The Illustrated Heart Sutra (圖解心經)

I went to listen to my first Buddhism talk at Eslite Bookstore this evening. I found out the information by accident: Yesterday I had a strong urge to go book shopping at Eslite’s flagship store, looking for books on Buddhism. These days I had been reading The Diamond Sutra (金剛經) along with a couple of Buddhism encyclopedia and found it was highly entertaining. The author, Nan Huai Jin (南懷瑾), is not only knowledgeable but also a good story teller. I couldn’t imagine myself reading Buddhist sutras before this trip, but that was all I read these days.

This new book, The Illustrated Heart Sutra by Zhang Hong Shi (張宏實), was in Eslite’s Top 10 list and so was displayed everywhere. (It’s very rare for a Buddhism book to get into Top 10, BTW.) The lecture information was attached to each book cover, and I was surprised that I actually could make it. For Chinese, we called this Yuan, meaning that it was a predestined relationship. Well, yesterday I was restless and couldn’t do anything; I just felt that I needed to go bookshopping. Why? I didn’t know. Once I found the book and decided to attend the lecture, I calmed down. Strange, huh?Zhang is a programmer in the States, too, so with our similar background, his logic and analysis are easier for me. The Heart Sutra is not an easy one, even though it’s the shortest one: only 260 characters in Chinese. And thank goodness that he uses English from Edward Conze’s translation to explain the vague Chinese version. The biggest turnoff of Buddhist sutras for me was always its funny Chinese. Since they were translated from Sanskrit over 1,000 years ago and Chinese has changed significantly since then, it made it very tough for a normal Chinese to understand Buddhist sutras. On the other hand, Conze’s English version is simple and clear, plus Sanskrit is a lot closer to English than to Chinese.

During his talk, Zhang emphasized that he was only an organizer (he compared 10 versions of The Heart Sutra) and none of his opinion was included in the book. He said that the explanation should leave to the great monks, not him. His job was to make it easier and more clear for people to understand what it was. Frankly, I thought that he reached to a broader audience than the normal Buddhism books could, because his was modern and he knew how to use tools like English and graphics to illustrate the core of The Heart Sutra. Well, lots of things to learn! The funny thing was that I seemed to get interested in a series of books about “the enlightenment of Emptiness” — The Sutra of Hui-neng (六祖壇經), The Diamond Sutra (金剛經), and The Heart Sutra (心經). (Note: Hui-neng was the grand master of Zen.) Ethan told me that I should start reading whatever interested me, because it meant that the book and I had Yuan and I was probably destined to practice Buddhism in that field. Hmm. Not sure if that was the case, but these 3 sets of books really attracted me that I actually felt OK not to read my favorite manga. Imagine that!

P.S. The JPG was taken from 般若心經研習社 (The Heart Sutra Study Club).