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

0:00Jonathan Fields: So have you ever felt a sort of an inexplicable pull towards something sacred or mystical, even if you didn't fully understand it or didn't really consider yourself mystical or spiritual? A kind of a magnetic draw that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the thinking mind. Today's conversation with my dear friend and sometimes collaborator, Susan Piper, is going to open that impulse, that feeling, that curiosity wide open. So for over three decades, Susan has been exploring and chanting the enigmatic Heart Sutra, one of Buddhism's most revered and paradoxical texts. And in this rich conversation, she's going to initiate us into the sutra's profound teachings on emptiness and permanence and the joy of letting go of concepts entirely.

0:47Jonathan Fields: Susan is a New York Times bestselling author, Buddhist teacher, and founder of the Open Heart Project. Her latest book is Inexplicable Joy on the Heart Sutra, and she has this just unique ability to make ancient wisdom feel alive and relevant to our modern lives. In today's conversation, Susan shares her surprising encounter with a 95-year-old Japanese calligraphy master that revealed the Heart Sutra's ultimate message in a way that she never saw coming, and how synchronistic experiences seem to affirm this insight of finding joy through radical non-clinging. So whether you're a long-time meditator or curious about a grounded sense of mysticism or spirituality or just new to these ideas, it's time to have your perspective upended a bit in a truly delightful and insightful way.

1:35Jonathan Fields: Susan's teachings point towards just living with an open, awake presence that doesn't resist life's ceaseless change. And we could all use more of that now. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. And this is Good Life Project.

1:56Jonathan Fields: This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. Good Life Project is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. So here's something I find genuinely fascinating. The places where exceptional design shows up where you least expect it, where someone decided that an everyday object, something completely ordinary, deserve the same level of intention and craft as anything else in your life.

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4:29Jonathan Fields: Dear friend, frequent collaborator, and thought partner, feel partner, person who I turn to for spiritually oriented yet practically grounded questions about life, about relationships, about work, about everything. Jonathan, you're in trouble now, boy. Setting expectations really high right there. But I'm so happy to see you. I'm always happy to talk with you. Always, always. Me as well. We're going to spend some time diving into this thing that roughly translates as the heart sutra today. And this is something that from what you've shared, you have been exploring you have been chanting for something like 30 years now.

5:12Jonathan Fields: What I want to drop into eventually is what exactly is this thing and why should we care in the context of our daily lives? But I also want to know, when you say yes to actually exploring something, to chanting it, to deepening into it for three decades, what was the inciting incident that was so different, so unusual, so impactful for you that led you to say, oh, this is something I need to dive into and not stop? For me, the spiritual journey and how one determines next steps, how I determine next steps, always seems to be not a result of a decision that I make, oh, this sounds smart or this sounds good, someone told me I should do it, but to see what drops into my world and to start responding to it.

5:59That's what seems to be the most trustworthy way of making decisions on the spiritual journey, at least for myself. And this is how I connected with the Heart Sutra. I, 35 years ago, through great circumstance, I found someone who was willing to teach me how to meditate, who was really overqualified to teach me how to meditate. A longtime practitioner, a deep practitioner, for some reason said, come over to my house, I'll teach you how to meditate. And this was, again, 35 or more years ago, so it was still kind of like, am I joining a cult or what's going on here? Who is this dude? But I went to his house.

6:33He had a beautiful shrine. I'd never seen a Buddhist shrine before. And we talked a little bit about meditation and what it is and my motivation and so on. And then we sat down in front of the shrine and he said, well, before we sit, let's just say this together. And he handed me a piece of paper with some words on both sides. He said, you won't be able to pronounce some of them. That's okay. Just skip the words you can't pronounce. Let's say this and then I'll teach you how to meditate. And it was the Heart Sutra. So, I received the Heart Sutra before I ever even learned how to meditate. And while I was doing it, I was like, why am I saying this?

7:11Who's Avalokiteshvara? Where's Raja Agriha? Just these things I'd never heard of. Fast forward 30 plus years, it is the center of my practice, I would say. It is an ever-deepening relationship with an inexplicable text. And it was the seed syllable for my whole journey. And I didn't know that, of course, at the time. But again, spiritual meaning seems to be viewable only in retrospect. You don't see it when it's happening. And when I look back, I see that this was really happening from Jump Street, from the moment I began to practice, this was my companion.

7:52Jonathan Fields: What was it about that first experience with it that made it so? Nothing. I did not feel like any sense of connection to it. I didn't understand it. I guess what made me stay with it was I trusted the person that taught me to meditate. And then he invited me and other people, maybe not right away, but a year or two later, to go on a weekend retreat with him and maybe just five other people to study this Heart Sutra, this version that we chant together, which was a page and a half. And that's when it really started to become deeply meaningful, not even to chant it a lot or to talk about what this word means or that word means, but to feel it take root in my practice and in my mind, I just noticed that that was happening.

8:46And again, what you notice is happening on the spiritual path is almost always more trustworthy than what you decide should be happening.

8:55Jonathan Fields: Good lesson for life more broadly too. Okay, so let me ask the big unanswerable question then. What is the Heart Sutra? It's big and it's unanswerable. Just for a little historic context, The Heart Sutra or Prajnaparamita Sutra in Sanskrit is revered text throughout the Buddhist world. It is central to the Zen tradition. It's very important in the Tibetan or Vajrayana traditions that I've been trained in. And if we were to turn up the volume on everybody who is chanting the Heart Sutra right now, it would be deafening. It's very revered, I would say, is an accurate word. And prashna means wisdom, and paramita means transcendent.

9:44So it is the Transcendent Wisdom Sutra. So that's point one. The full text of the Heart Sutra is something like 100 ,000 lines long. There's another version, politely edited down to 8 ,000 lines. And this version that I've written about and that I have chanted every day is not 8 ,000 lines long, it's 43 lines long. And it is also notable that the entire Heart Sutra could be 100 ,000, could be 8 ,000, could be 43, could be zero lines long and one syllable. And that syllable is, ah. If you think about, as I have, why? Why is that the one syllable? Ah, there's a sort of letting go, a dissolving out, a repositioning of your feeling of where you are from inside yourself to outside yourself.

10:46Your attention flows out on the ahs, perhaps one reason why breath is so emphasized in meditation practices all over the world. So that's the brief idea of what it is. I'll also say that Prajnaparamita is also the name of a female deity. Her name is Prajnaparamita, and she is the deity of wisdom. Wisdom in the Buddhist tradition is associated with the feminine principle. and I'll just say this briefly and then take a beat. Wisdom is thought to be with space, empty space. Sometimes Buddhist-y people will say, talk about emptiness, and they're talking about wisdom. But the emptiness isn't void, it's rather the space of all possibility.

11:38Anything has arisen. So it's the space of complete possibility. So it's just as accurate to call it fullness. And it explains perhaps a little bit why it's associated with the feminine principle. It's womb-like. It can give birth to anything. But it itself is empty of separate nature. It's a lot of Buddhist talk right there. I'll just tell you that.

12:03Jonathan Fields: I know. And we're going to dive a lot more into it. because in a couple of minutes, I'm going to ask you to actually share that 43-line version with us, and then we'll dip into it a little bit more and also explore why maybe it's not the greatest idea to try and deconstruct it at the same time. I want to actually ask about the word sutra. This is a word that I heard for the first time many years ago, roughly translated. Actually, what is a sutra? I'll have to look up what the actual word means, but it refers to the teachings given by the Buddha during his lifetime. There's the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra.

12:39There's many sutras that are about teachings. There are also texts that are called tantras, which don't have anything to do with sex. Tantra means thread. And these are teachings said to have been given by the Buddha after his lifetime. I cannot explain that. The sutras usually refer to the exoteric teachings and the tantras to the esoteric or mystical teachings. So when you're talking about a sutra, you're talking about something the Buddha actually said.

13:11Jonathan Fields: Back in many past lives now, when I was in the world of yoga, and I learned Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, different? Different. Not foreign, not disconnected, but predates Buddhism. Okay. So we have this thing called the heart sutra. 100 ,000 lines, 8 ,000 lines, 43 lines, one syllable. You've been doing it for three and a half decades. I'm going to go back to the question, why? Yeah, that is the question. And it is not answerable in advance. It's only answerable as you do it. For example, analogy is you are a writer among many things. And you may think, well, this is what I'm going to sit down to write.

14:00But then when you start writing, that's when you actually discover what to write about. And these texts, these chants are the same. You can study them all you want, but you're not going to have any idea what they are until you start doing them. And then they start to speak to you, not in a woo-woo way, but you develop a relationship with them. And it's similar to the magic on good days of writing when you discover in the process. So why chant? I don't know, but you'll discover it in the process. The chant that you choose to do, should anyone choose to do any chant, which nobody has to do, will open up a dialogue between you and a pre-existing wisdom that you have no idea what it's saying.

14:43At least I have no idea. And I'll just tell you that I don't necessarily understand this, even though I did write a little book about it, any more than I understood it the first time I did it before I had any idea what any of the words meant. But my relationship to it continues to deepen. And spiritual teachings, again, just to make another broad overgeneralization, seem to occur not between your ears, but in the relational space, between you and something. So it's very important to choose some things that are magnetizing to you, a chant, a shrine object, a retreat, a teaching, because those things wake up your inner wisdom.

15:26It's not generated from your, I don't know what, thought processes, but from your relationship to what you think about. Does that make sense?

15:34Jonathan Fields: I think so. So then it's something that you do because in some way it becomes magnetizing to you and delivers on the experience of waking up some kind of wisdom or insight within you without you even necessarily deconstructing your understanding what it is, what the words mean, who wrote them, where they came from, like what is the logical translation of. There's something about interacting with the language itself, the recitation of it, that for some reason, something inside of you is magnetized towards. And when you engage with it, there's an awakening that happens. That sounds totally right.

16:15Jonathan Fields: Okay. I had two little pieces to that. One is I've been absurdly lucky to have actual teachers who are great. And they said, you should do this. So I'm like, okay, I trust you. I'm doing it. So when I do it, I deepen my connection to the lineage that I practice in. That means a lot to me. It's not just floating out in space. It's deepening my relationship and honoring a relationship. You're right that when you try to deconstruct it, it falls away. It doesn't get closer to you. The best analogy, I think, is like listening to a piece of music. Like, I'm sure you've had the experience of you hear something on the radio or someone somewhere when you used to listen to the radio, and you're like, I don't like that, or whatever.

17:01And then you hear it again, you're like, hmm. And then you hear it a third time, and then you want to hear it again. It somehow sounds different each time you listen to it. And then when you become familiar with it, it takes place. It takes a place in your heart, in your ear, heart, or wherever music lives. and your relationship to it, you can listen to a piece of music you love a lot and you still love it. And you may hear something different, you may not, but it evokes something important. And the Heart Sutra, for example, can be understood in the same way music can be felt or heard. First way to understand the Heart Sutra is the words, but the meaning also comes through in the sound of the words.

17:48So just like music, even if you listen to lyrics in a different language, you don't know what they mean, but they have a sound. And the third way the meaning comes through is in the environment in which it is all happening. So I told this story in the book, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood here, and I had my headphones on and I had a Spotify playlist that just shuffled songs I like. And at one point, Chet Baker came on singing My Funny Valentine. It was just so mournful and reedy and beautiful. And I'm walking on this bike path, I'm like, oh, the world is so pretty. And then the next song that came on was Jump Around by House of Pain.

18:30Jump, jump. It was like from the word to your mom era. And the world really looked different. So that's a sense of words, sound of words, environment. And the heart suture, whatever one might chant, arises in those three forms as well.

18:49Jonathan Fields: That lands really powerfully with me. I mean, I think back to some of the music where if I can hear the first three notes, I know what it is. It transports me, it lets me time travel, and it gives me an immediate feeling that I love. Or maybe it's a sad feeling, but maybe it's a sad feeling that also is meaningful to me or just a joyful, blissed out feeling. And at the same time, often that may be like a soundtrack of my youth. And back then I never knew all the words. Now I still don't know all the words, but it still gives me the feeling. I'm still going to pretend I know all the words and garble along with it.

19:28Jonathan Fields: And even if I knew the words, it's very likely I would have no idea what they actually meant or meant to the person who wrote them or the people who wrote them. And then that third point, if I listen to that, if I go to a concert, so I love Bruce Springsteen. I could just listen and listen and listen and I put on my headphones and walk around and I'm smiling, listening. Profoundly different experience than being, and I don't know, it's called something different now, like Meadowlands in New Jersey, like hearing Bruce, you know, and the E Street Band play for four hours, you know, with 60 ,000 people all around you And still, I don't know the words to a lot of the songs, but they move me so deeply.

20:10Jonathan Fields: And then to actually experience them in communion with other people, it's magical. Like your entire life, there's the Buddhist thread and there's the music thread also, which I have to imagine aren't all that different in a lot of ways. To me, they aren't. And I love that analogy. And Bruce, if you're listening, call me. Me too. Come on the podcast. Okay, call Jonathan first. Thanks for listening. You changed my life. It's particularly dancing in the dark. It hit me in a moment in time long ago that caused me to take my whole life in a new direction. Another story. But that analogy of the song is the same.

20:49The words are the same, whatever they might be. The chord progressions are the same. Bruce is the same, thank goodness. but it's a I think songs are living they're living energies you can't first of all you can't find them they're not the ones and zeros and if you're living and so it's a relationship and it continues to deepen or become distant or now you like each other now you don't but that's a great analogy and music is not that different in fact for me and not just for me I'm sure in many ways music communicates spiritual truths in a deeper way than any words of any book, because it's so immediate and so alive.

21:32And when you listen, you're present. You're present. You can't listen to the song that you, when you listen to it yesterday, you can't listen to it yesterday. You can only listen to it right now. So it pulls you into the present moment. And many people, I parenthetically will say, I'm not judging, but don't know how to listen. You don't know how to track this instrument or feel that crescendo or it's ambient rather than something that you actually tune into and track. But when you do tune into and track, that's not different than meditating. I'm convinced.

22:09Jonathan Fields: No, I like that analogy. So you could look at a sutra, the heart sutra in particular, almost in that same similar context as like this is like a piece of music. It has all those similar qualities. You could literally look at the lyric sheet, read through it. You could chant it or hear it chanted or be in a room where many people are chanting together. And even if you read it and you look at the words and you're like, I don't quite get it, there's a transmission happening. There's a transmission of energy, of feeling, of sensory experience that in some way lands in your heart and your mind and affects you.

22:46It's so beautifully said. And the transmission is exactly the right word. You're not explaining it. A transmission is different than an explanation. It bypasses something, bypasses certain mental processes, I guess. And it strikes you somewhere more visceral. And that's why we love Bruce. And that's why we love music. And even if you hear a song you love in a different language, at a different tempo, maybe with different instruments, you still know what it is immediately. There's something beyond the words, beyond the chord progression, even beyond the tempo that is the song. I don't know what it is, but it's recognizable.

23:30Jonathan Fields: And at the same time, oftentimes you never quite know what it is. Well, that's a really good point. And this is what you write in the book relating to the Heart Sutra is a little bit like falling in love. Shortly after that, you finish with, you'll never really know each other. I mean, you don't, but at the same time, and I know we've both been married for a long time, the intimacy deepens, as does the love and the distance. It's a very strange matrix. You will never really know each other, but the intimacy deepens anyway. And I think that's weird and cool. Yeah, I think it's really cool also.

24:08Jonathan Fields: And as you're describing that, I'm also thinking the intimacy continues to deepen. And if you're in a relationship where each of you individually continue to explore and grow, because there's no stasis, you have two people, maybe three people, whatever your relationship is about. And if you're all evolving in your own unique way, that means you're forever changing. if you allow yourself the freedom to grow in perpetuity, by definition, you will never be fully knowable because who you were yesterday is not who you will be like next week and the month after and the year after. Yeah, you don't even know yourself.

24:45So it's a mystery, Jonathan.

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27:56Jonathan Fields: And it tastes great too. Lemon has been my go-to, but I've been branching out with berry and watermelon flavors lately. There are 16 original flavors and eight Zero Sugar Plus options. So this is just part of my everyday routine now. It's not just a workout thing. And right now, Drip Drop is offering our podcast listeners 20 % off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use the promo code goodlife. That's dripdrop.com promo code goodlife for 20 % off. Stock up now at dripdrop.com. Use that promo code goodlife. I feel like it's time for us to actually hear the text, not the 100 ,000 line version of it.

28:38Thank you.

28:39Jonathan Fields: Would you be so kind as to actually share the 43-line version of the Heart Sutra. I would be delighted. And my suggestion for people who are listening is twofold. One is there'll be names of people and words you don't understand. That's cool. Don't worry about it. And the other is, though it is tempting, it would be a mistake, I would say, to ask, as you're listening, what does this mean? It would be more helpful to ask, what does this mean to me? So you want to start off making it personal. In fact, the first line is, thus have I heard. And I'll just say a little bit about that. That's the first line of the 43.

29:18Thus have I heard. So right away, it's like, well, who is this I? And are they trustworthy? Yeah, that's what you heard. But what am I going to hear? So it happens that the I here is one of the Buddha's closest students named Ananda, who was also his cousin, and was renowned for his extraordinary memory. Maybe someone was mean to him earlier that day, and he didn't quite listen carefully. So you want to place yourself in the I position right away. That's always good advice, I think. Thus have I heard. Once the Blessed One, that's Buddha, was dwelling in Raja Griha at Vulture Peak Mountain, together with a great gathering of the Sangha of monks and a great gathering of the Sangha of Bodhisattvas.

30:00At that time, the Blessed One entered the samadhi that expresses the dharma called profound illumination. And at the same time, noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, while practicing the profound Prajnaparamita, saw in this way, he saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature. Then, through the power of the Buddha, Venerable Shariputra said to Noble Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, How should a son or daughter of noble family train who wishes to practice the profound Prajnaparamita? Addressed in this way, Noble Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, said to Venerable Shariputra, O Shariputra, a son or daughter of noble family who wishes to practice the profound Prajnaparamita, should see in this way, seeing the five skandhas, to be empty of nature.

30:55Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form. Form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. Thus, Shariputra, all dharmas, are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no increase. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas, no I.2 up to no mind.2, no datu of dharmas, no mind-consciousness datu, no ignorance, no end of ignorance, up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death, no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment.

32:05Therefore, Shariputra, since the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajna paramita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. They transcend falsity and attain complete nirvana. All the Buddhas of the three times, by means of Prajnaparamita, fully awaken to unsurpassable, true, complete enlightenment. Therefore, the great mantra of Prajnaparamita, the mantra of great insight, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequaled mantra, The mantra that calms all suffering should be known as truth since there is no deception. The Prajnaparamita mantra is said in this way, Om Gathe Gathe Paragathe Parasam Gathe Bodhisvaha Thus, Shariputra, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, should train in the profound Prajnaparamita.

33:03Then the Blessed One arose from that samadhi and praised noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, saying, Good, good, O son of noble family! Thus it is, O son of noble family! Thus it is. One should practice the profound Prajnaparamita, just as you have taught, and all the Tathagatas will rejoice. When the Blessed One had said this, Venerable Shariputra and noble Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, that whole assembly, and the world with its gods, humans, asuras, and Gandharvas rejoiced and praised the words of the Blessed One.

33:43Jonathan Fields: So two things are happening right now. One, I'm just really trying to sit with it. And as your invitation in the book was, let it wash over you. And then the other, like my scientist mind is like what is this what is that what is this who is this how is that i want to know like i want to i want to deconstruct a bit and i don't know if that's going to help me at all oh it will both are signs of intelligence i want to experience it and i want to penetrate it right there's very smart so let me ask a couple of questions sure it's like the first part of this the first third or so, it feels like it's the setup.

34:27Jonathan Fields: It's act one. It's the hearsay part. Like, oh, I heard a really smart dude talking about this thing. And I'm very trustworthy because I'm close to him and I have a great memory. So this is sort of like setting up what the quote central transmission is. Is that right-ish? I think so. Okay. And then we get into what feels to me like, for me, and again, you asked like, Don't think, what does this mean? But what does this mean to me? Or what does this feel to me? The part where I found myself really leaning in was when the language started talking about emptiness, which you referenced a little bit earlier in our conversation.

35:07Jonathan Fields: Emptiness, and then also just the notion of impermanence of everything, which is a truth that I constantly try to go back and explore. And it's hard. It's beautiful. There's grace that's and suffering and responsibility that goes along with it and freedom. And you want to kick and scream against a whole bunch of it. Walk me through that central part a little bit more. Yeah. And I share all of your feelings, by the way, in contemplation of impermanence. You're right. The first part's like, hey, here's the Buddha. Then he disappears. He goes into samadhi, which means a perfect absorption. And then the rest of it is spoken by one of his students, Avalokiteshvara, who is the bodhisattva of compassion.

35:52Jonathan Fields: And what does bodhisattva mean? Awakened being. So the sutra starts out by saying, the blessed one was there, that's the blessed one means Buddha, together with a great gathering of the sangha of monks, monastics, and a great gathering of the sangha of bodhisattvas. So some people are monastic in their spiritual pursuits, that's totally reasonable and good. other people are expressing their spiritual pursuits through being of benefit and helping others. Not that monastics aren't helping others, but the primary focus is, how can I serve? And that's bodhisattvas do. They lead with the question and devote themselves to how can I serve?

36:32So we had the monastics and we had the bodhisattvas. We had the foundational practitioners and the heart opening practitioners. And Avalokiteshvara is like the central of the Bodhisattva world, the center of the Bodhisattva world, the Mahasattva, the ultimate Bodhisattva. A student named Shariputra, who's known for intellect, asks him, what the hell? What is this that's going on here? And he says, well, whatever you think it is, it's not that. Oh, and thinking it's not that is also not that. Whatever you think it is, it isn't. And when you think, oh, it isn't, that's what it is, you just got kicked back to Palookaville.

37:11Because there is no place to land in empty space. It is groundless, according to the lore. So when you are in ultimate wisdom, which is synonymous with this vast space, there's no place to stand. And the sutra tells you over and over again, nope, don't try to stand there. Don't try to stand there. And it breaks it down. Whatever you think, including all the dharmas you've learned. No dharmas. Towards the end of the no's, there's 37 no's, I think. He says, no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path. For anyone who's studied any of Buddhism will immediately know those are the four noble truths.

37:56Right.

37:56Jonathan Fields: I'm listening to that and I'm like, wait, what? So at this point, by the way, according to the lore, some of the mastic's had heart attacks and died. Because I'm like, what? I shouldn't be laughing at that. I know, I know, I hope it's not true. But it just sounds so funny. And my favorite book on the Heart Sutra is called The Heart Attack Sutra by a great, wonderful writer named Carl Brunholtzel. And that's why he called it that. Because it shatters concept. And that's emptiness. Without concept, beyond concept. So that's one reason why we cannot apply concepts to understanding it. It's very frustrating.

38:34It's more like letting go, letting go, letting go. And then, according to all the great teachers, you realize emptiness. You don't understand it. You realize it. And it says towards the end of the Heart Sutra, you're not going to get anywhere. Since the bodhisattvas have no attainment and no non-attainment, thanks a lot, They abide by means of prajnaparamita, transcendent wisdom or emptiness. So, it's not like they, I've often wondered why that word was translated as abide, but it means they are one with the truth of emptiness. And P.S., there's a mantra that expresses this. And it says, the unsurpassed mantra, the great mantra, the unequaled mantra, and then the part that always gets me going, the mantra that calms all suffering.

39:29So if you ever were like, I wonder if there's a mantra that calms all suffering, this one says, yeah, it's right here. I'll just break it down very briefly. Aum, which is the seed syllable of compassion. So it's a seed syllable. It's a mantra. You are very familiar with Aum, as I'm sure are many people listening. But in this context, it plants the seed of compassion because it's Avalokiteshvara's seed syllable, the bodhisattva of compassion. Gatte, gone beyond. Gathe, I'm just going to say it again in case you missed it. Gone beyond. Paragathe, I really went beyond. Parasamgathe, I shattered. All limitations, I went so far beyond that I arrived.

40:12Bodhi, which means awake, in the root of the word bodhisattva and Buddha, which means awake. Svaha, which is often at the end of mantras, and it means so be it, or mic drop, I like to say. so compassion beyond beyond super beyond really not kidding beyond awake mic drop that's it i can't explain it that is the mantra that calms all suffering it does no good because i've tried this to say is that true only try you know i don't know why how could that be it how could that be the one but when i am suffering i say it and then i check and i learn things does it help Yes and no. I mean, what I want is to stop suffering.

41:00And on, you know, really good hoity-toity days, I want to learn something from my suffering. But I think that the way it actually helps is it makes of my suffering a kind of offering. And there are certain situations, and I'm sure everybody understands this, you can't fix it. It could be anything from an intractable migraine to the reprehensible political situation in our country. I'm suffering. I can't fix it. I don't know any way out. Can I find my rage or care or love or longing, whatever it might feel like, and offer it so that I don't know how it can help others? But let me just offer my suffering so that it could benefit others.

41:45Not because they'll learn from it. I don't know how. But it adds a little ingredient of generosity into suffering, which is usually very contracted. Anyway, that's just something to think about. When I chant the mantra, I feel like I'm letting go of something. That's a simpler way of saying it.

42:03Jonathan Fields: I mean, it feels similar in an interesting way to you. I think, I'm trying to remember, this is coming back to me with the right attribution. I think it was when in Viktor Frankl's Men's Search for Meaning, but quoting Nietzsche about how suffering becomes a different experience when you can identify a why for the suffering, when you can sort of like say there's a certain purpose to the suffering that like it will in some way help. Maybe not even me. Exactly. It's a building block of some sort. And I cannot see the blueprint for this building, but something in me says, this is part of it on good days.

42:48I think I would also say with this mantra and with the Heart Sutra in general, and you stop me if this sounds, I don't know what, confusing or unhelpful, but so much of spiritual practice in the West is about fixing yourself and withdrawing into yourself. Sometimes you gotta, because it's too stressful out there, or worse than stressful. But I don't think that's the original intention with these spiritual teachings, not to fix yourself, and it's certainly not to withdraw. It's to go in fully to your life, to the world, to the experience that you have. And the going out is name checks. Ah, I'm going out.

43:30Ah. When you say something like this that you don't understand or I don't, there's some sense that I'm reaching into a liminal space between me and wisdom that is beyond my conventional mind, which is the real one. It's important for spiritual practitioners, in my opinion, I mean, if you want to meditate, have less stress and get a better night's sleep, knock yourself out, it will help. That's great. Dig. But that's not why the practice was, I don't know what word is even suggested, invented, or taught. It wasn't like, hey, you'll become a better leader if you do this. It was, you will wake up from suffering.

44:06You will see what you cannot see with your conventional mind. If you want meditation as a spiritual practice, it's important to build some way of connecting with the space between. And that sounds weird, and it's not. When you say a mantra, you're connecting with a liminal space. I don't know what it means. I'm saying it. I'm letting it go. When you say a chant that you don't really understand, you're sort of knocking on a door that you're not quite sure what's on the other side. And it doesn't even have to be that conceptual. If you have a little shrine or an altar with a candle or incense or a picture of something.

44:44And then before you practice, if you have a practice, not everybody has to practice by any means, you light the candle or the incense and it's a gesture into the liminal space. It's not, I'm going to figure this out, let me think about it. I'm lighting a candle to something or looking at a picture of something that inspires me to sort of draw me out into a bigger space. And a chant like this only draws you into a bigger space. And I don't know what that's going to look like for you. I don't even know exactly what it looks like for me. But that piece, the mystery, is a very important part of the spiritual journey or meditation as a spiritual practice.

45:25And that's often left on the table in meditation instruction, that it's mystical.

45:31Jonathan Fields: I feel like we often, we don't want to actually bring that into the conversation. Why do you think that is? Because it means that we don't know everything and that we have to. That there's a giant domain of the unknown. Domain of the unknown is an oxymoron right there. There's an undefinable unknown out there in the world that there's a lot of our lives is unlockdownable. It is a mystery. It's mystical. And that terrifies us. We spend most of our waking hours trying to lock down as much of our lives as we possibly can. And you write about this actually in the book and you were just speaking to it, like this notion of spiritual practice versus self-improvement paradigm.

46:09Jonathan Fields: You know, self-improvement paradigm is largely trying to change what is and lock down the future. We have like very specific goals and outcomes because we think that's gonna make us feel the way we wanna feel. Whereas like in my experience, the spiritual paradigm is more, what if we accept that actually now is what it is. Life is about, more about surrender and unfolding. The vast majority of it, we don't have control over room we will never have control over. And yet we still exist within this ether of wisdom and truth and beauty. And if we can just be as present as we can, maybe we'll experience more of that without actually having to force change.

46:52Jonathan Fields: And those two worlds in my experience often are at odds. Mine too. And that was beautifully said. And it gets even more paradoxical when you think, well, if I could only be present, well, immediately you're not present when you think that. There's always a slapback on the deep spiritual path. The things you think, well, if only I wasn't attached, I would be happier. But then you're attached to non-attachment. So, there's always a, it's not that. Just like the Heart Sutra says, not that, not that, not that. And it's even not recognizing that it's not that. It's something beyond this or that. And yes, it is frightening to imagine that there is such a thing as beyond this or that, because I'll never understand it.

47:36But I'll tell you what's scarier is to pretend that you understand and to stake your life on false understandings, which I've done probably 27 times before we had this call today. That's really scary. You miss your whole life.

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50:31Jonathan Fields: lab handles the rest. Clinical grade, not novelty grade, your DNA doesn't change, but what we know about it does. So they keep reanalyzing your genome against new research for as long as you're a member, and they never sell or share your data ever. Right now, sequencing.com is offering our listeners up to 10 % off your full genome test, plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use the promo code goodlife for 10 % off. That's sequencing.com promo code goodlife. That is S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-I-N-G.com promo code goodlife. Dipping back into this central theme of emptiness. Again, I think this is one of these things where we come at it from a Western mind and really, really, really struggle with it because emptiness has a pretty negative connotation to most of us.

51:21Jonathan Fields: Like I feel empty inside. I don't feel anything. I want to feel alive. I want to be engaged. And the notion of emptiness, the frame that I think we so often bring to the concept is negative. Like this is the thing we want to avoid. And yet the heart suture kind of positions it as this is a space of just profound abundance. And I guess then you would make the argument at the same time, and then it's not. Know this, know that. It's very perplexing. It's so freaking perplexing. So here's a moment. This was long ago when I sort of got some sense of what this might mean, maybe. I used to live in New York City.

51:59So when I first moved to New York City a million years ago, and I don't live there anymore, but I could not sleep because it was so noisy. And it wasn't even that noisy, but there was just that ambient hum all the time that you come to love when you are a New Yorker. But at first you're like, how can anybody sleep here? So night after night after night, I can't sleep, I can't sleep. And then out of desperation, one night, my ear tuned away from the noise and into the silence under the noise. And I realized that I could always do that. You can do it right now. If you're listening, you can do it too.

52:36There's sound coming out of silence. Now there's a silence, and then I say words, and there's a sound. A bed of silence is always there. It's never not there. And if you want to play, you can tune your ear to it whenever you feel so inspired. and that's something about emptiness and I agree that it has a negative connotation and I wish someone had picked a different word whoever translated it because it could as mentioned just as easily be expressed as fullness because it's a fullness of silence anything can come out of it and nothing is possible without it then it would be dead but because there's silence there can be sound and there's something about that dichotomy because there's light there can be dark There was no light, there would be no dark.

53:24That bed from which light and dark, silence and sound arises, I think is a fruitful direction to explore.

53:34Jonathan Fields: Totally great. The way it lands with me is that's the space of unlimited possibility. And yet the first move we want to make we're in that space is to determine which possibility we want to make manifest so that we're diminishing the experience of the unknown. Yeah, and go ahead. Determine what is possible. That's what we do all day. But don't forget about this other space of silence and emptiness. It's still there too. So you had an interesting experience not too long ago. After studying and chanting this heart sutra for so many years, you decided to lead a retreat where you would teach it in Colorado.

54:19You show up at the retreat and there's a momentary experience that you didn't see coming

54:26Jonathan Fields: that sounds like has also, and that made a slight tweak to the mantra part of the Heart Sutra that was really interesting. Yeah. As you say, I went to this retreat center in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies to teach a retreat on the Heart Sutra. What a privilege for me. And when I got there, I noticed there was another program wrapping up on calligraphy, And it was taught by, I hope I'm not butchering the name, Kazuaki Tanahashi Sensei, a great calligrapher, 95 years old, Japanese, who also happened to have written a brilliant book on the Heart Sutra, a complete guide to the Heart Sutra by Tanahashi Sensei.

55:10And I'm like, I am such a poser. I have got full on imposter syndrome. And the reason I have that is because frigging true. Here's this guy and here's me. And I'm like, yeah, let me explain the heart sutra. And in the meantime, here's this actual sage walking around. And I think I said this in the book. I wanted every time he walked by me, like on the way to the dining hall or whatever, I'd wait till he passed. And then I would bow like into the space behind him because I didn't want to. I don't know what insert myself. Who knows what I was thinking. And then I'm like, wow, he's here and I'm about to do this.

55:46What the hell? And then the morning my program was going to start, his was ending. And I walked into the residential hall. and he was sitting in the vestibule with his suitcase, I guess, waiting for someone to pick him up, just him. And I just said, hey, and just rushed by. And then I'm like, wait, Susan, go back. Just go back. This is your chance to ask him a question. So, I asked him if I could ask him a question. And he said, yes. I said, if you could tell people one thing about the Heart Sutra, what would it be? What is the most important thing to say? And without hesitating, he said, joy.

56:23That is the most important thing. The mantra, om ghatte ghatte, paragatte, parasam ghatte, bodhisvaha, svaha often translated as so be it. He said, I translate it as joy. Svaha is joy. So the ultimate letting go, the so be it, is what joy feels like. So I was grateful. I said, oh, thank you, and sort of slunk away, I guess. And that was the experience of the retreat. It was the joy of letting go of concept with other people who are also doing their best. It's hard to do it by yourself. And then miraculous signs and symbols happened. I mean, I'm not BSing you. Every day there was a different rainbow.

57:13Crazy butterflies would just land on the threshold of the meditation room. Like, I'd never seen anything like this. There's another chant, not the heart sutra, that we do that says the raven-headed one, which is one of the deities in Tibetan Buddhism is depicted as having a raven head for a head. And ravens started cawing Jonathan Fields. You could hear ravens cawing. I'm like, okay, hold up, hold up, hold up. I don't know what's going on here, but it must have something to do with joy. There's a synchronization of inner experience and outer occurrences, a letting go and then letting go of letting go, and somehow the result is this svaha, joy.

57:53That's also where we started was how did I get started with this or how did I find the Heart Sutra? It's always a falling backwards and it's always a noticing what is happening rather than trying to conjure what we want to happen. Something is happening. And when you tune to that, rather than form, feeling, perception, formation, and so on, great forces come to your aid in the form of ravens and butterflies.

58:21Jonathan Fields: I just love that slight shift in where he defines Swaha. Me too. If the last thing is joy, and that means the letting go, and then the letting go of the letting go, and then I'm going to translate that to in my mind, this is joy, then it's an invitation to just sort of move through the day and exhale, let go. Like, what can I let go of? Even for a heartbeat, for a moment. And on the other side of that, or maybe in coincidence with that, maybe I'll invite more joy. I'm with you. I'm guessing that may be part of the reason that you ended up titling the book Inexplicable Joy. That is a very, very good guess.

59:07It's inexplicable, and it's joy. And then I read this very short, just a couple lines. As this manuscript was being written, I'm like, what is this joy thing? I read this from a different great teacher named Chokhi Nima Rinpoche from his book, Sadness, Love, and Openness, which is a great title. Deep sadness because nothing lasts. Fervent love because all beings are my beloved family. Lucid openness because this ordinary mind is full awakening. sheer joy because all of this is true i just burst into tears when i read that all of this nothing lasts everything is alive i don't know now i do now i don't i'm part of the fabric of something living that all of this is true is sheer joy that's my aspiration anyway and that feels like

1:00:05Jonathan Fields: a great place for us to come full circle as well. I've asked you this question in the past. I'm going to ask you again in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? A profound and lasting connection to a source of wisdom that you trust. That's a good life. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Tara Brock about making peace with the truth of our lives. You'll find a link to Tara's episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.

1:00:44Jonathan Fields: Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together.

1:01:22Jonathan Fields: Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

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