To See Is to Be Free

Starting from 260 Characters: Understanding How Buddhism Sees the World and the Mind, and Seeing Your Own Life Anew

For many people, their first encounter with Buddhism begins with the Heart Sutra.

The Prajñāpāramitā Heart Sutra is only a little over two hundred characters long, yet it condenses a very important worldview and body of practical wisdom from the prajñā thought of Mahayana Buddhism.

How do we come to know the world?

Why do we suffer?

What is real?

What is “I”?

And is the world we see really the world itself?

When wealth, status, relationships, the body, and even the self we trust most are all constantly changing, how can a person find true freedom amid change?

So I believe the Heart Sutra is a very good entry point for modern people to approach Buddhist thought.

It does not teach us to flee the world, nor does it tell us that nothing in life has any meaning.

Quite the opposite.

What it trains is a very profound ability:

To see the world anew.

And in the course of reading the Heart Sutra, I have slowly sorted out a path of understanding of my own:

Observation → Dependent Origination → Emptiness → Non-Attachment → Freedom

Only by seeing can we understand dependent origination.

Only by understanding dependent origination can we understand emptiness.

Only by understanding emptiness can we stop gripping so tightly.

Only when we are no longer bound by attachment do we gradually gain freedom.

This is the most important main thread of my reading of the Heart Sutra at present.

I. The First Entrance: “Observation”

The Heart Sutra opens with:

“When Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva was practicing the profound prajñāpāramitā, he saw clearly that the five aggregates are all empty.”

First, it must be made clear:

“Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva” here is first of all the name of a bodhisattva, one of the Chinese renderings of Guanyin Bodhisattva.

The three characters “Guanzizai” cannot simply be taken apart and turned into a meditation theory.

But for me reading the Heart Sutra today, the word “guan” (observation) happens to offer a very good entry point.

Because an important spirit of Buddhism is not only to ask people to believe, but to:

observe.

Observe your own body.

Observe your own feelings.

Observe your own thoughts.

Observe your own attachments.

And finally even observe:

What exactly is that “I” that we have always assumed to exist as something fixed?

There is an important concept in Buddhist meditation:

Calm and insight (śamatha–vipaśyanā).

“Calm” (zhi) is often matched with the Sanskrit Śamatha.

It lets a scattered mind gradually settle, so that attention is no longer constantly led around by external things, emotions, desires and thoughts.

It leans toward cultivating “concentration.”

“Insight” (guan) is often matched with Vipaśyanā.

On the basis of a mind with a certain stability, it observes body, mind and all phenomena as they truly are, gradually giving rise to insight.

It leans toward cultivating “wisdom.”

If I put it in modern language I am familiar with:

Calm is making the system stable.

Insight is making the system see clearly.

With only stability, there may be only tranquility.

With only analysis and no stable mind, we easily mistake our own emotions, biases, desires and fears for the truth.

So Buddhist practice places great importance on the coordination of concentration and wisdom.

And this has also helped me begin to understand:

True wisdom is not just knowing many things.

It is that when things happen —

your mind is not easily carried away, and at the same time you have the ability to see clearly the true causes and conditions of things.

This is the first step:

Observation.

II. What Is “Prajñā”?

Many people translate “Prajñā” directly as “wisdom.”

That is not wrong.

But if it is only wisdom in the ordinary sense — cleverness, rich knowledge, quick reactions — it is actually not enough.

The prajñā that Buddhism speaks of points to a wisdom of insight into the true nature of all phenomena.

That is:

We don’t only see things happen; we gradually see how they come to be established.

Mahayana Buddhism often speaks of the six pāramitās:

giving, ethical conduct, patience, diligence, meditation, and prajñā.

Giving is not only money, but also the giving of Dharma and the giving of fearlessness.

Ethical conduct establishes the boundaries of behavior.

Patience means not being easily led by anger and revenge when facing adversity.

Diligence means continually advancing toward goodness and continually practicing.

Meditation trains the stability of the mind.

Prajñā lets us go further and see into true reality.

So I am now reluctant to simply translate prajñā as “clever.”

The real question is not:

How much do you know?

It is:

How deeply do you see?

Knowing is information.

Understanding is cognition.

What prajñā points to is the insight that comes after piercing through appearances.

III. “Pāramitā”: From This Shore to the Other Shore

“Pāramitā” is usually translated as “reaching the other shore,” and is also understood as “crossing over” or “ultimate perfection.”

If we understand it in the most accessible way:

This shore is the state of life in which we are still bound by ignorance, attachment, fear and affliction.

The other shore points to awakening and liberation.

Therefore, “prajñāpāramitā” can first be understood as:

Through the wisdom of prajñā, transcending ignorance and attachment and moving toward liberation.

This is also why, as I read the Heart Sutra, I slowly came to find:

What it really talks about is not adding more knowledge, but —

how a person’s way of cognition undergoes a fundamental transformation.

I understand it with two sentences:

Prajñā is a change in the way of cognition.

Pāramitā is a crossing of the state of life.

So true practice is not merely knowing a new answer.

It is that the way of seeing the world has changed.

When the way you see the world changes, your relationship with the world begins to change too.

IV. “Seeing That the Five Aggregates Are Empty”: How Buddhism Deconstructs “I”

One of the most important lines of the Heart Sutra:

“He saw clearly that the five aggregates are all empty.”

What are the five aggregates?

Form, feeling, perception, volition, consciousness.

“Form” mainly refers to material existence, including our bodies.

“Feeling” is sensation and the function of feeling.

“Perception” includes recognizing, grasping characteristics and forming conceptual images.

“Volition” covers all kinds of acts of will and mental formation.

“Consciousness” is the function of discerning and cognizing.

For the convenience of beginners, we can roughly understand it first as:

Form leans toward the material level; feeling, perception, volition and consciousness involve our psychological and cognitive activity.

But the most important question is not memorizing these five terms.

It is why Buddhism analyzes things this way.

Because ordinarily we say:

“I got angry.”

“I failed.”

“I was rejected.”

“I succeeded.”

“I’m suffering.”

But if we truly begin to “observe”:

Which one is “I”?

Is the body “I”?

Are emotions “I”?

Is memory “I”?

Are thoughts “I”?

Is identity “I”?

Is the activity of consciousness an eternal, unchanging “I”?

When we observe layer by layer, we find:

The “I” we ordinarily take for granted is actually a psychophysical process formed by the continuous interaction of body, feeling, cognition, volition, memory, experience and all kinds of conditions.

It is not an entity that is forever fixed and unaffected by conditions.

At this point the truly central concept of the Heart Sutra begins to appear:

Emptiness.

V. “Emptiness” Does Not Mean Nothing at All

This may be the place where people most easily go wrong in understanding the Heart Sutra.

Emptiness does not mean that nothing exists.

Nor does it mean:

Life has no meaning.

The world is all fake.

There is no need to do anything.

None of these is what the Heart Sutra means to express.

When Mahayana Buddhism speaks of “emptiness,” one of its core points is:

No inherent nature (niḥsvabhāva).

That is, things do not exist in a way that is completely independent, self-sufficient, fixed and unchanging, and independent of conditions.

They are established depending on all kinds of causes and conditions.

Take a company, for example.

We say:

“This is a company.”

But where exactly is the company?

Is it the office?

Is it the chairman?

Is it the employees?

Is it the unified business number?

Is it the products?

Is it the customers?

Is it the capital?

Is it the brand?

In fact, a “company” requires a great many conditions to come together: shareholders, talent, capital, systems, technology, products, customers, markets, laws and the social environment.

When the conditions change, the company changes.

A tree is the same.

It needs seeds, soil, water, sunlight, air, temperature and time.

A person is the same.

Parents, genes, body, education, culture, language, memory, environment, relationships…

Countless conditions together form who we are today.

So:

Emptiness is not a negation of existence.

Emptiness is the negation of a thing existing with an independent, fixed inherent nature that does not depend on conditions.

This is a very important entry point for understanding “dependent origination and emptiness of nature.”

And when I read this far, I actually came to a very positive understanding:

Precisely because everything arises dependent on causes and conditions, everything has the possibility of change.

If everything had a permanently fixed essence, people could never grow.

Companies could never transform.

Relationships could not be repaired.

And fate would have no room to change.

It is precisely because causes and conditions can change that results can change.

So the “emptiness” I understand now is not negative.

On the contrary it represents:

Possibility.

VI. “Form Is Not Different from Emptiness; Emptiness Is Not Different from Form”

The most famous passage of the Heart Sutra:

“Form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form; form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”

This does not say that matter does not exist.

Nor does it say that everything we see before us is an illusion.

Its deeper meaning is:

The phenomena we see are themselves established depending on causes and conditions, and so have no independent, fixed inherent nature.

Therefore “form” and “emptiness” are not two different worlds.

It is not that we first negate the real world and then run off to another world called “emptiness.”

It is:

It is right within phenomena that we see emptiness.

A thing can truly happen, but that does not mean it has an eternal, unchanging inherent nature.

A company can succeed, and may also decline.

Wealth can increase, and may also decrease.

A relationship can be established, and may also change.

A person’s body grows, and is bound to keep changing.

Status will change.

Markets will change.

Times will change.

Even the self we so firmly believe in today is always changing.

So often the problem is not just “change.”

What truly makes us suffer is:

We demand that a world that is by nature always changing never change.

The causes and conditions change, yet we demand that the results stay fixed.

People change, yet we demand that they never change.

Markets change, yet we demand that success last forever.

The body changes, yet we demand that youth stay forever.

And so, attachment arises.

Suffering follows.

VII. From “Worldview” to the “Dharma-Realm View”

Next the Heart Sutra says:

“All dharmas are marked by emptiness: not arising, not ceasing, not defiled, not pure, not increasing, not decreasing.”

This passage is very easily misread.

People clearly are born, and also die.

Things clearly increase, and also decrease.

Why then say “not arising, not ceasing, not increasing, not decreasing”?

In my own reading, I temporarily use two levels of seeing to help understanding:

The view of the phenomenal world, and the view of emptiness.

In my own language, I would call it:

A way of reading that goes further from the “worldview” into the “Dharma-realm view.”

On the level of phenomena:

There is birth, there is death.

There is success, there is failure.

There is gain, there is loss.

There is increase, there is decrease.

None of these can be denied.

Buddhism does not deny the phenomenal world.

But observed from the perspective of emptiness, all these phenomena are established depending on conditions.

When causes and conditions come together, we call it “arising.”

When causes and conditions disperse, we call it “ceasing.”

There is no entity with a fixed inherent nature that suddenly arises independently from absolute “nothing”; nor is there an entity with a fixed inherent nature that is completely annihilated.

Therefore it is said:

Not arising, not ceasing.

Likewise:

Not defiled, not pure.

We are used to using concepts and discrimination to cut the world into clean and dirty, liked and disliked, good and bad.

But from the viewpoint of emptiness, “defiled” and “pure” are also not fixed entities with independent inherent nature.

And “not increasing, not decreasing” further loosens our reified understanding of “gaining” and “losing.”

So I understand these three pairs of phrases as the loosening of three deep attachments:

Arising and ceasing.

Discrimination.

Gain and loss.

And a great deal of human affliction happens precisely in these three places.

VIII. The Eighteen Realms: How Do We Actually Come to Know the World?

Buddhism has a very detailed analysis of human cognitive experience.

VIII. The Eighteen Realms: How Do We Actually Come to Know the World?

Buddhism has a very detailed analysis of human cognitive experience.

One important framework is the eighteen realms (dhātus):

Six sense faculties × six sense objects × six consciousnesses.

The tradition also often calls external objects of cognition the “six dusts.”

The six sense faculties:

Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.

The six sense objects:

Form, sound, smell, taste, touch, dharma.

The six consciousnesses:

Eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, mind-consciousness.

Take the simplest example:

The eye faculty contacts a visual object, and eye-consciousness arises correspondingly.

So we usually think:

“I directly see the world.”

But Buddhism reminds us:

Our experience is formed by the joint action of conditions such as faculty, object and consciousness.

This is very important.

Because one of the easiest mistakes a person makes is to treat:

“the world I experience”

as directly equal to:

“the world itself.”

I see that he doesn’t respect me.

I think this company has no value.

I think this person must have a problem.

I think that’s just how things are.

But Buddhism reminds us:

Don’t be so quick.

What you see — is it the thing itself?

Or the cognition formed after the thing passes through your senses, memory, experience, emotions, standpoint and concepts?

This is also where “observation” truly begins to get difficult.

Because what is hardest to see is often not the world.

It is:

It is our own way of seeing the world.

IX. The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination: How Is Suffering Manufactured?

If the eighteen realms analyze:

how we experience the world.

then the twelve links of dependent origination provide a profound framework for understanding the cycle of life and how suffering continues.

The twelve links are:

Ignorance → Formations → Consciousness → Name-and-form → Six sense bases → Contact → Feeling → Craving → Clinging → Becoming → Birth → Aging and death

The complete twelve links involve very deep Buddhist doctrine, including the cycle of birth and death, and cannot simply be reduced to ordinary psychology.

But for modern people encountering it for the first time, I think we can begin by observing one segment that is very close to everyday experience:

Contact → Feeling → Craving → Clinging

We come into contact with something.

A feeling arises.

Pleasant.

Unpleasant.

Or no particular feeling.

Then we develop craving for pleasant experiences and aversion to painful ones.

Going further:

Grasping.

“I must get it.”

“I can’t lose it.”

“He must follow my expectations.”

“Things must happen my way.”

At this point:

Craving further becomes clinging.

Suffering also begins to be amplified.

So I think one very profound thing about Buddhism is that:

It doesn’t just tell you —

Don’t be afraid of affliction.

It goes further and asks:

How exactly does affliction form?

If you don’t know how the system works, you can only keep dealing with the results.

If you see the causal chain, you can change it further upstream.

This is:

Dependent origination.

X. Suffering, Origin, Cessation, Path: The Problem-Solving Model Proposed by the Buddha

One of the most basic and important frameworks of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths:

Suffering, origin, cessation, path.

If I understand it in modern language, I would first organize it this way:

Suffering: What is the problem?

Origin: How did the problem form?

Cessation: Can this problem cease?

Path: Through what road should it be practiced?

Of course, the Four Noble Truths go far deeper than the “problem solving” of ordinary management science.

Because what it truly deals with is life’s fundamental suffering and liberation.

But this structure is still very inspiring for modern people.

Buddhist tradition also uses the “three turnings and twelve aspects” to explain the understanding and practice of the Four Noble Truths.

I will use modern language to organize it into three stages.

Stage one:

Knowing.

This is suffering.

This is the origin.

This is cessation.

This is the path.

Stage two:

Practicing.

Suffering should be fully understood.

The origin should be abandoned.

Cessation should be realized.

The path should be cultivated.

Stage three:

Completion.

Suffering has been fully understood.

The origin has been abandoned.

Cessation has been realized.

The path has been cultivated.

This shows me something very interesting:

Buddhism is not only about Know.

It is:

Know → Do → Become

Knowing the truth is only the beginning.

True practice is letting what you understand enter your life.

In the end,

you yourself become the proof.

XI. “No Wisdom and No Attainment”: Even Wisdom Must Not Be Clung To

The Heart Sutra goes on:

“There is no wisdom and no attainment, because there is nothing to attain.”

I think this is a very masterful point.

Because even after a person begins to practice, they may still create new attachments.

“I understand more than others.”

“My realm is higher.”

“I’m wiser.”

“I’ve already seen through it.”

“I’ve attained a certain state.”

If we begin to cling to:

my wisdom, my practice, my achievements, my realm,

then the “self-grasping” we originally wanted to let go of has merely changed clothes and come back.

So in the end the Heart Sutra won’t even let us hold on to “wisdom” and “attainment.”

This also reminds me of another very interesting body of thought that developed later in Mahayana Buddhism.

The Heart Sutra itself does not discuss “transforming the eight consciousnesses into four wisdoms,” but if we keep exploring along the later Yogācāra and related Mahayana thought, we find a very representative framework of mental transformation:

The first five consciousnesses transform into:

the Wisdom of Accomplishing What Is to Be Done.

The sixth consciousness, mind-consciousness, transforms into:

the Wisdom of Wonderful Observation.

The seventh consciousness, manas, transforms into:

the Wisdom of Equality.

The eighth consciousness, ālaya-consciousness, transforms into:

the Great Mirror Wisdom.

I like the image of the “Great Mirror Wisdom” very much.

The greatest characteristic of a mirror is:

When things come, it reflects them as they are.

When things leave, it does not hold on to the image.

A truly clear mind may be like this too.

It is not without feeling.

It is not without judgment.

Nor is it doing nothing at all.

It is:

It sees, but is not hijacked.

It acts, but is not controlled by attachment.

This begins to enter:

Non-attachment.

XII. “The Mind Has No Hindrance”

Having understood this far, let us look back at the Heart Sutra:

“With no hindrance in the mind, there is no fear; far removed from inverted views and dreamlike thinking, one reaches ultimate nirvana.”

Why, after “no hindrance,” can there be “no fear”?

My understanding now is:

Much fear has to do with our clinging to certain things.

Fear of losing wealth.

Fear of losing status.

Fear of losing relationships.

Fear of losing health.

Fear of losing recognition.

Fear of losing life.

When we identify something as:

“This is me.”

then once it is threatened, “I” seems threatened too.

Fear arises as a result.

But prajñā lets us gradually see:

The five aggregates come together by causes and conditions.

Thoughts change.

Emotions change.

The body changes.

Identity changes.

Wealth changes.

Markets change.

Success and failure change too.

So practice is not:

wanting nothing.

It is:

You can have, but don’t be controlled by having.

You can strive, but don’t let the result become the whole of the self.

You can succeed, but don’t think that success is “me.”

You can fail, and don’t think that failure is “me” either.

This is what I now understand as:

Non-attachment.

And as attachment gradually loosens, fear may loosen with it.

XIII. What Is “Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi”?

There is a long term in the Heart Sutra that beginners easily skip right over:

Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.

It corresponds to the Sanskrit:

Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi

It is usually translated as:

Unsurpassed, Perfect, Complete Enlightenment.

“Anuttara” means unsurpassed.

“Samyak-saṃbodhi” means perfect and complete enlightenment.

Taken together it points to:

Unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment.

So what Buddhism ultimately pursues is not only making your emotions a bit more stable.

Nor only being calmer day to day.

And certainly not treating the Dharma as a toolkit for success.

What it ultimately points to is:

A fundamental awakening to oneself, the world and true reality, and the liberation that comes from it.

This is also why the Heart Sutra cannot be understood only as:

“Think more openly.”

What it truly asks for is:

Seeing more deeply.

XIV. “Unequaled”: Why Is Prajñā So Important?

At the end, the Heart Sutra praises the prajñāpāramitā:

“It is the great divine mantra, the great bright mantra, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequaled mantra.”

“Unequaled” can be understood as incomparable, with nothing else that can be equated or compared to it.

But to me, what really matters is not treating these words as mysterious religious language.

It is returning to the Heart Sutra as a whole:

Why is prajñā so important?

Because it directly deals with a fundamental problem that Buddhism speaks of:

Ignorance.

If a person sees wrongly, they may judge wrongly.

Wrong judgment easily leads to wrong attachment.

Attachment forms choices.

Choices form actions.

Actions in turn form new results and conditions.

In the end, we may even live inside a cycle of cause and effect that we ourselves keep creating, while always thinking the problem is all outside.

So truly deep change does not necessarily begin by changing the outside world.

Sometimes we must first return to a more fundamental question:

How do you see the world?

When the way of seeing changes, judgment may change.

When judgment changes, choices may change.

When choices change, actions begin to change.

When actions change, new causes and conditions begin to form.

So:

Prajñā is not an escape from cause and effect.

It is that, because we see causes and conditions, we know better how to face cause and effect.

XV. The Heart Sutra Is Actually an Entrance Map to Buddhist Philosophy

When reading the Heart Sutra for the first time, there is really no need to rush to understand every line to the deepest level.

Because behind its two hundred or so characters is connected a vast system of Buddhist thought.

It is good enough to grasp a few entrances first.

Calm and insight let us understand how to train the mind.

The five aggregates let us re-examine how “I” is actually constituted.

The eighteen realms let us understand how cognitive experience forms.

The twelve links of dependent origination let us understand the cycle of life and how suffering continues.

The Four Noble Truths point out suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path to cessation.

Prajñā points to insight into the true nature of all phenomena.

Emptiness lets us understand that all phenomena arise from causes and conditions and have no fixed inherent nature.

Pāramitā points to moving from delusion and attachment toward awakening and liberation.

Finally, all of this returns to that extremely important line at the beginning of the Heart Sutra:

“He saw clearly that the five aggregates are all empty, and crossed beyond all suffering and distress.”

I would now condense the learning path of the entire Heart Sutra into five characters:

Observe → Conditions → Empty → Release → Freedom

To put it more fully:

Observation → Dependent Origination → Emptiness → Non-Attachment → Freedom

First see.

Then understand conditions.

From conditions, see emptiness.

From emptiness, loosen attachment.

From non-attachment, move toward freedom.

CEO Yang’s Reading Notes

I increasingly feel now that:

The Heart Sutra does not teach a person to want nothing.

It teaches a person:

not to be bound by what they own.

It doesn’t tell us not to succeed.

It is that when we succeed, we know success too is formed by countless causes and conditions.

So there is no need for arrogance.

Nor any need to think success can last forever unchanged.

It doesn’t tell us not to have wealth.

It is that when we have wealth, we shouldn’t let wealth in turn define us.

It doesn’t tell us to have no emotions.

It is that when an emotion arises, I can see:

This is a “feeling” that is happening.

It deserves to be understood, but it is not the whole of me.

It doesn’t tell us to give up our careers.

It is that when doing business, we know that a company itself is also a combination of causes and conditions.

Talent, capital, technology, markets, timing, systems, customers and the social environment together form the result we see today.

Since that is so, when we succeed there is no need to credit everything to ourselves.

When we fail, there is no need to negate our whole selves.

What really matters is:

Seeing the causes and conditions.

Because only by seeing the causes and conditions do we know what can be changed next.

How I Now Re-Understand “CEO”

I have run businesses for many years.

We talk about governance every day.

Governing the company.

Governing the organization.

Governing capital.

Governing systems.

Governing risk.

Governing technology.

But after reading the Buddhist sutras, I began to ask myself a more fundamental question:

How I Now Re-Understand “CEO”

I have run businesses for many years.

We talk about governance every day.

Governing the company.

Governing the organization.

Governing capital.

Governing systems.

Governing risk.

Governing technology.

But after reading the Buddhist sutras, I began to ask myself a more fundamental question:

If a person can govern a very large company but cannot govern their own mind, does that count as true governance?

A CEO can manage hundreds or thousands of people.

Can manage hundreds of millions, or even greater assets.

Can understand markets, capital, technology and business models.

But if they cannot manage their own fear, desire, anger, arrogance and attachment, then the larger the external system they manage, the more the unseen inner problems may also be magnified.

So I increasingly believe now that:

Running a business is governing the external system.

Practice is governing the inner system.

And a truly mature person must learn both systems.

This is also something I have always firmly believed:

Everyone is the CEO of their own life.

But what is truly hardest to govern in life may never be others.

It is oneself.

CEO Yang’s Five-Layer Cognitive Model of the Heart Sutra™

Having read this far, I have organized my current understanding of the Heart Sutra into five layers:

Observation → Dependent Origination → Emptiness → Non-Attachment → Freedom

It is not an academic classification of the Heart Sutra, but a way of understanding I arrived at after putting the Dharma back into business, decision-making and life.

Layer One | Observe

First see what is happening.

See what is happening outside, and even more, see your own thoughts, feelings and reactions.

Often we think we are observing the world.

In fact, we are only interpreting the world through our own experience, standpoint, emotions and desires.

So the first step is not to rush to judge.

It is to see first.

Without observation, there is no true awareness.

↓

Layer Two | Conditions

No result is formed by a single cause.

People are like this.

Companies are like this.

Relationships are like this.

Success and failure are like this too.

A result we see today is often the product of countless conditions acting together.

Therefore, understanding conditions is also a reminder to ourselves:

Don’t oversimplify the world.

Don’t attribute all success to yourself.

Nor blame all failure on one person.

Seeing conditions keeps us from reducing a complex world to a single answer.

↓

Layer Three | Emptiness

Since everything is established dependent on conditions, there is no permanently fixed inherent nature independent of conditions.

So:

Emptiness is not nothingness.

Emptiness is the absence of a fixed, unchanging inherent nature.

People change.

Relationships change.

Markets change.

Companies change.

Everything we take for granted today may also change as conditions change.

And this is not necessarily a pessimistic thing.

Precisely because nothing is fixed forever, change is possible.

Because of emptiness, there is possibility.

↓

Layer Four | Non-Attachment

Understanding emptiness doesn’t mean we don’t act.

It is:

Commit fully, but don’t bind yourself to the result.

You can have.

You can pursue.

You can succeed.

You can create wealth.

You can also hold very high standards for your own business.

But don’t let any external result become the whole of “I.”

Because when we tie ourselves entirely to a particular result, once the result changes, the self collapses with it.

So non-attachment is not not trying.

It is retaining freedom even after having tried.

↓

Layer Five | Freedom

Freedom is not that nothing ever happens.

It is that when things happen, you still have the ability to see, understand, choose and act.

It is not that there are no storms.

It is no longer being carried away by every wave.

It is not that life from then on has no gains and losses.

It is that between gain and loss, you still know what you are going through.

This is what I now understand as:

Freedom.

When You Have Everything, Is Your Mind Free?

Observation is seeing.

Emptiness is understanding.

Non-attachment is letting go.

Freedom is being free.

All our lives we pursue more.

More wealth.

More knowledge.

More resources.

More connections.

More achievements.

More influence.

There is nothing wrong with these things in themselves.

What is really worth asking is:

When one day you have everything, is your mind free?

If the answer is no, perhaps what truly needs upgrading is not just the outside world.

It is:

It is our way of seeing the world.

To See Is to Be Free

I now re-read the three characters of “Guanzizai” (Avalokiteśvara, “the one who observes freely”).

I know that it is first of all the name of a bodhisattva.

But for my own practice and life, it has also become a very important reminder:

To see is to be free.

See your own thoughts, rather than only following them.

See your own emotions, rather than only being controlled by them.

Only by seeing your own attachments is it possible to loosen them.

Only by seeing causes and conditions do we not mistake the transient for the eternal.

Only by seeing emptiness can we keep our freedom between gaining and losing.

So having read to the end, I actually feel that:

Practice is not leaving life.

True practice may happen precisely in the most complicated places of life.

In your career.

In your family.

In your relationships.

In success and failure.

In gaining and losing.

In the very moment each emotion arises.

And in every moment when we want to grasp something and are unwilling to let go.

In those moments, to still be able to come back and look at ourselves.

To see the causes and conditions.

To understand emptiness.

To loosen unnecessary attachments.

And then, to make a choice again.

This may be the most important starting point I have reached in reading the Heart Sutra up to now:

It isn’t that you must leave life to practice.

It is that within the most complicated life,

you can still see yourself clearly,

see the world clearly,

give your all,

yet not be bound by the world.

Finally, let us return to the path I have organized for myself:

Observation → Dependent Origination → Emptiness → Non-Attachment → Freedom

First see.

Then understand.

After understanding, you can loosen.

After loosening, there is choice.

And true freedom may not be that life from now on has no storms.

It is that when the storms come,

you still know where you are.

To see is to be free.

—— CEO Yang | Heart Sutra Study Notes V2.0