Heart Sutra Translations

(Click on thumbnail to view Sutra)

INTRODUCTION

Collected here are 42 different English versions (all from unacknowledged sources) of the Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra, known in Japanese by the abbreviated name Hannya Shingyo, and here commonly known as The Heart Sutra. Most translations are based on the Chinese-Japanese version, some are from the Tibetan version, and sometimes translators refer back to one of the various Sanskrit versions.

There are actually many more versions than these 42, causing me to wonder, “Why so many? Why do versions keep proliferating? Why do translators keep re-translating this one sutra? Why don’t they translate, say, the Yogachara Bhumi instead?” The answers may be obvious, but here is my personal story of how one of these versions came to be produced.

Before entering the Dharma, I assumed The Heart Sutra was about deep emotions, about love, compassion, sympathy, about things of the heart. Then when I entered the Shugendo Order we chanted it regularly in Japanese, unconcerned with its meaning. Later upon coming across an English rendering, I saw it had nothing to do with love or any other feelings from the heart. Rather it was largely incomprehensible, unless you had a good imagination, involving negations of lots of objects and concepts. “…no nose, no tongue…” What could this possibly mean? But it must be profoundly meaningful, I thought, because experienced Buddhists seemed to value it highly, and also because the sutra itself says so, one of its titles being The Perfection of Wisdom.

Although I couldn’t clearly grasp the Wisdom as expressed in English, the Japanese chanting accompanied by a steady drum beat was quite a lot of fun. In about a year, we knew it “by heart,” and chanted it “with heart,” even if the subject matter was not The Heart. And with the piling up of study and practice of the Dharma, the meaning of the sutra little-by-little revealed itself.

After studying Japanese for awhile, I recognized some of the basic Chinese characters and it occurred to me that it might be possible to translate it by myself, now knowing how to navigate a Japanese-English character dictionary. I could clear up some of the more obscure passages, and at the same time advance my Japanese studies. But it didn’t turn out that way, because the obscurities were found to be more a result of my own lack of understanding of Buddhism than of any faults of the previous translators.

Some years later I had the idea to daily chant and memorize an English version, and of the several translations available in the 1970’s I liked Yogi Chen’s best, partly because of his listing of the five skandhas (form, reception, conception, mental conduct, and consciousness), which made more sense to me than the terms used by others. So I took that as my chanting version, and when I was able to chant it from memory, a whole new world opened up, the world of hearing the sutra rather than reading it. This is why most Mahayana sutras begin with “Thus have I heard,” not “Thus have I read,” or “Thus have I thought,” or “Thus have I seen.”

Since then my English version has morphed at least 10 or 12 times as my understanding of the meaning has changed, and also in order to make the wording more chantable. Then too I return periodically to the Chinese-Japanese version to see that I haven’t strayed outside its bounds. My version, in keeping with the concept of non-acknowledgement, is now buried amongst the following collection of 42.

So in answer to the question of why people continue to produce translations, probably some of them share my experience: they are beginning to learn one of the source languages, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, or Sanskrit, or the target language, English; it is an extremely short sutra; it is both important and widely studied and chanted; and the meaning is difficult to understand and difficult to convey in English. But some people may have different reasons: They are aiming for a poetically beautiful version; or they want a technically accurate translation; or they want the phraseology to match that used in their own Buddhist tradition. Possibly some people are simply unsatisfied with any of the existing translations, and think they can improve, even produce the Definitive Version, though Chinese writing doesn’t lend itself to a single version, but allows several equally valid interpretations.

The ambivalence of Chinese is no doubt a major reason for the continuing retranslations, but even given the wide range of possibilities inherent in Chinese, there are also places where a translator has definitely made a mistake, or put in meaning not found or implied in any of the source versions. Therefore, maybe some people had in mind to correct a mistranslation.

Then there is the translator’s choice of which words to leave untranslated. As precedent, the Chinese version contains 13 untranslated Sanskrit words. On the other hand, the word “shunyata,” is translated, whereas many English translators are reluctant to use such words as “emptiness” or “the void,” and prefer to leave it untranslated as “shunyata.”

And finally, different Sanskrit manuscripts, as reflected in the Tibetan and the Chinese, would require different English renderings. So, given all of the above reasons, we can expect to see further new translations to appear.

My own experience, however, is that more important than the literal meaning of the sutra, or than the accuracy of the translation, is its use in chanting, in calming the mind, in revealing the causes of suffering and the treatments of illnesses, in a song to be sung, in engaging in worship and communion when chanting with others, in purifying a space or pacifying a wild animal, and in keeping alive the Dharma memories associated with times in the past when I joined in the chanting to a steady boom, boom, boom in the mountain temples of Japan. Because even though there are marked sectarian barriers in Japan, all the various sects agree that chanting the Hannya Shingyo is a good thing to do on almost any occasion.

Carmen Blacker, in her classic Catalpa Bow, describes many shamanistic uses of this chant (see particularly pp 239-40). And once many years ago I also experienced its healing powers. At that time, young and full of anger, after several days of indulging in angry and hateful thoughts I wanted to be rid of them, and so tried one method after another, but without success. Then I recalled one of the sermons of my teacher at that time, Dr. Ajari, to the effect that chanting the Hannya Shingyo ten times would dispel anger. And so, even though not having much faith, I decided to give it a try, and to my amazement, before I finished the third recitation, the anger was gone, just completely dispelled. Then I tried to recall the anger, but it could not be found. Gone, Gone, Gone Far Beyond….

It is my sincere wish, Dear Reader of these 42 versions, that you will select one you like, then memorize and recite it every day. In the words of Dengyo Daishi, “Great happiness! Great happiness!”