The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries

The Other Shore.... is one of the most important texts I have read on deciphering Buddhist sutras. It offers a revision of some words in the original text, which makes the sutra completely understandable to this Western Buddhist. It is concise, thoughtful, and beautiful. I will be keeping this text in my library.

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.

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.

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 case, this copy will definitely be given away!⚡☸️⚡

A lot of wisdom in this book...

Fast ship

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 touch my heart by using tender words and beautiful poetry, introducing progressively the students 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 got this??? In any Sutra such claim is made, on the contrary it is explained that Sugathagarbha it is not present in such unanimated objects.I also disagree with his explanation of the Four Noble Truths in page 95, to me he misses a key word in his coment; what we call suffering is just a mere empty appearence that arises as such due to our ignorance and karma. Suffering has the the same quality of the suffering in a dream; it's totally Illusory. It's not Real.In page 119 - 120, Thay makes another strange claim associating tantrik practitioners of the Mantrayana in ancient India with "superstition and magical thinking". He doesn't explain from where he gets this idea, but who does explain it is Red Pine in his own book. Thay has tremendous and deep qualitys as a spiritual Master and leader, but I believe schoolastism was not one of them.Personally I see this comentary as a first step in a long journey to access the space of Prajña, and for those devotes students of Chan/Zen tradition I recommend you also to study the Red Pine's comentary, more detailed.From the bottom of my heart, Thank You Thay for have written this work that brings us closer to the freedom of Awakening.

I am not a fan of Thich Nhat Hanh or the cult of personality that has sprung up around him, however, this is the best english translation of the Prajnaparamita. Direct translations have always been a problem because we westerners lack the cultural context to intuitively understand the intended meanings and implications of the original author's word choices. Thich cuts through this with subtle rephrasing that makes the text much less ambiguous. He also goes on to not only justify these alterations, but to provide parables that go a long way to illustrate the ideas they convey. Afterwards it becomes quite obvious what the original authors intended to convey.I highly recommend it for anyone interested in deepening the understanding of buddhist philosophies.