, and gai 改 is to correct or reform or
improve upon x on the basis of some standard or model y (for more on this see Roger
T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., “Appendix II: Further Reflections on Language,
Translation, and Interpretation,” in The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical
Translation, 281). Hua is also sometimes translated as the “-ization” part of a term,
as in cihua 磁化 (magnetize) or ouhua 歐化 (Europeanize), indicating that the phrase
becomes a verb, meaning to transform into or become the first character of the phrase.
76. See Mattice (2014), chapter 3.
77. For an account of “huajing” as an applied translation standard, see TANG
Zhouyi, “On Qian Zhongshu’s Huajing and Its Actual Practice,” US-China Foreign
Language 17, no. 3 (2019): 121–24.
70 Chapter 2

79. Liu Huawen, “Real-m-ization (化境) and Eventualization: A Phenomenological
Approach to Poetic Translation,” in Translating China for Western Readers, ed.
Ming Dong Gu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014). The author
here argues for a translation technique with respect to Chinese poetry that resists
the English tendency to want to make logical, coherent accounts out of what in their
source contexts are striking images not tied together with explicit event structures.
Foregrounding the image, as a noun, can help to resist this problematic tendency, and
retain more of the concreteness of the Chinese poetic imagery.
80. While the most common translation of Qian’s work renders this term, hua,
into English as “sublimity” (Kao, 1975), this overly Kantian reading is (at minimum)
not required by the text.
81. Specifically, it is the realm that depends on the body of the Buddha (nir-
manakaya); or any realms whose inhabitants are subject to rebirth; or (in Tiantai
especially) the Pure Land of Amida Buddha (Amituofo).
82. Peter Cole, “Making Sense in Translation: Toward an Ethics of the Art,” in
In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, 11.
83. Ibid.
84. Yuehong Chen, “Aesthetic Fidelity versus Linguistic Fidelity,” in Translating
China for Western Readers, 277. Chen argues for an interesting re-evaluation of
Pound’s translations, suggesting that Pound’s translations in Cathay are indeed
aesthetically faithful, using the Chinese aesthetic principle yijing 意境 (ideorealm,
artistic conception, aesthetic conception). Chen sees the criterion of aesthetic faithful-
ness as helping to break down the inappropriate dichotomy between literal fidelity and
beauty.
85. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982), 20.
86. Jacques Derrida, “Des Tours de Babel,” trans. Joseph F. Graham, in
Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph Fl Graham (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985), 188.
87. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations: Essays and
Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (New York:
Schocken Books, 1968), 70.
88. Qian, 18–19. Martha Cheung identifies the seventeenth-century thinker as
George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax.
89. Qian does not have a philosophical sense of rebirth (what he identifies as
“transmission of souls”) in mind here. He is calling on a very folk sense of this
concept, and I am departing from his sense of this to build on this idea in a more
philosophical manner.
90. Clare Cavanagh, “The Art of Losing: Polish Poetry and Translation,” in In
Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, 234.
91. Ibid., 241.
92. Ibid.
93. Qian, quoted in Wang Hongyin, 29.
94. This is perhaps also reminiscent of Wang Bi’s discussion of the “gap”
between idea/intention and word/image. For Wang Bi, the fact of this gap ought to be
celebrated, because it is this gap that makes possible continued return to the text as
meaningful in new circumstances. Without the gap, that would not be possible. For
more on this, see Valmisa (Forthcoming).
95. Allen and Bernofsky, xvii–xviii.
97. There is some irony in emphasizing this point, as per Cheung, Qian is argu-
ing against a kind of “loyalist” translation discourse that was in vogue in China at
the time.
98. Qian, 19. Translation with reference to Cheung, “Power and Ideology,” 153.
99. For an excellent example of why literalness does not equal fidelity,
see Cavanagh, 242–3, and her discussion of the translations of Szymborska’s
“Birthday.”
100. Kathleen Higgins, “Loyalty from a Confucian Perspective,” Nomos 54,
(2013): 22.
101. ICS Lunyu 4.15/8/7-9. 子曰：「參乎！吾道一以貫之。」曾子曰：「
唯。」子出。門人問曰：「何謂也？」曾子曰：「夫子之道，忠恕而
已矣。」A Concordance to the Lunyu (论语逐字索引), ed. D.C. Lau, Ho Che Wah
and Chen Fong Ching. ICS series (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1995), 4.15/8/7–9.
My rendering of the first line is somewhat unusual. For instance, Ames and Rosemont
read this line as “Zeng, my friend! My way is bound together with one continuous
strand” (92). However, this reading faces some grammatical and logical issues in the
context of the passage.
102. This reading of zhong/shu follows Nivison. The language of “benefac-
tors” and “beneficiaries” comes from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont,
Jr., “Introduction,” The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical
Translation of the Xiaojing, 50.
103. Higgins, 22–23.
104. Ibid., 26.
105. Analects 4.20: “Kongzi said, “Someone who does not alter the ways
(dao 道) of their late parent for three years can indeed be called filial (xiao 孝).”
子曰：三年無改於父之道，可謂孝矣。
106. Paul R. Goldin, “When Zhong Does Not Mean ‘Loyalty,’ ” Dao 7
(2008): 169.
107. Ibid., 170.
108. See Friedrich Schleiermacher, “On the Different Methods of Translating
(Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersezens, 1813),” trans. Douglas
Robinson, in Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietszsche, ed. Douglas
Robinson (New York: Routledge Press, 2014), 225–37.
109. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A history of translation (New
York: Routledge, 1995), 20.
110. Ibid.
111. Gu, “Introduction,” Translating China for Western Readers, 13. My italics.
72 Chapter 2
112. Qian seems to endorse something like this view elsewhere in his work.
113. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 5.
114. Ibid., 17.
115. Ibid., 21.
116. Ibid., 18.
117. Ibid., 18.
118. Swanson, 220.
119. Ibid., 195.
120. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 20.
121. Qian, 20. “媒”和 “诱”当然说明了翻译在文化交流里所起的作用。它是
个居间者或联络员，介绍大家去认识外国作品，引诱大家去爱好外国作品，
仿佛做媒似的，使国与国之间缔结了“文学因缘.” The phrase Qian uses at the end
of this selection, “文学因缘,” what I have translated as “literary interdependence,”
contains the term yinyuan 因缘, which has its roots as a Buddhist phrase meaning
principle and subsidiary causes or predestined relationship, and is one way of making
sense of karma, or the cycle of cause and effect that constitutes our relations in the
world.
122. For more on reading and transformation, see Mattice, “The Reader’s Chopper:
Finding Affinities from Gadamer to Zhuangzi on Reading,” in Daoist Encounters with
Phenomenology: Thinking Interculturally about Human Existence, ed. David Chai
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020).
123. Lawrence Venuti, “Translating Derrida on Translation: Relevance and
Disciplinary Resistance,” Yale Journal of Criticism 16, no. 2 (2003): 252–53.
124. See Sarah Mattice, “Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation,
and Interpretation,” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political
Philosophy, ed. Alexus McLeod (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
125. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., “Appendix II: Further Remarks
on Language, Translation, and Interpretation,” in The Analects of Confucius: A
Philosophical Translation (New York: Random House Publishing, 1998), 312.
126. This has not been without significant criticism and controversy. Critics have,
for example, objected to specific word choice, translation justifications, and the over-
all interpretive project. See, for example, Jianchuan Zhou, “On the Mistranslation
of Cultural Words in the English Versions of Sun Tzu’s Art of War,” Asian Social
Science 11, no. 21 (2015): 300–305; Michael Nylan, “Review,” Journal of Chinese
Studies 54 (2012): 305–13; and Bryan Van Norden, “’Few Are Able to Appreciate the
Flavours:’ Translating the Daxue and the Zhongyong,” Journal of Chinese Studies 56
(2013): 295–314.
127. He is influenced in this by twentieth-century comparativist Zhang Dongsun
張東蓀 (1886–1973).
128. Ames and Rosemont Jr., “Appendix II,” 284.
129. Ames and Rosemont Jr., “Introduction,” in The Analects of Confucius: A
Philosophical Translation, 22.
130. See, for instance, Frank Perkins, “Chinese Metaphysics,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
131. Rosemont Jr. and Ames, “Introduction,” in The Chinese Classic of Family
Reverence, 66.
132. See Kwong-loi Shun, “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics:
Methodological Reflections,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36, no. 3 (2009):
455–78.
133. Leah Kalmanson has argued this point in “Dharma and Dao: Key Terms in
the Comparative Philosophy of Religion,” in Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative
Philosophy of Religion, ed. Timothy D. Knepper and Leah E. Kalmanson (Cham,
Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017).
134. Roger T. Ames and David Hall, “Introduction,” in Dao De Jing: A
Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 57.
135. Ames and his collaborators are clear about not mechanically using the same
translations for terms, but using related clusters and being flexible in applying differ-
ent translations of the same terms.
136. Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Honolulu: University
of Hawai’i Press, 2011), xiii–xiv.
137. Nylan, 129.
138. Gu, “Introduction,” 10.
139. Swanson, 217.
140. Ibid., 216.
141. Ibid., 193.
Chapter 3
Guanyin
I am that name you give me, but I am also something else that cannot
quite be named.
—Judith Butler1
One of the consequences of translating the Heart Sutra from the Chinese,
rather than the Sanskrit, is that the main speaker of the text becomes
Guanyin, not Avalokiteśvara. It may be tempting to think that this change is
merely semantic—isn’t Guanyin just the shortened form of Guanshiyin (or
Guanzizai), the Chinese translations of Avalokitaśvara/Avalokiteśvara? The
answer to that question is “Yes, but.” It is true that Guanshiyin/Guanzizai—
shortened in colloquial usage to Guanyin Pusa (Guanyin Bodhisattva), or
Guanyin—is a Chinese neologism that was created to translate the name
of the bodhisattva.2 However, in relatively short order, Guanyin—the bod-
hisattva of compassion—took on a whole new life in China, enacting a pro-
found transformation that marks this figure as much more than a one-to-one
translation.
Who is Guanyin? This seemingly simple question is deceptively complex
to answer. Guanyin is a bodhisattva, a figure who has woken up and yet
chooses to remain in the cycle of birth and death out of compassion for the
suffering of others. Guanyin appears in more than eighty sutras, and innumer-
able stories, tales, and works of art, and is the Buddhist figure most widely
associated with compassion. “Guanyin” is the short-hand, popular version of
this bodhisattva’s name in Chinese, and what I call this bodhisattva in general
in this book. As will become clear, this figure defies easy categorization on a
number of levels, especially with respect to gender.
75
76 Chapter 3
According to the technicalities of Buddhist doctrine, bodhisattvas have

no gender. That said, it is clear that Avalokiteśvara (or Avalokitaśvara) was
commonly understood as predominantly male, as depicted in statues, paint-
ings, and other items of material culture. He was the object of cult worship
in India and Southeast Asia from about the fifth century, and by the sixth
century was seen as a key figure in his own right. In stark contrast, visual
depictions of Guanyin in China are very often obviously female and some-
times maternal. In this chapter and elsewhere in this text, because I am high-
lighting Guanyin’s Chinese context, in general I refer to Guanyin as “she”
and, when in context, Avalokiteśvara as “he.” But if ever there was a case for
the singular “they,” Guanyin is it. So, in cases where the gender or context is
ambiguous, I use “they” and “their” pronouns for Guanyin.3
There are three names this figure has been called canonically in Chinese:
Guangshiyin 光世音, Guanshiyin 觀世音, and Guanzizai 觀自在. These three
are translations of the two forms of the bodhisattva’s name: Avalokitaśvara
and Avalokiteśvara. These two forms likely arose from the movement
of Buddhist materials across Central Asia, where Sanskrit was mediated
by many other languages before reaching China. The earliest appearance
of Guanyin in China is in a list of attending bodhisattvas in the Sutra on
Achieving the Brilliant Concentration of Mind (T.630) from about 185 CE.
Guanyin appears as “Guangshiyin” in Dharmarakṣa’s 286 CE translation of
the Lotus Sutra (the “guang” 光, meaning “light” or “bright,” in Guangshiyin
emphasizing the infinite light connection with Amitabha Buddha, Ch.
Amituofo 阿弥陀佛). However, very quickly after Kumārajīva’s translation
of the Lotus Sutra (406 CE), Guanshiyin (One Who Hears the Cries of the
World), and the shortened Guanyin, became the dominant versions. Even by
the 430 CE translation of the Visualization of the Buddha Amitayus Sutra
(T. 365), Guanyin is “Guanshiyin” in the chapter on visualization, even
further connecting the name “Guanshiyin” with the bodhisattva’s image in
the minds of practitioners. Although Xuanzang was highly critical of other
translators who chose Guanshiyin, his translation from Avalokiteśvara (and
not Avalokitaśvara) into Guanzizai (Lord who Perceives) did not really reso-
nate popularly, although it is still used in his translations, including the Heart
Sutra.4
In the context of Chinese and East Asian Buddhisms, Guanyin transforms
from their early role as the princely bodhisattva attendant of Amituofo
(Amida Buddha), poised to be the future Buddha of Amituofo’s Western Pure
Land, to a figure of cultic devotion who saves people from many dangers, to
one who can appear in any form needed in order to teach the dharma, to a
“revealer of sacred dhārānīs” who had salvific powers to respond to anyone
and everyone in need.5 And, as C. N. Tay notes in the classic article, “Kuan-
yin: The Cult of Half Asia,”
Guanyin 77
In Mahāyāna Buddhism, which offers to all beings a yana or “vehicle” leading

to liberation by faith and love as well as by knowledge, the central figure is
Kuan-yin (the Bodhisattva “Avalokitasvara”), “the Regarder of the Cries of the
World,” the personification of Buddhist compassion, and to some the idealiza-
tion of Gautama Buddha.6
In addition to the Heart Sutra, Guanyin is a major figure in the texts

of the Great Compassion Dhāraṇī (Dabeizhou «大悲咒»), the Guanyin
Sutra (Pumenpin «普門品», aka Guanyin Jing «觀音經»)—chapter 25 of
the Lotus Sutra «妙法蓮華經»—various kōans and encounter dialogues,
the Huayan Jing «華嚴經» (Sk. Avataṃsaka Sutra, En. Flower Garland
Sutra), and the Śūraṅgama Sutra «大佛頂首楞嚴經». Guanyin also appears
in many other texts and contexts, canonical and otherwise, and the visual
imagery connected with Guanyin is extensive, across different Buddhist
sects and traditions. In fact, when considering Chinese Buddhist tradi-
tions that developed indigenously, Miriam Levering notes that “[a]ll of
the Buddhist schools created in the Tang dynasty chose as their central
of highest scripture sutras in which Avalokiteśvara figured prominently.”7
Indeed, these are the schools—especially Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land, and
Chan—that would travel across the rest of East Asia.8
However, even speaking of Guanyin as a single figure is a bit challenging—
from the Lotus Sutra, which tells us that Guanyin has thirty-three different
general instantiations (from a buddha or Lord Brahma to a monk or nun or
layperson and more), to the thirty-three instantiations of Guanyin in East
Asian art (from the eleven-headed Guanyin or the esoteric thousand-armed-
and-eyed Guanyin to indigenous forms of Guanyin like Water-and-Moon
Guanyin, Princess Miaoshan, White-Robed Guanyin, Child-giving Guanyin,
Guanyin of the South Seas, Fish-Basket Guanyin, Old Mother Guanyin,
and more), Guanyin is definitely a figure of multiplicity. As Chün-fang Yü
explains, even in a canonical context, Guanyin is “highly multivocal, multi-
valent, and multifaceted.”9 Indeed, Guanyin is constituted by her multiplicity.
Each and every one of their specific instantiations, which are in many cases
very detailed and particular, including with respect to gender, contain the full
multiplicity of Guanyin and all their transformative capabilities.
Guanyin, in an East Asian context, is not merely one bodhisattva of many.
The fact that it is Guanyin who, from a place of deep meditative insight,
delivers the Heart Sutra is significant and should help situate our reading of
the text. This chapter takes as its starting point the idea that Guanyin is the
main speaker of the Heart Sutra and that it matters that this particular figure,
and not someone else, is teaching the wisdom of insight from deep medita-
tive practice. In what follows, I provide some historical context for popular
treatments of Guanyin, examining Guanyin’s role in a number of key Chinese
78 Chapter 3
Buddhist texts. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Guanyin as a

figure of radical transformation and some suggestions as to what that might
mean for reading the Heart Sutra.
GUANYIN IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In their earliest appearance in China, Guanyin is a princely attendant bod-

hisattva of Amituofo. Guanyin is the future Buddha of Amituofo’s Pure Land,
as Maitreya is the future Buddha of this world. Amituofo (Sk. Amitāyus
Buddha, Amitābha Buddha; Jp. Amida Buddha), more well known in English
by his Japanese name, Amida Buddha, is strongly associated with everlast-
ing light and life,10 and in early Chinese Buddhism with the task of ferrying
people to his Western Pure Land after death. As happens with several figures,
in China he took on a new significance not seen in other areas and eventually
became the primary object of attention for the development of Pure Land-
associated practices and beliefs throughout East Asia. In Japan especially,
these practices contributed to the formation of several distinct schools of
Buddhism in the Kamakura period (1185–1333 CE), which remain the most
popular schools in Japan today.11
Although we see the first evidence of Guanyin in China around the 200s, by
the time Kumārajīva translated the Lotus Sutra, with its entire chapter devoted
to Guanyin, their cult status was booming.12 After all, in the Lotus it states that
the simple act of calling Guanyin’s name can activate their protective powers
in the case of ten kinds of calamities—calling on the name “Guanshiyin” is a
“universal gateway” to liberation. The text opens with the following passage.
Note that the translators of this 2019 edition also choose to render Guanyin
(Bodhisattva Regarder of the Sounds of the World) with female pronouns:
At that time, the Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Mind rose up from his seat, humbly
bared his right shoulder, placed his palms together toward the Buddha, and
said, “World-Honored One, for what reason is the Bodhisattva Regarder of the
Sounds of the World [Guanshiyin] called Regarder of the Sounds of the World?”
The Buddha answered the Bodhisattva Inexhaustible Mind, “Good son, there
are innumerable hundreds of thousands of millions of living beings who are suf-
fering from pain and distress. If they hear of this Bodhisattva Regarder of the
Sounds of the World and single-mindedly call her name, then the Bodhisattva
Regarder of the Sounds of the World will immediately regard that sound and
emancipate them all.”13
The text then proceeds to elaborate on the various calamities one might
face and how Guanyin will compassionately respond. The ten calamities
Guanyin 79
mentioned directly are dangers from fire, water, falling, unjust politics (if
you are about to be executed, definitely try calling on Guanyin), prison,
curses or poisons, various demons, evil creatures, war or armed conflict, and
the calamity of infertility (Guanyin can bestow children of good fortune, a
son or a daughter depending on the family’s wishes). In most cases, not only
does Guanyin rescue us from the literal danger with which we are confronted,
but their intervention ends with all parties, including those who would do
us harm, attaining liberation. Furthermore, the text states explicitly that this
requires only a moment of appropriate homage to and reverence for Guanyin.
In addition to saving others, the Lotus continues by explaining that Guanyin
can also transform into thirty-three different sorts of general role instantia-
tions in order to effectively (i.e., upayic-ly) teach the dharma, according to
each being’s needs for liberation.14 Upāya, expedient or skillful means (Ch.
Fangbian 方便) is a major theme of the Lotus Sutra, illustrated especially by
the parable of the burning house in chapter 2. One of the main concerns of
an upayic action or teaching is that it be tailored appropriately to the given
situation for the purpose of liberation. Guanyin’s thirty-three instantiations
include taking on the form of a buddha, a self-enlightened person (pratyeka-
buddha), a king, a rich man, a householder, a monk, a nun, a Buddhist lay-
person (man or woman), rich person’s wife or daughter, boy, girl, deva (god),
dragon (naga), and many others. Guanyin takes the form that will be most
effective in liberating whoever she is dealing with.
The text also explains that Guanyin “can bestow fearlessness upon those
facing a frightening or critical situation. For this reason, all in this sahā
world have given her the title Bestower of Fearlessness.”15 Specifically, it
connects “single-minded” concentration on them, and/or their name, with
fearlessness.16 And the karmic merits of practice oriented toward Guanyin
are, according to the text, very significant. Finally, the chapter, which also
contains a poem describing the same things, ends with what hearing of this
chapter can accomplish: “While the Buddha was preaching this chapter of
the universal gateway, the eighty-four thousand living beings in the assembly
all set their minds upon incomparable Supreme Perfect Awakening.”17 In
other words, attending to this chapter—and so, presumably, to Guanyin her-
self—can ignite bodhicitta, the strong wish for and commitment to one’s own
awakening motivated by compassion for others, and lead to full awakening
and buddhahood.
Within a few decades of this translation and dissemination, there started
to emerge a new genre of Chinese literature—Guanyin miracle stories:
“Miracle tales about Guanyin are an important and enduring genre in Chinese
Buddhism. They have been collected down the ages and are still being pro-
duced and collected today.”18 These stories were recorded and shared by
both lay persons and monastics and served as part of the cycle of growth for
80 Chapter 3
devotional activity centered on Guanyin, including the forging of icons to be

carried on the body (e.g., wrapped in the hair) and other artistic endeavors.
Stories tended to focus on the salvific powers of Guanyin (as detailed in the
Lotus Sutra), and the connection between devotional activity (worshipping
icons, chanting sutras, calling their name, etc.) and being saved from vari-
ous sorts of disasters or granted certain kind of wishes. Among these, Sun
Jingde’s story is particularly famous and became the basis for the origin
story of an entire indigenous sutra.19 Sun Jingde, a sixth-century soldier
wrongly condemned to death, regularly and sincerely worshipped an icon of
Guanyin, chanting a sutra revealed to him in a dream (that very sutra, King
Kao’s Guanshiyin Sutra). Having chanted the sutra a thousand times while
in captivity, when it came time for his death sentence to be carried out, the
executioner’s knife broke over his neck—three different times. The cuts that
would have been on Sun’s neck appeared on his Guanyin icon, and the ruler
pardoned Sun.20
Guanyin not only protects people in danger, however—in some stories, she
grants devotees’ most dear wishes. In the case of the monk Bo Fajiao, who
was diligent and devout, he wanted to recite the sutras but did not have a good
voice for it. He told his fellow monks that Guanyin “can help a person fulfill
his wishes in this very life. I will pray to [them] with singleness of mind. If
my sincerity is weak and cannot move the bodhisattva, my previous sins from
bad karma will not be eliminated. I would rather die than living a long life
but without a good voice.”21 After relating this to the monks, he refused to eat
and “concentrated his mind with utmost sincerity.”22 After seven days, when
he was on the brink of death, he suddenly opened his eyes and spoke, loudly
reciting a series of Buddhist poems. The story then summarizes: “He recited
half a million words after this. His voice sounded like a bell and showed no
sign of weakness. People at that time all realized that he was a person who
had achieved the Way.”23 As Yü explains, this story is unusual in not featur-
ing Guanyin rescuing someone from a calamity, but rather being moved by
sincere devotion to transform the supplicant. As these stories grew in number
and spread far and wide, Guanyin’s popularity and status as a figure in their
own right was secure.
As these stories were becoming more popular, esoteric forms of Buddhist
practice were also gaining traction in China. Guanyin has several esoteric
forms—perhaps most widely known is Thousand Hand and Eye Guanyin,
connected with the Qian Shou Jing, which saw more than a dozen differ-
ent translations during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), and several ver-
sions were sealed in at the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. However, the first
esoteric form in China was probably eleven-headed Guanyin. Some schol-
ars connect the eleven heads to eleven cardinal directions (eight cardinal
points, zenith, nadir, and center), while others relate them to the stages of
Guanyin 81
bodhisattva ascension to buddhahood (ten stages ending with a head rep-

resenting Amituofo). One of the more popular stories about the origin of
the eleven heads, however, is that when Guanyin became a bodhisattva and
vowed to hear the cries of all who suffer, although they exerted enormous
effort, they could not respond to all of those who were suffering. Guanyin’s
head split into eleven pieces, and Amituofo, appreciating their problem,
gave them eleven heads with which to hear the cries of those who need help
(and likewise with hands and eyes, in later versions). Stories featuring these
various esoteric forms of Guanyin also became popular during the Tang and
later.
Beginning in the Tang and continuing through the Song Dynasty (960–
1279 CE), Guanyin underwent a remarkable transformation. Although the
Guanyin imported from Central and South Asia had various different com-
mon depictions,24 Guanyin was, up to this point, consistently understood and
visually depicted as either clearly male or male/androgynous in terms of their
gender. However, during this period new, indigenous depictions of Guanyin
(e.g., Water-and-Moon Guanyin) emerged from popular artistic practice and
literary stories, and these depictions were importantly different—they began
to show Guanyin as often being clearly female. From White-Robed Guanyin
to Fish-Basket Guanyin and Child-Giving Guanyin, new versions of Guanyin
took shape and took over the imagination—and the visual representation—
of this figure across East Asia. Although Guanyin was still monastically
depicted as male/androgynous, following the conventions of the early Tang,
by the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 CE), Guanyin’s status as a woman was
largely solidified—especially in the visual arts and in devotees’ imaginations.
This long process of transformation is documented and explored in Chün-
fang Yü’s monumental monograph, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation
of Avalokiteśvara. As Yü explains,
Kuan-yin was perceived as masculine and was so depicted in art prior to and
during the T’ang (618–907). However, by the early Sung (960–1279), around
the eleventh century, some devotees saw Kuan-yin as a female deity and new
forms of feminine Kuan-yin images began to be created by Chinese artists. The
feminine transformation of the bodhisattva probably reached its completion dur-
ing the Yüan (1206–1368). Since the Ming, or the fifteenth century, Kuan-yin
has generally been perceived and represented as completely feminine.25
As Yü and others have argued, one of the key moments in this transforma-
tion was the popular dissemination of the story of Princess Miaoshan, starting
around 1100 CE. While the story of Princess Miaoshan shares some features
with other miracle tales concerning Guanyin, it also breaks new ground in
important ways that serve to fully domesticate or Sinicize Guanyin.
82 Chapter 3
Although there are several variants of the story, the basic version goes
something like this. There once lived a king and his family. The king had three
daughters, two of whom were good filial daughters who married well and never
gave the king any trouble. However, the third, Princess Miaoshan, was attracted
to Buddhism from the time she was very small. She would not eat meat and
spent all her time reading sutras and meditating and decided she wanted to be
ordained. When it came time for her to get married, the king arranged for a
fine husband, but Miaoshan refused to get married. Angry, the king first ban-
ished her to hard labor in the garden (which she completed) and then to work
as a servant at the local nunnery, hoping she would see the error of her ways.
When she was still committed to ordaining, the king had the nunnery burned to
the ground, killing all five hundred nuns. He then executed Miaoshan as well.
Miaoshan saved many beings while in hell, and then was herself miraculously
saved and went to live and meditate on Fragrant Mountain, where she achieved
enlightenment. At this time, the king had become very ill with a terrible sick-
ness and was going to die. He was told by a wandering monk (Miaoshan in dis-
guise) that the only thing that could cure him was a concoction made from the
eyes and hands of someone who had never felt anger.26 The monk told the king
about the sage on Fragrant Mountain, and the king sent a messenger. Miaoshan
(the sage) freely offered her eyes and hands for the medicine. The king was
cured and went to give thanks to the sage on the mountain. Once there, he and
his wife recognized the sage as their daughter, and overcome with gratitude
and guilt, they converted to Buddhism. Miaoshan then revealed her true form,
Thousand Hands and Eyes Guanyin.27
As an “incarnation” of Guanyin, Princess Miaoshan gives Guanyin a
Chinese biography and provides an account that on some views reconciles
Ruist filial piety with Buddhist devotion—the daughter who seemed unfilial
by not following her father’s wishes in fact makes an enormous sacrifice
for her father (a sacrifice her sisters were unwilling or unable to make),
which would not have been possible without her Buddhist practice. This
story became a crucial turning point in the ethnic and gender transformation
of Guanyin from their origins as a nearly generic bodhisattva attendant of
Amituofo to a truly distinctive Chinese figure. Guanyin takes on a life of her
own after this, becoming numerous other figures (White-Robed Guanyin,
Child-giving Guanyin, Fish-Basket Guanyin) that solidify both her Chinese-
ness and her femininity in the eyes of the general population—and this is
reinforced when these forms become the source of significant artistic pro-
duction and local veneration.28 So we see here not only Guanyin helping a
Chinese person, as was common in the earlier stories, but Guanyin becoming
a Chinese woman—and a lay woman at that—and a Chinese (lay) woman
becoming Guanyin. With this story, Guanyin fully took root in the broader
Chinese environment and, at least on some readings, both responded to the
Guanyin 83
long-standing Chinese concern about how to reconcile Buddhism and filiality

(孝 xiao) and provided an exemplar of women’s marriage resistance. In not
just having the ability to appear as a woman (as is clear from the Lotus and
other texts), but by becoming Miaoshan from Ruzhou (Henan) in particular,
and Miaoshan becoming her, Guanyin gained a Chinese story, a biography,
a hometown, and a feminine form, which became one of her key features.
Although all the other buddhas and bodhisattvas presumably have the ability
to appear as women in theory or may have been women in the very distant
past of previous lives, only Guanyin consistently realizes this theory in prac-
tice, with specific (Chinese and later East Asian) feminine forms. Guanyin’s
instantiations as White-Robed Guanyin (a development of the previous indig-
enous male/gender-neutral form of Water-and-Moon Guanyin), Fish-Basket
Guanyin, Child-Giving Guanyin, and other female instantiations became so
popular that even today, in the imaginations of many lay people in East Asia,
Guanyin is straightforwardly female.29
While White-Robed Guanyin is often part of miracle tales and appears
frequently in devotional art, she does not appear to have an “origin story” of
her own.30 Songzi Guanyin (Child-Giving Guanyin, or perhaps more literally
“Son-Giving Guanyin”) takes her origins from the sutras that list the granting
of children as among Guanyin’s powers. Fish-Basket Guanyin, however, has
a very distinctive story. Also sometimes called Malang Fu (Wife of Mr. Ma),
the story of Fish-Basket Guanyin begins with a beautiful young girl selling
fish in Shensi in 817 and takes us through the commitment in many forms of
Chinese Buddhism that enlightenment can come through our senses—perhaps
even sensual experience. Because she was very lovely, a number of men pro-
posed marriage. She initially said that she would marry the man who could
memorize the Guanyin Sutra (“Pumenpin,” Lotus chapter 25) in one night.
But twenty of the men did that successfully. So, then she told them she would
marry the man who could memorize the Diamond Sutra in one night (a much
more difficult task). Ten of the men passed that test. Next, she said she would
marry the man who memorized the entire Lotus Sutra in three days. Only
Mr. Ma succeeded. But on their wedding day she became sick and shortly
after the ceremony she died. Later, a foreign monk came to pay his respects
and told Mr. Ma and the locals that she was actually Guanyin Bodhisattva.31
In this story, we see not only another tale where Guanyin is identified with a
specific (lay) Chinese woman, but a story where the woman’s youth, beauty,
and allure were part of her upayic pedagogy. That is, her femininity—and
her sexual allure—was essential, not incidental, to her dharmic role, and this
sparked additional feminine versions of Guanyin.
As these versions of Guanyin became more and more widespread, Guanyin
also became strongly associated with an island of the coast of Zhejiang
province, now called Putuo Shan (Mt. Putuo, Sk. Mt. Potalaka).32 This
84 Chapter 3
mountainous island is said to be Guanyin’s bodhimanda (her realm of awak-

ening) and is one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism (along
with Wenshu’s Mt. Wutai, Dizang’s Mt. Jiuhua, and Puxian’s Mt. Emei). It
has been a major pilgrimage site for more than a thousand years and is cov-
ered in temples and monastic complexes.
When the Jesuits arrived in China in the 1600s, they understood Guanyin to
be a “Goddess of Mercy” and made numerous comparisons with the Christian
figure of Mary, especially between Mary and Child-giving Guanyin, spawn-
ing a new wave of Guanyin iconography that portrays her in ways very
similar to Mary. Guanyin also developed into a more generic Chinese deity,
taking on Daoist and other folks associations not connected with her Buddhist
origins.33 Guanyin and Mazu, for instance, are often connected in terms of
both literature and practice—while Mazu is most closely associated with
protecting fishermen near Fujian (and then in Taiwan), in some stories Mazu
is an instantiation of Guanyin, while in others Guanyin reveres Mazu.34 The
108-meter tall statue of Guanyin of the Southern Seas (Guanyin Nanshan)
erected in southern Hainan, China, in 2005 plays on some of these connec-
tions, although its Buddhist origins go back to the attempted (and then later
successful) sea voyage of Master Jianzhen from the mainland of China to
Japan during the Tang.
Specific Practices Associated with Guanyin

Guanyin devotion reached particularly great heights in the Ming (1368–1644
CE) and Qing (1644–1912 CE) dynasties. During this period, a number of
devotional practices associated with Guanyin became popular, especially but
not exclusively with female devotees. Historically, we know that Guanyin was
an extremely important figure in women’s practice in China (and elsewhere).
As Yuhang Li has shown in detail in her monograph Becoming Guanyin,
women during the Ming and Qing dynasties engaged in dance, painting, and
embroidery directed at reverence for Guanyin, appeals to Guanyin, or expres-
sions of their devotion to Guanyin. Li explains that “Guanyin served as a
model for women during the different stages of their life cycle.”35 Not only
did Guanyin—or more precisely, the many Guanyin—speak to women at
different points in their lives in different ways, but they also spoke to women
across class divides as well.
Drawing and embroidery were the two primary means by which women could
reproduce the image of Guanyin at home. . . . Drawing (i.e., painting in mono-
chrome) was limited to women who had acquired the skill of using brush and
ink; embroidery, traditionally defined as a female skill, was more widely prac-
ticed by women from various social classes.36
Guanyin 85
While there were many gentrywomen painters in the Ming and Qing who
used a variety of styles and techniques, Guanyin was by far the most popular
subject for women painters during the Ming and Qing.37 As was character-
istic of religious paintings during this time, the painters often copied sutras
or other scriptures onto the paintings, and the Heart Sutra and the Pumenpin
were two of the most common to accompany Guanyin—as they are two of
the most commonly chanted and reproduced sutras today.
As Li explains with respect to women painting Guanyin, “In particular, the
feminized Guanyin was a reflective device by which painters who were lay-
woman expressed affinity with the deity. Such devotion entailed giving form
to Guanyin’s virtuous qualities, such as compassion and purity, through the
skilled physical act of painting her.”38 Li describes in detail two artists who
were known for their paintings of Guanyin but who seem to have approached
their work in different ways. Xing Cijing (d. 1640), for instance, painted a
very famous version of White-Robed Guanyin in a series where Guanyin is
accompanied by a male child. Xing Cijing had a very difficult time conceiving
a child, and the painting of Guanyin stands as her testimony of devotion to
Guanyin in terms of fertility. Not only that, however, as her style of painting
used incredibly thin strokes: “In the process of making such hair-thin strokes,
Xing could not use the conventional method of tracing a model to make a draft
or make even the slightest mistake. Such an intense practice fosters an intimate
relationship between the artist and the icon.”39 In other words, not only was her
painting a symbol of her devotion and gratitude (after conceiving a son), but
the very act and practice of painting itself was devotional. In her later years, she
also wrote poetry on its own and to accompany some of her paintings. Li trans-
lates her poem “Casual Thoughts” on the topic of Buddhist transformation:
Repenting body and mind, avoiding illusory emotions,

Lighting fine incense and intoning the Heart Sūtra.
I vow to awaken to the subtleties of non-rebirth,
And ascend to the pinnacle of the lotus blossom.40
In this poem, we also see the depth of her commitment to Buddhist practice.
As Li explains,
this poem describes a Buddhist transformation, which involves a process of

self-negation. Body, heart, and emotions constituted her own identity and kept
her from overcoming herself and identifying with Guanyin. . . . After reading
the Heart Sūtra, she realizes the principle or dharma of no birth or the empti-
ness of living things. . . . Seated on the lotus flower, she not only goes beyond
the principle of birth and death but also becomes Guanyin and embodies her
compassion.41
86 Chapter 3
Her Buddhist practice is not only centered on Guanyin but also on texts in
which Guanyin features prominently, like the Heart Sutra.
Fang Weiyi (1585–1668), on the other hand, painted Guanyin as a form of
meditation. Her methods of painting displayed an artistic presence common
to Chan artists: “executing an exact figure without the meditation of tools
means there is no distance between the artist’s mind and her brushstroke.
Imagination is immediately expressed on paper, and immediacy is crucial to
Chan Buddhist practice.”42 Like other Chan artists, Fang practiced a “single
stroke” or “continuous line” technique, where she painted Guanyin with a
minimum of strokes, done in the immediacy of meditative awareness, without
previous sketching or outlines to follow.
Women who were not in a situation to be able to paint still engaged
Guanyin in artistic practice, especially through hair embroidery—the practice
of plucking out and using their own strands of hair as embroidery thread.
The following story illustrates one of the most famous accounts of hair
embroidery:
When Ye Pingxiang was fourteen years old, her father, a state official, was
wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. Ye Pingxiang was desperate to res-
cue her father. She prayed to the Buddha for help, crying day and night. Then
she experienced gan-ying 感應, meaning that the spirit responded to her prayers
by urging her to make an image of the deity using her skill, namely, embroidery.
She purchased a large piece of satin in the market and plucked out strands of
her own hair, then, using an extremely sharp knife, she further split each strand
into four. She used these split hairs to embroider the image of Buddha and a
scripture on the satin. After two years, she finally finished the piece, but she had
lost her eyesight. In return for her effort and sacrifice, her father was miracu-
lously released.43
There are many, many accounts of women (and some men) practicing hair
embroidery specifically with the image of Guanyin. One reason this practice
may have been so popular is that the incredible amount of effort, time, skill,
labor, material sacrifice, and practice that goes into creating a piece is visible
in the piece itself—every stitch demonstrates devotion, and so connects in
terms of intensive investment to generating karmic merit or spiritual efficacy.
Women embroidered Guanyin for a host of different reasons, from filial
concern to religious devotion. In terms of filial concern, we have stories like
that of Madam Feng, the daughter-in-law of Madam Fan, who was so filial
that when her mother-in-law became ill she wanted to take on her pain and
spent three years embroidering more than twenty Guanyin with her own hair.
While her mother-in-law recovered, Madam Feng became ill and perished.44
We also have stories like that of Madam Xu, made famous by the artist and
Guanyin 87
poet Su Shi, who memorialized Xu’s three years of Guanyin contemplation

practice in embroidery with a eulogy to her. In it, he writes that “[f]rom the
six sense organs, she uses any means she can to convey [Guanyin]. From her
hand, it reaches the needle, from the needle, it reaches the thread. . . . If each
stitch were a Buddha, there should be ten million Buddhas. If each stitch were
not a Buddha, how then could this likeness [be achieved]?”45 Madam Xu was
embroidering not for filial merit, but for her own devotional practice.
Contemporary Guanyin
By the time we reach the contemporary world, Guanyin has become a world-
wide phenomenon. Their reach stretches from the traditional East Asian con-
texts to Tibetan and other esoteric forms of Buddhism, where Avalokiteśvara
(Guanyin) is understood as the figure Chenrezig—and the current Dalai
Lama is their fourteenth instantiation. In Taiwan, a young nun artist imagined
Guanyin as a modern, spectacled young woman holding books in each of her
many arms.46 In the United States, as Jeff Wilson relates in “‘Deeply Female
and Universally Human’: The rise of Kuan-yin Worship in America,” bod-
hisattvas are particularly important for many American convert Buddhists,
and among those, Guanyin is especially significant (in the United States she
is often called by her Japanese name, Kannon). Although American (convert)
Buddhism’s early days were characterized largely by a rationalistic, anti-
ritual focus on Buddhism as a “way of life” that did not entail any “religious”
components, in contemporary times this has shifted significantly. In particu-
lar, with the rise of the first generation of women teachers (especially in Zen
traditions), Guanyin became more and more prominent. As Wilson explains,
This bodhisattva is increasingly favored by convert Buddhists for very obvious

reasons. The first is gender: among a constellation of male Buddhas, bodhisat-
tvas, and arhats, Kuan-yin stands out as a female bodhisattva. . . . For women
who have left forms of Judaism or Protestant Christianity that are dominated
by male deity images, Kuan-yin is a welcome alternative; for women who have
left Catholicism she is a warm reminder of the Virgin Mary, yet without the
negative implications for women’s sexuality. Kuan-yin represents for convert
women an affirmation that they too have a place in Buddhism. For both women
and men, Kuan-yin’s gender makes her more approachable than the Buddha or
Manjushri. . . . Beyond gender, two closely connected aspects of the bodhisattva
make her particularly appealing to convert Buddhists. Firstly, her status as the
embodiment of compassion, arguably valued even more highly than wisdom by
the practitioners. Secondly, her ability to take on any form in order to help those
in need. This is a characteristic of her compassionate nature, which is implicitly
tied to her gender by Americans.47
88 Chapter 3
Thus, it is Guanyin, with her distinctive gendered instantiations and emphasis

on compassion, that has become a part of the American religious landscape.
It is not unusual for Americans not to know that Guanyin is not always
female, and she (usually feminine versions) can be found everywhere from
garden centers to jewelry stores. She is often featured in American convert
(and non-convert) Buddhist spaces, public and private. The new context of
American convert Buddhism has also led to new Guanyin iconography, e.g.,
Universal Mother Guanyin.48 Universal Mother Guanyin is depicted as a
woman wearing a generically Asian-styled robe. Wilson describes the image
from a Dharmacrafts 2007 catalogue:
Her robe is open, revealing a pregnant stomach that is actually the Earth itself,
complete with oceans and continents. Naturally, it is North America that is the
main focus of the image, printed across the bodhisattva’s bulging belly. This
rather unsubtle image combines the convert desire for a female bodhisattva,
veneration of Mother Earth, and American-centricity into one neat package.49
Guanyin continues to take new forms and new shapes as her reach extends
beyond China.
Guanyin has also become a potent symbolic figure for new communities
as well. As Cathryn Bailey has argued in “Embracing the Icon: The Feminist
Potential of the Trans Bodhisattva, Kuan Yin,” Guanyin is becoming an
important icon in certain communities of trans persons, in part because of
their ability to subvert and disrupt binary gender theorizing, and in serving as
a positive example of someone whose ability to disrupt common categories is
valued. In these contexts, engagement with Guanyin draws on historical prec-
edent but uses the concerns of the present moment to construct new modes of
engagement. Bailey writes,
Kuan Yin may be able to express what metaphysically obsessed, essentialist, and
anti-essentialist theorizing ultimately cannot, the possibility of being both and
neither. With respect to gender, for example, she/he is not simply an androgy-
nous character, but one who, never having determinately slipped from male to
female, might also slip back, or linger tranquilly (or unnervingly) in between. It
is an image that challenges the basis of the entire essentialism debate.50
In other words, because of their specific history and myriad instantiations,

the figure of Guanyin is seen today in these communities as an expression
of resistance to gender essentialism.51 After all, Guanyin is sometimes male,
sometimes female, sometimes androgynous, sometimes maternal, sometimes
sexually alluring, sometimes completely asexual, sometimes human, some-
times non-human . . . Guanyin as an icon cannot be pinned down to a simple
Guanyin 89
yes/no, male/female dichotomy, and as such has potential for aiding in our
theorizing about gender. As Bailey notes, “despite the fact that for many
individuals Kuan Yin is experienced simply as female, we don’t have to
know very much about her/his story to see that s/he defies and explodes our
familiar sex/gender categories. In short, she is a quintessentially trans icon in
the queerest sense.”52
In fact, while historical accounts of Guanyin sometimes emphasize her
more traditional roles, Guanyin has an important place in queer discourse.
Consider, for instance, the opera by Wu Zhensheng (1695–1769), “The
Glory of Switching Bodies” (Huanshen rong 換身榮), where “the bodhisat-
tva Guanyin [helps] a desperate young male scholar change into a beautiful
woman.”53 Guanyin’s aid is unconditional, and, in many cases, is tied to the
suffering produced by rigid social distinctions, be they gender, class, or race/
ethnicity.
Bailey also describes a variety of ways in which Guanyin is used by some
contemporary trans persons—and even, in this case, Guanyin does not pres-
ent a singular view. Some trans persons engage Guanyin as a symbol of the
potential to transcend socially and biologically inscribed gender and sex cat-
egories, seeing Guanyin as a non-dual icon who exists beyond the limitations
of any account of gender or sex or as an icon of the reality of change from
one’s apparent sex/gender to one’s real sex/gender. For others, Guanyin is an
inspiration for political activism. According to Bailey,
This recent embracing of Kuan Yin by trans people echoes the experience
of Leslie Feinberg, who was motivated to search for trans images because “I
couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed ever to have existed”
(Feinberg 1996, 11). In the very language that must be used to speak of trans
people, it becomes clear that this is not a reality that can be accommodated
without disruption to an entire linguistic and conceptual economy. From this
point of view, not surprisingly, a trans person might see her/his role as that of
an activist, an activism that may be expressed simply by existing and surviving
in a linguistic, social, and political milieu according to which she/he is logically
and legally impossible. As Feinberg puts it, “I am a human being who unnerves
some people. As they look at me, they see a kaleidoscope of characteristics they
associate with both males and females” (Feinberg 1998, 6). “I defend my right
to be complex” (70), Feinberg insists.54
While Guanyin may not canonically have been an icon for trans persons,
the fact that they are such an icon now indicates we ought not museumize
Guanyin’s early context and that we ought to take seriously their continual
capacities for transformation in new situations. Attempts to understand
Guanyin challenge us to look at this figure from a variety of different
90 Chapter 3
perspectives. The next section narrows in on the different roles and attributes
of Guanyin, leading to a discussion of the significance of Guanyin as the main
speaker of the Heart Sutra.
GUANYIN IN PHILOSOPHICAL SOURCES
Although Guanyin has been studied extensively as an object of devotion,

and much ink has been spilled concerning questions over their gender(s) and
their name(s), they have not themself received much philosophical atten-
tion. There are some possible reasons for this, not the least of which may
indeed be gender complexity, as well as association with the supernatural
via the miracle stories mentioned earlier. In any case, this section attempts to
highlight some philosophically significant features of Guanyin by examining
Guanyin through some of their different roles or activities articulated in vari-
ous philosophical texts.
Guanyin in the Lotus Sutra

Many Chinese writers and compilers provide their own explanation for
what Guanyin’s name means (Bodhisattva Who Hears the Cries of the
World, Bodhisattva Lord Perceiver), depending on the particular translit-
eration/translation at play. But it is true that whichever version is at the
forefront, making sense of the “guan 觀” in Guanyin is really important.
This is a term that has a long and weighty history in Chinese thinking. In
the Shuowen Lexicon, guan is explained by reference to dishi 諦視, careful
observation or attention, and is given as a synonym for tai 臺.55 As I explain
elsewhere,
A tai is one of the watchtowers built on the walls of early Chinese cities, and
a guan is an observatory on one of these towers: from an observatory like this,
from specific perspective and height one can give careful and detailed attention
to the surroundings, observing and contemplating their significance in relation
to oneself and one’s context.56
Guan is, however, not only visual observation or attention. As Steve Odin
explains, guan is the “symbol of detached observation in all its forms.”57 He
suggests that guan generally represents “a calm, tranquil, spontaneous, and
detached contemplation of nature as a creative aesthetic process of perpetual
change and transformation.”58 In this sense we might think about guan as a
kind of sophisticated ability to “discern” what is happening, or a particular
kind of “regard” for the situation: a qualitatively special sort of attention.
Guanyin 91
According to the Yijing «易經», guan is what the sages of old did—they
comprehensively observed and carefully attended to their dynamic environ-
ments, using that observation to create the grams (gua 卦) of the text for
future generations. Specifically, they comprehensively observed or discerned
(guan) the many transformations (bian 變) in/of/between yin and yang,
and this attention to transformation led them to be able to help others live
well—there is a deeply moral connection even in this early text. The sages
of old, models for appropriation and inspiration, created the grams by adopt-
ing a particular attitude and relationship to the transformations of the world
around them. This attitude is one of careful attention and contemplation. The
judgment to Hexagram 20 of the Yijing states: “Viewing (guan), as when the
ablution has been made but not the offering, fills one with trust and makes for
a solemn attitude.”59 Wang Bi’s commentary on the judgment follows: “Here
the subject of Viewing (guan) is rendered in all its dignity and grandeur, so
those below who do the Viewing are morally transformed.”60 In other words,
even from very early usage, in a philosophical context guan is connected with
both the observation of transformation and the initiation of transformation,
and all of this is in a context of concern for others.
As Guanzizai (from Avalokiteśvara) she is the bodhisattva who has free
and unrestrained observation and attention—usually known as Lord Perceiver
Bodhisattva. In her most common name, Guanshiyin (from Avalokitaśvara),
she is comprehensively observing and attending to shi 世, the world, the age,
and the generations with respect to yin 音, sounds, tones, or voices. But just
as “guan” is a term with significant history, “yin” is also more than simply
voice. In Chinese antiquity, the voices of the people, containing their true
feelings and contexts (qing 情), were thought to be able to be stored in the
form of folk songs and poems (like the “airs” feng 風 in the Shijing «詩經»,
the Book of Odes). Those in power could use these songs and poems, with
their genuine connection to the people, to help them be better leaders, to
engage the people more sincerely, and to cultivate themselves morally.
Voice, then, is not simply sounds made by humans but a real window into the
full context of others; voice is a gateway to one’s true existential condition.
That Guanyin observes through sound was thus not a foreign idea, but one
with deep resonances in early China. After all, a sage (shengren 聖人) from
very early on is defined in part by activities such as listening well, seeing
clearly, and communicating effectively.
Guanyin is the bodhisattva who comprehensively observes and attends to
the crying out of the world, the voices of those who call out, people’s exis-
tential condition. Kumārajīva’s choice of “Guanshiyin” in his translation of
the Lotus Sutra established and sustained the connection between Guanyin
and hearing/listening to those who need help. From this, Guanyin is one who
hears and one who is listening. She is listening for the cries of those who
92 Chapter 3
need help—from fire, water, the oppression of the state, and disease in later
texts—but she is also listening for and able to discern her name and your real
suffering from your voice—the Lotus Sutra is clear that single-minded recita-
tion (or concentration) on her name is an avenue for liberation.
In a classical Chinese context, it is not insignificant that hearing, rather than
seeing, is the sense most strongly associated with understanding. In English,
we often will note that an idea is “clear” or that we “see” what you mean, and
although we can make sense of hearing as a metaphor for understanding—“I
hear what you’re saying”—it is not our default. For classical Chinese think-
ers, however, hearing was a much more powerful metaphor for understanding
than sight. This focus on hearing rather than seeing reflects an overarching
philosophical worldview premised on the power of patterned correlations and
resonances, as discussed in what follows.
In a world of harmony and resonance, sensitivity via proper attunement is
a key value. Not only does Guanyin comprehensively observe the suffering,
trouble, and discontent of all beings, but she is sensitive to it—she is deeply
affected by what she observes. As noted earlier, her sensitivity to the suffer-
ing of others is given as a cause for her eleven-headed form (her head having
split, unable to contain so much suffering). This heightened sensitivity is a
consistent marker of moral, aesthetic, and personal cultivation across Chinese
and East Asian philosophical contexts; sensitivity is an attribute that is widely
admired and consistently cultivated. From the highest virtue of Ruism, ren 仁
(intimate relationality) to Mengzi’s schooling of King Xuan of Qi—in being
affected by the suffering of one thing (the ox), he had the capacity to expand
his ability to be affected by his subjects, thereby the potential to be a great
king—cultivating the ability to be affected by the appropriate sorts of situ-
ations in the appropriate sorts of ways, becoming sensitive to those around
you, those with whom you have power relations, is a pre-condition for moral
growth and development.
Guanyin’s comprehensive observation of and regard for the suffering of
all beings is only effective in stirring her to act because she is sensitive to it.
Guanyin is an example par excellence of the connection between sensitivity
and compassion—this is why her chapter in the Lotus is the “universal gate-
way,” the gateway to liberation for all sentient beings; regardless of class,
status, gender, species, or practice, Guanyin is able to be moved to respond
to you. It is not only her eleven-headed form that is related to her capacity
for attending to others—her thousand-hand-and-eye form is also a response
to her situation as one who comprehensively observes, and one who compre-
hensively attends, to the needs of so many. She needs so many hands and eyes
to be able to respond to the many who need her.
Guanyin’s ability to be affected by the suffering of others and to respond
effectively is often explained by the idea of ganying 感應, or sympathetic
Guanyin 93
resonance. The term “gan” has connotations of feeling, sensing, being aware,
moving, touching, or affecting, and being thankful or obliged. “Ying” is
answering, responding, agreeing to do something, or accepting; this term
has a long classical history in Chinese aesthetics. As Kenneth DeWoskin
explains, ying as a concept is “broad, overlapping with notions of correspon-
dence, correlation, consonance, and resonance, and describes two seemingly
unrelated things that have significant interactive capabilities.”61 This term,
then, is often translated as “sympathetic resonance,” and its origins are in
music, where an instrument’s string vibrating entails a response from other
strings (of relevantly similar types).
As Robert Sharf notes in discussing basic Chinese cosmology, “The
Chinese . . . perceived the cosmos in terms of the cyclic movements of the
five phases . . . and yin and yang, which respond to each other through the
principle of sympathetic resonance.”62 Sympathetic resonance, or ganying,
is one of the main ways that Chinese thinkers from at least the Han Dynasty
(202 BCE–220 CE) forward made sense of how the changes that constitute
the world and everything in it works. Ganying makes sense, in part, because
of the ambient cosmological assumptions about qi 氣 (vital energies, psy-
chophysical stuff, pneuma, etc.). If each thing or event is not just made of qi
but is qi, in more and less dense patterns and arrangements, then one event
“vibrating” in one location would reasonably set off other events “tuned” to
the same pitch, so to speak. Ganying is most effective when the two (or more)
events in question are of the same general category or kind, and so are primed
to be sensitive to one another’s situations. The basic idea is often expressed
using two analogies: two strings tuned to the same note on zithers in different
rooms, where vibration in one is accompanied by vibration in the other; and a
bronze bell that sounds at the collapse of a distant mountain.
Later Tiantai thinkers use the image of the moon on water for making
sense of how calling the name of various buddhas and bodhisattvas is effec-
tive. They draw this image from the Lotus, where the image of the moon on
water is used to make sense of the relationship between sentient beings and
the Buddha: “Water does not rise, nor does the moon descend. Yet in a single
instant, the one moon is manifest in manifold [bodies] of water. [Similarly]
Buddhas do not come and sentient beings do not go. The power of the good
roots of compassion should be perceived in this way.”63 In the same way that
on a calm, clear night, one can see the moon reflecting on many different
bodies of water simultaneously, without either the water or the moon “doing”
anything, so too can Guanyin’s compassion reach many different individuals.
This key feature of Chinese cosmology, not restricted to Buddhism, has an
explicitly devotional aspect, in terms of serving as a long-standing explana-
tion for Guanyin’s miraculous interventions. As Yü explains, “Miracles hap-
pen to vouch for Guanyin’s efficacy (ling). They work because there is the
94 Chapter 3
relationship of sympathetic resonance (ganying) between the sincere devotee

and the bodhisattva. Both concepts have deep cultural roots in China.”64 The
sincerity of the devotee is crucial here, as is the devotee’s karmic stand-
ing, but starting especially during and after the period of the Northern and
Southern Dynasties (317–589 CE), when Guanyin’s status as a figure in their
own right and an object of cult veneration was on the rise, thinkers had to
reckon with how it was that calling Guanyin’s name was efficacious, and why
it worked in some cases but not others.65 It was, as Sharf notes, “noncontro-
versial” for Chinese Buddhists to think that sentient beings can stimulate
or affect buddhas and bodhisattvas into compassionate responses, as this is
much the same logic used to explain the mysterious efficacy of sages in both
Ruist and Daoist traditions—they have self-cultivated to a point where they
are fundamentally still and so sensitive to the needs of others, and they can
be moved by sincere petition or concern.66 But why it only works sometimes
was the subject of much speculation.
Early Chinese Sanlun (Madhyamika) theorists explain the workings of
ganying through the Chinese framework of qi cosmology and the Buddhist
notion of buddha-nature (佛性):
Sentient beings [all] have buddha-nature. Since sentient beings possess [bud-
dha-]nature, they are able to stimulate the Buddha. Since sentient beings are all
children of the Buddha, Buddha responds to sentient beings. Consequently, for
there to be a stimulus and response, there must be a correspondence of natural
types. The qi of the Buddha and sentient beings are of the same type. Sentient
beings, sharing the same type of qi as the Buddha, may thus [be designated
both] “buddha [-natured] sentient beings” and “sentient-being buddhas.” As
they are “buddha[-natured] sentient beings,” sentient beings stimulate the
Buddha. As they are “sentient-being buddhas,” the Buddhas respond to sentient
beings.67
In other words, there is both a “Buddhist” and a “Chinese” answer to how

persons (and other sentient and sometimes non-sentient beings) are able to
affect buddhas and bodhisattvas. On the Chinese side of things, it is because
we are all qi, and not only that, but we have the same general type or class of
qi as buddhas and bodhisattvas (especially when we engage in the right kinds
of practices). On the Buddhist side of things, this is where ideas of interrelat-
edness or interconnectedness, via the concept of buddha-nature (佛性, natural
tendency toward awakening) comes into play.68 Chinese Buddhists were ada-
mant that all sentient beings have/are this natural tendency toward awakening
(buddha-nature), contrary to some of their earlier Indian counterparts. So, if
we all are alike in naturally tending toward wakefulness, we are able to affect
one another, including individual persons and buddhas and bodhisattvas.69
Guanyin 95
As Sharf notes, however, in this context the “gan” in ganying can mean both
“to bestir” and “to experience the presence of” the buddha or bodhisattva’s
ying (compassionate response)70; are we “bestirring” Guanyin to act, or are we
acting and so “experiencing” or feeling for ourselves the presence of Guanyin?
Is this something happening “out there” or “in here”? In the context of the tra-
dition, the sharp distinction here between the ontological and epistemological
dimensions is not maintained—the answer is more like “yes, both and.”
What does this mean for Guanyin hearing a call for help and responding
compassionately? Guanyin can discern (guan) the voices/cries of those who
need her help because she and they are fundamentally interconnected—both
on the logic of qi and on the logic of Buddhist interrelatedness. Individual
persons and Guanyin inter-are (to borrow Thich Nhat Hanh’s coinage71). You
and Guanyin are already related with one another, so you are able to affect
her (to stimulate her response) through sympathetic resonance because of this
interconnection, and to personally experience her response. You and Guanyin
are alike in your capacity for wakefulness, in your qi, and in being fundamen-
tally empty and so full of interrelations. Because Guanyin is already awake,
for her wisdom and compassion are two ways of understanding the same
responsiveness to others based on insight into how things really are (empty).
She is able to respond compassionately and in so doing lead you to liberation
(waking up)—which was already your nature.
Furthermore, for many devotees, knowing that Guanyin is always in
a state of receptivity lets them know they are not alone and is sooth-
ing and calming by means of that connection. The chapter of the Lotus
Sutra often shorthanded as the “Guanyin Sutra,” after all, is in fact called
«普門品» “Universal Gateway Chapter” or «觀世音菩薩普門品» “Guanyin
Bodhisattva’s Universal Gateway Chapter.” This is in keeping with one of
the central messages of the larger text. As Michio Shinozaki explains, the
purpose of the Lotus Sutra is to communicate the teaching that
enables you and me to become buddhas together; through the bodhisattva

practices we perform for the sake of the enlightenment of ourselves and oth-
ers. Practicing Buddhism in this way is striving to attain Buddhahood by
means of the One Buddha Vehicle. This term from the Lotus Sutra, “One
Buddha Vehicle,” means the teaching by which all people can and will become
buddhas.72
This broader message of universal, all-inclusive liberation—all beings

will become buddhas, all beings are on the bodhisattva path—is echoed in
Guanyin’s chapter, as Guanyin is introduced as the bodhisattva who can
liberate anyone, simply on the basis of hearing her name called, and who can
take on any form beings need, to really hear the dharma from her.73
96 Chapter 3
Guanyin is also practically associated with not only the elite of society,
but various constituencies on the margins of social power, including the
anomalous dead (those without descendants to properly care for them),
ethnic minorities (e.g., the Hakka in Taiwan), and women of all classes. As
P. Steven Sangren notes, “Kuan Yin is also a favorite among prostitutes,
social outcasts in China as elsewhere, and no doubt there are other examples.
The common theme that links these disparate groups is the unity of humanity
(and, by implication, the rejection of divisive social distinctions) that arises
under Kuan Yin’s protection.”74 The all-inclusive gateway, then, is Guanyin’s
compassion, her sensitivity to the needs of others, her capacity for multiva-
lent transformation, and her wise responsiveness that stimulates liberation in
those she serves.
Indeed, by means of sympathetic resonance, she transforms those who call
on her, and anyone can be in a position of being transformed by her. We have
already discussed several miracle tales where Guanyin saved someone from
death or enhanced their ability to spread the dharma (through a lovely voice
for chanting), and the Lotus lists many further situations Guanyin can trans-
form. The Dabeizhou (Great Compassion Dhāraṇī) also lists many events
Guanyin can transform, including a variety of illnesses. While these accounts
and suggestions give us insight into the popular understanding of Guanyin
as a powerful being who can intervene on the individual’s behalf, they also
present a different side to things. If Guanyin has these incredible powers of
transformation—the simple act of being heard/observed by Guanyin is itself
transformative—and individuals are related to Guanyin in the ways suggested
by sympathetic resonance and by basic Mahāyāna doctrines of emptiness and
co-dependent arising, then this capacity for transformation is also potentially
something that can be developed by us—not an external force acting on us,
but a way of understanding our own existential situation. Guanyin’s compas-
sion, and so her capacity for transformation in order to effectively respond to
the world, is also our compassion and our capacity for transformation in order
to effectively respond to the world. The potency of this transformation and
sensitivity is part of how we can make sense of our natural tendency toward
awakening (buddha-nature).
Guanyin in the Śūraṅgama Sutra

One of the texts associated with Guanyin that has not received much con-
temporary philosophical attention is the Śūraṅgama Sutra (Ch. «大佛頂首楞
嚴經», T. 945). This sutra takes the format of a dialogue between the histori-
cal Buddha, various attendants, and Ānanda, his young cousin and disciple.
The prologue explains that Ānanda nearly gave up his celibacy during an
encounter with a courtesan, and the teaching that follows is given to both
Guanyin 97
Ānanda and the courtesan, on how to cultivate the most skillful kind of men-
tal focus, turning one’s sensory experiences away from the external, illusory
world inward toward true mind.75 The text contains an entire section that runs
through each of the senses, showing how it can be turned inward, away from
the illusory events that are connected with the senses as leading away from
awakening. In chapter 6 (“The Twenty-five Sages”), twenty-five attendant
sages are asked by the Buddha to explain to Ānanda how they used their daily
experiences, their sensory encounters, to break through to enlightenment—
which of the eighteen constituent elements (dhatu) or seven primary elements
they used for their awakening practice. Guanyin’s section relates that prior
to their awakening they (Guanyin) were taught by a different Buddha (also
named Guanshiyin) by means of hearing and contemplating.76 In his notes to
the translation, Ven. Hsüan Hua explains that “contemplation” in this sense is
not the normal thinking of our mental consciousness, but “it has the meaning
of quiet consideration—the skill of meditation in stillness.”77 Guanyin relates:
I began with a practice based on the enlightened nature of hearing. First I

redirected my hearing inward in order to enter the current of the sages. Then
external sounds disappeared. With the direction of my hearing reversed and
with sounds stilled, both sounds and silence ceased to arise. So it was that, as I
gradually progressed, what I heard and my awareness of what I heard came to
an end. Even when that state of mind in which everything had come to an end
disappeared, I did not rest. My awareness and the objects of my awareness were
emptied, and when that process of emptying my awareness was wholly com-
plete, then even that emptying and what had been emptied vanished. Coming
into being and ceasing to be themselves ceased to be. Then the ultimate stillness
was revealed.78
Guanyin then explains that this practice of turning their sensory attention
inward meant specific moments of unification between Guanyin and all
the buddhas, when “my power of compassion became the same as theirs,”
between Guanyin and all beings such that Guanyin “felt their sorrows and
their prayerful yearnings as my own,” and they then could “go to all lands and
appear in thirty-two forms that respond to what beings require.”79
Guanyin then describes the thirty-two forms, similar to the Lotus Sutra’s
thirty-three, and goes on to explain the various situations they can respond
to on account of having entered samādhi through “redirecting my faculty
of hearing inward to merge with the enlightened nature of hearing.”80 As in
the Lotus, these include bringing about liberation, saving beings from fire,
drowning, ghosts, and a host of other calamities. Each individual calamity
to be resolved is identified with an aspect of Guanyin’s practice of hearing
contemplation. For instance, they note that when sound completely dissolved
98 Chapter 3
as a result of the seventh aspect, they can make cangue disappear.81 Guanyin
can also help beings that are particularly lustful remedy their sexual desire—
the cause of Ānanda’s near-miss and a serious calamity for many. They can
also resolve anger and stupidity, grant sons and daughters to those who are
childless, and give extraordinary merit to those who recite Guanyin’s name,
causing them to have nothing to fear, paralleling the Lotus. They can appear
in many esoteric forms (multiple heads, hands, eyes, etc.) and proclaim effi-
cacious incantations as well.
Guanyin explains that entering samādhi through hearing is the best method
for fully waking up: “I entered through the gateway of the ear-faculty and
perfected the inner illumination of samādhi. My mind that had once been
dependent on perceived objects developed self-mastery and ease. By enter-
ing the current of the awakened ones and entering samādhi, I became fully
awake. This then is the best method.”82 The relationship between a meditative
practice connected to hearing and the awakening of samādhi is then clearly
established as a superior method.
In the next chapter, Mañjuśrī—the bodhisattva most closely associated
with wisdom (prajñā)—agrees.83 It is the best method, according to Mañjuśrī,
because it is the easiest. Our faculty of hearing is the most stable of our
faculties. What he means by this seems to be that unlike vision or taste, for
instance, our hearing is always “on”; even hearing silence is still hearing,
so the absence of the “object” of the ear-faculty does not mean that the ear-
faculty is not able to work. Thus, it is ideal for a meditative practice aimed
at illuminating the “always on” nature of awakened attention. Mañjuśrī
explains,
I now can recommend respectfully the practice

Taught by the One Who Hears the Cries of the World.
A being whose mind is tranquil hears the sound
Of drumbeats coming from all ten directions,
And yet he’ll hear each of the drums distinctly.
And so our hearing faculty must be the perfect one,
The one that’s genuine and true.
The eyes can’t see through objects that are solid;
The tongue and nose are likewise limited.
For bodily awareness, contact’s needed,
And, too, the mind’s chaotic, lacking order.
But sounds are heard close by and from afar;
And even walls may fail in blocking them.
No other faculty’s the equal of our hearing;
Both true and genuine, it is the one for breaking through.
We’re capable of hearing sounds and silence both;
Guanyin 99
They may be present to the ear or not.

Though people say that when no sound is present,
Our hearing must be absent too, in fact
Our hearing does not lapse. It does not cease
With silence; neither is it born of sound.
Our hearing, then, is genuine and true.
It is the everlasting one.
And when cognition ceases in a dream,
That does not mean that hearing is suspended.
The ear’s awareness goes beyond mere thought.
No other faculty, of mind or body,
Can ever be the equal of our hearing.84
Mañjuśrī is also clear that entering through any one faculty has the capacity to
further unite the others, such that one does not have to go through all of them,
but can start with any one sense and end up with an experience of awareness
that is non-discriminatory. Finally, one can cultivate turning hearing inward
in still meditation, otherwise known as chan, and this is more effective even
than mindfulness meditation. He says to Ānanda,
Why haven’t you been hearing your own hearing?

People say that hearing comes about because of sounds,
Not on its own. If that’s what you call “hearing,” though,
Then when you turn your hearing round and set it free from sounds,
What name are you to give to that which is set free?85
It is no mystery based on sections like this why the Śūraṅgama Sutra plays
such an important role in Chan and Zen training.
Even more than a description of how Guanyin woke up, however, these
sections of the sutra draw our attention to how this is related to liberation
for others. The first of the fourteen kinds of fearless merit generated by
Guanyin’s practice is this: “Since I myself do not meditate on sound but on
the meditator, I cause all suffering beings to look into the sound of their own
voices to attain liberation.”86 Miriam Levering explains this in terms of fur-
ther play on Guanyin’s name:
Guan-yin, or more fully, Guan-shi-yin, is usually interpreted as meaning “the

Perceiver (guan) of the Sounds (yin) of the World (shi).” Here Guanyin explains
his name differently: I do not meditate on the sounds of the suffering beings of
the world to rescue them; I meditate on sound (guanyin), and cause suffering
beings to look into (guan, avalokita) the sound (yin) of their own voices to attain
liberation.87
100 Chapter 3
Looking into the sounds of their own voices, in this case, is a way of talking
about a meditative practice that must and can only be personal—this is exam-
ining one’s own existential condition. On this account, it is not (precisely)
Guanyin who liberates—she causes or is related to the kind of awareness and
attention that is liberatory, and that is only possible when we attend to our own
situation. “Hearing,” then, is a way of talking about the kind of awareness one
finds in certain meditative contexts. It is not the hearing of our normal experi-
ence, which is drawn to various “audible objects” in the “external” world, but
it is the capacity for attention that once cultivated can choose whether or not
to follow “external” stimuli. This is why in this sutra and other similar texts
the point is not that our senses are deceptive, but that most of us, most of the
time, are in a position of being used by our senses, constantly chasing after or
running away from facets of our experience, rather than using our senses from
a place of insight into our nature (empty and co-dependently arising). In listen-
ing to ourselves, we can change our relationship to things that before seemed
unrelated to us, external from our situation, and yet which give rise to unwhole-
some judgments, strengthening the sense of the “I” or ego as a separate actor
from the world. Instead, through “hearing” that is not tied to “external” sounds
or silence, we can achieve the stillness and responsiveness of a bodhisattva.
Charles Luk further comments on this meditation of turning hearing
inward, bringing together the idea of awakening through hearing-awareness
together with practices of identification with Guanyin:
This is a very profound meditation which readers should not let pass without
careful study if they wish to know why Avalokiteśvara is so popular in Far
Eastern countries where he is the merciful patron saint. By discarding the
sound to look into the meditator himself, that is into the nature of hearing, he
disengages himself from both organs and sense data and thereby realizes his
all-embracing Buddha nature which contains all living beings. By developing
their pure faith in him and by calling his name, or concentrating on him, they
achieve singleness of mind that mingles with his Bodhi substance and become
one with him; hence their liberation from sufferings which do not exist in the
absolute state.88
Guanyin’s connection with hearing, and so listening, is not only in their abil-
ity to hear and respond to the cries of the world but in the very way in which
they woke up to how things really are. Guanyin listened compassionately
to herself, and from deep meditative practice, woke up. In the Śūraṅgama
Sutra, Guanyin not only shows that she will help with the practicalities and
calamities of our daily lives, but that she can, with wisdom gained from her
own awakening, give us a method for waking up—perhaps her most compas-
sionate act.
Guanyin 101
Guanyin in Chan Texts

Guanyin is featured in a number of Chan gong’ans (kōans) and short teaching
stories. While early in Chan’s development Guanyin is not a major figure—
indeed, we see explicit Chan exhortation to avoid the more “devotional” prac-
tices associated with Guanyin, she is mentioned in the Platform Sutra, in the
Song of Enlightenment, and in Baozhi’s discussion of Bodhidharma. In the
first two cases, the context is in suggesting to readers/listeners that Guanyin
be approached not as an “external” figure with powers relative to devotion,
but as an aspect of one’s own practice and development. The Platform Sutra,
for instance, states:
The Buddha is the product of one’s own nature. Do not seek it outside of
your body. If the self-nature is deluded, even a Buddha becomes an ordinary
human being. If their self-nature is enlightened, all living beings are Buddhas.
Compassion is the same as Avalokitesvara [Guanyin]. Happiness in almsgiving
is the same as Mahasthama. The ability to be pure is the same as Sakyamuni. And
not to make differentiation but to be straightforward is the same as Maitreya.89
In other words, Guanyin is not some deity “out there” somewhere, waiting for
you to revere her, but she is precisely your own fully compassionate activity.
In becoming compassionate, you are becoming Guanyin.
Over time, however, as the popularity of Guanyin grew to include the ritual
monastic recitation of the Dabeizhou, among other Guanyin-related activi-
ties, several stories referencing Guanyin became important in Chan practice.
Miriam Levering identifies two main categories of Guanyin encounter dia-
logues in Chan teachings:
1. Stories alluding to Guanyin in the Śūraṅgama Sutra; and

2. Stories concerning esoteric images of Guanyin (especially the eleven-
headed and thousand hands/eyes versions).90
One key story that references the Śūraṅgama Sutra is a conversation between
a monk and Chan master Guizong Zhichang:
A monk asked: “What is the profound message?”

[a dialogue follows in which he fails to understand the exchange and is
dismissed]
The monk pleaded, “Why, is there not some skillful means I might follow?”
The Master [Guizong] answered [quoting the Universal Gate chapter of the
Lotus Sutra]: “The wonderful wisdom of Bodhisattva Guanyin can help the
sufferings of the world.”
102 Chapter 3
The monk asked, “What is the wonderful wisdom of Bodhisattva Guanyin?”

The master tapped the lid of the tripod [kettle] three times and said, “Did you
hear the sound or not?”
The monk replied, “Yes, I did.”
The master asked, “Why do I not hear it?”
The monk could make no reply.91
This story asks the listener to consider what it really means when the
Śūraṅgama Sutra tells us that Guanyin turned her hearing inward and so
could stop hearing external sounds, and how this relates to liberation. The
monk is looking for an answer about cultivation “out there,” in the world
somewhere, in some teacher’s message, but he is continuously foiled because
he is not examining his own condition—using Guanyin’s easy path of turning
the senses toward oneself, compassionately listening to one’s own existential
condition as a springboard to deeper insight and awakening.
In terms of the second category, by far the most influential encounter dia-
logue is the dialogue between Daowu and Yunyan in the Blue Cliff Record,
which in a later version became a stand-alone gong’an. The latter gong’an
version goes as follows:
Daowu asked: The Great Compassion [Bodhisattva’s] thousand hands and

eyes—which is the true eye?
Yunyan replied: It is like grasping your pillow when there is no lamp—what is
that like?
Daowu said: I understand! I understand!
Yunyan said: How do you understand?
Daowu said: Every inch of the body (tongshen) is eyes.92
In her commentary on these passages, Levering writes that “[t]his gong’an

relies on bringing together the idea of the celestial bodhisattva Guanyin in
his thousand-hand and thousand-eyed form with the idea that an ordinary
human being reaching out to grasp a pillow in the middle of the night is also
Guanyin.”93
The “true eye” here is often taken as a stand-in for the “true dharma eye.”
In that case, one reading of this story is that Daowu is asking for something
that cannot be answered—which eye of her thousand eyes is the one that
really sees from and through the dharma? Yunyan’s response harkens back
to the Platform Sutra and other earlier texts that insist Guanyin is not “out
there” somewhere but rather that she is a way of making sense of our ordinary
experiences and the practices of cultivation of the bodhisattva path. Reaching
for a pillow in the middle of the night does not require some special skill or
sense, but just that one do it—and you will know it when you find it. In the
Guanyin 103
same way, every inch of the body, every act we engage in, is an opportu-
nity for compassionate response. Levering explains that “as with most good
gong’an, a question asked about Guanyin and not oneself becomes pointed at
oneself.”94 That is, Guanyin’s popularity makes her a useful figure for a teach-
ing story, but the story is ultimately aimed at the transformation of the reader/
listener, not at devotional practice toward Guanyin (although there certainly
was devotional practice toward Guanyin).
Levering further analyzes this gong’an using a Huayan frame that identi-
fies Guanyin’s essence with her functioning: “Guanyin’s essence, his/her
reality, is precisely her functioning, her regarding with many eyes or one eye
the suffering of beings and her responding with one hand or many hands.”95
Who Guanyin is, is precisely how Guanyin perceives, responds, acts, and
cares. Furthermore, the “fundamental realization about Avalokitesvara and
oneself to which this ‘public case’ points lies in the realization that the li
of Guanyin is fully present in the shi of oneself, that the functioning of
one’s arm groping for the pillow at night in a dark room is the functioning
of Guanyin.”96 Huayan thinkers use a fourfold schema to think through the
nature of reality as mutually interconnected and mutually interpenetrating and
borrow the classical Chinese philosophical vocabulary of li (理) and shi (事),
general and particular, transforming these terms into Buddhist vocabulary.
As Levering explains,
The fundamental idea of the Huayan Sutra and the Huayan school is the unim-
peded mutual solution of all particularities; mutual interpenetration. Each par-
ticularity, besides being itself, penetrates all other particularities and is in turn
penetrated by them. Huayan scholars point out that this is possible because the
essence, the fundamental nature, of all particularities is empty.97
That is, what in other schools is called “emptiness” in Huayan is li, pattern,
principle, or essence, or absolutely non-dual reality, and the harmonious
interplay between the general and the particular, li and shi, emptiness and
temporarily existing particular phenomena, also implies the harmonious
mutual interconnection and interpenetration of all particulars. As Levering
notes, this then means that “[a]wakening is characterized not simply as a
realization of the reality of emptiness, but as a realization of the mutual inter-
penetration of all particularities.”98 So, Guanyin’s compassion is fully present
in my particular person, and my activities can be precisely her activities. In
other words, the gong’an expresses a “vision of universal interrelatedness
and universally active compassion at the heart of everything and throughout
the universe of particulars.”99 Emptiness, the vision of all things as lacking
essential, individual, isolated, unconditioned own-being, here then means
the full relationality, and so fully compassionate awakened activity, of each
104 Chapter 3
and every moment, each and every phenomenon in the world, from the most
mundane or ordinary to the extraordinary.
And lest it be thought that this is narrowly a Huayan or Chan perspec-
tive on Guanyin, consider the following poem (“觀音大士像讚”) in praise
of Guanyin from Pure Land Master Sheng-an (aka Shih Hsien Hsing An,
省庵法師, 1686–1734):
Guanyin’s dharma-body,
not male nor female,
body yet not body,
What is there to rely on? . . .
Inform followers of the Buddha:
Do not cling to form.
The Bodhisattva is you:
not painting nor statue.
let it further be known:
self and other are not two,
Being able to see [guan 觀] like this—
truly incredible!100
GUANYIN AS FIGURE OF RADICAL CHANGE
All of this gives us a different, more complex lens to use when considering
Guanyin as the speaker of the Heart Sutra. Guanyin is not only the bodhisat-
tva of compassion—she is a radically transformative figure, and we can use
this discussion of her to consider a non-patriarchal, non-monastic perspec-
tive on the text as a living practice. Guanyin is able to transform herself
into numerous instantiations—there are thirty-two or thirty-three canonical
instantiations, depending on the sutra. These instantiations are generic: a lay-
man, the wife of a nobleman, a dragon, a king or queen, and so on. Guanyin’s
specific instantiations come later, hand in hand with the rise of certain visual
depictions of her. In her specific instantiations, she is White-Robed Guanyin,
or Fish-Basket Guanyin, Thousand Hand and Eye Guanyin, or Child-Giving
Guanyin, for instance. In all of these cases, Guanyin’s potent capacity for
self-transformation is also precisely her means for initiating transformation in
others. She instantiates—takes one of her many forms, general or specific—
in order to skillfully help those in need, whether that need be pragmatic or
liberatory.
Making sense of how she has this capacity for transformation into so
many different forms, however, leads us to a series of additional consid-
erations. As Paul Hedges has argued, Guanyin can be viewed from both a
Guanyin 105
very traditional perspective, where she upholds the values and virtues of
the conservative element of her society at the time, and from the perspec-
tive of radical change, where she serves as an agent of subversive thinking
and practice.101 Hedges argues that not only are these two very different
readings of her possible but that the subversive reading, in fact, “represents
her more potent and characteristic nature.”102 Hedges focuses most of his
argument on the legend of Miaoshan, perhaps the first specific instantiation
of Guanyin as a Chinese (lay) woman discussed earlier. As Yü and others
have noted, the legend of Miaoshan incorporates Guanyin into the broader
Chinese cultural domain by rendering her offering of flesh as an ultimate
act of filiality (xiao 孝), thus continuing the argument for Buddhist practice
to be an avenue for women to live that both resists certain Ruist norms
(like marriage) and yet operates fully within them (in terms of fulfilling
filial obligations).103 In addition, although Guanyin from that point forward
was popularly depicted as feminine in many of her forms, this does not
mean that she was understood as a figure of resistance to feminine norms
in the culture—Songzi Guanyin (Son/Child-Giving Guanyin) being a solid
example of her role as a supporter of convention.
Following Hedges, however, we can see at least four ways that she is a
potent figure of subversion: she undermines sexual identity (gender subver-
sion), personal identity (social subversion), women’s identities (patriarchal
subversion), and ethical identity (moral subversion).104 As Hedges notes,
“First, and perhaps most basic, she subverts our usual understandings of gen-
der.”105 This is not only because Guanyin is canonically capable of taking on
many forms (male, female, and other), as Guanyin is not the only canonical
figure with these abilities. Guanyin subverts traditional gender identities by
her consistent portrayal (and from portrayal to appearance to devotees) as a
woman, even though their identity is doctrinally non-gendered. Drawing on
the Miaoshan legend, he suggests that we see Guanyin (through Miaoshan,
a young lay woman) taking on key roles normally attributed exclusively to
elder male monastics: religious leadership, hermitage practice, and her status
as worthy to sacrifice her body for her father because she is without anger.
Furthermore, following Yü he argues that the image of Songzi Guanyin
(Child-giving Guanyin), while very traditional on the surface, shows “a
very unorthodox form of ‘mother,’ being a ‘fertility goddess who neverthe-
less is devoid of sexuality. She gives children to others, but she is never a
mother’ (Yü 2001, 257). Being also, generally understood as ‘male,’ he is
also a male mother.”106 The point that Hedges is making here, following
Yü, is that Guanyin is maternal, and yet has no husband or children, and so
is not connected with sexuality and that all of this comes together to chal-
lenge traditional forms of gender identity where sexuality and maternality are
necessarily fused. And all of this bleeds over into her role as subverting not
106 Chapter 3
just gendered but also social identities: “As male, virgin, mother, lay person
and religious leader, to name but a few of her roles, Guanyin very clearly
questions the whole basis of most conventional social relationships and iden-
tities.”107 Like her form, Guanyin’s sexuality, in both gendered and social
terms, also defies easy categorization. Because of her transformative potency,
she resists dualistic identities—either sexy or chaste, either male or female,
either mother or not, either young or old, and so forth. The non-dual multi-
plicity of her instantiations—the effect of her efficacious compassion—leads
to a kind of under-determinacy about her identity that serves to subvert the
common drive of gendered and social identities toward rigid determination.
While the challenge she presents to gendered and social identities is rel-
evant regardless of one’s initial social position, the critique she presents to
patriarchal power structures stems specifically from her instantiation as a
woman in a patriarchal context. Consider the paradoxical nature of the fact
that in the Blood Bowl Sutra it is Guanyin who saves us from the hell of men-
strual blood all women are destined to end up in, due to what was understood
as the inherent pollution of the female body, menstruation, and childbirth.108
Because one is a woman, one is impure, and so destined to end up in a men-
strual blood hell, yet it is a woman—a bodhisattva who chose to instantiate
in a woman’s body—who has the power to liberate. In choosing to instanti-
ate in a woman’s body, Hedges notes, “every iconographic representation of
Guanyin as female offered a sense that the female form was capable of being
pure.”109 Indeed, we might say that Guanyin offers the ideal of any and every
instantiation being pure and liberatory, given their plurality of identities.
In this way, Guanyin challenges common traditional Chinese norms about
shame and pollution of women’s bodies. Guanyin was also strongly con-
nected with real women’s resistance to patriarchal power structures, through
her connection to lay religious orders that allowed women the opportunity to
leave their husbands or stop having sexual relations with them in a socially
approved manner.110
Finally, she stands as an icon that challenges conventional moral norms.
In particular in the story of Miaoshan, the daughter who refused her father’s
organized marriage, left the family, and failed to have children—serious
breaches of conventional morality—we also find a daughter who becomes the
teacher (and perhaps spiritual parents) to her own parents, “a radical revision
of the normal Confucian social order.”111 Even her act of bodily mutilation,
which was condemned by Ruist doctrine (and yet still practiced), became an
exemplar for filiality.
Guanyin also subverts ethical norms in her all-encompassing compas-
sion—she is a figure who responds not only to those in power but also to
prostitutes and various kinds of social outcasts, which is extremely unusual
in major indigenous Chinese religious figures.112 One of the connections
Guanyin 107
between Guanyin and marginalized figures is not only that her compassion
is boundless, and so includes all, but that she herself sometimes instantiates
precisely as marginalized figures—prostitutes, outcasts, disabled persons,
animals, etc.—imbuing them with a potency and agency not found in tradi-
tional mores. For instance, in discussing Guanyin in the context of vernacular
Chinese literature, Wilt Idema writes:
One group of legends focuses on Guanyin’s use of her physical charms to con-
vert men to the emptiness of all existence. Buddhism teaches that we can achieve
enlightenment through any of the senses, and touch is one of those senses.
According to early legends Guanyin manifested herself as a loose woman, will-
ing to give herself to any man if doing so would convert him to the Dharma.113
In legends like these, Guanyin’s subversion of norms comes clearly to the

forefront. She chooses to instantiate as a “loose woman” who uses sensual
desire and touch as a means for awakening. In her instantiation as Lady
Yanzhou, a popular figure in the Ming Dynasty, “Guanyin does manifest
as a prostitute, and any man who has intercourse with her is freed from
sensual longing.”114 As Li explains, “Eroticism was viewed as a skillful
teaching device to help the laity, particularly agnostic men, reach goodness.
Simultaneously, to legitimize courtesans’ spirituality, male scholars con-
stantly drew comparisons between the courtesans and eroticized manifesta-
tions of Guanyin.”115
Sometimes, her instantiation as a beautiful woman is not so direct but is
rather a lure that leads to an awakening, as in the case of Mr. Ma discussed
earlier, who memorized many sutras to gain a lovely young bride, but on
going to collect her “finds the bridal sedan empty, the sight of which awakens
him to the emptiness of all phenomena”—Guanyin undermines the dualism
between “good” and “bad” people, “high” and “low” class actions, the pow-
erful and the powerless, foregrounding instead compassion for those who
are not yet awake.116 Her choice of instantiation as a marginalized figure—a
woman not bound by social conventions on sexuality, power, or spiritual
authority—directly challenges norms that rely on social distinctions and
instead serves to redefine ethics from a non-dual foundation. Guanyin shows
us that compassion requires transformation and that compassion is transfor-
mative. Compassion, in this subversive sense, takes many forms, some of
which directly challenge the assumptions of mainstream culture and identity.
Guanyin Who Gives the Teaching of the Heart Sutra

How does all this relate to Guanyin, the speaker of the Heart Sutra? The
Heart Sutra opens with Guanyin in the midst of deep meditative practice. Just
108 Chapter 3
as the hand that reaches back for a pillow in the dark of night is covered with
Guanyin’s eyes, so too is her activity of meditative absorption potentially
ours. Guanyin engaged in practice that led her to insight, and that practice is
available to us. In addition, on this sort of reading, those that have expressed
confusion about why the bodhisattva of compassion is giving the Heart
Sutra’s teaching on emptiness might consider that if Guanyin is our compas-
sionate activity (or our compassionate activity is Guanyin), then it is precisely
in the midst of a compassionate activity that we can gain liberatory insight.
Furthermore, this reflection on Guanyin foregrounds her connection with
both hearing and chanting. Guanyin hears the cries of the world, and her
hearing can save/liberate beings. This means also that recitation of the Heart
Sutra is salvific/liberatory because of its connection to Guanyin, and since
Guanyin is known as a giver of useful incantations, the Heart Sutra’s zhou
(mantra) is particularly effective. This also calls to mind the auditory quality
of the teaching and the fact that Guanyin woke up through hearing—and so
can you. In the Sutra, the discussion of the emptiness of the five constituent
processes (skandhas) serves to reinforce this point: listen! But what you are
really listening to is your own situation, your own buddha-nature.
Keeping in mind Guanyin’s many features and textual appearances also
foregrounds her ability to help us become fearless. The Heart Sutra tells us
that in reciting the text and the zhou (mantra), we can become fearless; we
should trust this because Guanyin is repeatedly associated with instilling calm
and reducing fear (seen explicitly in the Lotus Sutra, the Śūraṅgama Sutra,
the Dabeizhou, and others). How does she do this? One way to make sense
of her ability to help induce fearlessness is to consider where fear comes
from—on some Buddhist views, fear is a result of the three poisons: igno-
rance, attachment, and aversion. If Guanyin, or Guanyin-associated practices,
are aimed at remedying these poisons, then Guanyin can help you lose your
fear. Textually we also know that Guanyin is associated with helping those
who listen to attain incomparably perfect enlightenment (again seen explicitly
in the Lotus Sutra and the Śūraṅgama Sutra), so her help is not inferior in
any way to any of the buddhas or other bodhisattvas. In this sense, it is both
Guanyin and the experience of Guanyin that liberate us from any difficul-
ties—practices that ignite sympathetic resonance, like chanting the Heart
Sutra, are powerful vehicles for awakening.
When Guanyin says that “emptying is forming and forming is emptying,”
we can hear her telling us that emptying is a practice of increasing sensi-
tivity and responsiveness. We must empty our preconceptions, our habits,
our attachment to ourselves, or what contemporary teacher Ruth King has
described as the tendency to think that life is or should be perfect, permanent,
or personal.117 We need to empty out our own processes of identity formation
in order for them to change, to transform and be transformed, to respond to
Guanyin 109
ourselves and others with wisdom and compassion. Compassion transforms;

it is transforming for oneself and others and requires transforming of oneself
and others. And that transformation needs a self that is emptying its constitu-
ent processes, in order to be ready to take on whatever comes next without
imposing the burdens of the past or the expectations of the future on the
present.
How are Guanyin’s many instantiations, and especially my emphasis here
on her gendered instantiations, related to her role as speaker of the Heart
Sutra? In order to try and make sense of her many instantiations, it may
be helpful to read Guanyin together with American poet Walt Whitman in
Song of Myself when he writes, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” While this
line is often quoted without context, the full section of the poem is worth
considering:
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?118
Although Whitman explicitly eschewed any sense of his own work refer-
encing others and tracing historical influences is notoriously difficult, many
scholars have argued that there is a powerful resonance between his work
and some Mahāyāna Buddhist themes.119 Some go so far as to call him an
“American Buddha.” In any case, we can see a few immediate connections
to the discussion of Guanyin. In the opening lines, the image of the past and
present as wilted plants conjures a cyclical vision of change and transforma-
tion, where one plant wilting, dying, and decomposing becomes the fertile
ground for another’s growth and flourishing—bringing with it the question
of whether or not these plants are two or one, continuously becoming each
other. Whitman’s comment here—“I have fill’d them, emptied them”—might
bring us to the “emptying” and “forming” of the Heart Sutra, which Guanyin
explains as the key insight into (personal) identity. Here, it is an expression
of the way that we fill up and empty out our past in anticipation of the present
moment and the future yet to come. More centrally related, however, may be
110 Chapter 3
the most famous lines of the poem: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then
I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”120 Ed Folsom and
Christopher Merrill argue that for Whitman,
the self is a continually evolving and expanding entity, and new experiences will
always broaden and challenge and upset what a self believed earlier. We must
learn to be grateful to arrive at contradictions and to cultivate a sense of a self
open and aware enough to “speak against” (the root meaning of “contradict”)
the self that existed yesterday. As “Song of Myself” has demonstrated through-
out, a self that does not change is a stunted identity, dead to the transforming
stimuli of the multitudinous world around us, stimuli that include the transform-
ing words of this poem.121
Whitman’s expansive sense of self, the self large enough to contain mul-
tiples, is a self that is cognizant of its own changes, aware of how it has
transformed and will transform; this self takes the transformative potency
of impermanence as an immediate necessity, a grateful call to action for the
ever-vanishing horizon of the present moment. In addition, these lines are
situated between two calls for reader and poet to act as co-creators, to work
together, confiding in each other, walking together, in this exploration of the
human condition.
Taking this even further, however, we might ask if Whitman’s words
here could stand as an analog for Guanyin—is it that she, too, is large and
contains multiples? In the case of Guanyin, we can push Whitman’s image
and language here even further. It is not precisely that Guanyin contains
multiples—Guanyin is multiple. She is—they are—constituted by multiplic-
ity. Her potency for transformation—self and other—comes in part from
her realization of emptiness and co-dependent arising, the very realization
described in the opening of the text. She is empty of own-being, of isolated,
essential, independent existence, and so is full of transient relations to all
other events—things, persons, beings, and so on. Because of this, she can
transform herself, performing her identity by instantiating her boundless
compassion in the appropriate form for the needs of those who call on her.
And, because of our connection to her, this transformative multiplicity, and so
her compassion, also characterizes us. It is not only Guanyin who is multiple;
we are multiple, and in realizing that, her transformative power transforms
us, moving us toward liberation. Our own gendered identities, then, can be
understood as sites of transformation, liberation, and impermanent relation.
Given this, part of the reason I have referred to Guanyin with she/they pro-
nouns, then, is to emphasize the importance of the singular “they.”122 While
this is often treated as either simply gender neutral or a “PC” alternative to he/
she, the grammar is meaningful in addition to its current usage in non-binary
Guanyin 111
communities. Using a “plural” pronoun in “singular” constructions expresses

a part of something real and true about our experiences on this logic. Like
Guanyin, we are individually plural, irreducibly multiple and yet always sin-
gularly identified as a locus of context, relations, memory, and karma. Who
Guanyin is, who “they” are, is always in negotiation between the specifics of
a particular context and the broader field of transformation, and not only with
respect to gender. As Judith Butler notes in commenting on how important it
is that we refer to others in the ways that they ask:
At the same time, none of us are captured by the categories by which we gain
recognition. I am that name you give me, but I am also something else that
cannot quite be named. The relation to the unname-able is perhaps a way of
maintaining a relation to the other that exceeds any and all capture. That means
that something about the other can be indexed by language, but not controlled
or possessed, and that freedom, conceived as infinity, is crucial to any ethical
relation.123
Language, in other words, does not and cannot present us a full and complete
bridge to others. The bridge it does present, though, needs to be attended to
carefully. Indeed, in thinking about how this applies to everyday persons, we
can recall two of the key Buddhist characteristics of existence: impermanence
and nonself. If there is no isolated, independent, essential, unconditioned
“self” here, and what is here is how I emerge in any given moment, then “I”
may persist for some time, but ultimately any “I am” (“he is,” “she is,” “they
are”) is also subject to impermanence, to the changing nature of existence.
Given this, any (provisional) “I” and every “I am” is multiple. The plural-
and-yet-singular usage of “they” resonates well with this reality and the fact
that English can accommodate this should be a source of delight.
If Guanyin is a potent, subversive figure, as Paul Hedges argues, is it fair
to consider her a feminist icon, as Bailey does? The answer to this question
is complicated. As José Cabezón states clearly,
It is naive to think that the mere presence of a symbol of the feminine in a tradi-
tion is derived from a conception of gender that is affirming the status of women
or that the presence of such a symbol is sufficient to guarantee that a positive
attitude toward the feminine is going to be conveyed to women, or more gener-
ally to society through that symbol.124
Although Guanyin is often portrayed as a woman, her role in the larger cul-
tural domain is certainly mixed. She can be read both as supporting conser-
vative and traditional gender roles and as subverting gender and other social
identities. So the mere fact of her (popular) gender or ability to instantiate
112 Chapter 3
as different genders does not require her to be seen as supporting broadly

feminist concerns like gender equality, trans rights, or women’s empower-
ment. For instance, although I have generally translated “Songzi Guanyin” as
“Child-giving Guanyin,” since the canonical passages reference her ability to
provide both sons and daughters, in that form she was most strongly associ-
ated with prayer for sons, given the broader cultural context, and is usually
translated as “Son-giving Guanyin.” Hardly a feminist bulwark appealing to
equality in that case. Yet this potentially mixed reading of her also points us
to mixed readings of women and gender in the history of the various Buddhist
traditions and directs our attention to the many and varied connections and
lines of inquiry between Guanyin and Buddhist women.
Furthermore, although we are all subject to the transient nature of reality,
how we deal with this is very much related to the third characteristic of exis-
tence: duḥkha (Ch. ku 苦; Pali. dukkha; suffering, trouble, discontent). We
often either resist change, clinging to an idea of things staying the same, or
rush toward change, resisting the idea of things persisting as they are. In both
of these cases, we cause trouble for ourselves. Considering Guanyin’s transfor-
mative compassion, however, we can see the possibility of taking our personal
identity instability as an opportunity for acting as agents of compassion in
whatever circumstances we find ourselves. In other words, while in a Buddhist
world change is a fixed condition that is tied to suffering, transformation is a
possibility that opens the door to liberation. Guanyin is constituted by her mul-
tiplicity, and so identifying with Guanyin is both emptying out ourselves and
yet also celebrating ourselves as multivocal, multivalent, and multifaceted.125
This doesn’t mean that we can just “magically” change from persons to drag-
ons, as Guanyin can, but it does mean that in letting go of (the illusion of) a
permanent self we are more apt to be able to author our change in upayic ways.
NOTES
1. Judith Butler, “Reply from Judith Butler,” Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research XCVI, no. 1 (2018): 247. My thanks to Wiley and Sons Publishing for per-
mission to use this epigraph.
2. For more on Avalokiteśvara, see Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese
Transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). He
was the object of cult worship in India/Southeast Asia from about the fifth century,
and by the sixth century was seen as a key figure in his own right. There are two dif-
ferent versions of the name (Avalokitaśvara and Avalokiteśvara), which made their
way into China and were transliterated differently. Because of the change in Chinese
to English transliteration systems in the twentieth century, Guanyin (Pinyin) is some-
times also rendered Kuan-yin (Wade-Giles).
Guanyin 113
3. For those unfamiliar with the singular usage of the “they” pronoun in English,
see for instance Dennis Baron’s “A brief history of singular ‘they’,” Oxford English
Dictionary Blog, September 4, 2018.
4. For more on the history of the name, see Yü Chün-fang, “Ambiguity of
Avalokiteśvara and the Scriptural Sources for the Cult of Kuan-yin in China,” Chung-
Hwa Buddhist Journal 10 (Taipei: The Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies,
1997).
5. Yü, 13.
6. C. N. Tay, “Kuan-Yin: The Cult of Half Asia,” History of Religions 16, no.
2 (1976): 147.
7. Miriam Levering, “Guanyin/Avalokitesvara in Encounter Dialogues: Creating
a Place for Guanyin in Chinese Chan Buddhism,” Journal of Chinese Religions 34,
no. 1 (2006): 7. The Tang dynasty lasted from approximately 618 to 907 CE and is
often held as a high mark for Chinese cultural development.
8. While Guanyin is a major figure in some Pure Land Buddhists schools, as
Robert Sharf has argued, for most of its history in China Pure Land was not a separate
school, but a strand of practice woven into the other schools. It is in Japan where Pure
Land Buddhisms (Shinshu and Jodo Shinshu) become separate sects.
9. Yü, Chinese Buddhism: A Thematic History (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2020), 82.
10. Early in the transmission of Buddhism into China, the two distinctive
Buddhas—Amitāyus and Amitābha—were conflated into one figure, Amituofo
(Amituo Buddha).
11. In China, pure land practices were part and parcel of most Buddhist practices,
regardless of doctrinal or sectarian commitments. For more on this, see Robert Sharf,
“On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an/Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China,” in
T’oung Pao LXXXVIII (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
12. This was actually the third translation of the Lotus Sutra. The first translation
from 255 CE is no longer extant, and the second, by Dharmarakṣa, was in 286/290
CE. But Kumārajīva’s translation from about a hundred years later is by far the
most popular. For more on the Lotus Sutra see Donald Lopez’s The Lotus Sutra: A
Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
13. Lotus Sutra, Chapter 25, from Kumārajīva’s Chinese version. In The
Threefold Lotus Sutra: A Modern Translation for Contemporary Readers, trans.
Michio Shinozaki, Brook A. Ziporyn, and David C. Earhart (Kosei Publishing,
Tokyo, 2019), 353.
14. In the Lotus, the emphasis on expedient means is in part aimed to justify the
difference between Mahāyāna and earlier teachings, and to suggest the superiority
of the One Vehicle. In a Chinese context, expedient means was often used as a her-
meneutic device for classifying the relationships between different teachings: “each
teaching served as an expedient measure to overcome the particular shortcoming of
the teaching that preceded it while, at the same time, pointing to the teaching that was
to supersede it. In this fashion a hierarchical progression of teachings could be con-
structed, starting with the most elementary and leading to the most profound” (Peter
114 Chapter 3
Gregory, “Chinese Cultural Studies: Doctrinal Classification.” Chinese Buddhism

Encyclopedia. Last edited April 4, 2016).
15. The Threefold Lotus Sutra: A Modern Translation for Contemporary
Readers, 358.
16. Ibid., 357.
17. Ibid., 362. “Incomparably Perfect Enlightenment” is anuttara-samyak-sam-
bodhi, an attribute of every buddha, and a key phrase in the end of the Heart Sutra.
18. Yü, 85. For a few contemporary Guanyin miracle stories, see the ethnogra-
phies in chapter 4.
19. The King Kao’s Kuan-yin Sutra, quoted in Yü, “Miracle Tales and the
Domestication of Kuan-yin,” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 11 (1998): 459.
20. See Yü, Chinese Buddhism, 83.
21. Translated by Yü in “Miracle Tales and the Domestication of Guanyin,” 444.
My pronoun alteration.
22. Ibid., 444.
23. Ibid., 445.
24. Visual depictions of Avalokiteśvara were rare before about the fifth century
in India. As Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky explains in Guanyin (2012), “his image
appears frequently at Buddhist cave-temples carved into the Ghat Mountains of west-
ern India” (6). In a mural in Cave 1 at Ajanta, he is depicted with a variety of orna-
ments, including a tall crown with a small image of Amida Buddha, and he features
a “heroic body, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist” (6), and he holds a lotus
flower. He is often depicted similarly, with a youthful male body in a posture and with
accoutrement signaling his princely status. He often has a hand in varada mudra (gift-
bestowing hand position). In some depictions, he is shown saving the devoted from
various perils, as described in the Lotus Sutra. The eleven-headed Avalokiteśvara
appears in India sometime in the sixth century, and versions with many hands, heads,
eyes, and arms appear around the same time and later. Popular forms in the Tang
include the posture of royal ease (rajalilasana), where the figure is seated with his
right leg bent up and his left loose down. This is, for instance, the posture of the
Avalokiteśvara statue at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
25. Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara, 6.
26. Practices of filial flesh offerings for medicinal benefit were not all together
uncommon in medieval China, in both practice and story. The flesh or blood of the
thigh was especially common. Ruist officials attempted to ban the practices, showing
in part how common they had become.
27. For a short version of this story, see Yü, Chinese Buddhism, 86–87. For a
longer version and more detail, see Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious
Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and her Acolytes, trans. with introduction by Wilt L.
Idema. The longer versions reveal that the story of Princess Miaoshan was suppos-
edly contained in a book that was revealed to the monk Daoxuan (596–667 CE), as
reported by Jiang Zhiqi, the prefect of Ruzhou (modern day Henan Province), upon a
visit in 1100 to Incense Mountain Monastery (Xiangshansi).
28. There are also indigenous forms of Guanyin in Japan and Korea, so this is not
a phenomenon restricted to China.
Guanyin 115
29. To see confirmation of this in my ethnographic work, see chapter 4.

30. The earliest examples of White-Robed Guanyin with feminine appearance
are in two images at the entrance to the Yanxia Grotto in Hangzhou from about
the 940s.
31. See Yü, “Miracle Tales,” 469.
32. The connection between Guanyin and Putuo Island is strong in popular
literature, from India to East Asia. For instance, the story of Guanyin and Shancai
(Sk. Sudhana) from the Huayan Sutra takes place on Putuo island. Shancai was a
young boy with significant physical disabilities, but a sincere commitment to study-
ing the dharma. He managed to travel to Putuo and find Guanyin on the island, in
spite of his disability. Guanyin wanted to test his resolve, and so conjured an illu-
sion of bandits chasing her up a hill and over a cliff. Shancai did his best to follow
the bandits up the hill and over the cliff, trying to save Guanyin. She caught him
in mid-air and returned him to the island, and when he tried to get up he found that
his disabilities had been remedied and he could walk freely. In Korean, Mt. Putuo
is identified as Naksansa, and in Japan it is connected with the Saigoku Kannon
pilgrimage.
33. For more on this, see, for instance, Mark Meulenbeld’s “Death and
Demonization of a Bodhisattva: Guanyin’s Reformulation within Chinese Religion,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 3 (2016): 690–726. Meulenbeld
reads the story of Princess Miaoshan in light of popular Chinese religious concerns
and practices, including demonic spirits and trance possession.
34. For more on this connection, see for instance P. Steven Sangren, “Female
Gender in Chinese Religious Symbols: Kuan Yin, Ma Tsu, and the ‘Eternal Mother’,”
Signs 9, no. 1 (1983): 4–25.
35. Yuhang Li, Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late
Imperial China (New York: Columbia Press, 2020), 66.
36. Ibid., 63.
37. Guanyin was a popular subject for painters across genders, not only for
women.
38. Li, 105.
39. Ibid., 86.
40. Ibid., 83. My thanks to Columbia University Press for permission to repro-
duce this poem in full.
41. Ibid., 83–84.
42. Ibid., 101.
43. Ibid., 107.
44. See Ibid., 116.
45. Su Shi, translated in Ibid., 112.
46. This was a painting titled “菩薩” (Pusa, Bodhisattva) done by a young nun
(道璞法師) on display at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum in Taiwan, seen by
the author in July 2018. In the painting, Guanyin, as a young Taiwanese woman with
long hair bound back with a crown and wearing glasses, is seated in lotus position
reading a sutra book, with her many hands holding various sutras, and her top pair of
arms holding an icon of a haloed Amituofo.
116 Chapter 3
47. Jeff Wilson, “‘Deeply Female and Universally Human’: The rise of Kuan-yin
Worship in America,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 23, no. 3 (2008): 289–90.
48. Ibid., 296–97. Also Dharmacrafts, 2007.
49. Ibid., 295–96.
50. Cathryn Bailey, “Embracing the Icon: The Feminist Potential of the Trans
Bodhisattva, Kuan Yin,” Hypatia 24, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 192.
51. Transgender activist and academic Ray Buckner has written and discussed
contemporary concerns in American Buddhism in the context of trans identity, much
beyond the issues with Guanyin. See, for instance, “See Us Clearly: A Buddhist’s
View of Transgender Visibility” in Lion’s Roar, July 27, 2017. https://www.lionsroa
r.com/see-us-clearly-a-buddhists-view-of-transgender-visibility/; Buckner is also
interviewed by Koun Franz on the Lion’s Roar Podcast, March 31, 2021, “Creating
Space for Difference in Sanghas.”
52. Bailey, 192–93. The use of the singular “they” by some trans persons or
non-binary persons was not as common when this article was published as it is now.
I suspect, given Bailey’s broader argument, that Bailey would support the argument
for using she/they pronouns made in later in this chapter.
53. Li, 25. This opera also considers the famous courtesan Xu Jinghong’s
“Guanyin dance.” For more on this see Li, chapter 1: Dancing Guanyin.
54. Bailey, 182–83.
55. “臺: 觀，四方而高者。从至从之，从高省。與室屋同意.”
56. Sarah Mattice, Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play,
and Aesthetic Experience (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014), 92.
57. Steve Odin, Artistic Detachment in Japan and The West: Psychic Distance in
Comparative Aesthetics (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 16.
58. Odin, 16.
59. The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted
by Wang Bi, trans. Richard John Lynn (New York: Columbia University Press,
2004), 260.
60. Ibid., 260.
61. Kenneth DeWoskin, “Early Chinese Music and the Origins of Aesthetic
Terminology,” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 199.
62. Robert Sharf, Coming to Terms With Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the
Treasure Store Treatise (Kuroda Institute, 2005), 130.
63. Lotus Sutra T33: 697c, quoted in Yü, “Miracle Tales,” 436.
64. Yü, Chinese Buddhism, 85.
65. See Sharf, 121. There were various debates and controversies about the exact
mechanisms of how ganying worked and why it did not work in some cases—was
it the qi of the practitioner? Their karma? Their sincerity? Or something about the
practice that was especially efficacious or not?
66. Sharf, 122. See also Sharf, chapter 2.
67. Sanlun school quotation from HTC 74.32b8–13, in Sharf, 123. Wade-Giles
changed to Pinyin (ch’i to qi) for ease of reading.
68. For Chinese Buddhists, the idea of xing 性 was already part of their intellec-
tual landscape, being a key term in a variety of Ruist contexts, where humans have
Guanyin 117
natural tendencies concerning morality (and especially natural tendencies toward

good moral development and cultivation, as per Mengzi).
69. Later Tiantai and Huayan theorists push the boundaries of these ideas, assert-
ing certain kinds of identification between unique particulars (say, a person), the
whole of the cosmos, buddhas and bodhisattvas, and other unique particulars, based
on philosophical ideas of emptiness or suchness.
70. Sharf, 120.
71. For the story of how he came to coin this term, see Thich Nhat Hanh, The
Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries (Berkeley:
Palm Leaves Press, 2017), 27.
72. Michio Shinozaki, “Preface,” The Threefold Lotus Sutra, xv.
73. This is also a feature of Dizang (Jp. Jizo, Sk. Kṣitigharba).
74. P. Steven Sangren, “Female Gender in Chinese Religious Symbols: Kuan
Yin, Ma Tsu, and the ‘Eternal Mother’,” in Signs 9, no. 1 (1983): 20.
75. The Śūraṅgama Sutra is likely a sutra indigenous to China.
76. Śūraṅgama Sutra: With Excerpts from the Commentary by the Venerable
Master Hsüan Hua, trans. Ven Hsüan Hua (Ukiah: Buddhist Text Translation
Society, 2017), 234.
77. Hsüan Hua, 234.
78. Śūraṅgama Sutra, 235.
79. Ibid. The types of beings he can appear as are given as Buddha, various kinds
of pratyekabuddhas, arhats, Brahma King, Lord Sakra and other lords of various
realms, Celestial Kings, ghosts, or princes, human king, village elder, layperson, state
minister, Brahmin, monk, nun, precepted layman, precepted laywoman, queen or wife
of nobleperson, chaste young man, chaste young woman, various celestial beings,
dragons, humans and non-humans, and animate and inanimate things.
80. Śūraṅgama Sutra, 240.
81. Ibid., 242.
82. Ibid., 246.
83. Although the sutra is clear that this is not the only thing required—certain
moral behaviors and wholesome states of mind are required for cultivation as well.
84. Śūraṅgama Sutra, 253–54.
85. Ibid., 255.
86. The Surangama Sutra, translated by Upasaka Lu K’uan Yu (Charles Luk)
(Sri Lanka: Buddha Dharma Education Association, 1966), 197.
87. Levering, footnote 39, 13.
88. Luk, footnote 155, Surangama Sutra, 197.
89. Huineng. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun-
Huang Manuscript with Translation, Introduction, and Notes, translated by Philip
Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 158.
90. Levering, 12.
91. From Transmission of the Lamp in the Jingde Era (Jingde chuanden-
glu), Fascicle 7, T51.255c28–256a6. Quoted in Levering, 14. My change from
Avalokiteśvara to Guanyin.
92. From Transmission of the Lamp in the Jingde Era (Jingde chuandenglu),
T.2076.51.281. Quoted in Levering, 17–18. The earlier version of this dialogue
118 Chapter 3
is slightly different: “Yunyun asked Daowu, ‘What does the Bodhisattva of Great
Compassion use so many hands and eyes for?’ Daowu said, ‘It’s like someone reach-
ing back groping for a pillow in the middle of the night’. Yunyan said, ‘I understand’.
Daowu said, ‘How do you understand?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body (bianshen
遍身) are hands and eyes’. Daowu said, ‘You have said quite a bit there, but you’ve
only said eighty percent of it’. Yunyan said, ‘What do you say, Elder Brother?’ Daosu
said, ‘Throughout the body (tongshen 通身) are hands and eyes’.” (From Yuanwu
Keqing, Biyanlu, T.48.2003.213c19–26, quoted in Levering, 17).
93. Levering, 18.
94. Ibid. Although Guanyin does figure in the Huayan Sutra, bodhisattvas
Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra are canonically more central.
95. Levering, 19.
96. Ibid., 21.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid., 22.
100. “大士法身 / 非男非女 / 身尚非身 / 復何所倚 . . .
普告佛子 / 不應取相 / 菩薩是汝 / 非畫非像
又復應知 / 自他不二 / 能如是觀 / 真不思議 !”
Sheng-an, “觀音大士像讚,” in «省庵法師語錄» (Collected Sayings of
Master Sheng-an) X62n1179_p0240c16–21. 《大正新脩大藏經》與《卍新纂續藏
經》的資料引用是出自「中華電子佛典協會」 (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text
Association, 簡稱 CBETA) 的電子佛典系列光碟 (2011) 。The Shinsan Dainihon
Zokuzokyo, Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai. X: Xuzangjing《卍新纂大日本續藏經》
(卍新纂續藏)。東京:國書刊行會。CBETA, X62, no. 1179, p. 240, c16–21. https://
cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/X1179_001. My translation, with reference to Tay, 173.
101. Paul Hedges, “The Identity of Guanyin: Religion, convention and subver-
sion,” Culture and Religion 13, no. 1 (2012): 91–106.
102. Ibid., 91.
103. For more on practices of filial cannibalism, see Keith Knapp, “Chinese Filial
Cannibalism: A Silk Road Import?” in China and Beyond in the Mediaeval Period:
Cultural Crossings and Inter-Regional Connections, ed. Dorothy C. Wong and
Gustav Heldt (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2014).
104. Hedges, 99.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid., 100. Quoting Yü, 2001, 257.
107. Hedges, 101.
108. For more on this see Lori Meeks, “Women and Buddhism in East Asian
History: The Case of the Blood Bowl Sutra: Part I: China,” Religion Compass,
2020;14:e12336, and “Women and Buddhism in East Asian History: The Case of the
Blood Bowl Sutra: Part II: Japan,” Religion Compass, 2020;14:e12335.
109. Hedges, 101.
110. See Ibid., Topley 1975, and Sangren 1983.
111. Hedges, 103.
112. Ibid. See also Sangren.
Guanyin 119
113. Wilt Idema, Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll
Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2008), 8.
114. Li, 29.
115. Ibid., 27.
116. Idema, 8.
117. Ruth King, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out
(Boulder: Sounds True Press, 2018), 74. King’s work on how meditation practices
can be part of anti-racist pedagogies is timely and inspiring.
118. Walt Whitman, Section 51, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass
(Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891–2), 78. Accessed on May 21, 2021, The
Whitman Archive, https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/27. Bob
Dylan also quotes this poem in his 2020 song, “I Contain Multitudes.”
119. My thanks for Jason Simpson for also pointing out the resonance between this
work on Guanyin’s compassionate awareness of and connection with all beings, and
Whitman’s poem “I Am He That Aches With Love”:
“I AM he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?
So the body of me to all I meet or know.”
Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 93. Accessed on May 21, 2021, The Whitman
Archive, https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/39.
120. Whitman, Section 51. As some scholars have noted, this is a recasting of one
of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s key ideas from the essay “Self-Reliance”: “A foolish con-
sistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers
and divines. . . . Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what
to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-
day. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.” See Folsom and Merrill’s commentary
for more on this.
121. Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill, Commentary to “Section 51” Song of
Myself, WhitmanWeb, 2012.
122. For more on the singular “they,” see Gretchen McCulloch, “This year marks
a new language shift in how English speakers use pronouns,” Quartz, December 21
2015. For more on the history of grammar with respect to the singular “they,” see
Amia Srinivasan, “He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita,” London Review of Books
42, no. 13 (July 2020).
123. Judith Butler, “Reply from Judith Butler,” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research XCVI, no. 1 (2018): 247.
124. José Ignacio Cabezón, “Mother Wisdom, Father Love: Gender-Based
Imagery in Mahāyāna Buddhist Thought,” in Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender, ed.
José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 188.
125. Yü, Chinese Buddhism, 82.
Chapter 4
Voices of Women
They can’t all be men.

—Shawna1
In considering the Heart Sutra from a contemporary comparative philosophi-

cal perspective, it is especially important not to forget that this text had, and
has, a very real material life in the community of practitioners. This is not
a sutra that sat on a shelf in a library for a thousand years with only a few
select readers (not that there is anything wrong with that!). This is a sutra that
is chanted daily and has been for more than a thousand years. It is inscribed
on a myriad of objects of daily life, from tea towels to jewelry and more.
Calligraphic versions are posted not only in temples but in restaurants and in
homes. This is a sutra that lives in the complicated space between conceptual
thought and daily embodied activity. As someone who is not a specialist in
material culture, I wanted to construct a chapter that was inspired in some
way by this complex life of the text, and my way in was through the transla-
tion of Guanyin as feminine or gender complex. Given that many—perhaps
even most, given PEW data about the gender of practicing Buddhists2—of the
real people whose lives are connected with this text are women, how might
attention to their lives and their practices inform the larger project? This led
to the two parts of this chapter: Voices from the Past, which delves very
briefly into the long and complex history of women’s practice; and Voices
from Today, which shares material from ethnographic interviews I conducted
with contemporary Buddhist women in the United States and East Asia.3
121
122 Chapter 4
VOICES FROM THE PAST
Women’s practice is sometimes subject to misconceptions—such as the idea

that the patriarchy was so bad in historical Asia that women were not really
able to be important contributors to the tradition, for instance, or the mis-
conception that because Buddhist philosophy espouses nondual experience,
all Buddhists have enjoyed perfect gender equality—but neither of these is
really the case. Both the brief dive into Buddhist women’s history and the
ethnographic work in this chapter reveal an impressive spectrum of women
living their traditions.
As a broad generalization, Buddhist traditions have ambiguous relation-
ships with women. Women have become arhats and are capable of full awak-
ening. Women in some traditions cannot ordain. Women who can ordain are
always subordinate to ordained men. Women are revered as spiritually sig-
nificant figures. Women’s bodies, viewed through a lens of disgust and decay,
are the object of exercises designed to “cure” men of sexual desire. Women
are leaders, teachers, and figures of authority in their communities. No mat-
ter how advanced their practice, women—in women’s bodies—can never
become buddhas. Women seek liberation just as do men and non-binary per-
sons. Feminism and other calls for social justice are decried as anti-Buddhist.4
There are Buddhist feminisms.5 And so on . . . there is no simple reading of
women and gender in the context of complex, multifaceted, and sometimes
contradictory Buddhist traditions.
While Buddhist traditions are neither “inherently” feminist or not, different
readings about women, gender, and justice are possible from various Buddhist
sources. We should expect variation, ambiguity, and contradiction on these
topics. While the goal of this chapter is not the construction of a theory of
Buddhist feminism, my commitment to feminist reclamation—the project of
not only giving a fuller and more accurate view of philosophical history by
uncovering and including women’s voices where they have been buried and
marginalized but also transforming philosophical discourse into a more just
and equitable affair—does inform this chapter. In this line of thinking, what
we might call two strands of feminist readings of gender in Buddhist mate-
rial seem to emerge. On the one hand, the materials here sometimes suggest
a reading where because of the metaphysics of emptiness and nonduality,
gender is ultimately unreal, meaningless, and ought to be left behind. On the
other hand, these materials also sometimes suggest a reading of gender that is
attentive to particularity, where gender is “really” only conventional but still
deeply meaningful. These strands weave together a story of the complexity
and variation in Buddhist traditions with respect to gender, and as the conclu-
sion to this chapter suggests, also offer an avenue of interpretive possibility
for the Heart Sutra.
Voices of Women 123
Women’s Practice: Obstacles and Examples

Women’s practice, both monastic and lay, has been an important part of
Buddhist traditions from the very beginning, with Mahāpajāpatī’s journey
from lay practice to ordination to full awakening.6 Mahāpajāpatī, the historical
Buddha’s aunt-turned-stepmother, along with Yaśodharā, his (former) wife,
and perhaps as many as five hundred women from his clan were the first
ordained nuns in Buddhist traditions. As prominent scholar and activist Karma
Lekshe Tsomo, one of the organizers of the First International Conference on
Buddhist Nuns in 1987 and a founding figure in Sakyadhita (“Daughters of the
Buddha”), an international association of Buddhist women, explains,
Due to [Mahāpajāpatī’s] courageous agitation for equal opportunity, the Buddha

affirmed the equal potential of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment and
recognized their right to wear the robes of a Buddhist mendicant. The Buddha
was unable to ensure the total reformation of patriarchal Indian society, how-
ever. After the Buddha’s death, earlier modes of gender relations gradually reas-
serted themselves. The positive attitude toward women evident among the early
Buddhists seems to have declined sharply around the time written Buddhist
literature began to appear. These texts contain contradictory statements on
women, who are portrayed as capable of enlightenment on par with men and
also as sirens luring men from the spiritual path. These ambivalent attitudes
toward women persist today in the minds and institutions of Buddhist Asia.7
The story of Mahāpajāpatī’s ordination is a good place to start for exploring

some of the ambiguity surrounding women in the history of Buddhist tradi-
tions: women were both involved in Buddhism and held as potential dangers
for (men’s) practice from the beginning, both clearly having the capac-
ity for enlightenment and subject to extra rules and obstacles for practice,
both remembered and forgotten—or worse, transformed into foils for male
stories—in canonical materials.
The story of Mahāpajāpatī’s long process of ordination is preserved in a
variety of sources, both canonical (vinaya) and literary. Although these stories
have important differences, the basic structure of the story is shared. In this
shared storyline, Mahāpajāpatī approached the historical Buddha and asked to
be ordained (either just for herself or for herself and a group of women). The
historical Buddha refused. Mahāpajāpatī and the other women shaved their
heads, changed into robes, and walking barefoot followed the sangha on its
travels.8 After a long journey—what Grace Schireson calls “the first women’s
march”9—the women catch up with the sangha at Jetavana monastery, where
Ānanda (the historical Buddha’s young cousin and disciple) intervenes on
Mahāpajāpatī’s behalf. Although the historical Buddha is still reluctant, after
some discussion Ānanda convinces him to grant the women’s ordination.
124 Chapter 4
How did Ānanda convince the Buddha to ordain the women? Largely
through two arguments: the special maternal debt owed to Mahāpajāpatī
by the Buddha and the clear potential of women to fully awaken. Although
some scholarship suggests that the discourse of the special maternal debt
owed to Mahāpajāpatī is from a somewhat later period, the idea that the
historical Buddha may have been moved in part due to his actual relation-
ship with Mahāpajāpatī—knowing her, understanding her situation, believ-
ing her sincere commitment, and feeling some sense of the need to care for
her as she had for him—makes sense, and in a later East Asian context the
familial concern shown here helped to alleviate some tensions surrounding a
(foreign) tradition whose major figure left family life. Knowing that Ānanda
was also the historical Buddha’s cousin, and so also had a familial relation to
Mahāpajāpatī, adds weight to his persuasiveness.
It is the second argument, however, that seems to have done most of the
work of convincing the historical Buddha to allow the women’s ordination. A
number of early sources are very clear about women’s potential for awaken-
ing: “A discourse in the Samyutta-nikaya and its Samyukta-agama parallels
enunciate the basic principle that, from the viewpoint of early Buddhist texts,
women just as well as men can reach the final goal.”10 Furthermore, early
sutras explicitly name many women among those who have achieved nirvāṇa,
and there are texts like the Therigatha, a collection of poems by early Buddhist
nuns, that celebrate women’s achievements.11 The historical Buddha, it seems,
saw the contradiction in claiming that women could attain arhat-ship and yet
preventing them from joining a renunciate community. Convinced by Ānanda,
then, the Buddha facilitated the ordination of Mahāpajāpatī, Yaśodharā, and
perhaps as many as five hundred women from his clan.
Eight Special Rules

However, although the question of women’s ordination was resolved, it
was not without concerns. As Tsomo relates, “Along with accounts of the
virtuous lives and spiritual achievements of women, however, we encounter
repeated warnings against the temptations of women and a prophecy (as yet
unfulfilled) warning that women’s admission to the order would shorten the
life of the Dharma.”12 The concern that allowing women’s ordination would
directly shorten the life of the Buddha’s teaching is repeated in many ver-
sions of Mahāpajāpatī’s story. In addition, although women were allowed
to ordain, their ordination was not the same as men’s ordination; there were
built-in conditions to the Buddha’s agreement to ordain Mahāpajāpatī and
the others. As Ann Heirman explains, “When the Buddha allowed his step-
mother Mahāprajāpatī to become a full member of his own monastic order,
it marked the start of a twofold community (ubhayasaṃgha), consisting of
Voices of Women 125
both monks (bhiksụ) and nuns (bhiksụṇī).”13 This twofold community has
marked Buddhist monasticism with gender concerns from that moment
onward.
The additional conditions the Buddha required for women’s ordination
are called the eight special or heavy rules (Ch. ba jingjie八敬戒; Sk: gur
udharmas/garudhammas).14 The eight special rules, as articulated in the
Dharmaguptakavinaya (T. 1428:923a26–b21), the only tradition today where
full ordination for nuns is still possible, require that:
1) Even when a nun has been ordained for a hundred years, she must rise
up from her seat when seeing a newly ordained monk, and she must pay
obeisance.
2) A nun may not revile a monk saying that he has done something wrong.
3) A nun may not punish a monk, nor admonish him, whereas a monk may
admonish a nun.
4) After a woman has been trained as a probationer (śiksạmāṇā) for two
years, the ordination ceremony must be carried out in both orders (i.e.,
first in the nuns’ order, and then in the monks’ order).
5) When a nun has committed a saṃghāvaśesạ offense (an offense that
leads to a temporary exclusion), she has to undergo the penance in both
orders.
6) Every fortnight, nuns have to ask monks for instruction.
7) Nuns cannot spend the summer retreat (rainy season) in a place where
there are no monks.
8) At the end of the summer retreat, nuns have to carry out the pravāraṇā
ceremony (also) in the monks’ order.15
As Heirman notes, the special rules clearly reflect a view that sees “women
as soteriologically equal to men, but institutionally inferior. . . . Women
weaken the community, and thus the doctrine, by making it less respected.
This danger can only be countered if the monks strictly control the nuns’
community.”16 This sense of women’s danger for the monastic community is
balanced in some accounts by the presence of an analogy comparing the spe-
cial rules to a bridge or a dike, a common image from other texts suggesting
that the special rules are serving as a form of protection, allowing women’s
spiritual powers time to fully accumulate, as the water in the dike allows for
proper irrigation of newly planted seeds.17 Bhikkhu Anālayo gives a chari-
table reading of these images:
the different similes used to illustrate the function of the Buddha’s promulga-
tion of the gurudharmas seem to convey that these are considered a means
for the nuns to cross over or else a protective embankment, comparable to the
126 Chapter 4
cultivation of mental qualities like mindfulness and concentration, enabling

them to reach awakening.18
We can imagine the context—women requesting the authority to be home-

leavers, to secede from the bonds and roles of conventional life. In that
conventional life, women’s activities were both restricted and protected, and
there were (and are) very real, gender-specific dangers for women who live
outside of the boundaries of social expectation. Suggesting that the special
rules were there for the nuns’ safety and protection, as well as so that they did
not violate social norms by operating outside the umbrella of (male) author-
ity, may have ameliorated social concerns about women as home-leavers in
some circles.
While some of these rules seem to simply spell out potential relationships
between the male and female sanghas, given local (geographical and histori-
cal) concerns of the times, others place nuns directly in a submissive place
beneath monks, no matter their seniority, wisdom, or expertise, simply due
to their gender. Mahāpajāpatī is said to have objected to the first rule, which
subordinates all nuns to even the most junior of monks, but ultimately she
accepted the special rules for the sake of ordination.19 The rule concerning the
need for both sanghas to be present at women’s ordination has perhaps had
the most long-term impact on women’s practice, as it is largely because of
this rule that women are not able to ordain in most contemporary Theravadin
and Tibetan traditions (without a current women’s order, new women can-
not be ordained). As the story of Mahāpajāpatī’s ordination continued to be
told in later texts, “it takes a misogynistic turn” not obviously present in the
earliest versions: “Women are no longer seen as a threat to the community
because they make it less socially respected, but are now considered to be an
inevitable threat to the goals of Buddhist men personally.”20
The controversy over the eight special rules has continued into contem-
porary times, when, for instance, Venerable Chao Hwei Shih 釋昭慧, a
Taiwanese Abbess known for her strong stances on ethics and social issues,
including being the first monastic to wed a same-sex couple in Taiwan, went
so far as to tear up a copy of the eight special rules, live on television during a
conference on humanistic Buddhism.21 While her actions did not immediately
lead to the revocation of the rules, they did affect nuns’ positions, contribut-
ing to larger discussions on women and religion in Buddhist communities.22
While the eight special rules, and other selections from early texts may
suggest that few women practiced, or that women were always funda-
mentally limited by male sanghas, historical evidence indicates this is not
the case. We know that women were key participants in the development
of Buddhist traditions, from the very earliest times to the present. From
Mahāprajāpatī to Uppalavanna, the awakened nun with stunning powers of
Voices of Women 127
personal transformation,23 and continuing through to Zhu Jingjian 竺淨檢24

(ca. 292–361), who founded the women’s order in China, and into contem-
porary times, there have been women actively participating in the develop-
ment of Buddhism as both monastics and lay supporters, from its earliest
transmission.25
Considering Jingjian, for instance, a well-educated widow who left home
to pursue formal Buddhist training; she eventually found a teacher and had
a profound awakening experience. Although there was at that point no nuns’
order in China, she took the ten precepts that were available, studied to learn
about the historical role of bhikṣuṇi (fully ordained nuns), and, with twenty-
four other women, established an independent convent for nuns. Then, she
found a foreign monk, Tanmo Jieduo, who was willing to support her quest
for full ordination; he ordained her and three of her students, over the objec-
tions of some Chinese monks. In the next centuries, after concerns over
whether or not their ordination was fully legal, given that ordained nuns had
not been a part of it, Chinese nuns underwent a second ordination, with nuns
present from Sri Lanka, thereby authorizing their lineage, as according to the
eight special rules monastics from both sanghas must be present at women’s
ordinations. This is especially poignant considering that women’s sanghas
have since died out in most Theravāda and Tibetan traditions. Contemporary
efforts to reestablish women’s lineages in these traditions have received sig-
nificant support from Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and especially Taiwanese
orders.26
Five Hindrances and Thirty-Two Marks

Women monastics were subjected to a variety of obstacles: not only the
eight special rules but also the “five hindrances,” including the belief that
enlightenment/buddhahood was only possible from a male body. In the
Bahudhātuka Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 115), for instance, the Buddha asserts
that although women can become awakened arhats, they cannot (as such)
become bodhisattvas or fully awakened buddhas.27 The five hindrances are
held to be obstacles faced specifically by women: women, on this view, can-
not become a Brahma heavenly king, a Shakra, a mara king, a wheel-turning
sage king (Chakravartin), and women are prevented from taking on the body
of a buddha.28
While some scholars have noted that these restrictions came initially
from conditions under which these five roles were historically only possible
for men, as later Buddhist traditions developed, the issue of whether or not
women could become buddhas became more significant. In early Buddhism,
there is only one buddha at a time, and becoming a buddha was not the
goal of practice. Nirvāṇa, and arhat-ship, were the goal, and, as mentioned
128 Chapter 4
previously there was broad consensus and evidence that women were not
only capable but had in fact achieved this goal. However, in Mahāyāna tradi-
tions, there are many, many buddhas, and many, many bodhisattvas, and the
goal of practice shifted from arhat-ship to bodhisattva-hood or buddhahood.
The early presence of textual reference to the five hindrances, then, is a more
significant issue for women’s practice in (non-tantric) Mahāyāna contexts.
Why was it thought that women could not become buddhas? In addition
to the expectation that as a significant leadership role this was reserved for
men, on a more pragmatic patriarchal note it also had to do with the thirty-
two marks of the Buddha’s body. Although early stories of the historical
Buddha note that at Siddharta’s birth he had signs of becoming a great man
(hence the prophecies about his potential as a warrior-king or a holy man),
in the early texts only a few signs were specified, and these conform to pre-
Buddhist assumptions about the marks of great leaders. Keeping in mind that
the Buddha was described in the earliest texts as being very normal and hard
to distinguish in a crowd, the later addition of these characteristics as the
hagiography surrounding him grew seems likely. By about five hundred years
later, several texts mention by name the thirty-two marks of a Great Man
(mahā purisa lakkhaṇa), including the mark of a dharma wheel on the soles
of his feet; long fingers and toes; a large, lion-like torso; sensitive taste buds;
white, evenly spaced teeth; a long tongue; arms that extend to his knees; very
blue eyes (blue like a sapphire or the ocean, or like Krishna’s skin); and hav-
ing sexual organs concealed in a sheath. Each of the marks is connected with
the actions of the Buddha in his past lives and is considered a fruit of previous
(good) karma. It is the issue of the Buddha’s penis that becomes relevant for
discussions of women’s practice.
If a specific kind of penis is one of the required set of marks of a buddha,
then, so the reasoning goes, women (or all those without penises) cannot—in
their present state—become buddhas.29 Only after many lifetimes, when
their karma is sufficiently fruitful to allow them rebirth as men (those with
penises), can women (those without penises) achieve full liberation or bud-
dhahood. These canonical materials do not make any significant distinctions
between biological sex and social conceptions of gender. However, while
many seemed to read the sign relating to genitalia as a straightforwardly
necessary (although not sufficient) condition—the Buddha had a penis, and
so if you do not you cannot be a buddha—what precisely is meant by “sexual
organs concealed in a sheath” is a matter of some debate. There are three
obvious readings of this:
1. It refers to an un-circumcised penis where the foreskin is large enough to

cover the head of the penis, which may have been a sign of male beauty
at the time30;
Voices of Women 129
2. It refers to a sexual organ that can be retracted into the body, like a
horse’s penis31; and/or
3. It refers to sexual organs that are not visible externally, perhaps indicat-
ing an intersex person or a different ambiguous situation with respect to
sexual organs, or perhaps even a vulva.32
In any case, in the historical context of art, literature, and politics, it was
often taken to refer to a prominent penis on the model of (1) or (2). Because
early Buddhist material did not distinguish between sex and gender, the
thirty-two marks in general and the penis in particular were used as justifica-
tion for denying women’s ability to achieve buddhahood in this life, without
sexual transformation. Given that having brown eyes (as is common in most
of East Asia), and not striking blue eyes, was not held as a similarly exclu-
sionary standard, this suggests that the thirty-two marks were used largely
as a weapon against women’s practice by a patriarchal institution, rather
than being a central canonical commitment whose consistency must not be
questioned.
Women’s Bodies in Literature

In addition to the eight special rules, the five hindrances, the prophecy of
early destruction to the Buddha’s teaching at women’s ordination, and the
troubles that come with wide-spread patriarchy, Buddhist women also faced
challenges related to how their bodies were conceived of in some Buddhist
literature—women’s bodies were repeatedly described as snares set out to
trap men/monks into forbidden sexual thoughts or activities, and so as par-
ticularly dangerous. For instance, when the Buddha rebukes monk Sudinna
for having sex with his former wife—he claimed it was in order to give her
a child to replace his absence in having left home for monastic life—the
Buddha purportedly said that,
It would have been better, confused man, had you put your male organ inside the
mouth of a terrible [venomous] snake than inside the vagina of a woman. . . . It
would have been better, confused man, had you put your male organ inside a
blazing hot charcoal pit than inside the vagina of a woman.33
As Grace Schireson notes, the Buddha’s admonition here makes a woman’s

body, and especially her vagina, worse than encounters with snakes or burn-
ing coal. She writes, “While it is not so hard to understand the Buddha’s
warning against sexual pursuits, this admonition carries quite a charge. Far
from manifesting a cool, dispassionate, and mindful approach, the Buddha’s
admonition sounds almost hysterical.”34 In addition to this story and others
130 Chapter 4
like it, the repeated early monastic practice of monks meditating on women’s
bodies as decaying corpses in order to allay sexual urgings and prompt
realizations of impermanence puts women’s bodies in the position of being
necessarily sexualized, either as objects luring men into danger or as objects
to aid in meditative accomplishments. Women’s bodies are also subjected
to serious denigration in many early stories about hungry ghosts, where, for
instance, due to problematic actions in this life, some women are reborn as
hungry ghosts who repeatedly give birth and then devour their own offspring
in a hellish cycle of suffering that graphically depicts women’s bodies in
nightmarish terms.35
In addition to these early references to women’s bodies in Buddhist lit-
erature, the relatively late Blood Bowl Sutra (Xuepenjing «血盆經») is also
an interesting text to consider. This indigenous Chinese sutra of only 420
characters from the eleventh or twelfth centuries tells the story of Mulian
(目蓮尊者, Skt. Maudgalyāyāna), famous for having saved his mother from
the Avīci Hell, discovering her in a hell where women have specifically gen-
dered suffering and learning about the various things we (here on earth) can
do to make sure our mothers (and/or us ourselves) not only are saved from
this hell but can be reborn in the Pure Land.36 In the sutra, we learn that all
women are destined at death to fall into a special hell—a hell composed of
pools or bowls of menstrual blood—because of having polluted this earth
with their blood from menstruation and childbirth. Initially used as a text to
emphasize disgust for women’s bodies to male monastics, in China and later
in Japan the text became a kind of cult best-seller, sold to lay men and women
as a means of saving women, especially family members, from this hell in
part through Guanyin worship—it is Guanyin, after all, who can go into hell
and save women from the blood bowl suffering. The text was depicted in
gruesome paintings that were displayed to the public in marketplaces and
at temple fairs, visually revealing the suffering women were destined for on
account of their embodied condition. Indeed, women’s bodies were so dispar-
aged in some contexts that the very idea of enlightenment in a woman’s body
became subject to the need for sexual transformation—if a woman could turn
herself into a man, then (and only then) could she attain liberation.
Sexual Transformation
One of the most pervasive theoretical obstacles for women’s practice in
Mahāyāna traditions is the notion of sexual transformation as required for
enlightenment, for bodhisattva-hood, or for buddhahood. Although in the
fullness of time we have all been born as men and women and perhaps as all
varieties of sentient beings, karma was often popularly read, as it was in other
early Indian contexts, as having a teleological function, where enough good
Voices of Women 131
karma could lead you to be born as a man, and enough bad karma could lead
you to birth in a woman’s body, subject to the suffering—and impurities—
associated with menstruation and childbirth. Thus, a male birth was said to
be a sign of better karma, and women were encouraged to work to generate
merit in part for better future births. While the idea of sexual transformation is
perhaps also related to the thirty-two marks and the Buddha’s sexual organs,
the idea that women must transform into men in order to achieve enlighten-
ment has its roots in a variety of different sources.
For instance, Dharmakāra Bodhisattva—who would later become
Amituofo—gave as his thirty-fifth vow, “Even though I am supposed to
attain Buddhahood, should the women who dislike their female bodies, liv-
ing in incalculable, marvelous Buddha realms, having generated the mind
of enlightenment by listening to my name, be reborn as females again, I
will give up perfect enlightenment.”37 In other words, since Dharmakāra did
become Amituofo (Amida Buddha), all women who want to be reborn as
men, so long as they engage in the appropriate practice, will be. This vow is
interesting because it seems to apply only to those who want the change, not
to all women seeking enlightenment. It is stated even more forcefully, how-
ever, in the Amitābha Sūtra: “May no one be born as a woman or a girl in
my land and may the women born in my land change their gender to male.”38
This vow is generally taken to mean that everyone who achieves rebirth in
Amituofo’s Western Pure Land does so as male.
While some read these vows as asserting a strong claim that women needed
to be reborn as men before attaining enlightenment, Hae-ju Sunim argues that
this is a misreading of the texts.39 She writes,
This aspiration [for rebirth as a man] reflects an awareness of the terrible

conditions to which women are subject, but does not presuppose that women
are incapable of attaining Buddhahood. This fact is clearly demonstrated in
the Amitāyurbuddha Sūtra where a woman gives the sufferings that a woman
endures as her reason for seeking rebirth in the Pure Land. The Buddha eventu-
ally prophesizes her rebirth in the Pure Land as a result of her spiritual quest.40
Furthermore, other Pure Lands seem not to be premised on the claim that only
men can be born there: “In the Akṣobhya-tathāgata-syavyūḥā Sūtra, a woman
reborn in Akṣobhya’s Pure Land is said to have excellent virtues, with no bad
karma resulting from gossip or harsh speech. Even when pregnant or when
bearing a child, such a woman feels free, safe, and tranquil. It is said that all
these merits are due to the power of Akṣobhya’s original vow.”41 However,
other texts also describe sexual transformation as a necessary, although not
sufficient, process for rebirth in Akṣobhya’s Eastern Pure Land; it often still
reinforces the connection between sexual transformation and enlightenment,
132 Chapter 4
although as Hae-ju Sunim points out, “The idea of gender transformation

does not necessarily imply a relationship between gender and the attainability
of enlightenment.”42 That is, while the Pure Lands may involve gender trans-
formation, especially for those who have experienced their gender as a site of
suffering, this does not on its own suggest that enlightenment, in and of itself,
is not possible without such a transformation.
In addition, the fact that it is Queen Vaidehi, a woman, who asks for and
receives the teaching of the Contemplation Sutra (Amitāyurdhyāna Sūtra,
«佛說觀無量壽佛經») on Amituofo’s Western Pure Land, is not insignifi-
cant. In that sutra’s discussion of the practices necessary for entry into the
Pure Land, none indicate gender as a requirement.43 In fact, the twelfth con-
templation explicitly asks devotees to visualize themselves born in the Pure
Land sitting on a lotus flower, with no mention of it needing to be in a male
body. All of the various levels of births described in the sutra depend on
karma, merit, effort, faith, wisdom, and actions, not on gender. Furthermore,
Vaidehi and five hundred of her female attendants were predicted to be reborn
in that Pure Land, without mention of sexual transformation.
Queen Vaidehi is not the only woman to feature prominently in a sutra.
In the Śrīmālā Sutra, Queen Śrīmālā is not only a main character, but is in
fact the source of the teaching of the sutra. As Diana Paul explains, “Queen
Śrīmālā, who had the “lion’s roar”—or eloquence—of a buddha, first con-
verts the women of her kingdom, then her husband, a non-Buddhist, and
finally the men.”44 This sutra, translated into Chinese for the first time in
435 CE by Gunabhadra, focuses on the idea of the buddha-womb, and is a
key precursor to the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Awakening of Faith. It was
very influential on the development of all East Asian Buddhisms, as it was
the first to focus on the buddha-womb or buddha-nature, later a key theme in
East Asian Buddhism, and it was particularly important in the development
of Chan Buddhism. As Paul notes in her introduction to the text,
This text is a unique development within the Buddhist tradition because of its
egalitarian and generous view concerning women, portraying, on the one hand,
the dignity and wisdom of a laywoman and her concern for all beings, and, on
the other, the role of woman as philosopher and teacher.45
That is, unlike the Contemplation Sutra where Queen Vaidehi played an
important role as the requestor and recipient of the teaching, in the Śrīmālā
Sutra Queen Śrīmālā is clearly an ideal figure in authority, and the Buddha’s
prediction for her buddhahood is uncontroversial. According to Paul, “The
text raises the question of the possibility of female buddhas.”46 While female
buddhas or bodhisattvas are not uncommon in some Tantric traditions, the
very idea of a female buddha is still extremely controversial in mainstream
Voices of Women 133
Mahāyāna practice. Nonetheless, this is a clear example of a sutra featuring

a (lay) woman, predicted to become a buddha, who gives the teaching that
all beings already have the potential to awaken, with no mention of sexual
transformation as a prerequisite.
Hae-ju Sunim also analyzes two passages that are famous with respect to
gender—chapter 12 of the Lotus Sutra (“Devadatta”) and chapter 7 of the
Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra (“Viewing Sentient Beings”). While there are
many, many episodes related to gender transformation in Mahāyāna canons,
both of these texts were hugely popular and very important in the develop-
ment of Chinese and East Asian Buddhist traditions, and almost everyone
who deals with gender in a Mahāyāna context engages these stories. While
gender is not the doctrinal focus of either chapter, the fact of its relation to the
drama of each chapter—in both cases, it is women who face Śāriputra’s skep-
ticism of their accomplishments precisely because of their gender—makes
these selections potent resources for thinking through some of the ambiguities
surrounding women’s status in a philosophical context.
Lotus Sutra, Chapter 12

The relevant section of chapter 12 of the Lotus Sutra opens with the
Bodhisattva Accumulation of Wisdom asking Mañjuśrī if any living beings
have successfully managed to practice with the Lotus Sutra in the manner in
which it advises, such that they have quickly awakened and attained buddha-
hood. Mañjuśrī replies that there is such a being:
Yes, the daughter of the Dragon King Sagara, just eight years old. She is wise,
of keen faculties, and well acquainted with the actions and deeds arising from
the sense faculties of living beings. She has gained dhāraṇīs, has been able
to receive and embrace all of the extremely profound, innermost treasuries of
teachings of the buddhas, and has deeply entered into meditation and fathomed
all things. She aspired to awakening and attained nonregression in a single
instant. She has unhindered powers of eloquence. She has compassion for liv-
ing beings as if they were her own newborn children. Replete with merits, the
thoughts in her mind and the arguments she voices are sublime, vast, and great.
Benevolent and compassionate, kind and considerate, gentle and elegant in her
disposition, she is able to achieve awakening.47
But on hearing all this—that one being, a young (dragon) girl, practiced
diligently with the Lotus Sutra and attained incantations, treasures, medita-
tive states, compassion, wisdom, great pedagogy, and awakening—that she
attained full buddhahood in an instant, Śāriputra says to her with mocking
skepticism:
134 Chapter 4
You say that very soon you will attain the unsurpassable Way, but this is hard
to believe. For how could the highest awakening be attained in the female body
if it is impure and unclean and thus not a suitable vessel for the Dharma? The
Buddha way is so long and vast that it can be accomplished only after enduring
hardships, accumulating good deeds, and perfectly practicing the Six Paramitas
over the course of immeasurable kalpas. Moreover, the female body has five
hindrances. . . . How then could you, in a female body, so speedily become a
buddha?48
The young dragon girl does not bristle at Śāriputra’s skepticism, but instead
immediately transforms herself into a (human) male and accomplishes all
the bodhisattva activities. She attained perfect enlightenment, had the thirty-
two marks (including, presumably, the special penis) and the eighty kinds of
features associated with buddhahood. She taught the dharma to everyone in
all directions, including to all those assembled. The Lotus Sutra notes that
“[t]heir hearts were filled with joy, and from afar they made a sign of rever-
ence. . . . The Bodhisattva Accumulation of Wisdom, Shariputra, and the
entire assembly, in silence, believed and accepted.”49
This passage is somewhat ambiguous, with respect to gender. Either, some
say, it is evidence for Mahāyāna commitment to women’s enlightenment and
practice, or it is evidence that women cannot, in their own bodies, achieve
awakening. When interpreted in this latter way, it tends to be read strictly
according to the chronology of the story, on a non-subitist account—only
after turning herself into a (human) male does the dragon girl really achieve
perfect enlightenment and preach the Dharma. Thus, transformation out of
her female body was a necessary condition for her subsequent enlightenment.
However, there are (at least) three reasons, in addition to contemporary
feminist sensibilities, to resist this reading. First, the context of the passage is
important. Mañjuśrī was asked if sudden enlightenment was possible given
Lotus Sutra practice. His response is yes, and the dragon girl is his evidence.
But if her enlightenment really was sudden—immediate—then the events
being unpacked into a linear chronology are more like results of her enlight-
enment than prerequisites. Following this Chan-influenced subitist reading,
she performed the “old-school” chronology of events leading up to enlighten-
ment because she could, not because she had to do so in order to awaken.50
The performance was, perhaps, part of her teaching. Śāriputra, after all, is
the “straight man” in many Mahāyāna stories. There’s something important
that he, with all his early wisdom, does not get. He is also not the initial
questioner—it’s Prajñākūṭa, Bodhisattva Accumulation of Wisdom, who asks
Mañjuśrī not only whether or not sudden enlightenment is possible, but who
questions whether or not the dragon girl really had achieved enlightenment so
quickly. Śāriputra’s question to the dragon girl is an interjection in this larger
Voices of Women 135
drama, showing us in part that he is not concerned about the right problem
here; it is not her gender that is at issue, but whether or not practice with the
Lotus Sutra enables sudden or immediate awakening. The performance of her
enlightenment dispels that concern.
Second, there are other passages in the Lotus Sutra that attest to women’s
enlightenment without the mediation of sexual transformation. In chapter
13 (Encouragement), as Hae-ju Sunim points out, “the Buddha predicts the
enlightenment of the Buddhist nuns Mahāpajāpatī and Yaśodharā without any
allusion to the transformation of their female bodies.”51 The phrasing of his
prediction does not indicate any requirement of transformation first to male
bodies. He says to Mahāpajāpatī,
In a future lifetime [you will] become a great teacher of the Dharma in the midst
of the teachings of sixty-eight thousand million buddhas and so, too, will these
six thousand nuns, trained and still in training. Thus you will gradually perfect
the bodhisattva way and will become a Buddha called Delight to Behold for All
Living Beings Tathagata, Worthy of Offerings, Universally Wise, Complete in
Clarity and Conduct, Well Departed, Fathomer of This World, Peerless Leader,
Expert Trainer, Teacher of Heavenly Beings and Humans, Buddha, and World-
Honored One.52
While the Lotus Sutra is a large, composite text and we (scholars) should
not expect perfect consistency, if sexual transformation were required for
women, it seems reasonable that it would also appear here, in the discussion
of these specific women’s enlightenment. In addition, since a major concern
of the Lotus Sutra is the teaching that everyone will become a buddha, if
sexual transformation were a required step in that process, it seems unlikely
that such an important point would be left solely to this somewhat ambiguous
passage.
Third, there is another story of a dragon girl’s enlightenment that closely
matches this one, but does not contain any reference to sexual transformation.
In the Sāgaranāgarāja Sutra, Ratnadatta, also the daughter of a dragon king,
along with ten thousand dragon wives, generates the mind of enlightenment
and vows to attain buddhahood in a future life. In this case it is Mahākāśyapa
who is skeptical. He questions them, saying “Unsurpassed perfect enlight-
enment is extremely difficult to attain. One cannot attain Buddhahood in a
woman’s body.” Ratnadatta replies to him:
Mind and intention are originally pure. One who practices the bodhisattva path
will easily become a Buddha. If one generates the mind of the path of truth,
one will realize enlightenment as easily as seeing into the palm of one’s hand.
And when the wondrous power of wisdom is awakened, all the teachings of the
136 Chapter 4
Buddha will also be attained. . . . Buddhahood can be attained by all, because

ultimately mind is neither male nor female.53
This sutra was translated into Chinese in 258 CE, some hundred years before
Kumārajīva’s translation of the Lotus Sutra. For Hae-ju Sunim, this is suf-
ficient evidence to suggest that the view of women’s ability to enlighten in
their own bodies is not a reaction to an earlier requirement for sexual trans-
formation. Rather, she suggests, these were two contemporaneous views.
Furthermore, she argues that the view requiring sexual transformation, as can
be read in the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sutra, represents a minority
view associated with Devadatta, not with the larger Mahāyāna canon, whose
view is most closely aligned with sort of teaching we see from Ratnadatta in
this passage.54 This also parallels another conversation in the Sumatidarika-
paripprocha Sutra, where Mañjuśrī asks Sumati why she does not transform
out of her female body. She responds, “I have no attachment, why should I
have to transform my body? If one attains complete and perfect wisdom, not
even the word ‘woman’ will exist in the land.”55 So we know that the topic of
sexual transformation was present in the discourse, but we also see frequent
responses negating its necessity.
Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sutra, Chapter 7

Among all the sutras that were translated into Chinese, the Vimalakīrti
Nirdeśa is one of the most popular.56 Although it was never formally adopted
as a central canonical text for any particular school (as was the Lotus Sutra
for Tiantai, the Huayan Sutra for Huayan, or the Pure Land Sutras for Pure
Land schools), the text was loved for its depiction of a lay teacher, its themes
of emptiness, nondualism, and the bodhisattva path, and its rhetorical simi-
larities to Daoist material like Zhuangzi—Vimalakīrti’s great roar of silence
could have come from Master Zhuang in disguise. The Vimalakīrti became a
key text for Chan practitioners, and chapter 7 has long been a standout piece.
As John McRae notes in the introduction to his translation of Vimalakīrti,
“Modern readers are very interested in the scene in which a goddess upstages
the stodgy śrāvaka or “Hinayana” monk Śāriputra.”57 He observes that mod-
ern (western) readers are especially interested in this scene for its implica-
tions on gender, but “for medieval Chinese (and, I suspect, other East Asian)
readers it was primarily a statement about emptiness.”58
The chapter begins with Mañjuśrī asking Vimalakīrti how a bodhisattva
should skillfully regard living beings. Vimalakīrti’s initial answer to the ques-
tion of how to view persons is in the form of a series of images that suggest
emptiness or nonself: bodhisattvas should skillfully view persons as if they
were magicians viewing something that was conjured, as if a wise person
Voices of Women 137
seeing the moon in the water, as if seeing a face in a mirror, as if a mirage on

a hot day, the echo of a shout, clouds in the sky, foam on waves, bubbles on
water, the core of a plantain tree . . . in other words, as things that are empty,
ultimately not real in and of themselves, on Buddhist logic.
Mañjuśrī’s response to this is to ask, if bodhisattvas adopt this perspec-
tive—persons as empty—how can they practice compassion, how can they
feel and act with care toward others?59 Vimalakīrti’s initial answer is that they
should explain the dharma, and that this constitutes true care for others. His
larger response suggests that, like personal identity, our compassion is also
selfless and based in equanimity. Bodhisattvas—and so us, with practice—
can respond to precisely what presents itself, without partiality and without
attachment to outcome. As contemporary Buddhist teacher Pat Enkyo O’Hara
says in commenting on this section of Vimalakīrti,
For the past fifty years, we've heard endless tips on how to avoid burnout in the
helping professions—when the one you're caring for doesn't get better, when the
cause you believe in has no movement, no change, when the prospects of the
people you're working so hard to help are not ameliorated. And this sutra says,
“Do not despair.” Look on all beings as impermanent, not fixed—and be awed
by that. You can be awed by the reality that everything is constantly changing,
that there is no fixed self! It's marvelous! We begin to have delight in the bril-
liant flowing nature of all of reality. . . . Be awed by that. Don't think you know
what the right outcome is for anything—and yet, when something is in front of
you, you roll up your sleeves and you do it.60
The next sections of the chapter proceed with Mañjuśrī’s questions and
Vimalakīrti’s answers, exploring this theme of how to practice compassion,
given that persons (and all phenomena) are constituted by nonself. In section
five, Mañjuśrī asks what needs to be eradicated, if one wants to save sentient
beings. Their discussion on this leads Mañjuśrī to question the basis for the
distinction between good and bad. Vimalakīrti responds that the roots of this
distinction are in the kinds of embodied creatures that we are,61 and the root of
the problem with our embodiment is in our consistent wanting. Our wants—
wanting things to change when they persist, persist when they change, or be
other than they truly are, fleeting and interconnected—are what need to go in
order to be able to respond effectively and skillfully to the needs of others.
Wants and desires need to be eradicated, and according to Vimalakīrti, the
fundamental origin of desire is in false distinctions, like idea that the distinc-
tion between “good” and “bad” has some ultimate referent. In order for these
“wants” to go, the false or illusory views that they rest on need to go first.
Section six takes up the question of the nature of false distinctions, the
basis of our problematic desires. Vimalakīrti’s response is that the basis of
138 Chapter 4
our problematic distinctions is confusion; we make problematic distinctions

or discriminations because we are confused about how things really are.
Our concepts or categories are confused because we attribute some sort of
permanence or reality to them, when in fact the root of our concepts or cat-
egories is nonabiding (buzhu 不住); Vimalakīrti explains that “[n]onabiding
is without any fundamental [basis]. Mañjuśrī, all dharmas are established on
the fundamental [basis] of nonabiding.”62 In other words, all things, events,
ideas, concepts, and categories are impermanent. All dharmas have their root
in constant processes of emptying and forming, coming to be and perishing,
transforming and persisting.
At this point in the chapter, there was a goddess who had been listening,
and she was so delighted by the discussion she made herself visible and scat-
tered flowers over the bodhisattvas and disciples in attendance. The flowers
fell off the bodhisattvas but stayed stuck on the disciples’ robes, and the
disciples tried frantically to get them off, using all their various powers. This
is where the goddess and Śāriputra’s discussion begins—the goddess asks
Śāriputra, the consistent fall-guy for non-Mahāyānists, why he is trying to
get rid of the flowers. He tells her that he does not want the flowers on him
because that goes against vinaya rules about ornamentation for monastics.
But the goddess responds,
Do not say that these flowers are contrary to the Dharma! Why? These flow-
ers are without discrimination. Sir, it is you who are generating discriminative
thoughts. If one who has left home in the Buddha-Dharma has discrimination,
this is contrary to the Dharma; if such a one is without discrimination, this is in
accord with the Dharma.
Look at the bodhisattvas, to whom the flowers do not adhere—this is because
they have eradicated all discriminative thoughts.63
The goddess and Śāriputra then continue a lively discussion, where she
repeatedly pokes fun at his stodgy and limited views, demonstrating her
significant insight into emptiness and nonduality.64 Śāriputra next asks her,
given all her wisdom and accomplishments, “Goddess, why don’t you change
out of your female body?”65 She responds, “For twelve years, I have sought
womanhood without ever obtaining it. How, then, could I change it? For
example, if a skilled magician creates an illusory woman through his magi-
cal powers, could you reasonably ask why she does not change her woman-
hood?”66 Recall here that the larger context of the chapter is about how to
view and engage compassionately with persons. When the goddess says that
she has been searching for “womanhood,” the essence or form of what it is to
be a woman, for twelve years without finding it, she is not making a claim in
particular about women—she is talking about nonself and emptiness.
Voices of Women 139
Śāriputra replied that the womanly illusion would not need to change
her gender, because illusions do not have a definite form.67 The goddess’s
response generalizes this from a discussion about gender to applying equally
well to all dharmas; no dharmas have definite or fixed characteristics. At this
point, in a moment of dramatic flair, the goddess changes Śāriputra’s body
to be like hers, and her own body to be like his, and asks him why he does
not go ahead and change his body back to male. Śāriputra, in the form of the
goddess, said, “I don’t know what you did to change me into this feminine
form.”68 The goddess said,
Śāriputra, if you were able to transform this woman’s body, then all women
would also be able to transform themselves. Just as Śāriputra is not “female” but
is manifesting a woman’s body, so are all women likewise. Although they mani-
fest women’s bodies, they are not “essentially female.” Therefore, the Buddha
has explained that all dharmas are neither male nor female.69
The goddess is not alone here in noting the Buddha’s tendency to say that
nothing is essentially “male” or “female.” O’Hara explains that in the teach-
ings of the Buddha, we consistently see the refrain that there is neither male
nor female: “What that means is that we are relationally interconnected,
that nothing is fixed. And by challenging gender, which everyone thinks is
the most essential thing we have, this sutra is saying that even gender is an
idea.”70
One way to make sense of this passage is to note that although it is not
about gender, per se, there is a reason that the authors chose this example.
The notion of body swapping and gender transformation like this is not only
attention-getting, but also speaks to how deeply sedimented our notions of
gender often are. While the larger themes of this passage concern false dis-
tinctions, in general—our foundational tendency to split the world up into
dualistic pairs, and often our privileging of one over the other, or what Susan
Bordo has called “hierarchical opposition”71—we can use any number of such
distinctions to show their ultimate emptiness and illusoriness—good and bad,
young and old, beautiful and ugly, tasty and disgusting. . . . However, some
distinctions are so deeply ingrained that we sometimes have a hard time even
noticing that they are the same sort of distinctions, subject to the same logic.
Sex and gender often function like this, and so are especially powerful as
examples for this sort of analysis.
This part of the chapter ends with the goddess withdrawing her power and
changing herself and Śāriputra back to their usual appearances. She then asks
Śāriputra, “Where is this ‘mark of womanhood’ now?” And he replies, “I see, it
neither arises nor doesn’t arise.” She again extends this insight more generally
to all dharmas, explaining that for all dharmas likewise “it’s not the case that
140 Chapter 4
there is arising and it’s not the case that there is no arising. This ‘not arising’ and
‘not-not arising’ is how the Buddha explained it.”72 In other words, our ways of
characterizing the world and our experiences of it are temporary but existing,
they are constructions we use and are immersed in, but they are impermanent
and unsubstantial. O’Hara comments, referencing back to Vimalakīrti’s open-
ing image of nonself as a plantain tree, which has no central core,
We are like the plantain. . . . When we truly realize that we are not contained
or limited by our idea of our body, our mind, by our condition, . . . then we are
free to live a life of joy and delight, . . . a life that flies in the air like a bird, that
bubbles in the ocean, that offers compassion where it is needed, without attach-
ment to the outcome, without partiality or fixity, without phoniness, but simple,
overflowing compassion and joy.73
The nondualistic perspective espoused by the goddess brings us back to the

opening questions of the distinction between good and bad, of how to skill-
fully respond to the needs of others, as the goddess herself did with respect to
Śāriputra. Wisdom and compassion require both the recognition of emptiness
and nonself, and the particularity of circumstance. The insight into nonduality
does not make Śāriputra or the goddess’s gender go away, but it does give
them space and flexibility with it and other distinctions so as to avoid attach-
ment, expectation, and reification.
Gender is a deeply sedimented dichotomy, so these texts, at least on some
readings, use gender to undermine all dualisms.74 The goddess here showed us
that there is a need for particularity, including gender, in order to act compas-
sionately. Getting caught up on gender prevents wisdom, but understanding
gender allows for wisdom, as what is conventional is still part of what is. Her
opening statement, about looking for what it means to be embodied in a partic-
ular way, shows us that the meaning of these categories is the living of them;
there is no fixed, final, or essential meaning separate from lived experience—
we are immersed in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Hae-ju Sunim
has argued that in the transition between the Lotus and the Vimalakīrti, we
see the move from the need for sexual transformation, as a response to insti-
tutionalized sexism, to the notion of a nondualistic enlightenment, and from
there to the Queen Śrīmālā we see a theory of enlightenment in a woman’s
body—these texts suggest not a single, unified canonical response to gender,
but a complex and multifaceted response that changes and develops over time.
Chinese Buddhist Women

The various challenges to women’s status and potential did not stop large
numbers of women from practicing or from being ordained. In China alone,
Voices of Women 141
for instance, in the centuries after the women’s order was established,
by the year 1021 CE, a Chinese census reported 61,240 nuns, and by the
1200s, Miriam Levering estimates that women were about 13 percent of the
ordained Buddhist population.75 While one of the results of the reality of
on-the-ground patriarchy is that there are fewer extant copies of women’s
writing, this does not mean that there are none, or that we do not have good
sources for women’s Buddhist work in a Chinese context. In the last two
to three decades, increasing scholarship has focused attention on Buddhist
women’s lives and writings. We know that lay women were major forces
in chanting groups, in sponsoring artwork and temple construction, and in
promulgating Buddhism. We know that ordained women were a significant
portion of the monastic community for much of China’s history, and that
women left home (became nuns) for a variety of different reasons, from
all different walks of life. There are records of women, ordained and lay,
who were senior students of famous masters (like Zongchi, Bodhidharma’s
dharma heir), women who were authorized teachers, and women who were
recognized as masters in their lineages. There are hundreds of preserved
stories and writings: of old women who reveal important limitations in
monks’ understanding of the dharma, nuns who persevere in the face of
enormous obstacles, wives and daughters who practice in the context of their
household, the female emperor Wu Zetian and her complex relationship
with Buddhism,76 and working women who serve as dharma exemplars, to
name a few. Many women whose stories or writings we have now were not
explicitly about their gender, but in what follows, I highlight a few historical
stories of Chinese Buddhist women, where the story in particular relates to
gender in some way. The stories I have chosen, featuring Laywoman Pang,
Miaoxin, Moshan Liaoran, and Miaozong, here show a spectrum of views on
gender, from the view that gender is irrelevant to practice to the view that it
is particularly important.
While there are many recorded stories of lay women in Chinese Buddhist
canons, often these women are unnamed or referenced simply as an “old
woman.” In a significant portion of these cases, the women seem to be in the
story largely to facilitate a realization on the part of a (named) male monk;
when the old woman demonstrates a flaw in his understanding of the dharma,
he is shamed by being shown up by her and seeks to find a real (Chan)
teacher. While these kinds of stories do feature wise women, they also do not
give us much to go on in terms of the women as agents. However, from about
the eighth century, we have records of the Pang family, a family of devout
lay Chan practitioners whose virtuosity in ordinary life was celebrated. In
addition to Layman Pang, Laywoman Pang (his wife) and his daughter Ling
Zhao are also held up as exemplars of Buddhist practice in the midst of daily
life. The following story illustrates this well:
142 Chapter 4
One day Laywoman Pang went into the Deer Gate Temple and made an offering
of food. The temple priest asked her on whose behalf she made the offering, so
that he could dedicate its merit. She took her comb and stuck it in the back of
her hair. “Dedication of merit is complete,” she said, and walked out.77
In this short story, we see Laywoman Pang as a mature woman—her hair so

long it needs a comb to hold it up—who engages in the very ordinary action
of leaving food at a local temple. Amy Hollowell reflects on this story:
So here comes Laywoman Pang, stopping by a temple to offer food. The priest
inquires about the donation so that he can make the traditional dedication of
merit . . . Merit? Dedication? Laywoman Pang, it seems, doesn’t share the
priest’s views on the matter. Her entire life is an offering, and she therefore
replies spontaneously, sharing with the priest her no-view: she doesn’t dis-
criminate when responding to the needs of all beings. Her gift to the temple is
truly nothing special and she seeks not even a wink of recognition in return. Her
action reflects the experience that she is not separate from others and that, as
Gertrude Stein might have said, a comb is a comb is a comb, as perfectly sacred
as every single being and thing.78
Laywoman Pang’s performative declaration of merit—placing her hair up

with her comb—is at once deeply gendered and profoundly ordinary. She
has not shaved her head and cut her hair short in pursuit of a less-gendered
role, but has chosen to practice in the context of family life, and for her that
includes the rituals and routines of feminine upkeep. We can imagine the
smooth and practiced motion she used to pin her hair in place as the motion
of a woman who has done this every day for her entire adult life. It is both
gendered, as a woman’s motion in a woman’s embodied context, and entirely
normal, just put your hair up out of the way and get on with your day. In
performing this action as her dedication of merit, rather than the traditional
exposition of her name, rank, and so on, she is performing a skillful bodhisat-
tvic action—just respond as you are able to the needs in front of you, without
attachment to recognition or result.
Although we know that there were many accomplished lay women, we
do have better extant records of accomplished women who ordained, even if
late in life. One of the most famous ordained women from the ninth century
in China is Moshan Liaoran 末山了然, a Chan master who was the only
woman memorialized in the Transmission of the Lamp. In one of the more
famous stories about her, Master Linji Yixuan, known now as the founder of
the Linji/Rinzai school of Chan/Zen, sent his student Guanxi Zhixian to study
with Master Moshan Liaoran. Beata Grant, noted scholar of Chinese Buddhist
women, tells the story:
Voices of Women 143
Guanxi Zhixian asks Moshan, whose name means “Summit Mountain,” what
this summit is like, to which Moshan Liaoran replies that it “does not reveal
its peak.” The monk persists, asking who the owner of Summit Mountain is, to
which Moshan Liaoran replies, “Its appearance is not male or female.” At this
point, Guanxi Zhixian changes direction and asks, “Why doesn’t it transform
itself?” Moshan Liaoran’s response is immediate: “It is not a god and it is not
ghost, What should it transform itself into?” Her reply echoes that of the name-
less nun who was a discipline of Linji Yixuan’s and, when challenged by the
monk Tankong to manifest at least one transformation retorted, “I am not a wild
fox spirit. What should I change into?” The point, of course, was that “male-
ness” and “femaleness” are not essential attributes—indeed Buddhism denies
any such unchanging essence or “own-being.” In the end, Guanxi Zhixian has
the grace and wisdom to recognize Moshan Liaoran’s superior wisdom and even
goes so far as to work as her gardener for three years.79
This story shows us a rude student being schooled by a confident master.

The student is holding on to rigid ideas about gender that are influencing
his thoughts and actions, and Moshan cuts right to the heart of the matter,
calling him out on his bias against her by noting that the mountain (her) is
neither male nor female. And, with the taunting phrase asking why it/she
doesn’t transform—harkening here to the five hindrances and the need for
women to transform into men in order to be awakened—Moshan cleverly
alludes to another woman’s response to a similar issue. A wild fox spirit or a
ghost may be stuck in that form as a result of some problematic action, and
need to do something to return to human form.80 Perhaps the wild fox spirit
has a need of transformation, but Moshan—Chan Master—does not. If she
is beyond the concerns of male and female, then what transformation would
be relevant? Her story is referenced by many later thinkers as “evidence of
women’s religious potential. . . . Indeed, one of the highest compliments that
most male Chan masters could think to pay a Chan nun was either to refer to
her as a reincarnation of Moshan or, at the very least, to assure her that she
was worthy of carrying on the Moshan lineage.”81
In another story, ninth-century nun Miaoxin 妙心 also acts as a teacher,
and provides her own insightful commentary on one of Huineng’s famous
cases:
Seventeen monks, traveling in search of enlightenment, came to visit the famous

teacher Master Yanshan Huiji. Before climbing the mountain to see him, they
stayed the night in the temple guesthouse, and that evening they discussed the Sixth
Patriarch’s kōan: “What moves is not the wind nor the banner, but your mind.”
The nun Miaoxin was director of the guesthouse, a responsibility that had
been given to her by Yangshan. She overheard the monks’ conversation and said
144 Chapter 4
to her attendants, “What a shame that these seventeen blind donkeys have worn
out so many pairs of straw sandals on their pilgrimages without even getting
close to the Dharma.”
One of the nuns told the monks what Miaoxin had said. The monks were
humbled. They were sincere in their search for enlightenment, and so they did
not dismiss Miaoxin’s criticism as the impertinence of a woman. Instead, they
bowed respectfully and approached her.
Miaoxin said, “What moves us is not the wind, nor the banner, nor your
mind.”
All seventeen monks immediately awakened. They became Miaoxin’s disci-
ples and returned home without ever climbing the mountain to meet Yangshan.82
In this story, Miaoxin, a senior nun with significant authority over not only
a busy facility but other monastics as well, provides a teaching moment for
not only the seventeen monks who had journeyed to meet Yangshan, but
also for future readers, in her commentary on the kōan. What Miaoxin had
to teach them was, at least in part, genuine personal engagement. The monks
were studying Huineng’s kōan as a museum relic, not as a live expression of
wisdom. Anyone who knows enough about Huineng and Zen can make sense
of Huineng’s kōan, in an academic setting, but by challenging them with her
own re-formulation of the kōan, Miaoxin challenges them (and us) to take
it beyond making sense to making it real. She does not need to address her
gender, because her teaching speaks for itself, given students willing to listen.
This version of the story comes to us from Japanese Zen Master Dōgen
(1200–1253), who collected it and other accounts of women masters in the
“Raihai Tokuzui” chapter of his Shobogenzo. As Levering points out,
The sermon [Raihai Tokuzui] begins with the theme of how to choose a teacher
and how to obtain his or her most profound teaching, namely, awakening. But it
becomes in large part a sermon on how awakened nuns and laywomen, though
lower in status in the sangha than monks, should be honored by monks and
laymen and are worthy of being their teachers. Dōgen now proclaims awak-
ened women to be fully equal to awakened men as teachers for those not yet
awakened.83
In addition to preserving many Tang and Song Dynasty stories about women,
Dōgen’s chapter shows the importance of paying attention to “unorthodox”
teachers—like women—and we can see Dōgen’s nudging in that direction
with the in-line comment after the monks learned that Miaoxin had called
them blind donkeys: “The monks were humbled. They were sincere in their
search for enlightenment, and so they did not dismiss Miaoxin’s criticism as
the impertinence of a woman.” In other words, Dōgen is telling his readers,
Voices of Women 145
in serious Chinese Buddhist practice, sincere students can be humble in the

face of criticism (even from women) and become disciples of anyone who
has something real to teach them (even women), because gender is ultimately
irrelevant.
One of my favorite stories of Chinese women teachers concerns Miaozong
妙總 (1095–1170, lay dharma name Wuzhuo 無著), a Song Dynasty figure
who established a significant legacy in terms of women’s practice. Nuns from
later dynasties often understood themselves as being in her lineage, even if
they were not direct dharma heirs, and the story of her encounter with Wanan
is a kōan in its own right.84 As Schireson explains, “In her most famous teach-
ing encounter she vindicates the vagina: she extracts it from the Buddha’s
‘blazing hot charcoal pit’ and ‘mouth of a [venomous] black snake’ and
transforms it into the passageway and birthplace of all Buddhas and practi-
tioners.”85 These two images of the vagina—as a blazing hot charcoal pit and
the mouth of a venomous black snake—as discussed earlier were common
Buddhist tropes about women’s dangerous sexuality and unsuitability for
Buddhist practice.
Miaozong had to deal with this kind of view directly. She was originally
from a wealthy and politically connected family, and married a successful
government official. Miaozong had an interest in Chan from an early age,
and this was shared by her husband as well. They attended dharma talks
together, which is how Miaozong met Dahui, the famous Zen Master who
would become her teacher. Likely after she was widowed, Miaozong went
to stay with Dahui in the guest quarters of his monastery. This was both a
normal arrangement—a lay pupil might spend significant time with an abbot
in this manner—and one that violated basic monastic rules about women,
as women were not permitted to stay in the monastery past dark. Of course,
there were exceptions to this, as Dahui’s teacher Yuanwu famously had both
women students and multiple affairs. The senior monk at the time, Wanan,
was uncomfortable with her staying at the monastery—as we might expect
someone who had spent their entire life in a strict setting to be. After con-
fronting Dahui about it (perhaps he was concerned Dahui was following in
Yuanwu’s footsteps?), Dahui told him to go and talk directly with Miaozong.
She agreed to an interview, but asked if it would be a “dharma interview”
or a “worldly interview.” The difference is one of expectation—in a dharma
interview, the participants are vulnerable before each other in a way not
possible in a worldly context of social expectations: “A Dharma interview’s
sole purpose is to make clear the whole truth, in this very moment, through
the most direct, pertinent, and simple expression possible. Ultimate truth and
this particular moment appear in one seamless response.”86 Wanan wanted
a dharma interview, and so he had all of his attendants (who were appropri-
ate when visiting a woman) depart. We have the exchange between the two
146 Chapter 4
because Wanan recorded it—suggesting perhaps that this was a genuine and
significant teaching moment for him:
When he came past the curtain he saw Wuzhuo [Miaozong] lying face upward
on the bed without anything on at all. He pointed at her [genitals] and said,
“What kind of place is this?”
Wuzhuo replied: “All of the buddhas of the three worlds and the six patri-
archs and all the great monks everywhere—they all came out from within
this.”87
Miaozong here directly confronts Wanan’s issue with her at the monastery—
her womanly body. In the spirit of a dharma interview, she does not need to
discourse on the subject, she can simply present it, in all its immediacy, and
wait for a response. We can imagine Wanan, who if he ordained as a child
(seven to ten years old) as was common at the time, had probably never seen
a naked woman other than his mother, also getting right to the point. Asking
“what kind of place is this” of her genitalia brings with it all of his (personal
and/or communal) assumptions, his conceptual discriminations, and his deep-
seated attachments and aversions. He seems to be saying that this is not the
sort of place that should be in the monastery, implicitly invoking a whole
series of dualisms that are problematic from a Chan doctrinal perspective:
good/bad, pure/impure, sacred/profane, worthy/not, mine/other, appropriate/
sexual, and so on. Miaozong’s response is to try to shift his perspective on
her body, women’s bodies, and the dharma, all in one fell swoop. This place
that he is having such trouble with, that he has been taught is a bad place,
a dangerous place, a non-dharmic place—is the birthplace of all the bud-
dhas, all the monks, all the nuns, all the people who preach and listen to the
dharma. This response has almost a Daoist feel to it, reversing and undermin-
ing an implied hierarchy of value between dualistic poles. Here, Miaozong’s
gendered body becomes the site for a major teaching moment, disrupting
both conceptual categories and the poisons of attachment and aversion. This
teaching moment is possible only because Miaozong is fully present in her
gendered body, with all that means for her context at the time. She is not say-
ing, “don’t think of me as a woman,” she’s saying, “yes, here I am, and it’s
your problem, not mine.”
These women—Laywoman Pang, Miaoxin, Miaozong, and Moshan
Liaoran, and many others—demonstrated through their practice their under-
standing of and commitment to Buddhist ideals, and set the stage for future
generations of Buddhists. They did not need to all agree or have a univocal
perspective on gender and Buddhism in order to serve as teachers for those
around them and for all of us. There are many, many more canonical stories
and writings of/by women that I have not mentioned here, and I encourage
Voices of Women 147
unfamiliar readers to consult some of the excellent sources on Buddhist

women now available.88
VOICES FROM TODAY
As I worked on this project, knowing that I was going to emphasis Guanyin’s

gender in the translation prompted broadly feminist concerns for the way that
this relates to real women’s lives and experiences. I wanted to know if ordinary
practitioners would care whether or not the speaker of the text was a woman, how
they thought of Guanyin, what connections they made between their genders and
their practices, and I wanted to present their words to readers, so you could hear
from them directly and get a better sense of the multiplicity in contemporary
women’s practices. In 2018–2019, I conducted non-generalizable ethnographic
field interviews with Buddhist practitioners from the United States, China, and
Taiwan. All the interviewees cited here identified either as women or non-binary.
They ranged in age from late twenties to seventy-five, and included white,
Taiwanese-American, Japanese-American, Taiwanese, and Chinese practitioners
of Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Taiwanese Pure Land, and Jodo Shinshu (True Pure
Land) Buddhisms. Some were ordained, most were not. Most are not famous,
do not write or publish or go on speaking tours . . . they are practitioners that
otherwise do not have much of a voice in scholarship on Buddhism, and with the
exception of Venerable Hsiendu, who is the head of her order and a major public
figure, all names have been changed to protect participants’ privacy.
Shawna, mid-sixties white American ordained Zen practitioner
Eleanor, mid-sixties Taiwanese-American Pure Land practitioner
Katie, mid-seventies white American ordained Zen practitioner
Julia, mid-thirties white American Tibetan practitioner
Mei, mid-thirties Chinese Zen practitioner
Carrie, late-twenties Taiwanese-American Pure Land practitioner
Ting-Wei, mid-forties Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan practitioner
Shu-chen, mid-forties Taiwanese Chan practitioner
Diana, mid-seventies white American Zen and Tibetan practitioner
Danielle, mid-sixties Japanese-American Jodo Shinshu practitioner
Lucy, mid-sixties Japanese-American Jodo Shinshu practitioner
Lisa, mid-sixties Japanese-American Jodo Shinshu practitioner
Camelia, late-sixties white Catholic and Zen practitioner
Venerable Hsiendu, PhD, President of the Taiwanese Huayen Lotus Society
(華嚴蓮社)89
In the context of our conversations, which ranged over many different topics
not restricted to gender, Guanyin, or the Heart Sutra, participants had varied,
148 Chapter 4
complex, and sometimes contradictory responses to my questions. In this

section, I share their words on the themes of gender, Guanyin, and the Heart
Sutra, with as little of my own intervention as possible.90
Gender
When I asked participants the question, “Is your gender or body important
to your practice?” the most common initial response was . . . confusion.
Participants wanted me to state exactly what I meant or was looking for, and
I wanted to be vague so as to not color their responses. This meant that I got a
lot of answers that differ dramatically from one another, both in their content
and in what they understood the question to be asking. For instance, Katie,
one of the ordained women I spoke with, said:
I don’t . . . I wouldn’t say important or not important. What I feel is that . . . a

lot of people are surprised that I’m a woman and a Zen Buddhist priest. Because
when they hear the word priest they think of a man. You know, and then they’re
happy. They go, “Wow, really? That’s something, maybe I could do something
like that.”91
Diana, the oldest participant, who has practiced everything from Zen to
Tibetan Buddhism and more, for fifty-plus years, had this to say: “Well I’ll
tell you something. As a child I remember thinking to myself: I’m neutered.
I’m not male or female. I remember that. I prefer to identify with males and
the way they thought.”92 Unlike another participant (who preferred to remain
anonymous) who noted similar feelings and indicated that, if they had been
born in a different time they felt that they would have wanted to transition
genders, Diana identified her frustration with gender in the context of grow-
ing up in a very male-dominated world. Neither Diana nor Katie felt strongly,
though, that it impacted their practice(s).
Julia, an American practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, responded that gen-
der was especially important to her:
At the very deepest heart level I think a lot of what I have had to work through as a
practitioner has been societal trauma rooted in. . . . I could say personal trauma
in how gender functions in our society. And I wouldn’t have named that at the
beginning, but as I look at my own sort of biography as a practitioner and the
ways that I’ve grown so much of it has coincided with really confronting some
deeply painful habits that seem to, in my perception, to intersect with the inher-
ited trauma of being a woman in a patriarchy.93
Here, Julia identifies not only her experience as a gendered person as relevant
to her practice, but as a core component of the kinds of things her practice has
Voices of Women 149
addressed. She also made the connection between her own life and the way
that gender as she has experienced it is a function of our hierarchical society,
and noted that that was relevant to her practice as well.
Eleanor, a Taiwanese-American practitioner of Pure Land Buddhism, had
this to say about gender: “I think it’s an advantage to be a woman. I think.
Because . . . most of our group is women. And the guys, I don’t know, it’s
hard for them to focus. . . . I may be speaking too much for others but I’m
just saying I’m glad I’m a female and I can more focus on my chanting [and]
study.”94 She continued,
Yeah, I don’t think much about it. . . . But . . . I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother,
I’m a wife, businesswoman . . . I feel like women in general . . . I wouldn’t
use the word but it’s kind of like suffer more, work a lot harder than men. I
know men have a job but people forget, women they have children or they have
grandkids [and] it’s pretty much on the woman’s shoulder. So, when you suf-
fer alone . . . usually you [are] kind [of] looking to get some help, mentally or
[whatever]. So, I think being a woman, probably, still I think is a benefit to get
enlightened.95
Contrary to the more traditional account of the five hindrances and the addi-
tional burdens women face in their practice, here we have a contemporary
practitioner stating that being a woman—precisely because of the many chal-
lenges women face—may be a benefit for achieving enlightenment.
Not everyone had positive things to say about being a woman and practic-
ing, however. Mei, a Chinese woman who began practicing Zen Buddhism as
a graduate student in the United States, said: “being a woman, [it is] impor-
tant; during my period I can’t sit as much.”96 Being a woman, in a woman’s
body, means certain things that are rarely talked openly about in the context
of Buddhist practice—like the discomfort of menstruation, and taboos against
women doing a variety of things while menstruating (including in some cases
entering a temple, doing certain ritual activities, or sitting in meditation).
Mei’s response about not sitting while on her period made me think
about the Blood Bowl Sutra, mentioned earlier in the context of literature
about women’s bodies. Claire Gesshin Greenwood, for example, reads the
“the Blood Bowl Hell [as] a metaphor for those FUCKING FIVE DAYS A
MONTH WHEN EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.”97 She describes a kind
of Zen mindfulness perspective on this, noting that like all experiences,
menstruation (or hormonal fluctional in general) is an experience that can be
a site for awakening, or at least attending to the myriad ways in which our
embodied experiences and our consciousness can benefit from a little zazen.
In thinking about menstruation and practice, then, we might note that there
are some kinds of suffering where gender does seem to matter—perhaps
150 Chapter 4
including menstruation, miscarriage, childbearing, and menopause for those

gendered as women, in addition to the kinds of gendered suffering that result
from social/cultural expectations, institutions, and injustices. To be clear, this
is not to say that all and only those with ovaries, uteruses, and vaginas expe-
rience gendered suffering. Noting the gendered nature of some suffering is
not just about women, or men, or those that reject this binary categorization,
but about the way in which living in a world that seems to take gender as a
fundamental category of existence is implicated in and intertwined with the
particularities of both suffering and liberation.
Mei also commented on some of the differences between the United States
and East Asia in terms of how women are treated in Buddhist practice in her
experience. She said,
this is why I really admire western culture. You see not only female practitio-
ners but you see female teachers a lot. For example, in one temple, it’s not only
just male teachers, sometimes, actually, we have lots of women teachers in
Diamond Sangha around the world, more women teachers than male teachers,
which is really good to see, actually, that’s the democracy in the U.S.98
Women’s authority (and especially their authority to teach) in different

Buddhist communities can and does vary dramatically. One thing is clear,
though—according to the PEW Research Center, most Buddhists are women.
In East Asia, in addition to ordained women (nuns), many lay women run
reading or chanting groups, vegetarian restaurants, or serve as the main force
behind religious practice for their families.
In my conversations with several older women who are very involved in
a Japanese True Pure Land temple in Hawai‘i, the women reflected on the
gendered difference of authority and control in the organization. Lisa, for
instance, noted that “the Hongwanji tradition, is very male oriented, I think.
You think of the head temples, the chief minister, it’s a very male-dominated
situation. . . . With growing up as a kid that’s all I saw, male ministers.”99 She
continued, explaining that:
You know, to be quite honest, in terms of the women, my mom and the women
were in the kitchen, cooking the foods for the congregation, you know, the
“church lady” idea, it’s like that in many religions, church ladies, I talk to my
friends at work and say this is made by the old temple lady . . . I’m an old
church/temple lady myself.100
Lisa’s sense of the women’s community and women’s roles in her temple was
echoed by Danielle and Lucy. Danielle said although the temple’s leadership is
mostly men, that “more chances than not there are women in church. There are
Voices of Women 151
men too, but, just you kind of look around there’s more women. . . . They’re
important.”101 Lucy spoke of the Buddhist Women’s Group, a world-wide
charitable organization in this tradition. They spoke proudly about a number
of programs sponsored by the Women’s Group, including local charitable
causes connected to homelessness and the effort to sponsor a national speaker
at a large conference. Although these women were conscious of the lack of
women in certain kinds of leadership roles in the temple, they were also very
aware of the ways in which women play strong leadership roles outside of the
priesthood and formal temple head, and that women are the primary group
that can be counted on to attend services regularly.
My conversation with Mei moved on from menstruation to talk of her
mother. Mei described having a sensitivity for meditative practice that she
connected with being a woman, in part because of her experience teaching
her mother to meditate:
I think women, for example, my mother is very good at qigong, so meditation

for her is just easy and natural, I told her to do it then she just started . . . just
doing it every day, so it’s easy for her. I don’t know if it’s easy and natural espe-
cially for women. But I think because it is good for everyone . . . I am able to
see the qi in my body, and that feels very good, maybe you will identify . . . that
sensitivity with women, maybe.102
Almost all of my interviewees commented on their mothers in the course of

our conversations. For many, their mother or grandmother was a major source
of their early exposure to Buddhism, and a force for the family’s continued
practice, while for others their own role as mother, aunt, sister, or grand-
mother was also important.
Shawna mentioned, in the context of discussing how difficult it had been to
find time to sit zazen twice a day as a mother with small children,
But my family has brought me tea during my practice. They have always
respected my quiet time. Sometimes, and this is for the ladies. When ladies take
long baths, that’s a meditation process. They don’t realize it. And I keep telling
them . . . if you take a long bath and you think nothing and you’ve got your
candles lit and you got your little, sometimes a little glass of wine, or flowers on
the water, you’d be surprised you actually go into a meditative state, and they
don’t think about it.103
Shawna also noted that although she has been practicing silent meditation
since she was sixteen and was a founding member of her local Zen group,
she was not initially supported in her quest for ordination. She related that her
teacher (a white American who had been trained in Japan),
152 Chapter 4
never believed in women becoming monks, never once. I was encouraged by

two other women to ask him, they were monks. And [an American monk and
friend], He went to [Sensei] and said, “you should make Shawna a monk” and
[Sensei] said “no.” After the ladies encouraged me to ask him I did. In a not so
nice way [I] got turned down. But it didn’t stop me from practicing. Wearing
the robes doesn’t change the practice.104
In Shawna’s lineage, women are ordained as monks, not nuns, and she has
been a key figure in her organization since her ordination.
Master Hsiendu (b. 1960), current President of the Taiwanese Huayan
Lotus Society, in speaking of her own personal expectations, said her goal is
engaging in this-worldly bodhisattva practice—becoming a bodhisattva here
and now, and that this is not a gendered undertaking from her perspective. In
commenting on gender and sexuality, she stated that “[g]ender and sexuality
are conditions of embodiment, of growing up and maturing, and they change
with one’s environment.”105 She explained that this was especially true for
women over fifty-five years of age, due to the changes in hormones—gender
and sexuality for her did not matter as much as she aged. This perhaps echoes
Greenwood’s comments on the Blood Bowl Sutra—hormones can be signifi-
cant in our gendered and embodied suffering, and changes there can signifi-
cantly change our relationship to our gender. Ven. Hsiendu commented that
“after many years of continuous study and practice, the physical dominance
of the body is less and less.”106 As the body becomes less dominant, there is
more energy for mental and spiritual pursuits. She also expressed her belief
that living a life committed to Buddhist ideas and practices—in particular,
seeing the suffering and the needs of others in the world and responding
with bodhisattva practice—can activate a sense of purpose. In doing so, the
“small person” who is tied to their own ego and concerns “will fade, and the
public mind will naturally show up. You can get beyond the constraints of
gender.”107 This is learning to be a bodhisattva in her tradition, seeing the
world as big and “letting go of the limitations of the self, in order to find
one’s role in and perspective on the vastness of the universe.”108 In other
words, for monastics dedicated to the bodhisattva path, gender is just not that
important, and the way it impedes one in lay life can be dealt with in monas-
tic life. Monastics have already rejected a variety of social norms related to
gender—they shave their heads and (generally) do not wear any ornamenta-
tion that might signal gender, they wear loose robes that are not different
for different genders, they are addressed according to their Buddhist name
and role, rather than their secular name/role (generally), they are celibate (in
this context) and have left their family structures . . . doing all of this allows
them to occupy a space outside of or between social expectations related to
gender roles. And for Ven. Hsiendu, this liminal space is important for the
Voices of Women 153
bodhisattva project of responding to the needs of others without foreground-

ing one’s own.
She also commented on the Chinese Buddhist notion of the da zhangfu
大丈夫, the “great man,” an important ideal for Chinese and Taiwanese
monastics. The ideal of the da zhangfu is a controversial one in contemporary
times, especially in Taiwan. While the term might literally be read as “a great,
bold, heroic, virtuous ‘man’ or ‘person,’ ” and there are examples of “da
zhangfu” who are both men and women, it is most commonly read as refer-
ring exclusively to men. As Ching-ning Wang (Chang-shen Shih) explains,
although Chan emphasizes the Mahāyāna doctrine of egalitarianism and sudden

enlightenment within which all distinguishing marks—especially binary codes
such as male versus female, rich versus poor, old versus young—are dissolved
and regarded as nonexistent, the use of da zhangfu in the Chan literature is never
gender neutral but is always androcentric and patriarchal.109
While there may be some examples of historical figures who directly challenge
the notion that da zhangfu is always androcentric and patriarchal—perhaps
Dōgen is an example110—there is some challenge involved in reading this ideal
as not about men (“zhangfu” is a common term for “husband” in Mandarin).
Wang takes up this challenge on two fronts, one involving feminist philoso-
phy of language and the other involving ethnographic field work. She argues
first that we can read da zhangfu as “a generic term that includes both men
and women,” but we tend to read it as referring exclusively to men because
of larger biases in Buddhist and Asian traditions, and because in Chinese, as
in some other languages, the neutral or generic term tends to be more closely
associated with maleness than with femaleness.111 Nothing about the term or
idea, however, is necessarily or inherently exclusive. Second, from her field-
work she concludes that for “Chan Buddhist nuns in contemporary Taiwan,
the term da zhangfu refers neither to man nor woman but to a state beyond
dualistic form—that is, to the pedagogy of prajña (wisdom) in Chan, to the
absence of a doer, and to the mind freed from particularization.”112 Although
coming from a different tradition, it is this latter interpretation that resonates
well with Ven. Hsiendu’s comments about the ideal of the da zhangfu—that
this is an ideal where gender or embodiment is not particularly relevant.
My participants did not have a single, univocal perspective on gender and
Buddhist practice—their views and comments on gender were spread across
a range of concerns, as one would expect with such a disparate set of women.
Guanyin
I asked each participant about Guanyin—who is this figure? Does the figure
have a gender? Does that matter to you? Is this figure important in your
154 Chapter 4
practice? And, predictably, I got a wonderful variety of answers, from miracle

stories about Guanyin’s intervention in their lives to several practitioners for
whom Guanyin is not important to one who did not know who Guanyin was.
I was curious what the responses about Guanyin would be for my partici-
pants whose traditions do not tend to consider Guanyin particularly central
to their activities. As we might expect, Ven. Hsiendu gave the most canoni-
cal answer to my question: “Guanyin has thirty-two transformation response
bodies (huaying shen 化應身). There are also thirty-three different versions
of Guanyin that come from the different images in various sutras, and are
in response to the different needs of sentient beings.”113 In the Huayan tra-
dition, although Guanyin is one of the bodhisattvas in the Huayan Sutra,
she is not a major object of devotional activity. Other bodhisattvas (such as
Samantabhadra) tend to be more central in Huayan devotional activity.
For Katie and Lucy, Guanyin is not a major figure in their practice.
According to Katie, Guanyin is not really part of her practice, but “I do love
to have pictures around, different renditions of her and different ways and
little statues and stuff like that. I do appreciate that and I think that for me
she’s more of an expression of all there is. Not male or female but just all that
exists.”114 For Lucy, Kannon (Guanyin) is a female goddess that she knows
a little about, but who is not particularly important to her practice. She said,
“It’s fascinating to go to different temples, they have different central figures
at the altar, like Jodoshu, Kannon is a big thing there. It doesn’t bother me
who is in that central altar, just interesting to see how the altars differ.”115
While Kannon is not part of her formal Pure Land practice, she keeps a home
altar with a statue of Kannon she inherited from her grandmother.
For Camelia, who identifies as both Catholic and as a recent Zen practitio-
ner, “I think she [Guanyin] would be equated, if you had to translate it, with
Mary in the Catholic church.”116 When asked to say more about that connec-
tion she said, “Well that’s kind of how I felt about it. She’s a strong female
figure, which I really appreciated that about her . . . I care about that because
I care about Mary in the Catholic church. To see a female presented there is
important for me.”117 But Guanyin does not feature prominently in her prac-
tice, which is mostly centered on zazen.
For other participants, Guanyin is a crucial figure in both their formal
practice and in their daily lives. Shawna, for instance, said that she equates
Kannon (Guanyin) “to a guardian angel,” and notes that she often chants
the Kanzeon, otherwise known as the Ten Phrase Life Prolonging Kannon
Sutra.118 In discussing her husband’s difficult health and long hospitalization,
she said:
Believe it or not chanting the Kanzeon can actually bring me out of the panic
state with him. I can sit when he’s in the hospital, I can sit with him and do the
Voices of Women 155
whole service in my head start to finish and when I get to the Kanzeon, you’ll
notice today I’ve kind of rocked the last one. I think that it should be rocked all
the time. I think that that should be done in an uplifting beat because when you
look to Kanzeon you’re looking for comfort and wisdom. And to me you rock
that thing and her spirit will come out. And there’s a whole change in the zendo
if you haven’t noticed when that chant comes up there’s a complete energy
change, she has an energy if you will just open yourself up and let her compas-
sionate and wisdom side enter in, your life is much more comfortable. However,
not every. . . . None of us really do it all the time. We usually look to her when
we’re in dire straits. And that’s the wrong thing, we should be looking to her all
the time. She’s a very important part.119
When I asked Shawna if she considered Kannon female, since she had been
referring to Kannon as “her,” she said, “Mhmm. They can’t all be men.”120
For Eleanor, Guanyin always seemed more like a woman because of the
statues she saw of Guanyin growing up in Taiwan: “Guanyin is a male-
female. I think it’s always in my mind it’s a female. Just the image we have
since we were little kids. Parents would always mention her name and we
just always thought that was a female. But then Tibetans say that’s a male.
But to me I don’t think that really matters.”121 For her, it is Guanyin’s ability
to hear her prayer and come to her aid that really matters. She told me about
a time roughly twenty years earlier, when her father was so ill he had to be
taken to the emergency room, and the doctors told her he was unlikely to live
for much longer.
I remember in the hospital I find a room and I just [get] on my knee [and] I
start to pray to Guanyin . . . I read Heart Sutra. I close the door and I don’t
remember how long, I don’t think it was very long . . . I read and I sweat, like
pouring, and then I come out [and] I couldn’t believe it the doctor says, “He is
doing way better. He sweat so much I think we might have some good help. We
might save him now.” That was absolutely, probably the most miracle moment
I ever experienced from somebody tell you that and then because when that time
I pray I say just give him couple more years at least I understand he is in bad
shape but you know really two years later he passed away . . . I always know
Guanyin actually can hear you. I try not to tell a lot of people because they go
and say, “ahh.” But it is true, it happened to me. It’s incredible. So, when I’m in
trouble still I ask Guanyin to help me.122
For Eleanor, Guanyin is not just a symbol of compassion, but is a very real
figure who can and does directly intervene in the lives of her devotees.
Like Eleaner, for Mei, growing up in China, her understanding of
Guanyin’s gender was influenced by material culture. When asked about
156 Chapter 4
Guanyin’s gender, she said, “we all know that Guanyin bodhisattva was a
male, originally, and many forms of Buddhism it is still so. But in Chinese
culture it became female. I do always view Guanyin as female, that’s impor-
tant for me.”123 For Shu-chen who lives in Taiwan, “Guanyin appears female
to me because most Guanyin images are female.”124 However, as a practi-
tioner of Zen focused on the Medicine Buddha, she was clear to tell me that
“Guanyin is not relevant to my practice.”125
For Carrie, a second generation Taiwanese-American practitioner, Guanyin
has been a part of her life since she was born.
I’m going to go back to my childhood for a second because that’s when I

remembered having the closest connection to Guanyin. My mom said that when
she had me and when she was bowing to her own Guanyin on her alter in her
home in Taiwan there was a drawing of Guanyin quite like the one in front on
the right. It was 2-D and she bowed and she remembered that the Guanyin’s
mouth formed an “O” shape and in her mind she just knew that Guanyin is tell-
ing her to breathe that way during her labor when she is going to have me. It just
struck me and it was very impressionable to me when she told me that story. Of
how she just felt so supported by Guanyin and feeling that kind of compassion
coming from her . . So [during her mom’s labor] they couldn’t detect a heartbeat
for a while and she started chanting Guanyin’s name and after a while. . . . It
was okay and they found my heartbeat again and whenever she felt despair or
in some kind of difficulty, she would always chant her name and I’ve learned
from her when I was very small to also do the same.126
When I asked Carrie to tell me more about her relationship with Guanyin, she
said, “I believe in Guanyin’s compassion and my compassion that there’s a
connection there when I chant her name. So right now whenever I’m also in
difficulty, I also chant her name. Not so much not in prayer but in wanting to
feel that steadfastness and belief in my own strength.”127 Although Carrie is
not a Chan/Zen practitioner, this does very much reflect early Chan commen-
taries on Guanyin as the experience of genuine compassion, but her account
of Guanyin still contained a dimension of Guanyin as an other. I asked what
she did when she chanted Guanyin’s name, and she said,
I think about the imagery from the Guanyin Sutra. Specifically, the Pumen Pin.
And in that Sutra, it talks about how she has a thousand hands, a thousand eyes,
and she would come to you no matter what. Just from like one chant of her
name. Wherever you are. Even if you’re in the darkest place she will be there.
I think about that and how she’s vowed to save and help all living beings. No
matter their status [or] situation, no matter how evil they’ve been. Sometimes I
feel like I’m not worth helping but when I think about how she helps everyone
Voices of Women 157
without discrimination I feel comforted like I don’t feel ashamed of asking for
help. Yeah, when I think about those images from the Sutra it . . . I feel her
compassion and that helps me in that particular difficult situation.128
Many of my Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American participants noted that they

often chanted Pumen Pin, chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra. For Ting-wei, whose
sister is a nun and who has a very serious practice with Fo Guang Shan
centered on her veganism, “If I chant it will be Pumen Pin.”129 Another of
my participants explained that chanting Pumen Pin had a major impact on a
serious health issue they were having, and that chanting had been the only
remedy to really provide any relief.
When asked about Guanyin’s gender, Carrie responded, “I do think it’s a
feminine feeling because her figure is represented as a woman. I think of her
as a very caring mother. I think it’s because of how she’s represented, although
she technically does not have a gender. But I think ultimately it’s kind of a
feeling of being cared for.”130 Carrie’s response here was also very much in
line with the responses from other East Asian and Asian-American participants,
who noted a connection with a feminine/maternal Guanyin even while knowing
that canonically Guanyin is not female. Ting-wei told me that for her, “Guanyin
is a special being that will come to save everybody,” and that Guanyin “doesn’t
have to be a female, [although] most of the images will be female.”131
Julia was my only participant who felt that Avalokiteśvara was male,
largely because in her Tibetan practice the Dalai Lama is understood
as Avalokiteśvara: “The way that I was introduced to the existence of
Avalokiteśvara was through the Heart Sutra which in Shambhala is a memo-
rized chant that you say every morning as part of your opening ritual.”132 She
then explained,
To me the Dalai Lama is an example of how powerful and potent a life of

compassion is. Because I think sometimes that in at least conventional locution
compassion sounds kind of “mamby pamby” but I could hardly think of a living
world figure who has had more of an impact and transformed more domains of
modern society than the Dalai Lama has. So, to me I see him as this embodiment
of Avalokiteśvara and how prolific that is actually.133
For her, the fact that Avalokiteśvara is “male” was helpful in dislodging the
more “maternal” associations with compassion, which made her a bit uneasy.
She described Avalokiteśvara’s gender as “incidental” to the narrative and to
his teachings.
As with their reflections on gender, my participants had a variety of differ-
ent relationships to and understandings of Guanyin. For those whose practice
involved Guanyin, they chanted or engaged in some, but not all, of the same
158 Chapter 4
practices, and they looked for different things as a result of their engagement
with Guanyin.
Connecting with the Heart Sutra

I discussed with each participant the larger project of re-translating the Heart
Sutra, and some of the ideas I thought were connected with that change in
the text. I asked each participant what they thought about that (the transla-
tion), what, if any, practice they had with the Heart Sutra, and such. Some
of the participants were very enthusiastic, others less so, and several did not
want to comment about it at all. Many of the participants who read/speak
Chinese suggested that the sutra should be engaged primarily in Chinese, not
in English. But for almost all the participants who had strong feelings about
the Heart Sutra, the shared theme was chanting.
Eleanor said that although she did not really get the sutra when she was
younger, she really relates to it now, and chants it often. One example she
gave of a time she chants the sutra is when driving: “when I drive I just recite
it several times.”134 She continued, emphasizing how important memorizing
the whole sutra is to her: “if you don’t memorize them . . . when you have
trouble you can’t look for a book.”135 This view on memorization and chant-
ing is deeply embedded in East Asian practices, from early Ruism to Daoism
and especially in dhāraṇī practices in Buddhism.
Given that her primary practice is with Taiwanese Pure Land Buddhism, I
asked her about her understanding of the Heart Sutra’s mantra (zhou)—does
“going over” mean going to the Pure Land? She said yes, and that she always
recites the mantra (zhou) multiple times: “I don’t just read one time, I will
read multiple times and kind of tell myself . . . assume like a river here, we’re
going over. We go over this trouble water and reach that Pure Land. And
when you read a few times it really [sic] kind of purify your mind.”136 This is
interesting because most contemporary commentaries on the text focus on the
mantra (zhou) in the context of enlightenment, but for Pure Land practitioners
immediate enlightenment is not the goal of their practice, and the mantra
(zhou) is able to speak to that as well.
Lucy, a practitioner of True Pure Land Buddhism whose mother used to
chant the Heart Sutra, had this to say about chanting:
the attempt is to have people understand, but when you chant in English it
doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t hit you what the meaning is . . . I love the Heart
Sutra . . . because it has this beat to it, I don’t care what it says, I love the beat
of it. . . . But I’ve heard it said it doesn’t matter what’s being chanted, you chant
together, you feel each other, and so you don’t go faster or slower, you just go
together, and that’s the most important.137
Voices of Women 159
For her, chanting the sutra in Japanese was a tangible connection to her
mother, and to all the other women of her family line.
Shawna, who enjoys chanting the Heart Sutra in Japanese, although she
does not understand the language, said “I gave up trying to understand the
Heart Sutra . . . Because there is no true understanding of the Heart Sutra.”138
But as we talked about the different translations, she continued, “It’s not
saying anything is definite. It’s giving you a way to move things around
and shifting. Everything changes, nothing is permanent. And emptying is a
motion rather than an absolute.”139 She then connected my translation (from
“form” and “emptiness” to “forming” and “emptying”) to a more pragmatic
read of the text: “Depending on what struggles you’re going through and by
emptying what you’re going through, you’re re-forming yourself.”140
Julia had a similar understanding of the pragmatic focus of the text: “The
whole thing is trying to dissolve all of the categories in which we parse our
world conventionally.”141 She noted that the Heart Sutra is part of some early
Shambala practice, but that she often chants other things as part of her daily
practice now. Concerning chanting, she said,
For me chanting is one of the most difficult practices actually. Because once
it’s memorized there’s a kind of an automaticity to it that has the same feeling
of like when you get to the end of chant, like when you’re driving and you’re
kind of hypnotized when you get to your destination you’re like, how did I get
here? And so chanting can feel the same way. And for me it’s actually a really
challenging practice of mindfulness. Holding my mind to the words and it’s not
always like it’s like I’m always contemplating their deep philosophical mean-
ing or something but actually like genuinely trying to hold in mind that they’re
meaningful. And sort of letting that wash over me.142
These women show a full range of possibilities in how they think about
chanting, from the delight of the music of the chant in a foreign language to
chanting as a mindfulness practice.
CONCLUSION
Elsewhere I have argued for the importance of considering ethnographic field

work relevant to philosophical practice, especially in the context of feminist
reclamation—the project of not only incorporating more women, historical and
contemporary, into philosophical canons, but also transforming our canons to
be more just.143 But what does this discussion of women’s voices, historically
and contemporarily, in Buddhist traditions mean for reading the Heart Sutra?
160 Chapter 4
There are several takeaways that might guide a re-reading of the Heart
Sutra. When I ask my university students if Guanyin’s gender matters in
this text, every time I get the same answers I got from my participants—no,
yes, maybe, and it depends. Those who say “yes” are often, but not always,
women, and they couch their response in terms of both feeling more con-
nection with a female speaker and of seeing themselves more present in the
tradition. In thinking about the Heart Sutra, we have not only the teaching,
a conceptual artifact, but something that is part of people’s embodied lives,
and those lives are not all the same. What people do with the text matters,
and the fact that it has such a diverse life, from the routine of daily driving
to the intellectual examination of conceptualization and categorization, is
visible only when we attend to how it is used in practice. Paying attention
to how practitioners use the text also highlights differences in the text’s life
between different language groups—for some, the text exists as a kind of
opaque sonorous object, whose meaning is less important than the practice of
chanting it; for others, the meaning of the text is directly related to their larger
commitment to Buddhism. Mei, for instance, summarized her feeling on the
Heart Sutra by saying, “emptiness is happiness.”144 We do not have to reduce
our engagement with the text to one or the other, but instead can approach it
as a vehicle to both ordinary practice and philosophical insight.
In considering gender with respect to the Heart Sutra, in all its many
lists of negations—birth and death, purity and impurity, increasing and
decreasing, the five skandhas, the eighteen dhatu (all six sense faculties, six
sense objects, six sense consciousnesses), ignorance, the four noble truths,
wisdom, and attainment—we can imagine a line such as “no men and no
women” or “no gender and no nongender” (not to mention “no human and
no nonhuman,” reflecting on the dragon girl and the goddess), and indeed we
see such lines elsewhere in Buddhist materials like Vimalakīrti. What might
such a line mean in the larger context of emphasizing women’s practice?
Three of the central themes of the text may be relevant: impermanence, inter-
relatedness, and the limits of categorical/conceptual thinking. In as much as
the text is concerned with regarding all phenomena (all dharmas) as empty,
gender is certainly included. But as all the contemporary commentators on
the text are careful to emphasize, empty does not mean nonexistent. After
all, the text says that there is no eye, yet I seem to still see words on this
page, no nose yet I smell something baking in the kitchen, no ears yet I hear
the dog snoring next to me. . . . So for gender to be empty, it does not mean
that it does not exist or that there is no corresponding experience related to
it. Instead, one reading of the series of negations and how they can be gen-
eralized to all phenomena is that it negates our ordinary expectations with
respect to each concept/category, especially where those concepts/categories
are binary. In other words, we have bad (unskillful) habits of thinking of
Voices of Women 161
things as different from how they really are. When we think of (and act on)
gender as an unchanging, permanent, personal, isolated essence, just as with
any other thing/event we take as unchanging, permanent, personal, isolated,
or essential, we have problems. That also means that anytime we tend to
structurally value one part of a binary over the other, engaging in hierarchi-
cal dualisms like youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, life and death, we
are in trouble—we have not only reified something that is dynamic and rela-
tive to context, but we have missed how the binary parts are related to one
another. So the tendency, in scholarship and in life, to value the contributions
of men over those of women and/or non-binary persons, white persons over
persons of color, able-bodied over disabled persons, neighbors over strang-
ers, is one of the same problems the Heart Sutra is trying to help us resolve
by showing us the bodhisattva path.
NOTES
1. Shawna (not her real name), interview with author, 5/12/2019.

2. See PEW Research Center, “The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World,”
March 22, 2016.
3. This ethnographic work was generously supported with sabbatical fund-
ing from the University of North Florida, as well as a Research Grant from UNF’s
Academic Affairs. My thanks to my research assistant, Will Gilbert, for transcrib-
ing many of these interviews. My gratitude also to the NEH/ASDP Summer 2018
Program leaders, lecturers, and fellow participants.
4. For more on this, see, for instance, Ann Gleig and Brenna Grace Artinger’s
“The #BuddhistCultureWars: BuddhaBros, Alt-Right Dharma, and Snowflake
Sanghas,” Journal of Global Buddhism 22, no. 1 (2021): 19–48.
5. There are many Buddhist feminisms. For a selection of contemporary think-
ers, see, for instance, Yeng (2020), Gross (2018), Park (2017), and Tsomo (2020).
6. For more on Mahāpajāpatī, see Wendy Garling’s The Woman Who Raised the
Buddha: The Extraordinary Life of Mahaprajapati (Boulder: Shambala Press, 2021).
7. Karma Lekshe Tsomo, “Mahāpajāpatī’s Legacy: The Buddhist Women’s
Movement,” in Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations, ed. Karma Lekshe
Tsomo (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 5.
8. Anālayo argues that this is actually a sign that the Buddha gave her (and
women in general) a distinct set of rules to follow as householders who wanted to
practice seriously. Given the times and the dangers for women as renunciants, this
seems like a possibility. However, Mahāprajāpatī and the others were not satisfied
with this practice for women at home, and wanted full ordination.
9. Grace Schireson, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho
Masters (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2009), 47.
10. Bikkhu Anālayo. The Foundational History of the Nuns’ Order (Freiburg:
Projekt Verlag, 2016), See footnote 75, pp. 79–80.
162 Chapter 4
11. See, for instance, Poems of the First Buddhist Women: A Translation of the
Therigatha by Charles Hallisey (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2021).
12. Tsomo, 7.
13. Ann Heirman, “Buddhist Nuns: Between Past and Present,” Numen 58
(2011): 603.
14. For more on these, see Heirman (2011) and Bhiksuni Jampa Tsedroen and
Bhikkhu Anālayo, “The Gurudharma on Bhiksuni Ordination in the Mulasarvastivada
Tradition,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013): 743–74. Heirman notes that the spe-
cial rules are in all likelihood much later than the original community of nuns (606).
15. Translated by Heirman, 606–7. For a different summary and discussion of the
rules, see Schireson, 5–6.
16. Heirman, 607.
17. Anālayo, 93.
18. Ibid., 94.
19. Ibid., 43. In many versions, at some point after the women’s ordination the
historical Buddha notes that having ordained women will have significant negative
repercussions for the sangha, including shortening the reach of his teaching by five
hundred years.
20. Heirman, 608. She is referring specifically to the version of the story told in
the Da’aidao biquini jing (T. 1478, 大愛道比丘尼經, Sūtra on the Bhiksuṇī).
21. For more on Chao Hwei Shih, see Julia Lieblich, “Buddhist Nun Lead’s
Asia’s Fight for Gay Marriage,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2020,
https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/buddhist-nun-leads-asias-fight-for-gay-marriage/
22. For more on the repercussions of this act, see Chiung Hwang Chen’s
“Feminist Debate in Taiwan’s Buddhism: The Issue of the Eight Garudhammas,”
Journal of Feminist Scholarship 1, no. 1 (2011): 16–32.
23. See the discussion of Uppalavanna in Serinity Young, “Female mutability
and Male Anxiety in an Early Buddhist Legend,” Journal of the History of Sexuality
16, no. 1 (2007): 14–39.
24. For more on Jingjian and other early Chinese nuns, see Kathryn Tsai’s
Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994). See also Schireson, 51–53.
25. There are a number of works that may be helpful to those just becoming
familiar with these issues more broadly in Buddhist traditions, or looking for more
depth. Consider for instance: Schireson, Zen Women; Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Women
in Buddhist Traditions (New York: NYU Press, 2020); Zen Sourcebook: Traditional
Documents from China, Korea, and Japan, ed. Stephen Addiss, Stanley Lombardo,
and Judith Roltmann (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2008); The Hidden Lamp:
Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, ed. Zenshin Florence
Caplow and Reigetsu Susan Moon (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2013); Buddhist
Feminisms and Femininities, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: SUNY Press, 2019);
Buddhist Women Across Cultures, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: SUNY Press,
1999); Eminent Buddhist Women, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: SUNY Press,
2014); Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women: Tradition, Revision, Renewal, ed.
Ellison Banks Findley (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000); Rita Gross, Buddhism
Voices of Women 163
beyond Gender: Liberation from Attachment to Identity: Buddhism After Patriarchy

(Berkeley: Shambhala Publications, 2018).
26. For more on the legal complexities, see Heirman.
27. See Naomi Appleton, “In the Footsteps of the Buddha? Women and the
Bodhisatta Path in Theravāda Buddhism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27,
no. 1 (2011): 33–51. For more on sexual transformation and the five hindrances, see
Hae-ju Sunim (Ho-Ryeon Jeon), “Can Women Achieve Enlightenment? A Critique
of Sexual Transformation for Enlightenment,” in Tsomo, Buddhist Women Across
Cultures, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), and Anālayo, “The
Bahudhātuka-sutta and its Parallels on Women’s Inabilities,” Journal of Buddhist
Ethics 16 (2009): 136–90.
28. The Five Hindrances can be traced to several Nikaya and Vinaya texts, but
scholars argue that it is a later interpolation. For more, see Hae-ju Sunim, “Can
Women Achieve Enlightenment?” in Tsomo, 123–41.
29. Enichi Ocho makes this point in Lotus Philosophy (Hokke Shiso) (Tokyo:
Gotosha Press, 1969), 98.
30. This line of inquiry is explored by contemporary monk Shravasti Dhammika,
“The Highest Limb,” dhamma musings, April 27, 2008, https://sdhammika.blogspot.
com/2008/04/penis-in-buddhism-penis-angajata-linga.html
31. See, for instance, the Mahaprajnaparamita Sastra, in which the retract-
able penis is tenth in the sequence of the thirty-two marks, and is variously called a
“retractable horse-penis mark,” “horse-penis mark,” “penis mark,” and “penis mark
of a horse’s form.” See Hae-ju Sunim, 131.
32. This line of inquiry is suggested by Bante Sujato, an Australian
monk in the Theravadan forest lineage of Ajahn Chah: “The politics of the
Buddha’s genitals,” SuttaCentral, April 2017, https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/
the-politics-of-the-buddha-s-genitals/4876
33. Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in
Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 23. My addition. Original passage is from Vinaya Pitaka, 3:20. This passage
is discussed in Schireson, 184–85. The translation refers to the snake as “poisonous,”
but this is incorrect. Poisonous things introduce toxins via ingestion, whereas venom-
ous things introduce their toxins via injection (in this case, the snake’s fangs).
34. Schireson, 185.
35. For more on this, see Adeana McNicholl, “The Aesthetics of Disgust,
Morality, and the Abject Preta Body,” in Bodies in Buddhism, ed. Kenneth Holloway
(Brill, forthcoming, 2022).
36. For more on this see Lori Meeks, “Women and Buddhism in East Asian
History: The Case of the Blood Bowl Sutra” Parts I and II.
37. Sukhāvativyūha Sutra, quoted in Hae-ju Sunim, 132.
38. Amitabha Sutra, quoted in Hae-ju Sunim, 132.
39. “Sunim” is the Korean term for a monk or nun. Hae-ju Sunim’s lay name is
Ho-Ryeon Jeon.
40. Hae-ju Sunim, 132.
41. Ibid., 133.
164 Chapter 4
42. Ibid., 134. My italics.

43. The sutra explained that the main requirement is one-pointed concentration
on the visualization practices. However, there are also three key acts of merit: first,
caring for one’s parents, attending to one’s teachers and elders, compassionately
refraining from killing, and doing the ten good deeds; second, taking the three ref-
uges, keeping the various precepts and refraining from breaking the rules of conduct;
and third, awakening aspiration for Enlightenment, believing deeply in the law of
causality, chanting the Mahāyāna sutras and encouraging people to follow their teach-
ings. Nowhere in these accounts of key practices do we see sexual transformation.
44. Diana Paul, “Translator’s Introduction,” The Sutra of Queen Śrīmālā of
the Lion’s Roar (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research,
2004), 5.
45. Ibid., 5.
46. Ibid., 6.
47. Lotus Sutra, 235.
48. Ibid., 236. Hae-ju Sunim’s translation of this same passage: “It is hard
to believe that you could attain perfect enlightenment in a short time. Because a
woman’s body is filthy, it is not a suitable receptacle for the Dharma. How could you
attain perfect enlightenment? The path of the Buddha is so remote and massive that it
is attainable only by tormenting oneself, accumulating good deeds, and cultivating the
perfections. A woman’s body has five hindrances . . . How can the body of a woman
speedily achieve Buddhahood?” (124).
50. For more on this, and for a detailed discussion of Dōgen’s reading of this
passage, see Miriam L. Levering, “Dōgen and the Dragon Princess,” Japan Mission
Journal 68, no. 3 (Autumn 2014): 166–180.
51. Hae-ju Sunim, 125.
53. From the Sāgaranāgarāja Sutra, quoted in Hae-ju Sunim, 127.
54. See Hae-ju Sunim, 127–28.
55. Ibid., 134.
56. The sections related here occur in T. 14.474.528a–29b and 14.475.547a–48c.
57. John R. McRae, “Translator’s introduction,” in The Vimalakīrti Sutra
(Berkeley: Numata Center, 2004), 62.
58. McRae, “Translator’s introduction,” 62.
59. 如是觀者，何以行慈.
60. Pat Enkyo O’Hara, “Compassion and the Goddess” in True Expression:
Village Zendo Journal (New York: May 2010).
61. His answer is short: shen 身, because of our bodies.
62. Vimalakīrti, McRae translation, 127.
63. Ibid.
64. “Goddess, how long have you been in this house?” The goddess replied, “I
have been here as long as the elder has been in liberation.” Sariptra said, “Then, have
you been in this house for quite some time?” The goddess said, “Has the elder been
in liberation for quite some time?” At that, the elder Śāriputra fell silent.
Voices of Women 165
65. Vimalakīrti, 548b, my translation, based on McRae. 舍利弗問天：「

汝何以不轉女人身？」
66. Vimalakīrti, trans. Hae-ju Sunim, 137.
67. See Hae-ju Sunim, 137.
68. Vimalakīrti, 548c, my translation, based on McRae.
舍利弗以天女像而答曰：「不識吾何以轉成此女像也。」
69. Vimalakīrti, 548c, my translation, based on McRae. 天曰：「賢者！若能轉
此女像，則眾女人身可轉，若其不女于女身亦不見者，則眾女人雖女
身，為非女非見也。又如佛言：『一切諸法非女非男。』」即時，舍
利弗身復如故。
70. O’Hara, https://villagezendo.org/journal/may_2010/enkyo_roshi_compas
sion_goddess_may_10.html
71. See Susan Bordo, “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy,”
Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 11 (1988): 619–29.
72. 天曰:「賢者！何緣作此女相？」
[0529a26] 曰:「吾不作,非不作。」
[0529a27] 天曰:「如是,賢者!諸法亦非作非不作。夫不作非不作者,佛所
說也。」
73. See note 70.
74. They do give us some wiggle-room, however, in that in both cases, neither
woman is human.
75. Miriam Levering, “Miao-tao and her Teacher Dahui,” in Buddhism in the
Sung, ed. Peter Gregory and Daniel Getz (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2002), 188.
76. For more on Wu Zetian, see N. Harry Rothschild’s Emperor Wu Zhao and
Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2017).
77. The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women,
ed. Florence Caplow and Susan Moon (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2013), 303.
This particular story is from the Pang jushi yulu («龐居士語錄» The recorded say-
ings of Layman Pang).
78. Amy Hollowell, “Reflection,” in Hidden Lamp, 303–4.
79. Grant, Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 14–15.
80. This also serves as an allusion to a story-turned-kōan about Baizhang, a
very important figure in the establishment of Chinese and East Asian monastic
norms. Baizhang was giving a dharma talk and an old man stayed after one day. The
old man explained that in a previous life, a long time ago, he had been an abbot at
that monastery, but one day when a sincere student asked him if awakened persons
were still bound by karma, he answered “no.” Because of that answer, he had been
reborn as a fox five hundred times, and was seeking Baizhang’s help for a turning
phrase, a way to help him realize something about the issue. Baizhang provided
such a turning phrase—someone who has woken up is not separate from karma
(cause and effect), does not avoid karma—and that was the abbot’s last rebirth as
a fox.
166 Chapter 4
81. Beata Grant, “Introduction,” Zen Echoes: Classic Koans with Verse
Commentaries by Three Female Chan Masters (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2017),
14–15.
82. Hidden Lamp, 286. From “Raihai Tokuzui” in Dōgen’s Shobogenzo.
83. Miriam L. Levering, “Dōgen and the Dragon Princess,” 169.
84. Schireson has an extensive commentary on Miaozong in Zen Women,
187–98.
85. Schireson, 187.
86. Ibid., 194.
87. Ibid., 194. The passage continues with Wanan asking if the encounter is
going to be sexual, and Miaozong’s response, a twist on a famous teaching passage
from Zhaozhou, “horses may cross, asses may not.” Miaozong ends the interview and
Wanan leaves, embarrassed.
88. See note 25 for a list of some examples.
89. Venerable Hsiendu’s public biography, including a list of her published
works, is available on the Taiwanese Huayen Lotus Association website: https://
www.huayen.org.tw/page_view.aspx?siteid=&ver=&usid=&mnuid=2190&modid=4
41&mode=
90. More of this ethnographic work can be found in Sarah Mattice, “Menstruation,
Gender Segregation, and a Kōan Concerning Miscarriage” in Bodies in Buddhism, ed.
Kenneth Holloway (Brill, Forthcoming, 2022).
91. Katie, interview with author, Florida, 5/10/2019.
92. Diana, interview with author, Florida, 5/11/2019.
93. Julia, interview with author, Skype, 7/23/2019.
94. Eleanor, interview with author, Iowa, 2/16/2019. Eleanor is a non-native
English speaker.
95. Eleanor, interview with author, Iowa, 2/16/2019.
96. Mei, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/17/2018. Mei is a non-native English
speaker.
97. Claire Gesshin Greenwood, “That’s So Zen: Zazen and Menstrual Blood
Hell” (unpublished manuscript, April 26, 2021) word document. My thanks to
Gesshin Greenwood for permission to cite this piece.
98. Mei, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/17/2018.
99. Lisa, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/10/2018.
100. Ibid.
101. Danielle, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/10/2018.
103. Shawna, interview with author, Florida, 5/12/2019.
104. Ibid.
105. Ven. Hsiendu, interview with author, Taibei, 8/2/2018. My translation and
parsing, “性別是與生俱來的肉體狀態，後天成長，性向因環境而改變”.
parsing, “經過不斷對教義的理解及法門的修持，肉體的主宰依賴就越來越少”.
107. Ven. Hsiendu, interview with author, Taibei, 8/2/2018. My translation and pars-
ing, “這樣小我就會淡化，公心自然會顯現出來，就可以超越性別上的束縛”.
Voices of Women 167
parsing, “而我所謂的學習做人間的菩薩，不要只注意眼前的人我是非。世界
何其大？自我又多麼渺小？要放掉自我的侷限，從浩瀚的宇宙中找到
自己生命的定位”.
109. Ching-ning Wang, “A ‘Great Man’ Is No Longer Gendered,” in Buddhist
Feminisms and Femininities, ed. Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2019), 108.
110. See Levering’s discussion of this in “Dōgen and the Dragon Princess.”
111. Wang, 108.
112. Ibid., 109.
113. Ven. Hsiendu, interview with author, Taibei, 8/2/2018. My translation
and parsing, “觀音有32化應身，33種觀音是出自各種經對其不同形象介紹，
以及應不同眾生需要所展現的不同身像.”
114. Camelia, interview with author, Florida, 5/10/2019.
115. Lucy, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/10/2018.
116. Lucy, interview with author, Florida, 5/10/2019.
117. Camelia, interview with author, Florida, 5/10/2019.
118. Shawna, interview with author, Florida, 5/12/2019. In Shawna’s Zen tradi-
tion, they chant this particular piece in Japanese, and often emphasize the “Kanzeon”
in the very last round of chanting. For a version of this chant and Zen Master Hakuin’s
commentary on it (Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, Ten Phrase Life Prolonging Kannon
Sutra), see “The Kannon Sutra,” Spring 1996, Tricycle.
120. Ibid.
122. Ibid.
124. Shu-chen, interview with author, email correspondence, 8/12/2018.
125. Ibid.
126. Carrie, interview with author, Iowa, 2/16/2019.
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid.
129. Ting-wei, interview with author, Taiwan, 7/26/2018. Interview conducted in
Chinese, my translation.
130. Carrie, interview with author, Iowa, 2/16/2019.
131. Ting-wei, interview with author, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 7/26/2018.
133. Ibid.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid.
137. Lucy, interview with author, Hawai’i, 6/10/2018.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
168 Chapter 4

142. Ibid.
143. See Mattice, “Menstruation, Gender Segregation, and a Kōan Concerning
Miscarriage.”
Chapter 5
A Chinese Interpretive Context
Ride along with phenomena so that your thinking and feeling roam
freely about; give yourself over to what cannot be otherwise so as
to nourish what is central—this is the utmost. 且夫乘物以遊心,
託不得已以養中, 至矣.
—Zhuangzi1
In a world that is constantly changing, in process with various transforma-

tions, the future is uncertain. This is not only a Buddhist problem but one that
is shared between all of China’s main religio-philosophical traditions, whose
starting conditions see our world primarily through a lens of change. This
chapter explores an interpretive context for the Heart Sutra, from the per-
spective of threads drawn from each of China’s sanjiao 三教, the three main
philosophical traditions: Buddhism, Ruism (Confucianism), and Daoism.
While it is convenient to talk of these three traditions as if separate, there
has been considerable cross-pollination and fertilization between them.
Beginning with Ruism and Daoism, which trace their origins to the Warring
States Period (475–221 BCE) and earlier, these traditions emerged out of
a shared context where they mutually informed one another. For instance,
Kongzi 孔子(Confucius) is not only a sage (shengren 聖人) for Ruists, but
he also serves as a key character in the Zhuangzi «莊子», a paradigmati-
cally Daoist text, where he is sometimes a stodgy moralist and sometimes a
“Daoist” sage. As Buddhism entered China and slowly became domesticated,
this third tradition also influenced, and was influenced by, each of the others.
Daoist and Buddhist religious communities mutually informed one another;
Ruist hierarchies became embedded in Buddhist monasticism; and ideas and
practitioners moved between the traditions. The formation of Chan Buddhism
is directly tied to a number of features of early Daoist material, including not
169
170 Chapter 5
only philosophical appropriation but also such key literary activities as the
encounter dialogue. And there are even texts like the Longshu jingtu wen
«龍舒淨土文» (Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land) that actively syncretize
different traditions: the text is a “‘Confucian’ version of Pure Land faith.”2
While each of the traditions has at various times been in tension with the oth-
ers, and each has at times risen and fallen with imperial support, for the lives
of practitioners these traditions rarely existed in pure silos, but rather all three
formed a complex tapestry.
Although early traditional commentaries on the Heart Sutra (Tang and
Song especially) tend to be very sectarian, using the text as a vehicle for
clarifying or advancing the specific vision of their school, later commentaries
(especially Ming) are markedly less sectarian. In the Ming, according to John
McRae, “this text appealed to a much wider assortment of commentators”
than it had during earlier periods, and “Quite a few of the Ming commentaries
use this short scripture as a vehicle for the presentation of theories concerning
the unity of the Three Teachings.”3 Not only were Buddhist monastics com-
menting on the text, but also lay people, and even Ruists.4 While my goal
here is not to present a commentary on the unity of the three traditions, I am
interested in reading the sutra in a less sectarian manner, drawing on insights
from across the Chinese philosophical landscape to enhance our reading
of the text. I am not aiming to recreate a historical account of how the text
was read by these different traditions, but rather to highlight a few pieces
of philosophical context that emerge from this shared environment, which
I find helpful for reading the Heart Sutra. In particular, this chapter consid-
ers Yogācārin accounts of suchness, Ruist theorizing of ritual, and Daoist
playful-yet-temporary lodging places. Considering responses to uncertainty
as a shared theme, each of these provides a different lens from which to
approach the text. Chinese Yogācārins urge us to analyze our own minds and
cognitive-perceptual habits to figure out where we go wrong when the uncer-
tainty of a changing world causes us to suffer; they also present the concept of
“suchness” as a positive counterpart to the uncertainty implied by emptiness.
Ruists theorize and engage in ritualized activities in order to bring order to
a disordered, uncertain world. And from the classical Daoist text Zhuangzi,
we can see advice to adopt playful-yet-temporary lodging places with the
changes of the world and with our conceptual discriminations, drifting along
and harmonizing with but not fixating on the course of things.
YOGĀCĀRA AND SUCHNESS
Yogācāra, also known as the “Consciousness-Only School,” arose in India

when the work of philosophers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu was systematized
A Chinese Interpretive Context 171
around the fourth century CE. It made its way into China through a number
of different texts and treatises like the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and Paramartha’s
translation of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa. Like other Mahāyāna schools,
this school also focused on understanding emptiness, but it saw the develop-
ments of Mādhyamika thought as too negative and not focused on the right
area of inquiry. Yogācāra thinkers developed extensive and sophisticated
accounts of cognitive phenomenology, as well as bringing the ideas of
tathāgatagarbha (buddha-womb, buddha-nature), alaya-vijnana (storehouse
consciousness), and tathātā (suchness) into Chinese Buddhist discourse.
Two of the Heart Sutra’s first commentators, Kuiji and Wŏnch’ŭk, consider
the text from the perspective of Yogācārin philosophy. As Dan Lusthaus
explains,
For both K’uei-chi and Wŏnch’ŭk, the Heart Sūtra represents an upāya of
the second turning of the Dharma Wheel, which, for them, explains why it
emphasizes emptiness (空) and nonexistence (無). That emphasis, according
to the theory of the three turnings of the Dharma Wheel expounded in the
Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and elsewhere, was a response to the first turning of the
wheel during which—in an effort to concretize the abstruse and unclear—basic
facts of existence (有) were asserted. That emphasis on existence, since it lent
itself to the extreme of eternalism, needed to be corrected by counter-stressing
emptiness. K’uei-chi and Wŏnch’ŭk both associate this second turning of
the wheel with Mādhyamika (though in different ways). The second turning,
since it could foster the opposite extreme of annihilationalism, needed to be
supplanted as well, this time by a third turning of the Wheel, represented by
Yogācāra thought, which provided the culminating corrective to the existence/
nonexistence dialectic.5
Although the various Yogācāra-inspired schools in Chinese Buddhism were

not particularly long-lasting, many Yogācārin insights were incorporated into
other schools.
One of the central insights of Yogācārin philosophy is that because our
conceptual systems actively participate in constructing our experience of
the world, changing one’s “mind,” one’s cognitive-perceptual system, is
changing the world. They engage in complex cognitive phenomenology in
order to examine the facets of our conscious experience that incline us to see
and experience ourselves and the world around us as if not empty, as if we
were separate, isolated, independent, essential, and permanent. Figuring out
why and how we tend to do that helps us to shape practices and techniques
for resolving the problem. As Diana Paul explains, “Yogācāra . . . explores
the question of the nature of subjectivity, that is, the constituents of mental
processes that deceive the perceiver into thinking that self-existent entities do
172 Chapter 5
indeed exist.”6 Theirs is a philosophy with therapeutic aims, not primarily a

descriptive metaphysics.7
The Yogācārin-influenced text the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra was very popular
in China after its translation by Gunabhadra in 443 CE. It was especially
influential on the development of Chan Buddhism—Bodhidharma famously
gave his copy to his successor Huike, telling him that everything he needed
to know was in the Lanka.8 Red Pine identifies two main teachings tying the
Lanka together: “the ‘nothing but mind’ of Yogacara and the ‘self-realiza-
tion’ of Zen.”9 In other words, liberation is a function of realizing that what
we take to be the “real” (independent) world and the “real” (independent) self
is an illusion produced by consciousness, and it is only through direct experi-
ence of our own mental activities (consciousness, phenomenal experience)
that we can transform into buddhas and bodhisattvas. The context of the sutra
is a teaching on the illusory nature of all phenomena (dharmas), given to the
ancient Serpent King of Lanka (Sri Lanka) by the Buddha, and the question
and answer discourse of the Buddha on this teaching by Mahamati, one of
the assembled bodhisattvas. The Lanka is centrally concerned with the way
in which we project various illusory or incorrect conceptions onto ourselves
and the world. As Red Pine explains,
the Lankavatara teaches the non-projection of dharmas, that there would be

no dharmas to be empty or to be detached from if we did not project them as
existing or not existing in the first place. The Buddha tells Mahamati, “Because
the various projections of people’s minds appear before them as objects, they
become attached to the existence of their projections.” So how do they get free
of such attachments? The Buddha continues, “By becoming aware that projec-
tions are nothing but mind. Thus, do they transform their body and mind and
finally see clearly all the stages and realms of self-awareness of tathagatas and
transcend views and projections regarding the five dharmas and modes of real-
ity.” (chapter 2, LXIV)10
We mistakenly think that there are “objects” that exist “out there” some-
where, separate from us and each other. We “project” this mistaken view
(non-emptiness), and in so doing set ourselves up to be attached or averse to
things that are not “really” the way that they seem to be to us. But understand-
ing that projections are our activities can lead to transforming not only our
own cognitive-perceptual habits, but the very world itself.
Consider, for instance, a (relatively) recent example of our projected real-
ity: the Laurel/Yanny recording that went viral in May, 2018.11 On hearing
this audio clip, most people have the strong, unshakable conviction that they
are hearing the word “Laurel,” or the strong, unbreakable conviction that they
are hearing the word “Yanny.” Online forums exploded with people outraged
at how someone could be listening to the same clip and yet hearing something
so completely different.12 As it turns out, what word we might hear in this clip
varies depending on a number of factors, including the nature of the record-
ing media, the nature of the playback media, and, most importantly, whether
we pay attention more to higher (“Yanny”) or lower (“Laurel”) frequencies
of sound. What we hear is directly related to how our brains—especially the
superior temporal gyrus—direct and interpret our attention, but this is for
most of us not at the level of conscious manipulation, although once we are
aware of it some people can “switch” between the words. As neuroscientist
Dr. Matthew Leonard puts it, “This is a really great example of the distinc-
tion between sensation and perception. The same physical sound is going into
everyone’s ears, but we hear completely different words. It’s a really striking
demonstration of how our brains try to make sense of the world around us
in ways that we are not even aware of.”13 In Yogācārin terms, both “Laurel”
and “Yanny” are projections, constructed in part by our auditory awareness
(which may or may not be “conscious” on our part). By becoming aware of
the active role that our thinking (broadly construed) plays in constructing
our experience of things as externally “real,” we can use that awareness to
deconstruct our assumptions and impositions, dislodging our prior cognitive-
perceptual habits, and ultimately arrive at an experience of emptiness and
interdependence. Moving from the experience of being sure that the record-
ing is “really” saying “Laurel,” and that everyone who hears “Yanny” must
be mistaken somehow (or vice versa), the view that there is a definite external
reality separate from us that we have unmediated access to, to understanding
how we participate in constructing our experience of the world, is part of the
therapeutic function Yogācārins saw as centrally important to their project.
We can also see this in an example like the experience of the world as
full of color (for the non-color blind)—imagine a red apple on the table in
front of you. While this may seem a straightforward experience, even the
color of the apple can lead us to an insight of emptiness. While we might
first see it as external and unrelated to us, on further examination we realize
that color is a combination of many different factors that are all context-
dependent. Color as we experience it relates not only to the eye’s rods
and cones and color-sensing physical apparatus, the nature of the surface
of the object, and our mental/brain interpretive schema, but also to our
socio-historical and linguistic background, and color—a seemingly obvious
external, separate characteristic of objects in the world—also depends on
the ambient light in the environment, which may change dramatically, as
well as the air pressure, temperature, and humidity present in the environ-
ment, and it can change with how alert or tired we are. Coming to see how
all of this—including our own situation—is implicated in the experience of
the red of the apple does not mean that we can magically decide to see the
174 Chapter 5
apple as a different color, but it provides insight into how color functions as
a projection, and so can lead us to understand the way that we project, and
are projected, and how that relates to our existential condition.
Contemporary psychologists study a related phenomenon they call “self-
directed neuroplasticity,” which is our “capacity to proactively modify
cerebral function through volitional control and the intentional practice of
focusing attention in desired ways. In other words, the mind can consciously
change the brain.”14 Considerable research has been done, for instance, on the
impact of gratitude practices—like daily or weekly journaling—on our expe-
rience, not only emotionally or psychologically but also in terms of our expe-
riences of physical pain and discomfort.15 Practices that impact our tendency
toward negativity bias—that things that are negative have more impact on us
than things that are neutral or positive—a function shared by many Buddhist
meditative practices, can, by changing our minds, change our worlds.
So in the Heart Sutra, which begins with Guanyin engaged in meditative
practice, where she illuminates the five constituent processes (Ch. yun 蘊;
Sk. skandhas) as empty (Ch. kong 空; Sk. śūnyatā) and negates the various
aspects of our sensory experience, this Yogācārin philosophical thread sug-
gests a therapeutic or phenomenological approach centered in understanding
and practicing to realize how our “normal” projections are related to our suf-
fering, and how to use that awareness therapeutically.
Yogācārins also extensively theorized “suchness” (Ch. zhenru 真如; Sk.
tathatā), or “being such as it is,” the ultimate source and character of all
phenomena. “Suchness” is things just as they are, a way of thinking about or
engaging ultimate reality (which is empty). “Suchness” is often read as the
Yogācārin answer to the Mādhyamika analysis of emptiness (空):
both are relating to the same essential teaching and reality, whether described
as “emptiness” or “suchness.” Mādhyamika applies its rhetoric of negation and
its insightful, intellectual approach to the problems of ignorance and delusion
and to the emptying out of any set view of reality. By contrast, Yogācāra uses
the positive terms of suchness or thusness and an emphasis on yogic practice to
celebrate the wonder of interconnectedness.16
That is, the Yogācārin account of suchness is not meant to address a differ-
ent theoretical construct from emptiness but is a different way of reading the
same issue. As D. T. Suzuki notes in his work on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, for
instance, “we must remember that the Mahāyāna has its positive side which
always goes along with its doctrine of Emptiness. The positive side is known
as the doctrine of suchness or Thusness (tathatā). The Lankavatara is always
careful to balance Sunyata with Tathatā, or to insist that when the world is
viewed as is empty, it is grasped in its suchness.”17
The suchness perspective might require a little more unpacking in order to

see how it relates to the Heart Sutra. Zhenru 真如 (tathatā), often translated
as “suchness” or “thusness,” became a key concept in Chinese Buddhism
relatively early in texts like the Lanka, the Lotus Sutra, and the Awakening of
Faith. It features extensively in Kuiji and Wŏnch’ŭk’s commentaries on the
Heart Sutra. It was also developed by thinkers like Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597),
founder of the Tiantai school, who creatively appropriated the term from
Yogācārin thought for Tiantai’s own complex metaphysics. As Ronnie
Littlejohn explains,
The most distinctive ontological claim of Tiantai is that there is only one reality
that is both the phenomenal existence of everyday experience and nirvana itself.
This is a significant divergence from many early Buddhist teachings in India
that drew a sharp demarcation between the phenomenal world and the world of
nirvana. In Tiantai, there is not only one reality but also it is ultimately empty.
The reason all things are empty is that literally every object and real thing (that
is, every dharma) exists as it is through an indefinite number of interdependent
causes. Nothing has its own nature or essence that underlies or exists apart from
the interplay of all these causes. Accordingly, all things have only tentative
existence, and they are impermanent.18
This new ontological framework had significant implications for other

Buddhist concepts. As Donald Mitchell and Sarah Jacoby explain, comment-
ing on the threefold Tiantai articulation of truth (all dharmas are empty of
own-being because they are dependently arisen, all dharmas possess tem-
porary existence due to having arisen dependently, and all dharmas are both
empty and temporarily existing)19:
To behold this identity between emptiness and phenomena is to see the such-
ness (tathatā) of things. This suchness is the true nature of things that Tiantai
calls Buddha-nature. Therefore, Buddha-nature is not something that one can
see in itself, apart from phenomena. Given emptiness, Buddha-nature is not an
independent thing, but is the essence of Buddhahood seen in the phenomena of
the world. The metaphor that is used to express this presence of Buddha-nature
in phenomena is water in waves. One cannot see water in itself apart from the
forms it takes. So, too, the suchness of existence, Buddha-nature, is found when
one sees the identity of emptiness and the temporary forms of life.20
Suchness, then, is ultimate reality (buddhahood, buddha-nature) expressed

in particulars. So, for early Tiantai thinkers, there is only one world, and
this world (and all things/events in it) is both temporary and existing. This
temporary existence is how it is because of dependent arising, the complex
176 Chapter 5
network of causes and conditions responsible for each phenomenon as it is.

Brook Ziporyn explains that on this perspective, “Every instant of experience
is the whole of reality manifesting in this particular form, as this particular
entity or experience.”21 And there is no other way it could manifest. This,
then, explains why Tiantai identifies suchness with buddha-nature—there
is nowhere else for the potential for awakening to be than in the becoming
and fading away of myriad particular phenomena. Paul Swanson explains
buddha-nature in Tiantai Zhiyi’s thought as “an active threefold process that
involves the way reality is, the wisdom to see reality as it is, and the practice
required to attain this wisdom.”22
This perspective complements the theoretical perspective of emptiness.
While a perspective focused on emptiness reveals an experience in which any
given thing is ultimately unreal, a perspective focused on suchness reveals an
experience in which any experience is a gateway to liberation. There is no
buddha-nature, no potential for (or already existing) awakening, that happens
without a particular context, and any context in which we find ourselves is
momentary; the future is uncertain. That context may be the movement of
wind through the grass, the sound of a bell, the blow of a staff, or the smile
of a friend; it is always in and through the fullness of our embodied experi-
ence that we wake up.
Suchness does not only reveal reality in “good,” “pleasant,” or “beautiful”
moments, however. A key part of this perspective is that it is each and every
moment, each and every experience—including those that are “negative,”
unwholesome, or part of our unenlightened condition. For Zhiyi, “negative
states” like attachment or anger were his most favored meditation objects.
Mitchell and Jacoby explain,
When one realizes the deeper interrelated unity of reality, one sees that the
unwholesome states of mind are arising dependently, that they are empty of
any substance, and then one finds freedom from any bondage to these negative
factors of existence. However, this does not mean that the liberated person is
purified of all negative mental factors. Given the interpenetration of all realms,
even the hellish ones, these factors can always be found in the mind. While
the liberated person is not himself or herself moved or defiled by any negative
mental factors, he or she uses them to stay united with all beings in their struggle
for liberation and to work as a bodhisattva for their salvation.23
Each and every facet of our experience, including all of our sensory experi-
ences (from seeing and hearing, touching and tasting, to smelling and con-
ceptualizing) are potentially relevant for waking up to how things really are;
they are the waves in the water of suchness. When the Heart Sutra states that
there is no purity and no defilement, one way of understanding that is from
this perspective, even experiences that we understood as “defiled” are gate-

ways to waking up beyond such dualisms.24 In other words, “The goal is not
to depart this world and go into some other transcendent reality. It is to exist
as a Buddha in this world.”25 This can be understood as the aim of the Heart
Sutra’s bodhisattva path.
Building on this early Tiantai insight, later Chinese Chan thinkers incor-
porate suchness into their theoretical toolbox, often with an explicit focus on
suchness as reflecting or enabling an immediacy of compassionate response
to the present situation.26 Mazu’s insight that “ordinary, everyday mind is
Buddha” can be seen as an outgrowth of how Chan thinkers made sense of
suchness.27 He was once asked by another monk, “Why do you say ‘mind is
Buddha’?” Mazu replied, “To end the crying of small children.” The monk
then asked, “So what do you say when the tears have dried up?” Mazu
answered, “It is neither mind nor Buddha.” The monk continued, “Then what
if people come along who don’t fit into either of these categories? How do
you teach them?” Mazu said, “Then tell them I said it’s not a thing.” Still
not giving up, the monk finally asked, “But what about if you come across
someone who is truly present?” To this Mazu replied, “I teach such a person
to realize the great Way.”28 Mazu’s claim that “ordinary mind is Buddha,”
or “ordinary mind is awake,” marries the Yogācārin insights about such-
ness—that all experiences, even those of “ordinary” thinking and feeling, are
avenues for enlightenment—with their insight that our cognitive-perceptual
habits co-create the world, such that being truly present and able to respond
compassionately to one’s immediate situation is the working of enlightened
activity. As Leighton writes, suchness is “simply this immediate present
moment” without mediation.29
Mazu is far from the only Chan thinker to embrace suchness. Dongshan
Liangjie 洞山良价 (807–869 CE) begins his “Jewel Mirror of Samādhi”
poem like this: “The Dharma of suchness is intimately transmitted by bud-
dhas and ancestors; Now you have it; preserve it well.”30 In commenting on
these first two lines, Leighton writes,
The “Jewel Mirror Samādhi” starts with the Dharma of suchness, and here
Dharma can mean “reality” or “truth,” and suchness itself is a way of seeing the
nature of the present reality. Dharma also means “teaching,” so this refers to the
depths of reality, to teachings about this reality, and to how to engage it. This is
what has been intimately and carefully transmitted and conveyed by all the bud-
dhas and ancestral teachers. The poem says about the Dharma of suchness, “You
now have it,” with the admonition to “preserve it well.” This expresses that the
reality of suchness is not something that needs to be calculated or acquired. It
is already present but needs to be personally discerned, realized, expressed, and
carefully sustained.31
178 Chapter 5
Another way to translate this first line of this poem would be, “The teaching
(or truth) of things such as they are is intimately transmitted by buddhas and
ancestors” or “Buddhas and ancestors intimately transmit reality as such.”
In the extensive Chan and Zen commentaries on the many, many literary
pieces (stories, kōans, philosophical treatises, etc.) that deal with suchness,
the emphasis is often on the quality of how we are in our present experience,
whatever that might be. As Thomas Kasulis notes, concerning his decision
to translate “immo” (from Dōgen’s Shobogenzo) adverbially (being such as it
is) rather than as a noun (suchness), “This term is often improperly construed
substantially and metaphysically as “Suchness.” [But it] is not a thing; it is
a way things are experienced.”32 This is a way of experiencing the present
moment, the moment such as it is, in the here and now of our experience.
For some Chan/Zen thinkers, our ability to enter into receptivity to this sort
of quality of experience is cultivated in meditative practice. Without our cus-
tomary intellectual and perceptual habits overlaying themselves onto things,
imposing discriminations or conceptualizations that separate us from the
world—the expectation of things as personal, permanent, and perfect—we
can experience the “positive” side of emptiness as the fullness of imperma-
nent, interconnected, dynamic reality, where we are neither fully subject nor
fully object, but somewhere in the middle.
This early Yogācārin idea of “suchness,” transformed through various
Chinese and East Asian sources, becomes an interesting lens on the Heart
Sutra. Instead of the many negations we see throughout the text, we might
read each negation as a joyful “Yes!” “Yes!” to the five processes, “Yes!”
to the sense realms, “Yes!” to living, dying, increasing, decreasing, purify-
ing and defiling, “Yes!” to the four truths for nobility, to wisdom, and to
attainment—but this “Yes!” asserts only that facet of our experience such
as it (really) is, a particular moment of becoming without attachment or
aversion, without judgment, without impositional cognitive activity, just the
immediacy of this.
For Chan and Zen thinkers, this is depicted in idealized form through the
spontaneous immediacy of compassionate response: not simply a quietistic
experience, a solitary realization, but rather one bound up with the bodhisat-
tva path, with engaging and skillfully responding to the trouble and suffering
of those around us. All of this theorizing is still about how to live well and
how to best serve others. Chan thinkers were perhaps influenced in this by
earlier passages in texts like the Zhuangzi about how to respond to situations
as they come and how to let them go, without either imposing one’s own
prejudices or projections on them or letting oneself become too attached. For
Zhuangzi, the concern is with cultivating a kind of nimble responsiveness so
that, forgetting (wang 忘) to put oneself at the center of the universe and ceas-
ing to feed one’s thinking and feeling (fasting the heart-mind, xinzhai 心齋),
like a mirror one can naturally—simply, easily, without extensive delibera-

tion or projection—engage whatever comes along.33
As the Tang figure Yunju Daoying 雲居道膺 is said to have proclaimed,
“One who has comprehended has a mind like a fan in winter, has a mouth
growing moldy (from disuse). This is not something you force—it is
naturally so. If you want to attain such a thing, you must be such a person.
Since you are such a person, why trouble about such a thing?”34 Leighton
comments,
When the present reality of suchness is realized, the discriminating mind and
the expounding mouth need not be employed, like a fan in winter or a moldy
tongue. Then a person of suchness lets go of all striving, with no need to deliber-
ate via thought or speech about how to proceed. Engaging such a situation, one
naturally just responds, with nothing to force or worry about.35
While the training required to be able to respond naturally without forcing

one’s projections onto things may be extensive, a key takeaway here is that
this responsiveness—suchness, or becoming such a person—is manifest right
here in the messiness of our complicated lives with one another, right here
where trouble and suffering are. The Heart Sutra, as a description of and
invocation toward the bodhisattva path, then, can also be read as suggesting
not only emptiness but suchness, not only insight but also engagement, and
emptying of everything (including yourself) out so that you can jump right in,
and like a bodhisattva give of yourself to the world.
RUISM AND RITUAL
Ruism (Confucianism)36 is a sophisticated religio-philosophical tradition

that emerged in the classical period with figures like Kongzi, Mengzi 孟子,
and Xunzi 荀子, and was transformed into imperial ideology during the Han
Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). As reflected in the early Ruist text the Daxue
大學 (The Great Learning), Ruists are generally concerned with the rela-
tionships between self-cultivation, family, community, and state order, and
cosmic harmony.37 They identify five “virtues” that are key for becoming a
junzi 君子, or exemplary person: ren 仁 (intimate relationality, humaneness,
consummate personhood), li 禮 (ritual, etiquette, observing ritual propriety),
yi 義 (appropriateness, honor), zhi 知/智 (wisdom, understanding, realizing),
and xin 信 (trustworthiness, standing by one’s word). In the context of a
person-centered hierarchical cosmos, Ruists tend to be moral optimists, com-
mitted to the idea that putting the right person in a position of power will help
to harmonize the whole world.
180 Chapter 5
For Ruists, the Yijing «易經» (Book of Changes) and other early texts
seek to help us figure out how to live in light of our changing circumstances.
We can learn to identify patterns of change and patterns of persistence, and
navigate these to co-create good situations for ourselves, our families, and our
communities. One of the main Ruist vehicles for navigating change is li 禮
(ritual, etiquette, ritual propriety).
The Heart Sutra is the site of intense (Buddhist) ritual activity. Paul Copp
notes that for incantations like the Heart Sutra, “their most emblematic form
of enactment was ritual chanting,” although we know that sutra copying,
painting, embroidering, carving, and other written/visual means were and are
also very common.38 While chapter 3 discussed some of the ritual functions
of the text in light of Guanyin’s efficacious activity, here we can consider the
rituals connected with the text in light of broader Ruist theorizing about ritual.
After all, the activities of memorizing, reciting, and copying out texts were
not unique to Buddhism in China, and Buddhist activities of this sort arrived
and developed in an environment already saturated with ritual concern (from
Ruists, Daoists, and various folk traditions).
Going all the way back to the Analects «論語», we see li emerge as a key
topic of concern.39 In passage 12.1, Kongzi 孔子 (Confucius) tells Yan Hui
顏回, his most favored disciple, that “self-discipline and repeatedly observing
ritual propriety (li 禮) become intimate relationality (ren 仁).”40 In passage
6.27, Kongzi tells his students that “[e]xemplary persons (junzi 君子) learn
broadly of culture (wen 文), discipline this learning through observing ritual
propriety (li 禮), and moreover, in so doing, can remain on course without
straying from it.”41 And in passage 20.3, the final passage of the text, Kongzi
tells his students:
Someone who does not understand the propensity of circumstances (ming 命)

has no way of becoming an exemplary person (junzi 君子); someone who does
not understand the observance of ritual propriety (li 禮) has no way of knowing
where to stand; a person who does not understand words has no way of know-
ing others.42
From these passages and others, we can get a sense of how important li was
for early Ruist projects—it is a key activity of junzi 君子, where becoming a
junzi is a key goal of Ruist practice. It is related to becoming cultured, refined,
and staying on one’s (moral) course, and consistent practice of li is both part
of how one develops the central “virtue” of ren 仁 (intimate relationality,
humaneness, consummate personhood) and the medium through which one
expresses one’s ren.
Li are understood as formal ceremonies, as informal gestures, as external
behaviors, and as internal dispositions; they are both the structure of the
activity and the activity itself. As Michael Ing explains, li are “performances
enacted by human beings for the purposes of ordering the world.”43 That is,
we need li because there is something that needs ordering, something that
is out-of-whack or not quite as it should be, or that we are worried will get
that way. In other words, Ruists practice li in order to deal with uncertainty.
Ing argues that li “serve as guides for proper relation. When human beings
perform ritual [li], they put the things of the world in synchronization with
the dao 道.”44
This does not mean, however, that li get rid of uncertainty, but rather that
they provide techniques for accommodating it. In thinking about li in the
context of existential re-habituation, Leah Kalmanson argues that a kind of
“existential anxiety” arises out of a basic Ruist worldview, that “even our
best efforts cannot sway the tide of impending disorder, that the cosmos is
not especially receptive to our interventions, and above all that our moral
exemplars are as ineffective as the rest of us.”45 Given this, li are “existential
coping strategies. They help us make use of preexisting tendencies . . . while
shaping and developing our capacity to endure otherwise overwhelming
anxieties.”46 Li are significant techniques for responding to the uncertainties
of a changing world, and through li, one can actively participate in regulating
those uncertainties toward a harmonious outcome. Meeting someone for the
first time? Something as simple as a handshake—a li we perform together—
can organize the situation and relieve some of its uncertainty. Grieving the
loss of a family member? Funeral rites help us to navigate the uncertainty of
a future without our loved one.
Two metaphors have become common in contemporary discussions of li:
li as social grammar and li as interpersonal choreography. Roger Ames and
Henry Rosemont, Jr., describe li as a kind of social grammar that helps us
know the what, when, and how of being with others:
Li are those meaning-invested roles, relationships, and institutions which

facilitate communication, and which foster a sense of community. The compass
is broad: all formal conduct, from table manners to patterns of greeting and
leave-taking, to graduations, weddings, funerals, from gestures of deference to
ancestral sacrifices—all of these, and more, are li. They are a social grammar
that provides each member with a defined place and status within the family,
community, and polity. Li are life forms transmitted from generation to gen-
eration as repositories of meaning, enabling the youth to appropriate persisting
values and to make them appropriate to their own situation.47
As a grammar, li provide a map for how things ought to go, when things
ought to happen, and who ought to do what, setting up the conditions for
our interactions so that there is little uncertainty in how to proceed. Like
182 Chapter 5
grammar, they are constructed by communities to help things function better,

and like grammar, they not only can change with the times but when enacted
by someone with real expertise, their rules can be broken to good effect.
Drawing on Robert Eno’s characterization of Confucian life as “totally
choreographed,”48 Amy Olberding extends this metaphor about li (etiquette,
in her translation) to the realm of dance:
the evocative language of dance illuminates important features of etiquette rules

embedded in Confucian li. Like choreography, etiquette rules aim at gracious
and pleasing effect, as well as, most fundamentally, ensuring that one does not
trod on the toes of others. The prescribed steps protect coparticipants in the
dance of social intercourse, averting conflicts arising from behaviors insensitive
to the reality that one shares the floor with others. Minimally, the rules encode
deference to the constraints of shared social space; maximally, they enable
cooperative and collaborative accord, facilitating the possibility of dancing
gracefully together in common purpose.49
That is, having some choreography for our vital dance with one another
through this uncertain world helps us to become increasingly sensitized to
our circumstances as we become more skilled, more graceful, and more in
tune with each other. Like both grammar and dance, it takes time, effort,
and enthusiasm—sustained practice—in order to develop such expertise that
one’s enactment of li feels (to oneself) and seems (to others) natural and
beautiful. And like both grammar and dance, as anyone who has ever studied
a foreign language or attempted a new dance can attest, having a pattern to
start from brings the chaos of seemingly unlimited options down to a man-
ageable few.
By engaging in training to perform li well (performing, here, also includ-
ing one’s own feelings, emotions, bodily competencies, and dispositions), we
are (re)training and (re)habituating ourselves toward one another in ways that
facilitate community and respond to uncertainty. For Xunzi 荀子, this is one
of the most important functions of li, as he sees us as naturally inclined to
be selfish and seek to fulfill only our own desires, which leads to significant
uncertainty about the future. Li can channel and cultivate our natural dispo-
sitions toward one another and toward broader Ruist moral life: “Rites [li]
trim what is too long, stretch out what is too short, eliminate excess, repair
deficiency, extend cultivated forms that express love and respect so that they
increase and complete the beauty of conduct according to one’s duty.”50
Li, then, can be understood as techniques for training and developing atten-
tion or sensitivity to our habits of conduct, bodily comportment, language,
perception, and emotional disposition in accord with situation-specific socio-
cultural patterns and norms, in order to move us from a sense of disorder
to order, toward a felt sense of equilibrium or harmony with our changing

circumstances.51 This function of li, of practicing rituals, in order to respond
to uncertainty is also recognized by contemporary psychologists. Dr. Nick
Hobson, for instance, explains that through our many years of adaption to our
environments, we have evolved:
a suite of behavioral and cognitive responses that help quell the inevitability of
life’s uncertainties. Rituals seem to be particularly good in this regard. Scholars
have long known about the anxiolytic properties of rituals. They bring order
and structure to a world that is inherently disordered and chaotic. Rituals are an
effective shield that protect us from the onslaught of uncertain events. . . . The
defining features of rituals, repetitive and rigid movements, buffer against
uncertainty by evoking a sense of personal control and orderliness. The very act
of engaging in a scripted sequence of ritualistic movements tricks the brain into
thinking that it’s experiencing the pleasant state of predictability and stability.52
So when several of the women in chapter 4 describe ritual behavior—Eleanor

relates how she chants the Heart Sutra when she drives, Shawna explains
how she chants the Kanzeon at her husband’s hospital bedside, and Carrie
tells how she chants Guanyin’s name when she is in a difficult circum-
stance—we can use this Ruist account of ritual to help make sense of what is
going on, keeping in mind that this is a contemporary appropriation of these
ideas, not a traditional interpretive framework, and that many (although not
all) specifically Ruist rituals were aimed at the realm of interpersonal activity.
One facet of practice with the Heart Sutra is ritualized chanting (out loud
or internally) or sutra copying, both alone and in community settings. In
addition to the specifically Buddhist functions of these activities—generat-
ing merit, sympathetic resonance with Guanyin, etc.—we can also see these
activities more broadly as techniques for responding to uncertainty. On the
one hand, ritualized activity with the sutra can respond to the uncertainty of
the future due to the fact of impermanence. From a Buddhist perspective,
everything—including us—is impermanent, and so subject to change. This
means the future is uncertain. Ritualized activity, like chanting or copying
a sutra, can serve not only the kind of calming function Hobson describes
above, but also can address uncertainty—and the vulnerability that comes
along with it—by bringing us into community and shared space (both syn-
chronically and diachronically). The community in this case might be others
literally chanting text together, feeling the vibrations of sound from the group
as they move through your body. Or, the community entered might be a rela-
tionship with Guanyin, or with previous family members who practiced with
the same text. But in each case by connecting us with others, the ritualized
activity reminds us “where to stand,” that is, where we stand in (inter)relation
184 Chapter 5
to one another.53 In doing so, it helps us get back into the choreography of
continued motion together as changes occur. When you do not know what to
do and are overwhelmed with uncertainty, having something familiar to do
helps re-order a chaotic moment, whether that is the chanting of a memorized
text, the tactile sensation of prayer beads as you count the recitations, the
embodied activity of calligraphy or writing, or something else.
In addition, given the key themes of the Heart Sutra, ritualized activity
with it also relates to uncertainty due to the empty nature of ourselves and the
world around us. While some ritualized activity may not be connected with
the meaning of the text at all (chanting it for the sound in another language,
for instance, without knowing what it means), for others the meaningfulness
of the text is part of the ritualized activity. Thich Nhat Hanh writes that “[w]
henever I chant the Heart Sutra, I bring concentration into the chanting and
the listening. In this short sutra, every phrase should express the essence of
the teachings.”54
On this model, repeated engagement with the content of the text can turn
the uncertainty and instability of emptiness into equanimity or even joy at
how things unfold. Just as Xunzi suggested that li can (re)habituate our bodily
and emotional dispositions toward a Ruist path, we can imagine a similarly
Buddhist account of chanting or copying the Heart Sutra—the very activity of
enacting the ritual works on one’s cognitive-perceptual schema, transforming
through performance. The ritual is an aid in the process of not only coming
to understand the text, but to realize—to make real—its meaning for oneself.
In this case, the transformation ritualized activity makes possible is toward a
sensitivity to emptiness, to the interrelated, impermanent, and nonself nature
of all phenomena, including oneself. This sensitivity is another way to think
about the rise of compassion as a response to oneself, others, and the envi-
roning world. If uncertainty is a necessary consequence of an impermanent
cosmos, then ritualized activity with the Heart Sutra may serve the purpose
of turning an anxious response to that uncertainty into a compassionate one.
ZHUANGZI AND PLAYFUL-YET-

TEMPORARY LODGING PLACES
The Zhuangzi «莊子» is an accretion text from the Warring States period
(fifth to third centuries BCE) in early China.55 Often held as one of the literary
masterpieces of the period and an example par excellence of classical Daoism,
the text is a delightful mixture of poetry, parable, and philosophy. Not unlike
the Heart Sutra, the Zhuangzi is full of complicated negations and seemingly
paradoxical statements; it plays with our tendency to engage in conceptual
discriminations, breaking our experience up into dualisms or dichotomies
while valorizing one half of the picture. Wu Kuangming argues that Master
Zhuang (Zhuangzi) is a consummate philosopher-at-play, “playing with vari-
ous arguments around many positions . . . happily meandering among those
positions so as to expose the absurdity of being stuck in a single position.”56
One of the ways that this text suggests we deal with uncertainty brought on
by the constant transformations of the world is by moving playfully through
temporary lodging places—lodging places in different perspectives, but also
in the various conceptual discriminations or dualisms we tend to make.
We can see the Zhuangzi’s concern regarding dualisms in several stories
throughout the text, but it is especially prominent in the first section of chap-
ter 20, “The Mountain Tree” (山木), where the dualism in question is useful
and useless (or worthwhile and worthless). The passage begins:
Zhuangzi was traveling in the mountains when he came upon a huge tree, luxu-
riantly overgrown with branches and leaves. A woodcutter stopped beside it,
but in the end chose not to fell it. Asked the reason, he said, “There is nothing it
can be used for.” Zhuangzi said, “This tree is able to live out its natural lifespan
because of its worthlessness.”57
This parallels other stories in the text where woodcutters or carpenters

decide—sometimes after intervention in their dreams—not to cut down par-
ticularly unique trees. Zhuangzi’s comment here is consistent with these other
stories, urging readers to reconsider how they have previously understood
what it means for a tree (or anything) to be “good for nothing.” Being good
for nothing, rather than a negative, as many would usually assume, is in these
cases actually a positive, as the tree is able to live its full lifespan. The tree
here also evokes Zhuangzi himself, or an unconventional scholar who might
not be “useful” for life at court, but whose lack of conventional worth enables
him to avoid the often mercurial whims of a king and his executioner. What
something is good for, then, is directly relevant to context, and the context
is not always the one that is immediately obvious. In other words, it is good
to be good for nothing, at least sometimes. However, the passage continues:
When he left the mountains, he lodged for a night at the home of an old friend.
His friend was delighted, and ordered a servant to kill a goose for dinner. The
servant said, “There is one that can honk and one that cannot. Which should I
kill?” The host said, “Kill the one that cannot honk.”58
Unlike the benefit the tree found from being useless, in this case, it is the
goose that cannot honk, and so cannot warn of visitors, whose lifespan is cut
short. For that goose, being useless was not such a good thing. From the per-
spective of Zhuangzi’s dinner, however, it was hopefully worthwhile.
186 Chapter 5
Understandably, Zhuangzi’s disciples are confused as to what they see as

inconsistency in the master’s position, questioning him: “The tree we saw
yesterday could live out its natural lifespan because of its worthlessness,
while our host’s goose was killed for its worthlessness. What position would
you take, Master?”59 Zhuangzi replies,
I would probably take a position somewhere between worthiness and worth-

lessness. But though that might look right, it turns out not to be—it still leads
to entanglements. It would be another thing entirely to float and drift along,
mounted only on the intrinsic powers of the Course—untouched by both praise
and blame, now a dragon, now a snake, changing with the times, unwilling to
keep to any exclusive course of action. Now above, now below, with momen-
tary harmony as your only measure.60
Another way to read the disciples’ question to Zhuangzi is, “Where would
you rather be?” in the category of the useful or the useless? Zhuangzi’s
response here, initially, is that he would like to be somewhere in between
the useful and the useless, operating in the midst of dualisms and dichoto-
mies without being fully stuck by either side. However, a static position “in
between” is still not the best option. The best place to be is unmoored by the
dualism or dichotomy, roaming with the movement of dao 道, what Ziporyn
translates as the Course, without any predetermined or fixed commitments.
Not only should one be unmoored, but also untouched by praise or blame,
not interested in the game of winners and losers, best and worst, mine and not
mine. Instead, one should transform (hua 化) in concert with the transforma-
tions happening all around. Harmony (he 和) is one’s only measure, and in
this context harmony is not something that can be established in advance, but
is an equilibrium between diverse aspects of a situation that is achieved by
each part balancing with the others, the way that musicians work together in
playing a song or the ingredients in soup harmonize to create a balanced, deli-
cious flavor.61 Only a momentary harmony is ever possible, as everything is in
process, in the midst of transforming from and to something else. Zhuangzi’s
description of this as floating or drifting along fits in well with larger tex-
tual concerns about non-imposition and non-domination—one cannot force
momentary harmony, but one can let it happen. Here, we can see an early
Daoist response to a potential trouble with the Ruist use of li to respond to
uncertainty: where the Ruists want active techniques for restructuring things,
Zhuangzi suggests letting ourselves drift with the current.
The text consistently plays with common dualisms like large and small
or young and old: “Nothing in the world is larger than the tip of a hair in
autumn, and Mt. Tai is small. No one lives longer than a dead child, and old
Pengzu died an early death.”62 More broadly, the text considers dualisms in
the context of shi 是 (this) and fei 非 (not this), terms that act as “deeming
it so” and “deeming it not so” in much Classical Chinese discourse. With
respect to these sorts of conceptual discriminations, Zhuangzi’s advice is to
adopt a yu 寓 , a “temporary lodging place” from which one can “shift into
and out of various . . . perspectives or social identities to cope with them with-
out falling prey to their respective falsities and obsessions.”63 For Zhuangzi,
we can provisionally lodge in various parts of a dualism or dichotomy, but
only when we understand that each side implicates the other and so can avoid
getting tangled up in asserting that something is the case in more than tempo-
rary terms and with more than cautious confidence. As Paul D’Ambrosio and
Hans-Georg Moeller explain,
In the language of early Chinese philosophy lodging in temporary dwellings

refers directly to only provisionally appropriating various shi-fei 是非 (is-is not,
right-wrong, ought-ought not) positions. The second chapter of the Zhuangzi,
“Equalizing Things and Arguments,” eloquently displays how futile it is to
argue for the universal dominance of any single perspective by repeatedly show-
ing how fixation on anything quickly tumbles over and inverts itself.64
A temporary lodging place, then, is a provisional appropriation of part of any

dualistic discrimination. The text highlights this in a discussion of the shi and
fei, in the context of the Ruists (Confucians) and the Mohists, two schools
with significant philosophical disagreements: “we have the rights and wrongs
of the Confucians and the Mohists, each affirming what the other denies and
denying what the other affirms.”65 The trouble here is that they are too fixed,
too attached to the rightness of their own perspective. This part of the text
continues with a lengthy discourse on “thisness” (shi) and “thatness” (fei),
including this reflection that illustrates D’Ambrosio and Moeller’s point:
“Thatness” emerges from “thisness,” and “thisness” follows from “thatness.”

This is its theory of the simultaneous generation of the “this” and the “that.”
However, by the very same token, it can say that their simultaneous generation
means also their simultaneous demise, and vice versa. When it affirms either
one, it simultaneously finds it has denied it; when it denies either one, it simul-
taneously finds it has affirmed it.66
The very act of attempting to fix and hold something as one side or other of a
dualism—beautiful or ugly, for instance—means that one has already brought
the other into being. The very act of “deeming” something this or that, yes
or no, right or wrong, creates the dualism as a rigid entity. Thus, we need to
approach these dualisms not as real, permanent descriptions of things as they
are in the world, but as opportunities for temporary lodging.
188 Chapter 5
The need for these lodging places to be temporary is suggested by the

text’s consistent emphasis on transformation—from the opening image of the
Kun fish becoming the great Peng bird onward, everything is in the midst of
transforming. Given this, any attempt at a fixed or rigid position, dogma, or
attachment to one side of a dualism over the other, is bound to fail.
Zhuangzi advocates placing ourselves at the center of the Potter’s Wheel of
the Heavens (tianjun 天鈞, Potter’s Wheel of Nature), from which we have
equidistant access to all possible positions, and can move nimbly and flexibly,
according to the needs of the moment. For Zhuangzi,
A state where “this” and “not-this”—right and wrong—are no longer coupled

as opposites is called Course [dao] as axis, the axis of all courses. When this
axis finds its place in the center, it responds to all the endless things it confronts,
thwarted by none. For it has an endless supply of “rights,” and an endless supply
of “wrongs.”67
As Aaron Creller explains,
The Zhuangzi does not hold all lodging places are equal, however. The best
place to take a position is the point where the perspective is the most mutable,
located by various special metaphors as the center—the pivot point of the Dao
(daoshu 道樞) or the center of the potter’s wheel of Nature (tianjun 天鈞), for
example. From these places, one is not stuck in perpetual conflict by holding to
a single perspective against others, but instead is at the center of the rotation of
many perspectives. The center is the place where one can “let both alternatives
proceed” and see where they lead.68
If the world is constantly transforming, then being able to notice the “rotation
of many perspectives” around us and being able to move about without being
stuck to any single perspective, is key to knowing how and when to adopt a
temporary lodging place.
Following Michael Crandell, elsewhere I identify several features of
Zhuangzi’s playfulness, including how the text engages the Daoist exemplar
Cook Ding 庖丁, and how it considers terms like hua 化 (transformation),
you 遊 (roving or rambling), wu sang wo 吾喪我 (forgetting oneself), shi 是
and fei 非 (that’s it, that’s not), and yuyan 寓言 (goblet words).69 The best
response to the transformations of the world around (and in) us is, as Creller
describes it, “a rambling playfulness.”70 That is, Zhuangzi is not simply
suggesting that we be flexible with our epistemic lodging, so to speak, but
that how we approach the uncertainties around us is especially significant.
“Rambling” here is referencing you 遊, also translated as roving, roaming,
or meandering, “a kind of movement that is nondirected, without specific
external purpose or aim: touring aimlessly with one’s companions.”71 In

chapter 2 of the text, Kongzi (here as a Daoist sage) tells his disciple Zigao,
“Ride along with phenomena so that your thinking and feeling roam freely
about; give yourself over to what cannot be otherwise so as to nourish what
is central—this is the utmost.”72 The uncertainties around us are traveling
companions, and we ought to let ourselves roam about playfully with them.
The playfulness of the text is also seen in its philosophy of language. The
text itself tells us that Zhuangzi “regards language that spills over as flow-
ing into streams of meaning, regards language with weight as genuine, and
regards language that rests in different lodging places as broad ranging.”73
Creller explains these three categories of language—spillover words (lan-
guage that is self-renewing), weighty words (language whose power comes
from authority), and lodging words (language that speaks from another’s
perspective)—as all situated in a context that makes them effective. Each can
be heuristically useful: “spillover words flow out of a context without stay-
ing, weighty words sink in to a context, and lodging words bring and borrow
meaning while visiting new contexts.”74 Although some of our language is
best made sense of through the categories of weighty words or lodging words,
Zhuangzi suggests that most of his language should be approached as spill-
over words. Spillover words get their name from a trick goblet of the time
that would spill out a certain amount of liquid and then right itself back up,
and these words are “giving forth [new meanings] constantly.”75 This process
of emptying out and filling back up with new meanings is described as “har-
monizing,” taking into account the myriad transformations of the world (and
us), and the way in which our language needs to transform as well. Spillover
words also imply “the participatory nature of language—to discover how the
wine tastes, one must actually pick up the goblet and drink, let the wine sit
on the tongue, and savor its taste.”76 Playing with language, then, also implies
use—our conceptual discriminations, which are visible in language—can be
played with, when approached in a “spillover” sort of way.
An attitude of rambling playfulness serves us well because it allows us to
nimbly move to and fro, here and there, lodging now in one place and then
another, without being caught in the trap of treating any one perspective as
the perspective. For Zhuangzi, this is the attitude that allows us to enjoy
whatever is happening while recognizing that transformations are in process.
Identifying something as worthwhile or worthless is nothing more or less
than a provisional heuristic, sensitive to context but not generalizable, and not
meaningful beyond the scope of the particular moment. If one can drift and
float along with the way things are transforming, one can playfully inhabit
different perspectives, different sides of a dualism, without needing to stake
a claim about how things really are. This is expressed clearly in the story,
“Three every morning”:
190 Chapter 5
A monkey keeper handing out nuts said, “Three every morning and four every
evening.” The monkeys were all in a rage. “All right then,” he said, “four every
morning and three every evening.” The monkeys were all delighted. Without
anything being missed out either in name or in substance, their pleasure and
anger were put to use; his too was the “That’s it” which goes by circumstance.
This is why the sage smooths things out with his “That’s it, that’s not,” and
stays at the point of rest on the potter’s wheel of Heaven. It is this that is called
“Letting both alternatives proceed.”77
Whatever the monkey keeper did, the monkeys needed to eat. But how he
approached it could have made it more difficult for everyone involved. Instead,
by adopting a playful-yet-temporary lodging place regarding “breakfast” and
“dinner,” he was able to harmonize with the flow of events—even uncertain
or unpredictable events, like how much the monkeys want for dinner.
This technique of playful-yet-temporary lodging places between concep-
tual discriminations can inform how we read the many negated dualisms—or
the very idea of getting beyond conceptual discrimination—in the Heart
Sutra. Instead of abandoning all conceptual discrimination, we can adopt
this playful approach, here increasing, here decreasing, here pure, here not,
now useful, now useless, all the while recognizing that these discriminations
are coping mechanisms, not fixed designations telling us something “real”
about the world and ourselves. Zhuangzi’s coping mechanisms can then be
understood through a Buddhist lens of skillful means (Ch. fangbian方便; Sk.
upāya) that buddhas and bodhisattvas use to adapt to the changing needs of
their circumstances.
If Zhuangzi had a line in the Heart Sutra, perhaps it would be “no shi, no
fei,” or maybe “not useful, not useful.” But he would deliver it with a smile.
Referring to Zhuangzi, Wu Kuangming writes, “To the question, ‘What is
your point?,’ he would merely smile and point at us. For the answer is in how
evocation comes off. Presentation is all there is; what is presented is yet to
come, in the playful freedom of the reader.”78 In other words, a Zhuangzian
reading of the Heart Sutra might invite us to play with the text but to not get
stuck in any one place, taking its negations as possible locations for tempo-
rary lodging, not forgetting that any given term might spillover and renew
itself again, in the fullness of worldly transformations.
CONCLUSION
While the Buddhist idea of suchness implies a kind of union between the ordi-
nary and the extraordinary—buddha-nature is a clap of thunder or my dog’s
bark or an angry shout—the Zhuangzi set the stage for this much earlier:
Master Eastwall asked Zhuangzi, “Where is this [dao] you speak of?”
Zhuangzi said, “There is nowhere it is not.”
“You must be more specific.”
“It is in the ants and crickets.”
“So low?”
“It is in the grasses and weeds.”
“Even lower?”
“It is in the tiles and shards.”
“So extreme?”
“It is in the piss and shit.”
Master Eastwall made no reply.79
This passage reveals not only that there is nowhere dao is not, but also that
the conventional discriminations made by Master Eastwall—low and high
(class), extreme and common—are not capable of capturing the fluid transfor-
mations of dao. And if dao is in excrement, that ought to make us rethink how
we have been using these discriminations—after all, pooping is necessary for
living. To be able to playfully and provisionally lodge within such discrimi-
nations, to be free of their power of fixation, “means not allowing likes and
dislikes to damage you internally, instead making it your constant practice to
follow along with the way each thing is of itself, going by its spontaneous
affirmations, without trying to add anything to the process of generation.”80
Someone who can do this is both extraordinary and completely ordinary.
Likewise, although the Ruist descriptions of exemplary persons often seem
impractically lofty, as when Kongzi says,
I have yet to meet people who are truly fond of [ren] and who truly abhor behav-
ior contrary to it. There are none superior to those who are fond of [ren]. And
those who abhor behavior contrary to it, in becoming [ren] themselves, will not
allow such conduct to attach itself to them. Are there people who, for the space
of a single day, have given their full strength to [ren]? I have yet to meet them.
As for lacking the strength to do so, I doubt there are such people—at least I
have yet to meet them.81
Truly caring for one’s intimate relationality (ren) seems an incredibly high
bar, and although Kongzi says here that we are all capable—we have the
strength to do so—it seems most of us do not or cannot make it happen. This
perhaps echoes his claim in 6.29 that “the excellence (de 德) required to hit
the mark in the everyday is of the highest order. That it is rare among the
people is an old story.”82
However, we also see the following passage: “The Master said, ‘How could
intimate relationality (ren 仁) be at all remote? No sooner do I seek it than
192 Chapter 5
it has arrived.’ ”83 That is, there is not some special preparation that needs to
be met in order for one to practice intimate relationality, this key “virtue” for
Ruists—it is right here, in the context of my most mundane relationships and
interpersonal encounters, that it is demonstrated. No sooner do I seek it, or
no sooner do I turn my attention and my conduct to being right here and now
with others, with my roles and responsibilities, considering how I can help
aid in their flourishing, and that’s it; ren is not reserved for an audience with
the king or for use after a lifetime of practice, but is cultivated precisely in
the small moments of our interactions—demonstrably recognizing the shared
humanity of others, perhaps in something as small as getting off our phones
and sincerely inquiring as to the welfare of the grocery store clerk—that is
just as ren as anything else. After all, ren arises from our experiences of lov-
ing and being loved in a family context (Analects 1.2), of learning to respect
and care for those around us. It is precisely in and through the context of our
messy relationships that Ruist cultivation occurs.
How does this all connect back to the Heart Sutra? Recall that the Heart
Sutra is, at least in part, an account of the bodhisattva path. While it is not
a straightforward description of the various levels of bodhisattva-hood in
Mahāyāna doctrine, it is expressing in some way how to become a bod-
hisattva, or how bodhisattvas become buddhas.84 As is the case with Daoist
and Ruist traditions, Chinese Buddhist visions for cultivation also navigate
between the extraordinary and the ordinary, and the bodhisattva path is no
exception. Many bodhisattvas in the Mahāyāna cosmos are straightforwardly
extraordinary, with magical powers, mystical appendages, and salvific capa-
bilities. Guanyin here is no exception—she is certainly extraordinary. And
yet, the bodhisattva path is not for some other person in some other time and
place—it is for us, right here and now. Anyone who has generated the aspira-
tion to wake up in order to help others has already started on the bodhisattva
path. The bodhisattva’s work to be done is not in some rarified realm, but this
ordinary spot, among these ordinary people.
NOTES
1. Zhuangzi, chapter 4, my translation. 且夫乘物以遊心，託不得已以

養中，至矣. A Concordance to the Zhuangzi («莊子逐字索引»), eds. D. C. Lau,
Ho Che Wah, and Chen Fong Ching. ICS Ancient Chinese Text Series (Hong Kong:
Commercial Press, 2000).
2. Daniel Getz, “A Confucian Pure Land? Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land by
Wang Rixiu,” in Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts: An Anthology. ed. Georgios
T. Halkias and Richard K. Payne (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), 603.
3. McRae, “Ch’an Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: Preliminary Inferences on
the Permutation of Chinese Buddhism,” 101.
4. Ibid., 101–2. There are Ming commentaries on the text by Ruists Li Chih
(1527–1602) and Lin Chao-en (1517–1598), for instance.
5. Lusthaus, 66.
6. Diana Paul, Philosophy of Mind in Sixth-Century China: Paramartha’s
‘Evolution of Consciousness’ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 5.
7. For more on this reading of Yogācāra, see Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist
Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the
Ch’eng Wei-shih Lun (New York: Routledge, 2006).
8. The story of how Huike became Bodhidharma’s disciple also involves
Yogācārin philosophy like that found in the Lanka. So the story goes, Huike kept
trying to become Bodhidharma’s disciple but had no luck. So, he cut off his arm
to demonstrate his sincerity, and asked Bodhidharma to help him pacify his mind.
Bodhidharma said to him, “Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you.” Huike
replied, “I have searched for my mind, but it is completely unobtainable” (i.e., I can-
not find it anywhere). Bodhidharma then said, “I have [now] completely pacified your
mind for you.” For more on this, see Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology, 488–89.
9. Red Pine, “Translator’s preface,” in The Lankavatara Sutra: Translation and
Commentary (New York: Counterpoint, 2013), 5.
10. Ibid., 4.
11. Not familiar with this phenomenon? The NY Times built an online device to
allow users to experience the full range of the audio clip: https://www.nytimes.com/i
nteractive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html
12. This harkens back to the 2015 incident with “the dress,” a photo of a striped
dress that people experienced either as white and gold or black and blue. See for
instance Pascal Wallisch, “Two Years Later, We Finally Know Why People Saw ‘The
Dress’ Differently,” Slate, April 12, 2017, https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/
heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html
13. Matthew Leonard, quoted in Nina Bai, “Yanny Vs. Laurel: A Neuroscientist
Weighs In,” May 16, 2018.
14. Tim Klein, Beth Kendall, and Theresa Tougas, “Changing Brains, Changing
Lives: Researching the Lived Experience of Individuals Practicing Self-Directed
Neuroplasticity,” Sophia (2019).
15. For a summary of this research, see Alex Korb, “The Grateful Brain: The neu-
roscience of giving thanks,” Psychology Today, November 20, 2012. For an example
of a well-regarded study, see Y. Joel Wong, Jesse Owen, Nicole T. Gabana, Joshua
W. Brown, Sydney McInnis, Paul Toth, and Lynn Gilman, “Does gratitude writing
improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Evidence from a randomized
controlled trial,” Psychotherapy Research 28, no. 2 (2018): 192–202.
16. Taigen Dan Leighton, Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes
and Their Modern Expression (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012), 48–49.
17. D. T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: George Routledge &
Sons, Ltd, 1930), 446.
18. Ronnie Littlejohn, “Chinese Philosophy: An Overview of Concepts,” Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
19. Against the twofold articulation of truth from earlier Mādhyamika thinkers
(conventional and ultimate), Tiantai Buddhism’s early founder Zhiyi articulates
194 Chapter 5
three levels of truth: First, the truth of emptiness, that all things (dharmas) are
empty of own-being because all things are the result of causes and conditions
(dependent arising); second, the truth of provisionality, that all things possess tem-
porary existence due to their dependent arising; and third, the truth that the nature
of things is both empty and temporarily existing. The third truth is also called the
Middle Way.
20. Mitchell and Jacoby, Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 234.
21. Brook Ziporyn, “Tiantai Buddhism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta.
22. Paul Swanson, “Tiantai Zhiyi’s Concept of Threefold Buddha Nature,” in In
Search of Clarity: Essays on Translation and Tiantai Buddhism (Nagoya: Chisokudo
Publications, 2018), 66.
23. Mitchell and Jacoby, 236.
24. The concern over the implications of this position for ethical action was not
lost on Chinese philosophers of the time. Many were especially concerned that the
position be expressed as all experiences can awaken, rather than all experiences do
awaken or are a reflection of buddha-nature.
25. Littlejohn, “Chinese Philosophy: An Overview of Concepts.”
26. Suchness is also theorized in Huayan Buddhism.
27. Xu zangjing, 119.406. The assertion that “mind is buddha, buddha is mind” is
also found much earlier in Chinese Buddhist contexts, and is not necessarily only a
Chan consideration.
28. Xu zangjing, Vol. 119.408b. Hershock, Peter, “Chan Buddhism,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta.
29. Leighton, 127.
30. Dongshan, Jewel Mirror of Samadhi, quoted in and translated by Leighton,
168–69.
31. Leighton, 171.
32. Thomas Kasulis, Zen Action Zen Person (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 1981), 85–86. Kasulis is here talking about the Japanese term “immo.”
33. For more on the mirror metaphor in Zhuangzi, see Erin Cline’s “Mirrors,
Minds, and Metaphors,” Philosophy East and West 58, no. 3 (2008): 337–67. For
more on forgetfulness see, for instance, Ellen Y. Zhang’s “Forgetfulness and Flow:
‘Happiness’ in Zhuangzi’s Daoism,” Science, Religion, and Culture 6, no. 1 (2019):
77–84. For more on all three of these images, see Chris Fraser’s “Heart-Fasting,
Forgetting, and Using the Heart Like a Mirror: Applied Emptiness in the Zhuangzi,”
in Nothingness in Asian Philosophy, ed. Jeeloo Liu and Doug Berger (New York:
Routledge Press, 2014), 197–212.
34. Yunju Daoying, quoted in Leighton, 135.
35. Leighton, 135–36.
36. While known more popularly in English as “Confucianism,” in Chinese this tra-
dition is the tradition of the “Ru,” ritual masters or literati (Rujia 儒家 or Ruxue 儒學).
37. See, for instance, Daxue and Zhongong, trans. Ian Johnston and Wang Ping
(Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012).
38. Paul Copp, The Body Incantory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval
Chinese Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 4.
39. The term li 禮 occurs about seventy five times in the text, next in frequency for
technical terms only to ren 仁, which occurs more than 100 times in the text.
40. Analects 12.1, “克己復禮為仁.” Author’s translation, ICS Lunyu: 12.1/30/17.
In this passage, Yan Hui is referred to by his courtesy name, Yan Yuan 顏淵.
41. Analects 6.27, from The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation,
trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Random House
Publishing, 1998), 109.
42. Analects 20.3, Ames and Rosemont, 229.
43. Michael David Kaulana Ing, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 18.
44. Ing, 19.
45. Leah Kalmanson, Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in
Asian and Western Thought (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 106.
46. Ibid., 107.
47. Ames and Rosemont, “Lexicon,” Analects, 51.
48. Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (New York: State University
of New York Press, 1990), 31.
49. Amy Olberding, “Etiquette: A Confucian Contribution to Moral Philosophy,”
Ethics 126 (2016): 429.
50. Xunzi 19.5b, in Olberding, 433.
51. To be clear, this is not the only function of li.
52. Nick Hobson, “The Anxiety-Busting Properties of Ritual,” Psychology Today,
Sept 25, 2017.
53. See chapter 4 for more details on these ethnographic references. The reference
to “where to stand” is from Analects 20.3, quoted earlier in this section.
54. Thich Nhat Hanh, 117.
55. The text is composed of thirty-three chapters (the Guo Xiang version), of
which the first seven are styled the Inner Chapters. These Inner Chapters were long
thought to have actually been written by Zhuang Zhou, who may have lived in the
4th century BCE, while the Outer Chapters were thought to have been written by his
disciples. Textual and linguistic evidence now suggests that even the Inner Chapters
have perhaps twelve different authors. The text as a whole displays the work of many
people over several hundred years, riffing on the same set of themes. As such, it is
more precise to read any reference to Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi) the author as instead
a reference to the Masters Zhuang, in the plural. For more information on this issue,
see McCraw (2010).
56. Wu Kuang-ming, Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play (New York:
Crossroad Publishing and Scholars Press, 1982), 19.
57. Zhuangzi, chapter 20, in Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings. Translated by
Brook Ziporyn (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2020), 157.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
196 Chapter 5
61. For more on this, see Mattice, Metaphor and Metaphilosophy.

62. Zhuangzi, chapter 2, trans. Ziporyn, 17.
63. Paul D’Ambrosio and Hans-Georg Moeller, “Authority without Authenticity:
The Zhuangzi’s Genuine Pretending as Socio-Political Strategy,” Religions 9, no.
398 (2018): 8. On this reading, it might also seem that Guanyin’s taking on different
forms in order to respond upayically to her circumstances is a kind of Zhuangzian
“temporary lodging place.”
64. Ibid., 8.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 14–15.
68. Aaron Creller, Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to
Comparative Epistemology (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017), 145.
69. Mattice, 56–67.
70. Creller, 115. For more on Zhuangzi and play, see Mattice, Metaphor and
Metaphilosophy, chapter 3.
71. Mattice, 57. Readers might find resonance between this notion of rambling and
Thoreau’s description of walking (and thinking) in his essay, “Walking.”
72. Zhuangzi, chapter 2, author’s translation. 且夫乘物以遊心，
託不得已以養中，至矣. ICS Zhuangzi: 4/11/4. This passage could also be read as
“Travel with things and events in order to let your heart-mind ramble around, trust
in what is necessarily so in order to nourish the center, that is the most you can do.”
73. Zhuangzi, quoted in and translated by Creller, 115. From ICS Zhuangzi:
33/100/7–8.
74. Creller, 115.
76. Mattice, 64.
77. Zhuangzi, chapter 2, trans. A.C. Graham in Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001), 54.
78. Wu Kuangming, Chuang-tzu: World Philosopher at Play (New York: Scholars
Press, 1989), xiii.
81. Analects 4.6, trans. Ames and Rosemont, modified to include “ren” and not
“authoritative conduct,” 90.
82. Analects 6.29, trans. Ames and Rosemont, 110.
83. Analects 7.30, My translation based on Ames and Rosemont, 117. ICS Lunyu:
7.30/17/12. 子曰：「仁遠乎哉？我欲仁，斯仁至矣。」
84. Most Mahāyāna traditions hold that there are ten levels of bodhisattva-hood.
Chapter 6
Translation and Line Commentary
The translation and line commentary found in this chapter are one in a long,
long tradition of commentaries. This text has not suffered from a lack of com-
mentarial attention. As John McRae points out,
The tradition of exegesis on the Heart Sutra is absolutely exceptional in the his-
tory of Chinese Buddhism. The elegant brevity and multivalent profundity of
the text have made it a favorite subject of commentators from the middle of the
seventh century up until the present day, and there is no other single text—nor
any single group of scriptures—that has been interpreted by such a long and
virtually unbroken list of illustrious authorities.1
In addition to the more than one hundred pre-modern Chinese commentar-

ies on the text, there are Indian commentaries extant in Tibetan,2 Japanese
commentaries, and now contemporary commentaries in a variety of Indo-
European languages by such Buddhist superstars as the Dalai Lama, Sheng
Yen, and Thich Nhat Hahn.
The line commentary in this chapter is different from its predecessors in
(at least) a couple of ways. First, I am not an “illustrious authority.” Most
commentaries on this text are made by monastics, or at least lineage-holders,
and they engage in sectarian discourse, thinking through the text from within
the framework of their specific tradition, or in contemporary terms, preaching
the dharma, using the commentary on the text to introduce Western readers
to Buddhism (of a particular school). I am a philosopher, and the line com-
mentary is intentionally non-sectarian. The aim here is not to dislodge any
other commentaries or translations, but rather to showcase another way of
approaching this text—leveraging the other chapters of this book, the line
197
198 Chapter 6
commentary takes an interdisciplinary philosophical approach, providing the

reader with appropriate context to explore the text on their own terms.
Second, as discussed especially in chapters 2 and 5, I have situated my
translation (and commentary) in a Chinese context. This means that in this
line commentary, I have given priority to Chinese vocabulary over Sanskrit
terminology when appropriate and have translated with an eye toward letting
the text be a site of difference. Gerunding “kong” and “se” (“emptiness” to
“emptying,” “form” to “forming”), for instance, has an impact on how we
understand the text, and the line commentary explores this and other issues
of meaning in the text. As discussed in the last chapter, I also want to take
seriously the text as a phenomenology of the bodhisattva path, and the line
commentary attempts to bring this out where applicable.
TRANSLATION OF THE HEART SUTRA
The Heart Sutra

Compiled by Ven. Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty

Śāriputra! Forming is not different from emptying; emptying is not dif-
ferent from forming. Forming is emptying; emptying is forming. Sensing,
perceiving, acting, and knowing are all like this.
Śāriputra, this is the emptying of each and every phenomenon. They are
neither becoming nor ceasing to be, neither defiling nor purifying, neither
increasing nor decreasing.
For this reason, the core of emptying is without forming, without sens-
ing, perceiving, acting, or knowing; without eye, ear, nose, tongue, body,
or cognitive attention; without seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
or thinking; without any of the sense realms, from the visual through to the
intelligible; without generating ignorance and without exhausting ignorance,
all the way through to without aging and dying, and without an end to aging
and dying; without suffering, craving, extinguishing, or way-making; without
becoming wise and without attaining anything.
Translation and Line Commentary 199

awakening.
LINE COMMENTARY
般若波羅蜜多心經
唐三藏法師玄奘譯3
The Heart Sutra
Compiled by Ven. Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty
Bore Boluomiduo Xinjing (Sk. Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sutra) is the long

title of the text often known just as the Xinjing, the Heart Sutra. Calling this
text the “Heart Sutra,” though, is as previously discussed, a bit complicated.
Xinjing 心經 does mean “heart sutra”—xin is the aorta, the heart, the center,
the locus of feeling and thinking, and jing is literally the warp, the thread that
runs through bamboo slips to hold them together into a book, and then more
commonly a special kind of text, a classic or scripture from Ruist and Daoist
canons, and later a sūtra (a thread tying back to the historical Buddha’s teach-
ings) in Buddhist terms—but it has often been understood to also allude to
the text as containing or standing for the heart, the metaphoric center or key
component of the Prajñāpāramitā set of texts.
Prajñāpāramitā, or “perfection of wisdom” literature, is one of the earliest
forms of Mahāyāna literature, and much of the Prajñāpāramitā literature is
from around 100 BCE to 150 CE. Most Prajñāpāramitā literature is char-
acterized by an emphasis on prajñā, wisdom, and in particular the wisdom
that comes from realizing śūnyatā, the empty and illusory nature of all
phenomena. Prajñāpāramitā is also sometimes personified as the “Mother
of the Buddhas,” especially in esoteric traditions. The Eight Thousand Line
Prajñāpāramitā is one of the most famous Prajñāpāramitā texts, but there
is also the Prajñāpāramitā in Ten Thousand Lines, the Large MPS, and
numerous other works. Given the tendency of this form of Mahāyāna to be
relatively verbose, having a “heart,” a short key summary teaching, would be
especially valuable.
However, “xinjing” was also a technical term in Chinese Buddhism that
referred to a kind of dhāraṇī text—an invocation or incantation, meant to
200 Chapter 6
be written, copied, and chanted for ritual and/or protective purposes. The
Heart Sutra, in this sense, both contains a dhāraṇī —the “mantra” or zhou at
the end of the text—and is itself a dhāraṇī. This was not uncommon around
the time when the sutra was likely edited/compiled in China. As Paul Copp
explains,
Dhāraṇīs and other incantations were central parts of Buddhist practice in

medieval China . . . all monks seem to have regularly chanted them. Indeed, not
only monks chanted them—the material record contains many examples of lay
people chanting spells, wearing them as amulets, or having them engraved on
their memorial stelae for the various sort of aid their practice promised.4
The incredible variety we still see in use of the Heart Sutra, then, fits with
its early origins as a dhāraṇī, as a “Prajñāpāramitā Incantation” in addi-
tion to its life as a “sutra.” When Xuanzang told his students about the high
value he placed on this text, his emphasis was on its incredible protective
powers—it was the Heart Sutra, after all, that saved him in the desert on his
long journey.5 As Dan Lusthaus points out, for Xuanzang, “it was the most
efficacious dhāraṇī he knew for warding off pain, suffering, and adversities
of all kinds.”6
觀自在菩薩行深般若波羅蜜多時, 照見五蘊皆空, 度一切苦厄。

Here, I have translated “Bore Boluomiduo” (Prajñāpāramitā, “perfec-

tion of wisdom”) as “Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting” practice. While it is
common for translators to retain the Sanskrit, I think it is useful to think
about what this term means. While “prajñā” is wisdom, the wisdom of
the insight into the emptiness of all phenomena, “pāramitā” has two main
connotations: going over to the other shore, a metaphor for awakening or
enlightenment; and the full completion of an event, or the realizing or per-
fecting of that event.
In Mahāyāna discourse, “pāramitā” also evokes the six pāramitās or “per-
fections,” which are key dispositions for bodhisattva cultivation. As Kazuaki
Tanahashi explains,
The six paramitas are regarded as the means by which bodhisattvas lead beings
to the shore of nirvana. They are: giving, keeping precepts, patience, vigor-
ous effort, meditation, and prajna. . . . You might imagine that when wisdom
is perfected, there is nothing more to do; when you have arrived at the shore
of enlightenment, there is nowhere else to go. [But] I invite you to consider
paramita as a dynamic state of arriving, rather than a static state of having
already arrived. The six paramitas may thus be interpreted as the six aspects of
practice being actualized.7
This reading of the pāramitās as dynamic, interrelated practices is helpful to

keep in mind throughout the sutra. Many contemporary theorists and transla-
tors, as Tanahashi demonstrates, are increasingly emphasizing the need for
stressing dynamism in reading East Asian Buddhist materials. As Taigen Dan
Leighton writes, from a (Zen) Buddhist perspective, “ultimately and in reality
all things are not things, are not substantially and inherently existent objects.
In actuality, there are no nouns, but all words and supposed entities are verbs
or adverbs.”8 This brings us back to the argument for foregrounding gerunds
in translation from chapter 2.
When the term “Prajñāpāramitā” was translated into Chinese, transla-
tors chose to transliterate it—to create a new word using Chinese sounds to
approximate the Sanskrit sounds. This was not because Chinese did not have
words for “wisdom” or “perfection”; one way of understanding the rationale
here is to see that they wanted this to be a technical term in Buddhist phi-
losophy, distinct from the already existing term zhihui 智慧 (wisdom), which
connoted a broadly Ruist framework. Here, the practice that Guanyin is so
deeply engaged in is concerned with a specific sort of wisdom, the wisdom
of insight into emptiness. For this reason, I have adopted the translation of
“Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting practice” for Prajñāpāramitā.
Guanyin (discussed at length in chapter 3) is in the midst of this deep prac-
tice where she sees clearly, she observes, in fact she illuminates something
for all of us about the five yun 蘊. The five yun (Sk. skandhas), often trans-
lated as “aggregates,” are the composite aspects of all phenomena. I translate
this as the “five constituent processes” in order to emphasize for the reader
that these are processes, not “things,” and what they constitute when viewed
together is our experience of the world.9
Early Buddhist thinkers identified these five processes as what, when
heaped up together, constitute our experience of all things, including the
“self.” As the Zhishen proto-Chan anonymous commentary on the Heart
Sutra notes, “the five skandhas [yun] are provisionally called a person.”10
However, because each of these processes is impermanent, interdependent,
and without an essence, although together they compose our experience of
“stuff” or “identity,” analyzing them reveals that there is no stable identity,
essence, or self to any “thing,” including especially our “selves.” These five
processes constitute our activity of “thing-ing” or “self-ing” as a verb, not
202 Chapter 6
“things” or “selves” as having permanent or independent existences, which

Buddhists argue is a deeply problematic illusion. This illusion of permanent,
separate identity is disrupted or de-solidified when we understand the various
constituent processes that “heap up” together to form our phenomenological
experience of the world and ourselves.
Guanyin’s realization about the five processes is that they are all kong 空
(Sk. śūnyatā), empty, emptying. As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, each time
we see “empty” we ought to ask, “empty of what? To be empty is always to
be empty of something.”11 As a description of processes, kong is also how
these processes work—emptying. Kumārajīva was the first to introduce kong
as a translation for the Sanskrit term śūnyatā, which refers specifically to the
way in which things are empty of own-being (Ch. zixing 自性; Sk. svabhāva),
empty of a separate, isolated, essential “stuff” or “self.” In Chinese, the term
“kong” connotes both emptiness of substantial stuff, like the way a bowl is
empty without anything filling it up, and emptiness, as in the vast emptiness
of the open sky. This key Mahāyāna term is equated with dependent arising,
so that being empty is at the same time being “full” of relations, being “full”
of dependence. Because this fullness of dependence on other phenomena is a
fullness of interrelations, things are empty precisely because they are full of
(inter)relations.12 I often tell students to substitute “interrelated” for “empty,”
if they are having a hard time not reading “empty” as non-existence or not
real, which is not (precisely) what the term means. While Xuanzang’s version
of the text does not contain further explanation of what the five self-ing pro-
cesses are empty of, I think it is useful to emphasize that kong is a technical
term indicating a specific absence or lack—the lack of permanent, indepen-
dent, unchanging essence, self, or existence.13
Buddhist theorizing on kong is often taken as a middle position in at least
two ways. First, it is between a kind of eternalism, which asserts that (at least
some) things do have permanent “selves” or essences, and nihilism, which
asserts that nothing really exists or matters. For most Chinese Buddhists after
the early Tiantai thinkers, “empty” means empty of isolated, independent,
permanent essence and so full of impermanent interrelations with everything
else—empty, because dependently arisen. Empty in an East Asian Buddhist
context always goes along with “temporarily existing”; empty means not
separate and not permanent, or the process of coming into being and fading
away. Second, the sutra also presents a critique of the view that “emptiness”
is itself some thing—the dangerous tendency to substantialize or reify the
activity of “emptying” into the thing, “emptiness.” Even the concept of emp-
tiness itself is subject to its own logic—it too is provisional and dependently
arising. As Wŏnch’ǔk, Xuanzang’s student, explains in his commentary on
the text:
However, then emptiness does not contradict existence; that is precisely the
principle of emptiness. Nor is it that nonexistence does not contradict emptiness;
that is precisely the explanation of how rūpa (form) establishes itself. “Both
emptiness and existence” accords with and establishes the two truths. “Neither
emptiness nor existence” conforms to the Middle Way. Isn’t this the Great Tenet
of the Buddha Dharma?14
In other words, emptiness expresses a Middle Way about what it means to

exist—not existing without causes and conditions (dependent arising), and
not not-existing.
For most Chinese Buddhist thinkers, emptiness is taken to be a position
that celebrates the provisional existence of things without reifying them.
That is, phenomena are impermanent, continually changing, arising and
ceasing with the interactions between “person” and environment—the ways
we have of being ourselves are themselves the means by which we change,
grow, develop, and interact with the world around us. These processes, under
closer examination, empty us of even the possibility of a permanent, separate,
essential “self.”
This insight led Guanyin to overcome all ku 苦 (Sk. duḥkha), often trans-
lated as “suffering.” Ku refers to a flavor that is bitter (as opposed to sweet);
hardship, suffering, pain, or hard times; being worn out or worn down; being
troubled by something; or bringing suffering to another. While the Sanskrit
term evokes dark clouds on the horizon or the continual discomfort of a
poorly carved wagon axel on a long trip, the Chinese term uses a gustatory
metaphor—the character is visually a combination of “old” and “grass,” which
is certainly bitter—for this dis-ease that underlies everything we experience.
Basic Buddhist teachings identify three main categories of ku: basic pain and
suffering, troubles or discontentment caused by impermanence, and the bitter-
ness of difficulties due to interdependent causes (especially the twelve links of
dependent causation). Some contemporary translators choose “unsatisfactori-
ness” or “dissatisfactoriness” to try and capture this broader range of meanings.
I have chosen not to restrict the translation to a single term, instead including
suffering, trouble, and discontent in the translation. Remedying ku is the central
concern of Buddhist doctrine—we need to remedy our ignorance about how we
and all phenomena really are, because it is our ignorance, and the accompany-
ing attachments and aversions, that causes us to be discontent.
Guanyin’s realization of the nature of constitutive processes as empty of
separate or permanent essence led her to overcome or get beyond this char-
acteristic of existence. Most often this is read as her overcoming her own
suffering, trouble, and discontentment, but the grammar—and the metaphys-
ics—is delightfully ambiguous. She clearly saw 照見 the five constituent
204 Chapter 6
processes 五蘊 were all 皆 empty 空, overcoming 度 all 一切 suffering,

trouble, and discontent 苦厄. The trouble Guanyin gets past here is “all
trouble,” “every trouble,” or “everything troubling.” There is no question that
her meditative insight, her practice, enabled her to change her conceptual and
phenomenological apparatus so as to remedy her own suffering. Because she
perceived things in a certain way, due to her dedicated practice, she altered
her inertial habits, and so her new habits of self-ing and emptying no longer
generated suffering. But there is also a sense in which if we are all deeply
and fundamentally interconnected, her insight did not only ease her pain but
set the stage for all of us to overcome our troubles, our discontentment, and
our sufferings—to fundamentally alter the quality and nature of our relation
to our own experience. She overcame all suffering. Drawing on recent stud-
ies concerning the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation practices (some
kinds of meditation have measurable effects on pain and suffering), Kazuaki
Tanahashi parses this part of the sutra as, “(Avalokitesvara) frees all (who
practice likewise) from anguish.”15
舍利子 ! 色不異空, 空不異色; 色即是空, 空即是色。受、想、行、識,

亦復如是。
Śāriputra! Forming is not different from emptying; emptying is not different
from forming. Forming is emptying; emptying is forming. Sensing, perceiv-
ing, acting, and knowing are all like this.
Śāriputra, who we have encountered in other Mahāyāna texts as the rep-

resentative for arhat-ship, is addressed by Guanyin as if he had asked her
about the nature of her insight, or how he ought to practice—how to become
a bodhisattva. Because he is well known in English by his Sanskrit name
and not his Chinese name, Sheliezi, I have kept the Sanskrit rendering here.
While Śāriputra has no lines of his own in this sutra, his presence draws
our attention to all of the other sutras he does appear in, where he questions
Mahāyāna doctrine and practice, ever the dutiful disciple but never the liber-
ated bodhisattva. Perhaps this teaching was the one that succeeded for him.
Guanyin tells Śāriputra that, beginning with forming (Ch. se 色; Sk.
rūpa), each of the five constituent processes is empty. These five processes
in Chinese are: se 色 (forming), shou 受 (sensing), xiang 想 (perceiving),
xing 行 (acting), and shi 識 (knowing), more commonly rendered from the
Sanskrit as form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saṃjñā), volition
(saṃkāra), and consciousness (vijñāna).16 As detailed in the translation per-
spectives chapter, I have translated these from the Chinese, not the Sanskrit,
using gerunds, not nouns, in order to highlight a dynamic and processual
perspective on how these processes are both constitutive of identity and
how an examination of them reveals no permanent, isolated, independent, or
essential “self,” but rather the on-going events of “becoming” persons and
phenomena.
Examining these terms in more detail may help to reveal more about the
basic framework in place. In what follows, I give a brief overview of the
general meanings of each of these terms in Chinese, followed by an account
of how the term functions in Buddhist discourse. Se (forming) in general has
to do with color or luster, countenance or facial expression, the quality of
goods, and sexuality or sexual charms (especially of women). In this context,
it connotes the outward appearance or expression of things, their materiality
or substance, especially as they impinge on our experience or each other. This
is the fleshiness of the body, the resistance of physical objects, the “sensorial
materiality” of our experience.17 Shou (sensing) means to receive or accept;
to be subjected to, endure, or bear; pleasant; and is sometimes a grammatical
marker indicating passive voice. In this context, it connotes the way in which
we receive or are subjected to sensory experiences. This is the bare experi-
ence of having sensations—sensations are happening—seeing is happening,
hearing is happening, touching is happening, tasting is happening, smelling
is happening, and thinking is happening. Xiang (perceiving) in general means
to think or feel; to believe or suppose; to wish or want; or to miss, especially
something that is no longer present. In this context, it connotes something
like perception, the activity of perceiving objects of our sensory experience.
Xing (acting) is a polyvalent word that has meanings including to walk or go
somewhere; to do or perform; to be capable or competent; current, makeshift,
or temporary; and behavior or conduct. In this context, it indicates the part
of the person that moves them to act and their actions, what we might think
of as intention + action, or volitional activity. Finally, Shi (knowing) means
to know or understand, to grasp, conceptualize, knowledge, and conscious-
ness. In this context, this is the activity of the consciousnesses or awarenesses
that arise with sensory experience (which includes our mental activities, as
discussed below).
Having identified the constituent processes of “thing-ing” or “self-ing,”
each presents an opportunity for realizing the transience, nonself, and inter-
dependence of both ourselves and the world around us.18 To have a body, or
be embodied, for instance, is to experience the impermanence of se, form,
materiality. Our bodies grow larger and smaller, change in color and appear-
ance, muscle tone and flexibility, building fresh cells and shedding old ones,
developing age spots and cataracts, receiving sunburns, and much more. We
consume nutrients (and some less-than-nutritious things) that become us—
the “stuff” we are made of—even as our eliminative systems transform what
once seemed to be our bodies into no longer ours (e.g., sweat, tears, mucus,
sexual fluids, blood, urine, and feces). Our very existence requires dead dino-
saurs, topsoil, sunshine, glacial water from thousands of years ago, farmers
206 Chapter 6
in Nebraska, honeybees, World War II, and on to the whole of existence. We

are fundamentally interconnected and interrelated with everything. And so
forming—becoming this body, here and now—is at the same time empty-
ing—changing, transforming. There is no single, stable, isolated “thing” that
is our body—or any body. Instead, there are processes of forming, becom-
ing, emptying, and transforming. This same logic applies to all instances of
forming—including my cat, the book on the table, the rain, and the computer
I type this on.
To say that forming is emptying and emptying is forming is to recognize
that there is no static “form” that needs to be recognized as “empty” of its
own independent essence, but rather that in their continual growth and devel-
opment, the phenomena around us (including us) are always already in the
midst of forming, and in doing so, always already emptying out again. As
our eyes grow and change, so too does our sight—and as the light around us
changes, so too does our experience of color. Our intentions, and the activi-
ties they inspire, change, and develop as we change and develop, with new
relationships, transformed motivations, and different phases of life. Even our
processes of conceptualization change, grow, and develop in relation to our-
selves, those around us, and our environments.
As a key part of the bodhisattva path, kong is not simply an acknowl-
edgment of a metaphysical position—that no “things” have independent
essences—but also advice on how to realize, how to make real, this insight
in our own lives. We are the ones who have a tendency to reify (ourselves
and the things around us), and so we are the ones who need to empty out our
perceptual and conceptual schema, our habits of thinking and feeling, and
our environing assumptions about ourselves and the world—and, given the
inertia of our normal modes of thinking/engaging, we need to do this often.
We need to habituate emptying practices.
Perhaps the two most famous lines of this sutra, apart from the ending
zhou or “mantra,” are the identifications between se and kong. I have chosen
to translate these using gerunds: forming and emptying. These lines are more
commonly rendered as a version of “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,”
where both se and kong are nominalized. Here are several other versions of
these lines from different English translations of the Heart Sutra:
• “Form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from
form. Form itself is emptiness, and emptiness itself is form” (Dan Lusthaus
and Heng-ching Shih, Kuiji’s commentary, 127).
• “Form is empty; emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form,
form is not other than emptiness” (Donald S. Lopez, from the Tibetan,
vii).
• “Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form; Form is

emptiness, emptiness is form” (Norman Waddell, Hakuin’s Japanese ver-
sion, 31).
• “Form is not other than emptiness, and emptiness is not other than form;
form is precisely emptiness, and emptiness is precisely form” (Sheng-yen’s
Chan commentary, 7).
• “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form,
form too is not other than emptiness” (Dalai Lama, Tibetan, 60).
• “Form is not separate from boundlessness; boundlessness is not separate
from form. Form is boundlessness; boundlessness is form” (Joan Halifax
and Kazuaki Tanahashi, American Zen, 3).
I take no particular issue with these readings. In choosing to translate these

lines differently, I am not suggesting that these are somehow bad or incor-
rect translations. Instead, translating these phrases with gerunds does at
least two things that I think are worthwhile: (1) it foregrounds a processual
understanding of what is going on; and (2) it makes the assertion more
personally active. In foregrounding a processual understanding of these
concepts, noting that “forming is not different from emptying, emptying
is not different from forming; forming is emptying, emptying is forming”
takes this from its more common understanding as a statement about meta-
physics19 (which it also is) to a statement about human becoming—about
living well, and about our phenomenology. This sort of translation helps
us not to mistakenly reify “emptiness” as a “thing” but to see it as a way
of engaging ourselves and the world around us. Furthermore, emptying is
something that we do, a way of becoming with the also emptying world. It
is not merely a view about what is real—a claim about the illusory nature
of our common tendency to see things in terms of cosmic furniture, stuff
that exists separately and permanently—but is something that we, on the
bodhisattva path, do. We empty out our cognitive-perceptual systems and
habits (including the concept of emptying itself). That is, this is a practice
for living well. By using the gerund, this translation puts the reader in the
text as an actor, one who should be emptying oneself (all five processes)
out, not just once but as a consistent part of living a life that embodies
wisdom through compassion. Although not mentioned directly in the sutra,
compassion and wisdom are understood as two sides of the same coin, two
different ways of talking about the same phenomena. Compassion is the
rational response to emptiness—if we are all interconnected, then there is
in a sense no “private” suffering. Compassion for others and compassion
for oneself are intertwined. This point is also emphasized by Guanyin being
the speaker of the text.
208 Chapter 6
It is also relevant to note that the two lines—“Forming is not different

from emptying, emptying is not different from forming. Forming is emptying,
emptying is forming”—are grammatically different. The first phrase uses the
buyi 不異 construction, A is not different from B, where the second phrase
uses the jishi 即是 construction, A is (also or just precisely) B. This asserts
both a lack of difference and a shared identity.
Noting that forming is not different from emptying and emptying is not dif-
ferent from forming (色不異空, 空不異色) hits at the heart of our common,
pre-reflective assumption that forming and emptying (form and emptiness)
must be distinct in some way, that form(ing) is some other sort of “thing”
from emptiness (emptying). The sutra tells us that they are not different, pre-
cisely because it would be our natural position to assume that they are funda-
mentally different. However, while our language does distinguish them, here
Guanyin negates our common understanding of things, telling us that they
are not fundamentally different. Rather, there are a multiplicity of diverse
phenomena that nonetheless are united in their character as impermanent,
interconnected, and nonself.
Noting that forming is emptying and emptying is forming (色即是空,
空即是色) adds to the previous lines in important ways. While it may seem
that the grammar of the two phrases (not different from, is) is getting at the
same thing, perhaps repeating only for rhetorical effect, there is more at play.
Building on the assertion of non-difference, the next phrases give us the
identification between emptying and forming in the senses of “just precisely”
or “is also”: forming is just precisely emptying; forming is also emptying;
emptying is just precisely forming; emptying is also forming. Forming is
non-forming, emptying is non-emptying. Things that seem different are both
different and non-different. In other words, each of the five processes are no
more and no less than their repeated process of provisionally becoming and
being emptied back out. All five processes are emptying, but that does not
mean that all five processes are indistinguishable from one another—this is
not an assertion of identity that does away with difference, but one that oper-
ates on the Buddhist logic of nonduality. Things are not all one, all the same,
but they are also not two.
Seeing that emptying is not different from forming and vice versa is impor-
tant for shifting how we are in the world. It is not that “forming” is bad and
“emptying” good, but rather that “forming” is, when viewed appropriately,
the process of “emptying.” Emptying is how forming forms, and forming is
how emptying empties. And, of course, this is not simply an opportunity for
insight and transformation we have with se (rūpa, materiality), but with all
of our constituent processes—and through changing our cognitive-perceptual
habits of “thinging” and “selfing,” we can transform the very nature of our
existence and of reality. Da Dian’s commentary explains this well:
Form and emptiness are of a single type. From the buddhas above to the insects
below, each and every [sentient being] is fundamentally completely emptiness.
The eyes are unable to see form—they can only see true emptiness. The ears are
unable to hear form—they can only hear true emptiness. Although divisible into
eighty-four thousand [different experiences], all perceptive and cognitive activ-
ity (chien-wen chueh-chih) derives from the six senses. Form and emptiness are
not different: this is the wondrous principle of true emptiness. . . . If you wish to
eradicate birth and death, then just illuminate and destroy from a single sensory
capacity. You will instantly be empty and serene, you will instantly receive your
self from before the eon of emptiness. . . . Empty yet without anything that is
empty, the eight-four thousand sensory efforts and false thought suddenly end in
a single moment. Persons are empty, and dharmas are empty. The path of words
is cut off, and the locus of mental activity is extinguished. To make the thoughts
move is to be in opposition; to evaluate it is to be in error. If you can penetrate
to the bottom of this without depending on anything, you will instantly receive
[this understanding]. There are no persons and no buddhas.20
Da Dian here is not only asserting the full identity of forming and emptying,
but he is also making clear that any of our sensory experiences or capacities
can lead to these insights.
舍利子 ! 是諸法空相
Śāriputra, this is the emptying of each and every phenomenon.21
Each and every phenomenon, here, can also be read as “all dharmas.”
Dharma, fa 法 in Chinese, is a complex word with a range of meanings. It
means the teachings of the Buddha—one of the three refuges22—but because
the Buddha’s teaching is about how things really are, this term also connotes
truth, reality, phenomena, and something like the laws of nature (from a
Buddhist perspective). Thus, it also means all things, each and every thing,
event, or process that can even in theory be individuated or categorized or
conceptualized, anything that is qualitatively unique—so this is the emptying
of all “thing-ing” as well. Furthermore, the term can also refer to the objects
of the thinking consciousness (yishi 意識)—in other words, concepts.23
For Mahāyāna thinkers, especially in the Yogācāra tradition, not perceiv-
ing the mark of emptiness (kongxiang 空相) of each dharma is the initial
condition for the formation of the cognitive hindrances (所知障). Cognitive
hindrances are the variety of factors that distort our awareness of reality; they
hinder our awakening because of our own habituated perception of phenom-
ena (things/events/processes/concepts) as separate or unchanging—as non-
empty. When Guanyin tells Śāriputra that “this,” the activity of emptying the
five constituent processes, is the emptying of each and every phenomenon,
210 Chapter 6
she is emphasizing for him the connection between our own habits of per-
ception and our tendency to attribute “stability” or “essence” to things in the
world. The reasoning from the previous section of the sutra applies not only
to identity formation of persons, but to any and everything, including but not
limited to objects in the world, persons, creatures, and ideas. Just as our own
self-ing is empty of isolated, permanent reality, so too are all “things” empty.
The sutra moves us from realizing the interrelated and impermanent nature
of our selves to the interrelated and impermanent nature of all phenomena.
不生不滅, 不垢不淨, 不增不減。

They are neither becoming nor ceasing to be, neither defiling nor purifying,
neither increasing nor decreasing.
These pairs of negations are paradigm examples of dichotomies or dual-

isms, and the sutra is here forcefully reminding us that each of these are
products of our thinking, our habitual engagement with the world. The first
pair, shengmie 生滅, can be read most directly as living and dying (birth and
death), but refers more broadly to coming into existence, growing, or produc-
ing, and going out of existence, extinguishing, or fading away. The second
pair, goujing 垢淨, can be read most directly as dirtying and cleaning, and
more broadly as defiling and purifying. The third pair, zengjian 增減, is most
directly increasing and decreasing, but also more broadly expanding and
contracting or adding and subtracting. As paradigm examples of dichotomies,
each pair seems to express the full range of possibilities—from alive to dead,
sparkling clean to filthy, expanding outward to diminishing down to nothing.
Yet here the elements of each pair are negated—neither living nor dying,
neither defiling nor purifying, neither increasing nor decreasing. “They,” as in
all phenomena, all dharmas, are empty(ing), and so not captured by dichoto-
mies.24 Our problematic habit of splitting the world into parts and valorizing
one over the other has a tendency to lead us to assume that these dichotomous
characteristics are somehow real, separate from us and the context in which
they appear, in addition to being independent from their mate. From the
moment of our first breath, we are living—and we are dying. Our death seems
final to us, and yet even in our corpses there is new life as microorganisms
and other critters feed and breed from our bodies. Life and death are not sepa-
rate from one another. Our ideas about what is clean and what is dirty, what
is increasing and what is decreasing, are likewise problematic dichotomies,
especially when we identify one as good or desirable and the other as bad, and
operate under the illusion that they are distinct from one another and from our
construction of their context. This logic extends out to all dichotomies and to
dualistic thinking in general.25 Thich Nhat Hanh explains it in this way:
When people hear the word “emptiness,” they often panic because they tend
to equate emptiness with nothingness, nonbeing, and nonexistence. Western
philosophy is preoccupied with questions of being and nonbeing, but Buddhism
goes beyond the dualistic notions of being and nonbeing. I often say, “To be or
not to be, that is no longer the question. The question is one of interbeing.”26
Hanh uses the phrase “interbeing” to try and disrupt the conventional way we
tend to think and act, as if we (and everything else) are separate and fully isol-
able from each other and the world around us, and as if “emptiness” or “emp-
tying” were a “thing” that could have any of these characteristics. Seeing the
various dichotomies and dualisms that tend to structure our thinking as “inter-
being” with one another and us, rather than hierarchically opposed to one
another and describing some objective reality, is what it means to “empty”
these constructions.
是故, 空中無色, 無受、想、行、識; 無眼、耳、鼻、舌、身、意; 無色、

聲、香、味、觸、法; 無眼界, 乃至無意識界;
For this reason, the core of emptying is without forming, without sensing,
perceiving, acting, or knowing; without eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or
cognitive attention; without seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or
thinking; without any of the sense realms, from the visual through to the
intelligible;
This section of the sutra enjoins us to resist reifying emptiness or empty-

ing, which is described here as itself having or being an empty center—a
center or core reminiscent of Vimalakīrti’s core-less plantain, without any-
thing we might be tempted to attribute to it, were “it” a “thing.” English is
a fantastic language for reification, as we can make “things” out of pretty
much any “thing.” This section details that whatever we think “emptiness”
or “emptying” is, it is not the five constituent processes. Furthermore, it is
not “there” somewhere in our experience of ourselves and the world around
us, which Buddhists characterize by the eighteen realms of phenomenal
experience (Ch. jie 界, Sk. dhatu)—six sense faculties, six sense objects,
and six sensory consciousnesses (the first and the last are listed, with the
others assumed).
In most Buddhist thought, there are six senses: seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting, smelling, and thinking (directing our cognitive attention to some-
thing, like a flashlight illuminating an aspect of our experience). Each has a
sense faculty (eyes, ears, skin, taste buds, nose, mind), a sense object (things
that can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled, or conceptualized), and a
sense awareness that arises though the interaction of sense faculty and sense
212 Chapter 6
object (visual awareness makes sense of what the eye sees, auditory aware-
ness makes sense of what the ears hear, tactile awareness makes sense of
what we touch, gustatory awareness makes sense of what we taste, olfactory
awareness makes sense of what we smell, and conscious awareness makes
sense of what we are mentally attending to). Our experience of ourselves and
the world around us always occurs in between—in between “us” and “world,”
but more precisely in between the engagement or negotiation of our sense
faculty, sense objects, and sense awarenesses. Sheng Yen describes a Chan
meditative practice related to this:
you can contemplate the nature of a sense faculty, its sense object, or the sense
consciousness. The sense faculties and objects are the physical and psychologi-
cal components inside and outside the body. If you successfully complete your
contemplation and wisdom arises, then the practice is realized. The goal is to
realize that while the sense faculty, the sense object, and the sense conscious-
ness are empty, they also exist. This is the Mahāyāna realization: that emptiness
and existence are the same. Because everything constantly changes, there is no
real existence. Phenomena come, seeming to emerge from emptiness, and return
back to emptiness. This is the result of causes and conditions coming together.
Proper contemplation is precisely the realization of this emptiness.27
In other words, all of our experience is “in between,” a negotiation of interac-

tion between our sensory apparatus (including our “thinking” sense) and the
world around us, none of which is on its own without changes or relations.
Examining our sensory experiences carefully reveals that no facet of our
experience stands alone—recall here Guanyin’s meditation on hearing from
the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. Emptiness—the practice or process of emptying—is
not some “thing,” but the way that any and all phenomena are, how they
exist—interrelated, impermanent, and without a “self” or “essence.”
The sutra gives us this long list, in part, as a reminder that this is part of the
bodhisattva path—insight into reality can come from anywhere in our experi-
ence, and we can use any or all of these senses or facets of our identity to realize
it. As McRae notes in his discussion of Chan Master Da Dian’s commentary
on the Heart Sutra, “Any sensory capacity may be used as the vehicle of
enlightenment, as long as one ‘illuminates and destroys,’ i.e., illuminates so as
to eliminate any dualistic distinctions, from that one perspective.”28
無無明亦無無明盡, 乃至無老死亦無老死盡;
without generating ignorance and without exhausting ignorance, all the way
through to without aging and dying, and without an end to aging and dying29;
This section of the sutra continues the reasoning of the previous section,
enjoining us not to reify emptiness and to use any and all facets of our
experience as entry points for awakening. In suggesting that the core of
emptying has neither ignorance nor an end to ignorance, has neither aging
and dying nor an end to aging and dying, the text is directly evoking the
twelve links of dependent arising (Ch. 十二因緣; Sk. dvādaśa-astanga
pratītyasamutpāda)—ignorance is the first of the links, and aging and
dying the last, although they are all understood as mutually conditioning
and so non-hierarchical. The grammar of the phrase (乃至) indicates that
what is being said is the case from the first link—ignorance—all the way
through, including all the others, to the last link—aging and dying.
These twelve links of conditioned existence, or twelve phases, are the
conditions that give rise to our suffering: lacking insight, also known as
ignorance (wuming 無明), intending that leads to acting (xing 行), con-
scious attending (shi 識), naming and forming (mingse 名色), the sixfold
sphere of sense contact, sensing (liuchu 六處), contacting (chu 觸), engag-
ing the senses (shou 受), thirst/craving/desire (ai 愛), grasping/seeking
(qu 取), becoming/existing (you 有), birthing/growing/producing (sheng
生), and aging and dying (laosi 老死). But even here, in this way of mak-
ing sense of how lacking insight (ignorance) is a seed for how we come
to suffer (both synchronically and diachronically), we are reminded that
emptying is not a substance with attributes. Each of these links can itself
be an avenue for waking up, a moment for realizing that it too is marked
by emptiness, that it too is in the process of emptying, changing, develop-
ing, and connecting.
無苦、集、滅、道; 無智, 亦無得。

without suffering, craving, extinguishing, or way-making; without becoming
wise and without attaining anything.
This section continues the long list of negations from the previous sections,
focusing on central Buddhist tenets it would seem impossible to deny: the
four noble truths, gaining wisdom, and spiritual attainment. And yet the text
is very clear—just like the five constituent processes, the eighteen realms
of phenomenal experience (six sense faculties, six sense objects, six sense
awarenesses), and the twelve links of dependent arising—the four noble
truths, wisdom, and the very idea of spiritual attainment or progress, are
empty of separate and permanent existence, and so full of both relationships
and change.
The four noble truths, or truths for nobility, are here rendered as suffering
(suffering, trouble, and discontent), craving, extinguishing, and way-making.
214 Chapter 6
The historical Buddha realized these truths after a small meal and a long
meditation under the bodhi tree: all this is suffering; the cause of suffering is
craving; it is possible to extinguish suffering, and there is a path to do so. In
many early cases, this is explained along a medical model: there is (a) dis-
ease (diagnosis); the dis-ease has a cause (etiology); knowing the cause, it is
possible to get rid of the dis-ease (prognosis); and there are things you can do
to bring about a good prognosis (treatment).
While the first three are relatively close between the Chinese and Sanskrit,
the fourth is very interesting. The Chinese term for the fourth truth, dao
道, is one of the most important philosophical terms in the whole of the
Chinese tradition. It has (at least) four general meanings, and can hold all
simultaneously:
1. Path, road, way, paths, roads, ways. Chinese nouns are mass nouns,
which means they do not admit of number. In English, we have some
mass nouns—deer, for instance, does not change if there is one deer or
three hundred deer. So, this can be read in the singular or plural, and
more context is necessary to know which is appropriate.
2. The activity of making, building, or traveling along a path/road/way or
paths/roads/ways.
3. Prescriptive discourse. In this case, dao refers to the “way” to do some-
thing, how it ought to be done, the way that should be followed.
4. The holistic yet unbounded totality of all events, objects, and phenomena
in the cosmos.
In the case of Buddhist materials, dao refers to the Buddhist path(s) and
activities of Buddhist practice. As the fourth truth for living a noble life, it
suggests the eightfold path, the set of interconnected ethical, meditative, and
insight-generating practices that constitute the path to awakening and extin-
guishing one’s suffering—radically reorienting oneself and one’s relation-
ship to one’s experiences. The eight co-constitutive practices of the path are:
cultivating appropriate perspectives and views (zhengjian 政見); cultivating
appropriate reflective thinking (zhengsi 正思); cultivating appropriate speak-
ing (zhengyu 正語); cultivating appropriate intentions and actions (zhengye
正業)30; cultivating appropriate livelihood (zhengming 正命)31; cultivating
appropriately vigorous energy (zhengjingjin 正精進); cultivating appropriate
recollection (zhengnian 正念); and cultivating appropriate meditative con-
centration (zhengding 正定).32
Traditionally, continuous practice and development of the eightfold path
lead to wisdom or realization of how things really are. Some Mahāyāna
thinkers argue that the eightfold path is supplanted by the bodhisattva path,
which includes it but also goes beyond it, with its insight into emptiness and
compassion. The last negated term in the sutra’s list, attainment, can be seen
in a couple of different ways. In early Buddhist traditions, attainment would
refer to the four attainments or stages of enlightenment that lead to arhat-
ship: becoming a stream-enterer, a once-returner, a non-returner, and an arhat
(Pali: arahant). More broadly, attainment can refer to any sense of progress
or development in one’s practice—attaining anything up to and including
awakening.
When the sutra negates the four noble truths, wisdom, and attainment, in
one sense the logic is the same from the previous sections: none of these are
separate or permanent (each is empty and emptying), and each is a potential
vehicle for awakening. However, this section also pushes us further to think
about the bodhisattva path. Why would a sutra on how to become a bodhisat-
tva negate these things? For advanced practitioners like Śāriputra, one danger
is that wisdom and attainment become seen as consequences of the practice,
as things that are separate from the practitioner and that can only be gained
after some specific amount of effort. But the sutra here is perhaps suggest-
ing that there is no separate thing to be gained, no “other” wisdom you do
not already have. In most Chinese traditions, all persons (and sometimes all
things—rocks, mountains, rivers, dogs, cats, bugs, etc.) have buddha-nature
(Ch. fo-xing 佛性), the potential for awakening. In some Chinese traditions,
and in many other East Asian traditions, this idea transforms into not just
the potential for awakening but the idea that each and all of us are already
awake. Practice helps us to realize that—to understand it and to make it real
in our lives. But we are not getting something new or extra; rather, we are
shedding our blinders in order to fully experience—and habituate the experi-
ence of—phenomena (and our nonselves) as they really are, interrelated and
impermanent, or empty(ing).
In seeing this as advice for the bodhisattva path, it also connects directly
to problems of self-cherishing. The first step on the bodhisattva path is gen-
erating the aspiration for awakening (Ch. putixin 菩提心; Sk. bodhicitta), the
drive to awaken for the sake of helping others. There are no noble truths, no
wisdom, no attainment, for those who see/experience themselves as isolated,
essential, or permanent. Focusing on attainments for oneself, and not for all,
does not prompt awakening. We do not need the four noble truths or com-
plicated accounts of wisdom or attainment to be able to be present with one
another, to respond compassionately to the suffering of others, and to cease
viewing the world as being about ourselves. Bodhisattvas do not practice in
order to wake up—their practice supports their compassionate activity, which
is itself a performance of their awakening. In other words, because the inten-
tional activity is what drives the production of karma, which keeps us stuck
216 Chapter 6
in the cycle of birth and death (synchronically and diachronically), being able
to intentionally act without looking for the activity or the rewards to tie back
to oneself—not looking for wisdom for oneself, or attainment for oneself—is
precisely what ceases the generation of new karma.
But still, this section negates even nirvāṇa (Ch. mie 滅, extinction)! No
suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no way out. One way
to read this is to recall that for Mahāyāna thinkers, nirvāṇa and saṃsāra (the
cycle of birth and death) are identified with one another. There is no way
out, and nowhere else to go. Waking up happens right here, in the midst
of all the causes and conditions of suffering. But each of those causes and
conditions, or experiences of suffering, is a potential wake up call—in fact,
there is no other context in which awakening occurs. Some thinkers make a
comparison to the statement, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” on this
point.33 While somewhat trite, the saying does get at something important—
an experience is suffering from one side of it, and joyful (or at least, with the
suffering extinguished) from the other. The material conditions might not
have changed, but we can change the quality of our relationships to our own
experiences.
無所得故, 菩提薩埵依般若波羅蜜多故, 心無罣礙; 無罣礙故, 無有恐怖,

遠離顛倒夢想, 究竟涅槃。三世諸佛依般若波羅蜜多故, 得阿耨多羅三
藐三菩提。
awakening.34
Bodhisattvas do not get something extra; they give—generosity, after all,

is one of their key practices. Because they are not in it for themselves,
because compassion is their driving force, they are able to rely on and
maintain the practice and the insight that all phenomena (including them-
selves) are empty (and so interrelated and impermanent). This means that
they can operate without the obstructions or impediments that come from
not emptying oneself and the various phenomena one encounters, from not
recognizing our interconnectedness and impermanence, and from cling-
ing to conceptual dualisms. This releases them from fear—a consequence
often associated with Guanyin in other texts. While this section of the text
does not refer to Guanyin by name, the phrase for “bodhisattva(s)” here
can be understood both in the general sense and as referring specifically to
Guanyin.
In this section, I have translated xin 心, more commonly rendered as

“mind” or “heart-mind,” with the activities of the heart-mind, feeling and
thinking, because what Guanyin has done is enact a profound change in all
of her phenomenological schema. She has not just adopted a particular view
about emptiness, but she has transformed all of her embodied cognitive-per-
ceptual habits, about herself and the world, relying on the insight about their
true nature as empty. This is not only about her mind, then, but about the full
range of her embodied experiencing—after all, this practice enables her to be
without fear. It also enables her (and all bodhisattvas) to avoid thinking or
feeling that is diandao 顛倒, literally upside-down, meaning false or incorrect
views, and thinking or feeling that is mengxiang 夢想, dream-like, imaginary,
or illusory. By staying far away from thinking that reverses or undermines
how things really are, feeling that constructs and clings to illusions rather than
reality, Guanyin, all bodhisattvas, and any on the bodhisattva path, are able
to awaken fully.35
This section ends with a statement that can be read in a couple of different
ways. First, all the Buddhas from the three ages—past, present, and future—
engage in and rely on this practice centered on emptying, and in so doing
wake up as fully as they can possibly wake up. The Sanskrit term here is
anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, often translated as supreme or perfect enlighten-
ment, unexcelled or incomparably perfect enlightenment, the enlightenment
that has nothing beyond it or above it. It is characterized by a full understand-
ing of Buddhist teachings, and by the compassionate teaching to others that
leads them to liberation. In a variety of other sutras, Guanyin is often associ-
ated with enabling this kind of enlightenment. So, on one reading, the sutra
is emphasizing that this practice will lead, someday, to full enlightenment.
On another reading, everyone who has woken up—in the past, the pres-
ent, and the future—has through this practice woken up. Because we are all
interconnected and interrelated, we have/are buddha-nature, the potential or
capacity to wake up. Engaging in this wisdom of emptiness practice, then,
does not lead to awakening but reveals the awakening that was already pres-
ent. Given that the bodhisattva path culminates in buddha-hood, the sutra is
perhaps making clear that this wisdom of emptying practice is for both begin-
ners and experts, both students and teachers, both bodhisattvas and buddhas.
There is no practice more powerful than this insight into interrelation and
impermanence, and it is for us all.36
故知般若波羅蜜是大神咒, 是大明咒, 是無上咒, 是無等等咒, 能除一切,

真實不虛, 故說般若波羅蜜多咒。即說咒曰：揭帝揭帝般羅揭帝般羅
僧揭帝菩提僧莎訶!37
218 Chapter 6

In Kuiji’s commentary on the Heart Sutra, he ends with this to say: “Because
wisdom and compassion are difficult to practice . . . the Buddha vowed to employ
concise words. The intention [of the zhou] is profound and its doctrine abstruse
and broad. It is not easy to comment on it in detail.”38 In spite of this, there are
some important things to mention as we consider the sutra’s final section.
This sutra ends with a zhou 咒, usually translated as “spell” or “incanta-
tion”; the category of zhou includes chants, mnemonic codes, recitations,
sacred writings, and talismans. English translations of the sutra tend to take
this term from the Sanskrit version, which uses “mantra.” In Chinese, though,
zhou is much broader than the technical term “mantra” from the Sanskrit. It
has a range of meanings and uses that include both dhāraṇī and mantra, but
are not limited to those meanings. While mantra are most commonly single
or limited syllable phrases (e.g., “aom”), where the sound of the term is key
and the term does not carry a “meaning” beyond its sacred sound, the zhou
at the end of this sutra is significant in both its sound and its meaning, and
where mantra are usually meant to be spoken but not written, this phrase is
importantly both spoken and written.39 Because this is a complex term that
the English “spell” or “incantation” does not fully capture, I have left in the
Chinese term in the translation. Furthermore, because this section of the text
was very likely compiled in a Chinese context, as discussed in chapter 1, it
may be most accurate to use “zhou.”
While the zhou is transliterated from the Sanskrit, the sound of the phrases
in Chinese is not quite the same as in Sanskrit.40 However, because written
Chinese was the “lingua franca” of East Asia, the written transliteration
worked its way from Chinese into other East Asian languages, although the
zhou was verbalized in the local language.41 So for any non-Sanskrit speaker,
the zhou at the end of the text is always at least a little bit other, which may
have contributed to its “magical” aura.
While non-East Asians (including many contemporary Euro-American
practitioners) have tended to prefer chanting the zhou in Sanskrit, as Paul
Copp explains,
In modern temples in China, for example, it is nearly always the medieval tran-
scription of the Heart Sutra’s famous spell that is chanted—not one in roman-
ized Sanskrit and not one in Chinese characters chosen to make contemporary
Mandarin or local dialect pronunciations more closely match the supposedly
timeless syllables of the original.42
This is also true in other East Asian contexts, where Xuanzang’s version of
the zhou still has a place of priority. Because of this, I decided to retain the
pinyin version of the zhou in the translation instead of substituting the more
common Sanskrit transliteration.
The zhou is usually rendered into English from the Sanskrit as ga-te ga-te
pāra-ga-te pāra-saṃ-ga-te bodhi svaha! The meaning of this phrase is tied
to one of the connotations of pāramitā: going over to the other shore, a meta-
phor for enlightenment. As Thich Nhat Hanh glosses this,
Gate means gone: gone from suffering to the liberation from suffering. Gone
from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality to nonduality. Gate, gate
means gone, gone. Pāragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So
this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In
Pārasaṃgate, saṃ means everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings.
Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment,
or awakening. You see, and the vision of reality liberates you. Svāhā is a cry of
joy and triumph, like “Eureka!” or “Hallelujah!”43
The sutra goes to great pains to assure us that this zhou is special: it is inspir-
ing and enlightening; it occupies a position without comparison. It is shi 實
(substantial) and not xu 虛 (void, empty), genuine and not vacuous. In other
words, it really works (in contrast to incantations from other traditions like
Daoism, which was strongly associated with xu 虛44).
But what does it mean for the zhou to work? The sutra tells us that this
zhou, given by Guanyin, who is associated with sharing significant protec-
tive and other spells, dispels all suffering; it takes away all our problems.
In his commentary on this section of the sutra, sixteenth-century Japanese
Zen Master Hakuin (1686–1768) provides his trademark unusual reflection:
“Picking a lily bulb apart to find a core. Shaving a square bamboo to make
it round. Ripping threads from a Persian carpet.”45 Hakuin here encourages
his readers to think really seriously about what it would mean to say that this
zhou can fix your problems—to think that nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are separable
in some way and that this zhou could take you from one to the other.
The three images in his poetic commentary—the lily bulb, bamboo, and
Persian carpets—point us to a way to make sense of what “it really works”
does not mean (at least from a Chan/Zen perspective). A lily bulb, in this
context, is like an onion or a plantain tree—it is made up of its various parts
coming together, without a different core or center to which they attach.
Bamboo normally grows in a cylindrical shape, but it can be forced to grow
in a square-ish shape—so if you had gone to the work of training something
to grow one way, why shave it back to its more natural form? It was already
round to start with. And as for Persian carpets, if you begin to tug a thread
220 Chapter 6
from a carpet pretty soon you will have unraveled the entire piece, as the car-
pet is no more and no less than its threads woven together. In other words, the
context in which we live, our trouble, discontent, and suffering, is precisely
also the context of our awakening. The zhou does not change your context,
but practice with it does change you. In this reading, Hakuin is suggesting that
the more “magical” functions of the zhou may not do what you might think
they do—it is not the simple recitation of the phrase, but the long, hard prac-
tice, in the midst of suffering, that precisely is waking up. It is not the zhou
that does the work, on this reading, but you—and how could it be otherwise?
NOTES
1. McRae, “Ch’an Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: Preliminary Inferences on

the Permutation of Chinese Buddhism,” 87.
2. See Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
3. Chinese text is T. 251. Xuanzang, ed., «般若波羅蜜多心經» Heart Sūtra,
in Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō «大正新脩大藏經» 8, no. 251, ed. Takakusu Junjiro
(Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai, 1988), CBETA version 6/15/2016.
4. Copp, 3.
5. And, as noted in chapter 1, calling Xuanzang the “editor” of this text and not
its “translator” is likely more accurate. Attwood discusses the use of 譯 in this context
in his 2019 essay.
6. Lusthaus, 63.
7. Tanahashi, 143–44.
8. Leighton, 9–10.
9. This translation does lose the imagistic feel of both “skandha” and “yun” as
being piled up on top of one another to compose a whole.
10. Discussed in McRae, 93.
12. Thich Nhat Hanh’s chapter “Interbeing” in his commentary on the Heart Sutra
is perhaps one of the most poetic expressions of this idea. In it, he reflects on the fact
that a sheet of paper is composed entirely of non-paper elements.
13. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s latest translation, he also modifies this and other lines
to add the phrase “not separate self-entities,” in order to help clarify for readers that
“empty” is not “non-existent.”
14. Wŏnch’ǔk, “Commentary on the Heart Sūtra,” translated by Dan Lusthaus, in
“The Heart Sūtra in Chinese Yogācāra: Some Comparative Comments on the Heart
Sūtra Commentaries of Wŏnch’ǔk and K’uei-chi,” International Journal of Buddhist
Thought and Culture 3, (September 2003): 68.
15. Tanahashi, 9.
16. The early Pali discourses on the five processes are extensive and do differ in
some respects from later Mahāyāna and East Asian discourses.
17. “Sensorial materiality” is how Lusthaus parses “rūpa” in Buddhist

Phenomenology (2002). See pp. 46–51.
18. Early Pali discourses consider this by means of the four phases (nature, origin,
cessation, and the way leading to cessation).
19. That is, a statement about both the nature of our selves/everything being
empty, and about emptiness itself.
20. Da Dian, Commentary on the Heart Sutra, trans. John McRae, in McRae, 97.
21. Alternate readings of this section of text include “Śāriputra, all dharmas
are marked by emptiness,” “Śāriputra, this is the emptiness of all dharmas,” or
“Śāriputra, this is the emptying of all “thing-ing.” While the first two alternate
readings prioritize more common nominalized and Sanskrit-forward readings of
the passage, the last highlights the fact that fa 法 (dharma) serves both as “things”
and the process by which we cognitively and linguistically individuate “things”; it
is our tendency to “thing” things, to substantialize and reify, that Guanyin is telling
Śāriputra to empty out, or to notice its emptying function. It should also be noted
that kongxiang 空相 is a technical term, usually translated as “mark of emptiness”
or “marked by emptiness.” I have chosen not to highlight this technical term in the
translation because of the inherent ambiguity in the current version (this is the emp-
tying of each and every phenomenon)—that can be read as both asserting emptying
as a characteristic activity of all phenomena and as an activity Śāriputra needs to
engage in. Furthermore, I have translated zhu 諸 as “each and every” rather than
“all,” because it often grammatically serves to mark out “many,” as in every mem-
ber of the group. This is philosophically relevant to the point about individuation
that the text is making here.
22. The three refuges, or three jewels, are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
23. For more on this, see the entry for fa on the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism,
ed. Charles Muller, 2010.
24. On the logic of the text, this phrase can also be applied to “emptiness” or
“emptying” as well, taken as the subject of the sentence.
25. Sheng Yen has a serious of excellent examples of this in his chapter,
“Impermanence,” in There Is No Suffering, (New York: Dharma Drum Publications,
2001), 53–60.
27. Sheng Yen, 63.
28. McRae, 98.
29. For readers who are unfamiliar, the Chinese term for ignorance in a Buddhist
context is wuming 無明, which can be somewhat literally rendered as “lacking
insight.” In my translation, I add the phrase “generating,” both to make the phrase
a gerund (generating ignorance) and to provide a match to what is negated in the
second half of the phrase, jin 盡, which means to exhaust or deplete. So in this case,
ignorance is neither being generated nor exhausted. This coincides well with common
discussions of how the twelve links of dependent arising function.
30. Note: ye 業 in the classical period meant one’s profession, business, or trade,
but came to also mean one’s general activities, and later gained a technical Buddhist
meaning of karma, indicating action, or intention + action.
222 Chapter 6
31. In the classical period, ming 命 is a very important term. It means one’s lifes-
pan, destiny, or fate, but also refers to the establishment of a settlement or the guiding
order or instruction of an important activity. For instance, it is in the key Ruist term
tianming 天命, often translated as “Mandate of Heaven.”
32. While it is more common to give these terms as “right” (e.g., right livelihood),
I have here translated the zheng 正 from the eightfold path as “appropriate.” Zheng
has meanings of upright, true, proper, correct, or orthodox, in addition to appropriate,
and in this case also suggests skillfulness. For more on zheng in a Ruist context, see
Sarah Mattice, “On ‘Rectifying’ Rectification: Reconsidering Zhengming in Light of
Confucian Role Ethics,” Asian Philosophy 20, no. 3 (2010): 247–60.
33. See, for instance, the “Two Darts” parable. The first dart, pain, is inevitable,
but the second dart, our judgment or response to the pain, is optional. Feeding that
second dart feeds our suffering.
34. The grammar of the first section of this passage is somewhat ambiguous.
Translators have rendered it with at least three different logical structures: “Because
there is no attainment, and because bodhisattvas rely on Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting
practices, therefore their feeling and thinking has no obstacles”; “Because there is
no attainment, bodhisattvas rely on Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting practices. Because
of that, their thinking and feels has no obstacles”; and “Without attaining anything,
bodhisattvas rely on Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting practices and think and feel without
obstructions.” The issue at stake is the precise way to read the various gu 故, which
often serves the function of indicating a causal relationship (therefore, because of) but
sometimes also simply indicate association or connection. I have chosen to maintain
the implication of a causal relationship (“and so”), but to leave the precise details
ambiguous and so open for the reader to consider.
35. The phrase in the text is jiujing niepan 究竟涅槃, ultimate or final nirvāṇa, the
utmost level of awakening.
36. This second reading might also suggest that full and complete awakening is
a “self-effacing end,” or the sort of end that cannot be acquired by means of direct
pursuit.
37. While Xuanzang’s text (T.251) transliterates svāhā as sēngshāhē 僧莎訶, there
were many different transliterations for this term. Later versions of the text indicated
sàpóhē 薩婆訶 as a reading of the phrase, much as bō 波 is given as a reading for
bān 般. By the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasty canons, 薩婆訶 became so dominant
that it replaced the earlier characters all together. So while I have retained Xuanzang’s
version of the Chinese text, I have provided the pinyin of the zhou that would be
familiar to those chanting the Heart Sutra today.
38. Kuiji, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra: Translated from
the Chinese of K’uei-chi (Taishō Volume 33, Number 1710), trans. Heng-ching Shih
and Dan Lusthaus (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research,
2001), 125; 542c.
39. For more on the complicated implications of considering this a “mantra” from
an Indian context, see Donald S. Lopez, Jr., “Inscribing the Bodhisattva’s Speech: On
the “Heart Sūtra’s Mantra,” History of Religions 29, no. 4 (1990): 351–72.
40. There is a version of the Heart Sutra that was entirely transliterated from the
Sanskrit, which was used in some later Tantric practice. The existence of that version
demonstrates the view that the text was extremely efficacious as a zhou or dhāraṇī.
41. Classical Chinese served as a shared written language across most of East Asia
for a very long time. While regions developed their own takes on pronunciation, the
characters remained the same. So in both Korean and Japanese versions of the sutra,
although when chanted it is pronounced locally, the text is identical.
42. Copp, 5.
43. Thich Nhat Hanh, 116. My italics, for ease of reading.
44. This term has a long history in Daoist texts and practices, beginning perhaps
with chapter 3 of the Daodejing, where sages are said to xu qi xin 虛其心, empty their
heart-minds.
45. Hakuin, Zen Words for the Heart: Hakuin’s Commentary on the Heart Sutra,
trans. Norman Waddell (Boston: Shambala Press, 1996), 71.
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Index
Ames, Roger T., 59–64, 181 94–96, 100, 108, 132, 171, 175–76,
Amituofo, xiv, 76, 78, 131, 132 190, 209, 215, 217; historical figure,
Analects, 36, 53, 54, 180, 192. See also xiii, xiv, 5–6, 9, 10, 18, 24, 27, 38,
Kongzi; li; ren; Ruism 40, 48, 77, 86–87, 96–97, 123–29,
Ānanda, 96–99, 123–24 135, 139, 140, 172, 209, 214, 218;
Avalokiteśvara, 8–9, 13–15, 18–19, 22, in the larger Mahāyāna sense, xix,
24, 75–77, 87, 157. See also Guanyin 8, 77–79, 83, 93–95, 101, 104,
Awakening of Faith, 14, 132, 175 108, 109, 122, 127, 128, 132–33,
135, 146, 177–78, 190, 192, 199,
Benjamin, Walter, 50 209, 216–17. See also Amituofo;
Bernofsky, Susan, 31, 33, 34; Medicine Buddha
co-authored with Esther Allen, 32, 52 Buswell, Robert, 6, 19
Blood Bowl Sutra, 106, 130, 149, 152 Butler, Judith, 75, 111
bodhicitta, 79, 215
Bodhidharma, 101, 141, 172 Camelia (interviewee), 147, 154
bodhisattva, xi, xix, 7–8, 75, 80–81, Carrie (interviewee), 147, 156–57, 183
152–53, 161, 172, 176–77, 179, Chan, xiv, 25, 77, 86, 99, 101–4, 132,
190, 192, 206–7, 212–13, 215–17; 134, 136, 141–47, 153, 156, 169,
efficacy and, 93–95; five hindrances 172, 177, 178, 201, 207, 212, 219.
and, 127–28; Laṅkāvatāra and, 172; See also Zen
Lotus Sutra and, 133–36; pāramitās chanting, 16, 23, 24, 85, 96, 121, 141,
and, 200–201; sexual transformation 149, 150, 154–60, 183, 200, 218. See
and, 130–33; sutra origins and, also recitation
18–19; transgender icon, 88–90; chaojing. See sutra extract
Vimalakīrti and, 136–40. See also Cheung, Martha, 34–36, 39, 46, 52
Dharmākara; Guanyin; Mañjuśrī; Chinese Rites Controversy, 45
Samantabhadra co-dependent arising. See dependent
Buddha: buddhahood, 79, 81, 127, 129– arising
32, 134–36, 175; buddha-nature, xiv, Cole, Peter, 49
239
240 Index
compassion, xiv, 40, 75, 77–79, 85, 87– emptiness/emptying, xi, xiv, 7, 8, 24–
88, 92–97, 100–104, 106–10, 112, 25, 44, 51, 64, 96, 103, 107–8, 110,
133, 137–38, 140, 155–57, 177–78, 122, 136, 138–40, 159–60, 170–76,
184, 207, 215–18 178–79, 184, 198, 200–203, 206–9,
Confucius. See Kongzi 211–13, 215, 217
constituent processes, xix, 51, 108, 174, esoteric, xiv, 41, 43, 77, 80, 81, 87, 98,
198, 200–204. See also skandhas 101, 199
Conze, Edward, 17–18
creativity, 3, 4, 25, 32, 46 Fang Weiyi, 86
Creller, Aaron, 188–89 five hindrances, 127–28, 134, 143, 149
four noble truths, xi, xiii, xix, 160, 198,
Da Dian, 208–9, 212 213–15. See also eightfold path;
da zhangfu 大丈夫, 153 nirvāṇa; suffering
Dalai Lama, 17, 87, 157, 197, 207 foxing 佛性. See buddha-nature
Danielle (interviewee), 147, 150–51 Fukui Fumimasa, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21
dao 道, 33, 53, 62, 181, 186, 188, 191,
214 G, Warren, 2–3, 24. See also sampling
Dao An, 37–38 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 31
Daoism, 44, 46, 158, 169, 184–90, 219. ganying 感應, 92–95
See also dao; Zhuangzi geyi 格義, 37
dependent arising, xiii, xiv, 25, 95, gong’an. See kōan
96, 100, 103, 110, 175, 176, 202, Greenwood, Claire Gesshin, 149, 152
203, 217; twelve links of dependent Gu, Ming Dong, 34, 56, 63
arising, 213 guan 觀, 90–91
Derrida, Jacques, 3, 49–50, 58–59, 61 Guanyin, xii, xiv, xv, 75–78; America
dhāraṇī, 10, 13, 19, 20, 24, 41, 77, 96, and, 87–89; Chan and, 101–4. See
158, 199, 200, 218. See also zhou also Chan; Chenrezig, 87; Child-
dharma, xiii, 76, 79, 85, 95, 96, 102, giving Guanyin, 77, 81–84, 104,
104, 107, 124, 128, 134, 135, 137– 105, 112; devotional practices
39, 144–46, 160, 171, 172, 175, 177, and, 84–87, 183; Eleven-headed
203, 209–10 Guanyin, 77, 80, 81, 92, 101; Fish-
Dharmākara, 131. See also bodhisattva basket Guanyin, 77, 81–83, 104,
Diana (interviewee), 147, 148 107; gender and, 75–77, 81, 104–7,
Dōgen, 144, 153, 178 110–12, 121, 154–58, 160. See
Dongshan Liangjie, 177–78 also Blood Bowl Sutra; Guanyin,
dragon girl, 133–35, 160 Princess Miaoshan; Guanyin,
duḥkha. See ku; suffering transgender communities; singular
they; Guanyin Jing. See Lotus
eight special rules, 124–27 Sutra, Pumenpin; Guanyin of the
eightfold path, 214. See also four noble South Seas, 77, 84; Heart Sutra
truths and, xix, 7, 26, 63–64, 107–12,
Eleanor (interviewee), 147, 149, 155, 174, 198, 200–204, 207, 216–17;
158, 183 history of, 78–84; Lotus Sutra
Emmerich, Michael, 32 and, 78–79, 90–96, 108. See also
Index 241
Lotus Sutra, Pumenpin; name, 76, karma, xiii, 37, 40, 51, 80, 86, 94, 111,
90–92; Princess Miaoshan, 77, 128, 130–32, 215, 216
81–83, 105; Songzi Guanyin. See kōan, 77, 101–3, 143–45
Child-giving Guanyin; Śūraṅgama kong 空, xi, 13, 44, 64, 174, 198, 202,
Sūtra and, 96–100, 108, 212. See 206, 210; kongxiang 空相, 209. See
also Śūraṅgama Sūtra; Thousand also emptiness
hand and eye Guanyin, 77, 80, 82, Kongzi, 53, 169, 179–80, 189, 191. See
92, 101, 102, 104, 156; transgender also Ruism
communities and, 88–89; Universal Kōsei, Ishii, 21–22
mother Guanyin, 88; Water-and- ku 苦, 112, 203. See also suffering
moon Guanyin, 77, 81, 83; White- Kuan-yin. See Guanyin
robed Guanyin, 77, 81–83, 85, 104; Kuiji, xii, 7, 171, 175, 206, 218
Yanzhou, Lady and, 107. See also Kumārajīva, 7, 11, 13–18, 21–23, 37–
bodhisattva 39, 41, 44–45, 54
gurudharmas. See eight special rules
Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, 132, 171–72,
hair embroidery, 86–87. See also Li, 174–75
Yuhang Laywoman Pang, 141–42, 146
Hakuin, 207, 219–20 Leighton, Taigen Dan, 177, 179, 201
Hedges, Paul, 104–6 Levering, Miriam L., 77, 99, 101–3,
Heraclitus, xvi 141, 144
Hershock, Peter, 25 li 禮, 62, 179–84. See also ritual
Hsiendu, 147, 152–54 Li, Yuhang, 84–87, 89, 107
hua 化, 47, 48, 186, 188 Liji, 35
Huayan, xiv, 77, 103, 154 Lisa (interviewee), 147, 150–51
Huayan Lotus Society. See Hsiendu Littlejohn, Ronnie, 175, 177
Huineng, 19, 143–44 lodging places, 170, 187–90
Longshu jingtu wen, 170
ignorance, xiii, xix, 108, 160, 174, 198, lotus blossom, 85, 132
203, 213. See also three poisons Lotus Sutra, xiv, 76–80, 83, 91–98, 101,
impermanence, xiii, xvii, 52, 110–11, 108, 133–36, 140, 175; Pumenpin,
130, 137–38, 140, 160, 175, 183–84, 77, 83, 85, 95, 156, 157
201–3, 205, 208, 210, 213, 215–17 Lucy (interviewee), 147, 150–51, 154, 158
incomparably perfect enlightenment, 79, Lusthaus, Dan, 17, 22–23, 171, 200
108, 217
Ing, Michael, 181 Mahāpajāpatī, 123–24, 126, 135
interrelation. See dependent arising Mahāyāna, xiii–xv, 6, 9, 19, 20, 40, 44,
77, 128, 130, 133–34, 136, 153, 171,
Jingjian, 127 174, 192, 199, 200, 202, 204, 209,
Julia (interviewee), 147–49, 157, 159 212, 214–16
Mair, Victor, 37, 43
Kalmanson, Leah, 181 Maitreya, 78, 101
Kannon. See Guanyin Mañjuśrī, 14, 98–99, 133–34, 136–38
Kanzeon, 154–55 mantra. See zhou
Katie (interviewee), 147, 148, 154 Mazu, 84
242 Index
Mazu Daoyi, 177 rebirth, 47, 50–52, 85, 128, 131

McRae, John, xi, 134–35, 138–39, 170, receptivity. See sensitivity
197, 212 recitation, xii, 7, 10, 13, 19, 41, 80, 92,
Medicine Buddha, 156 98, 101, 108, 158, 180, 184. See also
meditation, 18, 44, 86, 97–100, 133, chanting
149, 151, 176, 200–201, 204, 212, Red Pine, 17–18, 172
214; by hearing, 98–100, 102, 108, ren 仁, 92, 179, 180, 192. See also
212; samādhi, 44, 97–98; zazen, 149, Ruism
151, 154 ritual, 6, 24–25, 62, 87, 101, 142, 149,
Mei (interviewee), 147, 149–51, 155– 157, 170, 179–84, 200. See also li
56, 160 Ruism, xiv, xv, 36, 37, 42, 46, 53, 61,
Mengzi, 179 82, 92, 94, 105, 106, 158, 169, 170,
Miaoxin, 143–44 179–84, 186, 187, 191, 192, 199,
Miaozong, 145–46 201. See also Analects; Kongzi; li;
mokṣa, xiii, 43 Mengzi; ren
Moshan Liaoran, 142–43
mutual interpenetration. See dependent Sagara. See dragon girl
arising; Huayan sage, 82, 91, 94, 97, 127, 169, 190
Sakyadhita, 123
Nattier, Jan, 8–24 Samantabhadra, 14, 154. See also
nirvāṇa, xiii, xiv, 23, 124, 127, 175, bodhisattva
200, 216, 219 sampling, 1–4, 24–26
nonself, xiii, 51, 111, 136–38, 140, 184, saṃsāra, xiii, xiv, 216, 219
205, 208 sangha, xiii, 44, 123, 126–27, 144, 219
Nylan, Michael, 32, 33, 61, 62 Śāriputra, xix, 8, 9, 133–34, 136, 138–
40, 198, 204, 209, 215
O’Hara, Pat Enkyo, 137, 139, 140 Schireson, Grace, 123, 129, 145
Olberding, Amy, 182 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 55
sensitivity, 34, 92–96, 151, 178, 182,
penis, 128, 129, 134 184, 189. See also ganying
Platform Sutra, 19, 101, 102 sexual transformation, 130–33, 135–36,
Porter, Bill. See Red Pine 140
Porter, Catherine, 32–33 Sharf, Robert, 93–95
Pound, Ezra, 49 Shawna (interviewee), 121, 147, 151–
Pure Land, xiv, 43, 76–78, 104, 130–32, 52, 154–55, 159, 183
136, 147, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; Sheng Yen, 17, 197, 207, 212
Master Sheng-an, 104; True Pure Shih, Chao Hwei, 126
Land/Hongwanji, 147, 150, 158. See Shijing, 91
also Amituofo; Dharmākara Shu-chen (interviewee), 147, 156
singular they, 76, 110–11
qi 氣, 93–95, 151 skandhas, 8, 15, 51, 108, 160, 174, 201.
Qian Zhongshu, 35, 46–55, 57–59 See also constituent processes
Śrīmālā, Queen, 132, 140
Ratnadatta, 135 suchness, 43, 170–79, 190
Index 243
suffering, xiii, xix, xx, 75, 81, 89, 92, Virgin Mary, 84, 87, 154
99–101, 103, 112, 130–32, 149–50,
152, 178, 179, 198–200, 203, 204, Wang Bi, 34, 44, 91
208, 213–17, 219, 220 Weinberger, Eliot, xvi, 47
śūnyatā, xi, 12–13, 44, 174, 199, 202. Whitman, Walt, 109–10
See also emptiness/emptying Wŏnch’ŭk, xii, 22–23, 171, 175
Śūraṅgama Sūtra, 77, 96–102, 108, 212 Wu Zetian, 141
sutra copying, xii, 16, 24, 180, 183, 184 Wu Zhensheng, 89
sutra extract, 20 Wuzhuo. See Miaozong
Swanson, Paul, 31, 43, 63, 176
Xing Cijing, 85–86
Tanahashi, Kazuaki, 17–19, 200, 201, Xuanzang, xi, xix–xx, 7–8, 10, 13–23,
204, 207 37, 39–42, 44, 76, 198–200, 202, 219
tathātā. See suchness Xunzi, 179, 182, 184
Theravāda, xiii, 40, 126, 127
Tiantai, xiv, 31, 77, 93, 136, 175–77, Yan Fu, 45–46
202; Zhiyi, 175, 176 Yancong, 37, 39–40
Thich Nhat Hahn, 95, 184, 197, 202, Yaśodharā, 123–24, 135
210–11, 219 Yijing, 34, 91, 180
thirty-two marks, 127–29, 131, 134 Yogācāra, 170–79. See also suchness
three poisons, xiii, 108, 146 Yü, Chün-fang, 77, 80, 81, 93, 105
Ting-Wei (interviewee), 147, 157 Yun, Ji, 17, 19–20
Yunju Daoying, 179
upāya, 37, 79, 83, 112, 190
Uppalavanna, 126 Zanning, 37, 42–43
Zen, 87, 148, 149, 151, 154–56
vagina, 129, 145, 150 zhong 忠, 47, 53–57, 59; abusive
Vaidehi, Queen, 132 fidelity, 58–59
Valmisa, Mercedes, 34 Zhuangzi, 47, 48, 136, 169, 178, 184–91
Vajrayāna, xiv. See also esoteric zhou, xx, 8–10, 13–14, 20–22, 24, 41,
Venuti, Lawrence, 55–59, 61 64, 108, 158, 199, 200, 218–20
Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, 133, 136–40, Ziporyn, Brook, 176, 186
160, 211 Zongchi, 141
About the Author
Sarah A. Mattice is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy

and Religious Studies at the University of North Florida. She specializes in
comparative philosophy, with a focus on East Asia, and is a founding member
of the Society for Teaching Comparative Philosophy. Her published works
include Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and
Aesthetic Experience (2014) and numerous book chapters and journal articles
on topics such as Ruism and Daoism, hermeneutics, aesthetics, pedagogy,
and feminist philosophy.
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Exploring the Heart Sutra

Exploring the Heart Sutra

86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE

Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mattice, Sarah A., author.

at Lexington Books, the editors who graciously put up with me pushing

Author interviews found in ch. 4 and 5, including the ch. 4 epigraph

Stein, Stephen. “Steinski Gives a Sampling History Lesson.” By John Schae-

My first encounter with the Heart Sutra was as an undergraduate student in

THIS IS A COMMENTARY, THIS

This book is a commentary on the Heart Sutra, the short-but-profound

PREACHING TO THE BUDDHA

Siddhārtha Gautama, of the Sakya clan, woke up—became a Buddha, or

enhanced by interdisciplinary inquiry, and the chapters here reflect my com-

1. John McRae, “Ch’an Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: Preliminary Inferences

When Guanyin was in the midst of deep Buddhist-wisdom-perfecting prac-

1. Translated from T. 251. «般若波羅蜜多心經» Heart Sūtra, in Taishō Shinshū

The resituation of the sample in its new context is a moment of rupture

What we take a text to be and how we approach it matters. This chapter

SAMPLING AS HERMENEUTIC PARADIGM

“Sampling” is the practice in music composition where a portion, or sample,

While in this case Warren G describes McDonald’s appreciation of and

pervades much of the general discourse on authenticity, ownership, and origi-

THE HEART SUTRA

do we not call it something connected to its Chinese or Japanese name? Why

What I intend by Buddhism, is the system of metaphysical and social philoso-

The Traditional Story

by a team of translators working through a chain of languages from the origi-

authoritative, which in turn reflects the questionable assumption that older/

The Nattier Hypothesis

(1) A brief introduction, in which the perspective of the bodhisattva

Considering the text from within the literary category of Mahāyāna

Nattier’s argument for the back-translation hypothesis—that the Sanskrit

The version attributed to Kumārajīva mostly agrees with Xuanzang’s ver-

To assume any other direction of transmission would present insuperable

This was Edward Conze’s conclusion concerning other Prajnaparamita

My own solution to this apparent inconsistency is to assume that the lines in

This is not, then, so much a disagreement with Nattier’s argument but a

come to be involved with the “back-translation.” While there are extensive

were meant to be accurate synopses of authentic translations that would make

In the early catalogues, many chaojing were listed as having anonymous

this phrase in different places—the Chinese traditionally after “genuinely true

must have originally been a Sanskrit text, from a contemporary philosophical

composition opens up some interesting avenues for thinking about this

42. Nattier, 176.

In the end, all translation is transformation. It just isn’t possible for a

Twentieth-century hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer famously

an interpretation of the source text—the translator has to make sense of the

translators, like actors, appear to us under a persona, speaking to us with words

This perspective on translators—as skillful and creative agents, not as pas-

servitude—which will mean their work is perceived as transparent, while

To alert readers of the complexity, ambiguity, or intentional difficulty present

back in the sophisticated hermeneutics of Wang Bi 王弼 (226–249 CE), one

In the discipline of translation studies, efforts of scholars from the metropoli-

Rather than beginning from a history of Western or European translation the-

Chinese literary giant Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書 (1910–1998), in conversation

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TRANSLATION

a central philosophical theme for reflection outside of the Buddhist context,

doctrine, ability to benefit readers, karmically or upay-ically, and not seeking

The three difficulties can be summarized as:

These translation considerations shaped much of the discourse to follow,