The Other Shore: A Fresh Look at the Heart Sutra with Insightful Commentaries

Solidus Snake: Thich Nhat Hanh does a superb job translating one of the most important and yet subtle texts of the ancient Mahayana Buddhist canon, the Heart Sutra (Sanskrit: Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Sutra, Chinese: Xīnjīng). Translated into English variously as the 'Heart Sutra', 'The Perfection of Wisdom of the Heart Sutra' etc and by Nhat Hanh as 'The Insight That Brings Us To The Other Shore'.

Thich Nhat Hanh, elucidates how the historical rendering of the Sutra into English as well as other languages further confounded its highly subtle meaning, which is a crystallisation of the Mahayana Buddhist doctine of Śūnyatā, often translated as 'Emptiness, Voidness, Nothingness'.
Thich Nhat Hanh, tries to highlight the subtlety of the concept by highlighting the fact it can easily be misunderstood as an absolute nihilism, that nothing truly exists and everything is empty, but he reveals that it is in fact really a way to conceive of the ultimate interconnectedness of all things in existence and even non-existence.
After Thich's translation of the short Heart Sutra the remainder of the book is the Zen Buddhist teacher's commentary and interpretation of the deeper meaning of the...

United Kingdom on Oct 05, 2023

Mike22: Last book i read by this author was back in 1999, I find his personal views and opinions sometimes bring noise to the message, but have great respect for the individual no questions about that. His translation about the MAIN concept of the Heart Sutra is WORTH Reading, once you pass that, you come across several of his personal views and opinions that "for me" should not be part of the book, but again, that is why i don read his books since 1999, but again, have great respect for the man,.

Canada on Oct 01, 2023

Cliente Amazon: Thitch Nah Hanh explica el corazón del budismo de forma sencilla, accesible, yendo al grano. Lo he encontrado tremendamente útil e inspirador.

Spain on Sep 08, 2023

sd: There is a lot of repetition, which at times annoyed me when I had already gotten, but I appreciated when I didn't and needed further examples in hopes to understand one of them. To get a lot out of it you have to invest time to not only read but to think stop and reflect. You need some fundamentals first to better understand it, and similar to Old Path, White Clouds there can be some fluff between gems, but the gems are worth it. Unlike Old Path, the fluff here is repetition versus true fluff. An easier read is No Mud, No Lotus, but if you have some basics down and want more this is where to go. Cultivating The Mind of Love also pairs well with this, especially for him to admit he was in love with a nun.

United States on Jun 28, 2023

David Cappella: The book presents the most unintuitive aspects of Buddhism to a general audience, such as emptiness, no-self, and impermanence. Hanh is able to aptly explain the fine-tuned way in which Buddhists attempt to navigate between extremes of being and non-being, of emptiness and form, and even briefly comments on mind and body problems in modern scientific investigations. Overall the book presents Buddhism as offering a relief from the suffering of the modern individual, anxious about one’s own place in the world and what to do about the mental strain of enormous problems like climate change or world hunger while retaining a strong sense of compassion and even-temperateness. When I reflect on the book I wish I had come across it earlier (say 2016) and that I had had more exposure to the wisdom that Buddhism offers to the world community in the 21st century. I look forward to reading more from Thich Nhat Hanh.

United States on Feb 23, 2023

BoonK: Master Hanh has beautifully simplified and summarized the essence of Heart Sutra to modern English readers like us. Thank you and sadhu

United States on Feb 11, 2023

Roberta M. Brannan: We read this in my Buddhist oriented reading circle. The concepts aren't overly simple, but the theme was very 'enlightening' (so to speak). :)

Canada on Oct 03, 2020

Shambhala: As a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism focused into study and practice the Prajnaparamita, I have several comentarys to the Heart Sutra and I felt compelled to get this book too. Instead of a direct explanation of Emptiness Thay unfolds the Dependent Origination teaching and reasoning. He manages to touche the very heart of the student using tender words and beautiful poetry, introducing progressively the student to the key points of the text that leads to the state of Wisdom (see the Life of a Leaf chapter). His approach is to point out again and again the interdependent and non-dual ground of reality like a finger pointing to the moon. Thay also explains that he felt the need to write this comentary in order to dispel the danger of missundertand the Sutra as a nihlistic view, and I believe he does it succesfully.
Nevertheless Thay makes some odd and wrong ascertions like, "Buddha Nature is the nature of plants and minerals". From where he get this??? In any Sutra such claim is made, on the contrary it is explained that Sugathagarbha in is not present in such unanimated things.
I also disagree with his explanation of the Four Noble Truths in page 95, to me he misses a key...

United States on Mar 19, 2020

Will: Over the last decade or so I've read Thich Nhat Hanh's translation & commentary of the Heart Sutra in "The Heart of Understanding" over a dozen times (if I were to guess).

I usually give the book away when I'm done, so I've bought the book many times. When I went to get another copy I was shocked when it wasn't in print anymore! I was even more surprised to find a new version with a "new" translation and even a new title.

The new translation gets rid of lots of liguistic baggage, and makes it more understandable to a western audience. The word "emptiness" used in buddhism is often lost in translation, and this translation mitigates that some. It's really crazy how different yet more clear the translation is, albeit it's still cryptic on many levels!

For context, the original translation was 2 pages & book was 49 pages total. New version the translation is 3 pages & entire book is 133 pages. "The Other Shore" is quite a substantial update! Thich Nhat Hanh is definitely my most influential teacher (outside mt engineering professors 😉), and he's literally on his death bed, so this was a surprising book at a pivotal point in my life...

In any...

United States on Oct 22, 2019

Holly "Ragdoll Reads" Hodson: TL;DR – A skillful breakdown of the Heart Sutra, making an important piece of Buddhist scripture more accessible.

4 Button

RAGDOLL RATING: 4/5 BUTTONS

Why I read it…

I love Thich Nhat Hanh’s work, I find the man totally inspiring, so I’ll read basically anything of his. I read this specifically because I wanted to start reading Buddhist scriptures, and not just commentaries.

The Book…

The book is broken down into several parts. First up, we have introductions to the book and a very brief background to the Heart Sutra itself. Next we have what I suppose technically needs to be classified as a re-interpretation of the text. It’s more or less a translation but with some sections tidied up for better clarity. What follows is a series of chapters, each focusing on a few lines of the sutra, explaining what the text means and how we are to understand it. Then to finish up we have the original text in romanised sanskrit, and then a literal English translation and finally an English version of the text that was used for chanting at Plum Village from the 1980’s to 2014.

What I liked…

This book has Thich Nhat Hanh’s...

United Kingdom on Sep 18, 2018