..续本文上一页ill take place since their quality conditions consciousness, and through them consciousness seeks a form in rebirth to manifest those qualities.

　　The skandha called consciousness (Sanskrit: vijnana) is the faculty of knowing. Consciousness is a reaction or response which has one of the six organs (of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind) as its basis and one of the six corresponding external phenomena (visual form, sound, smell, taste, touch and mental thoughts) as its object. Consciousness arises out of contact between the object and the corresponding organ, but consciousness does not recognize an object itself. It is only a sort of awareness, awareness of the presence of an object. For instance, when eye comes into contact with a blue color, eye-consciousness simply "sees" the presence of a color. The recognition that the color is blue comes from the skandha of perception, the third aggregate discussed above. Likewise, the hearing-consciousness only hears the sound but does not recognize the category of sound; this is done by the perception-aggregate, and so on.

　　A commonly-made mistake about consciousness is to misunderstand it as some sort of soul or permanent self or continuum that proceeds through one life and onto the next. The Buddha taught that consciousness arises only out of conditions; without the presence of conditions there is no consciousness. Consciousness depends on form, feelings, perceptions and impulses for its arising and cannot exist independently of them. It is essentially an observing function.

　　[edit]

　　"...and is saved from all suffering and distress."

　　All suffering is caused by delusion--delusion as to the nature of ultimate reality. Ultimate reality, in Buddhist view, for which now some very interesting parallels have been provided by quantum physics, is neither being (particle) nor non-being (wave), neither solid nor abiding in space-time continuum. .The qualities of non-self (Sanskrit: Anatman) and impermanence (Sanskrit: Anitya) are the hallmark of each inpidual existence; it is only the ego which clings to the deluded view of a permanent self and distorts the, , nature of reality. In meditation, one apprehends on a direct, experiencial level that the five skandhas are mere processes and that no self exists in the sense of a permanent, eternal, integral, independent substance; it is through this apprehension that a person is saved from deluded views, and hence from pain and suffering that ensue from such deluded views.

　　[edit]

　　"Sariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness form."

　　As noted above, like all phenomena, form is devoid of any inherent self-abiding nature. This devoidness (emptiness) is not a quality which a form gains in the course of its (momentary) existence but is infused with it from the very beginning. Quantum physics, as noted earlier, posits the energy of silent pulsation at the core of everything in the universe, thus defining for us emptiness or sunyata as the "core energy"; in this light it is possible to see all forms emerging out of this silent pulsation as in waves or particles at the cellular level.

　　The sutra insists that form is emptiness. There is a critical difference between form being empty and form being emptiness. Sunyata, in Prajnaparamita sutras, is the ultimate nature of reality; at the same time it does not exist apart from the phenomena but permeates each phenomenon. Therefore, sunyata cannot be sought apart from the totality of all forms. And, although all forms are qualified at their core by sunyata, its presence does not negate the conventional appearance of form. In this sense, emptiness is dependent upon the form it qualifies, as much as form is dependent on …

《Heart Sutra: Buddhism in the Light of Quantum Reality》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…