PART ONE: Review of Chapter 1
Subhūti and the Buddha explain Prajñāpāramitā to Śāriputra who questions them about it.
Definitions of ‘Bodhisattva,’ ‘armor/adornment,’ ‘Mahasattva,’ ‘Great Vehicle,’ and ‘attainment’ were given.
PART TWO: CH 2 - Śakra Devānām Indra
1. Preamble
Śakra (Indra), highest god in the Realm of Desire, requests Subhūti to explain Prajñāpāramitā
Subhūti begins by extoling the past deeds of the Buddha and says:
“Arhats are unfit for anuttarā-saṃyak-saṃbodhi because the ‘flood’ of birth-and-death (samsara) hems them in and they are incapable of any more rebirths (to rescue sentient beings)”
2. Standing in Emptiness
Subhūti then explains the Heart Sutra’s, “No Form, Sensation, Perception, Condition, Consciousness. No eye, ear, nose, etc.” including many more dharmas.
Śāriputra merely thinks his question and Subhūti replies:
“The Tathāgata does not abide anywhere. The non-abiding mind is known as the Tathāgata. The Tathāgata does not abide in the conditioned nature, nor in the unconditioned nature.”
3. Arhats and their goals are Illusions
From Huifeng Shi translation:
Thereupon, the gods within the assembly conceived this thought: “Even though we can understand the meaning of the speech and language of the yakṣas, that taught and expounded by Subhūti is difficult to comprehend.”
Subhūti knew the thoughts conceived in the minds of the gods, and spoke to the gods saying: “Within this, nothing is spoken, nothing is shown, and nothing is heard.”
The gods conceived this thought: “Although Subhūti wishes to make the meaning easier to comprehend, he instead makes it more profound and subtle.”
Subhūti: “I teach that living beings are like an illusion, like a dream; the fruition of a srotāpanna is also like an illusion, like a dream; the fruition of a sakṛdāgāmin, the fruition of an anāgāmin, the fruition of an arhat, and the path of a pratyekabuddha, also like an illusion, like a dream.”
The gods said: “O Subhūti! You even state that the Buddha dharmas are like an illusion, like a dream?!”
Subhūti: “I teach that the Buddha dharmas are also like an illusion, like a dream. I teach that even nirvāṇa is also like an illusion, like a dream.”
The gods: “Even Nirvana!?”
Subhūti: “Even if perchance there could be anything more distinguished, of that too I would say it is like an illusion, like a dream, for not two different things are illusions and Nirvana, are dreams and Nirvana.”
4. Śakra’s Flowers
Thereupon the thought came to Śakra…and the Venerbale Subhūti thought to himself by way of reply, “These flowers Śakra scatters are magical creations, not from trees, shrubs, etc. These flowers are mind-made.’
Śakra replied:
“These flowers have not been generated at all, for there are really no flowers.”
5. Training in Prajñāpāramitā
“Subhūti explains the merely nominal existence of all separated things.”
“Prajñāpāramitā is not one of the skandhas, nor yet other than they.”
6. The Infinitude of Prajñāpāramitā
Śakra: “By ‘living being’, not any dharma is meant, nor any non-dharma is meant. There is only a nominal designation, and this name is without foundation, without basis, with the forced establishment of a name, known as a ‘living being’. … “’Living being’ is, right from the very beginning, constantly pure.”
7. Confirmation
The Buddha said to the gods: “In the distant past, [when] I was at the city of Dīpavatī, the abode of the Buddha Dīpaṃkara, I practiced without being separated from Prajñāpāramitā. At that time, the Buddha Dīpaṃkara predicted that I, in the future, after asaṃkhya kalpas, would become a Buddha, by name of ‘Śākyamuni’.