Snowflakes on a red hot stove

I was reading Red Pine’s (a.k.a. Bill Porter) translation and commentary on the Heart Sutra, one of the most important sutras in Mahayana Buddhism. In the discussion, Red Pine quotes Chen-k’o as saying that, once we realize the inherent emptiness of our so-called reality,

“…the light of the mind shines alone. When all the clouds are gone, the full moon fills the sky. thus birth and destruction, purity and defilement, completeness and deficiency are all snowflakes on a red-hot stove.”

“Snowflakes on a red-hot stove” – now THAT is excellent.

I was just thinking about that today when my youngest son, Mark, was talking about the lives of writers that he likes: this summer it’s Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, and the Bronte sisters. He knows so much about the lives they led while they wrote the books that he loves, the full human beings almost come alive for me. And then I realize how not alive they are. There’s a collision between all that energy I can still feel when I imagine who they were and the slapping fact of how quickly, really, it is all over.

There’s a line chanted at the end of some of the services at ZCLA – it’s an admonition of sorts – not to “squander your life” and to practice as though there were a “fire on your head.”

…or, perhaps, as though you were a snowflake on a red-hot stove.

 

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The Heart of the Perfection of Great Wisdom Sutra

 

This is the version they use at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. There are many different translations.

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita,
Clearly saw the emptiness of all the five conditions,
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain.
O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form;
Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness are likewise like this.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness, not born, not destroyed;
Not stained, not pure, without loss, without gain;
So in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena;
No realm of sight…no realm of consciousness;
No ignorance and no end to ignorance…
No old age and death, and no end to old age and death;
No suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, no path;
No wisdom and no gain. No gain and thus
The bodhisattva lives prajna paramita
With no hindrance in the mind,
no hindrance, therefore no fear,
Far beyond deluded thoughts, this is nirvana.
All past, present, and future Buddhas live prajna paramita,
And therefore attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.*
Therefore know, Prajna Paramita is
The great mantra, the vivid mantra,
The best mantra, the unsurpassable;
It completely clears all pain–this is the truth, not a lie.
So set forth the Prajna Paramita Mantra,
Set forth this mantra and declare:
Gat é! Gat é! Paragat é! Parasamgat é!**
Gat é! Gat é! Paragat é! Parasamgat é!
Gat é! Gat é! Paragat é! Parasamgat é!
Bodhi svaha!***
Prajna Heart Sutra

* Bill Red Pine Porter‘s definition: “unexcelled perfect enlightenment”
** Red Pine’s roughly translates this: “The Gone, the Gone Beyond, the Gone Completely Beyond” but suggests that the vibration, the sound, like in Hinduism, is as important if not more important than the meaning of the words themselves.
*** Again, Red Pine: “Bodhi…means ‘enlightenment’ adn svaha is exclamatory: “at last,’ ‘amen,’ ‘hallelujah.'”

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