Wu Wisdom: The Heart Sutra

The following is an excerpt from the Tao of Wu.

When someone is known to be strong in the streets they say, “That nigga got a lot of heart.” It doesn’t mean he’s the toughest dude out there. It just means he has the will and the courage to do something difficult, even if it’s just surviving. If he got beat down, he came back up: He got a lot of heart.

But another way of putting that is to say that his soul is large. This relates to the Heart Sutra, one of the shortest but most important sutras in all Buddhist writings. It’s from the sutras known as the Perfection of tight, and incomparably profound.

Mostly the Heart Sutra is about being able to see reality as it truly is, unclouded by the things human beings project onto it. You read it differently in different translations, but to me, it’s about knowing yourself. It’s about trusting your heart—real heart, not your ego—to show you the truth. It’s about that spark of God inside you. It’s a lesson that I learned many years ago, when I was a kid in Staten Island.

Additional Reading: English translation of the Heart Sutra & A Commentary On The Heart Sutra.